I had to take a few moments to comment about this article about how Microsoft.com is included in a list of names that sport a website that is not compatible to Internet Explorer 8.

http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/02/19/2056228&from=rss

Despite the fact that Microsoft.com doesn’t do well with its own browser, I commend the team that developed the new IE8. It appears they wanted to achieve something good and wholesome and something very unlike traditional MS… they wanted to conform to standards.  

So this is good right?

Well unfortunately, not really. The reason is because so many people designed their sites to work with IE5, IE6, and IE7, IE8 may actually hurt a lot of sites when it’s launched. Currently the list is at a 2400 websites and growing…

Thank the lord for QA folks!

Recommendation

Don’t Panic! When MS launches IE8 officially, many users will update… but many still will remain with IE6 and IE7. Check out these statistics of browser usage…

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Don’t sweat it… Just be aware when developing new website designs…

The best thing to do is to verify your site across a range of browsers (various IE’s, FireFox, Safari, Chrome, Opera…) and use your analytic information to see what your visitor base is primarily using.

Concerned? Send me a mail or leave a comment, let’s discuss.