sandwichesandapples

We had a brief discussion via email around the office today. The head of our UI team sent everyone a link to a new .png (I pronounce it “ping”) fix for Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE). I know for the non-webby it still sometimes comes as a surprise that IE is so despised by web developers but here it is: IE is crappy and here’s one reason. A .png is a type of graphic file like a .jpg (“jay-peg”) or .gif (“gif”). IE doesn’t render transparent .pngs correctly so designers must employ a hack to make this very common file format work in this very common browser.

One of our designers responded with another Microsoft complication to avoid. I responded, “Avoid Microsoft. Period.” Which got a response like “Oh, I heard you don’t like IE. If only you can convince billions of people to stop using it…” Har har. (continue reading…)