I hope your customers share your sense of elitism

Do web sites need to look exactly the same in every browser? I’m sure you’re asking yourself that right now.

Now you can find out! (Also, you can find out if Mike Arrington is a dick. Sadly the need to post if Caps are in the playoffs is gone; someone prod Gary to do this next season.)

Anyway, well allow me to retort.

I so want to live in the magic world where this simple web site will convince the braying masses that are our customers to suddenly decide it’s OK, yes, you’re right mister smart web guy, it’s totally cool that you hacked up our new internet thing at a Starbucks on your MBP with the WebKit nightly.

“We certainly don’t mind that it looks funny”, they’ll say. “We’re so glad you’re hip and you are helping us break free of the shackles that are the Microsoft-IE hegemony.”

Yeah. That’s totally how it’ll go. Or, in the real world:

“Listen, make it work in IE6 or I’ll find another vendor who can. Say another word to me about web standards and CSS, and I’ll go somewhere else.”

Maybe it’s that our customers are insane - no argument there, I post about it all the time - but it seems to be that for we poor run-of-the-mill web developers, life is pretty cut-and-dried: do what you’re fucking told, and that is “make it work on my aunt’s eMachines shitfest”.

Or maybe it’s these guys doing the talking again.