I’m referring to a large percentage of web pages by the way. Since moving on from Internet Explorer to better browsers (imo), namely Opera and Firefox, it is actually quite disturbing the number of websites (and web pages) that just look wrong. Images misaligned, backgrounds tiled and very poor implementation of content and features. And its not just small sites that suffer from it – there are a few big ones which are no better.

Why? The single answer is Internet Explorer. Internet Explorer was bundled with all Microsoft Operating systems since way back and as such, the majority of computer users use IE to surf the net.

This is all well and good, or would have been had internet standards been adhered to during its development. Microsoft decided to add proprietary features into IE and change the way a lot of established code and features would be implemented into their browser. The end result is that the browser which the majority of people use is full of security holes and renders web content in an entirely different way to everything else.

Consequently, beginner’s websites and even certain well established sites became developed exclusively for IE without a thought for other platforms or browsers, causing quite serious accessibility issues.

To be fair, Microsoft seems to have realised the error of their ways and have begun to make amends upon the release of IE7. It stacks up well with the competition feature-wise and renders most things to web standards. It’s not perfect (no browser is), but it’s definitely a step in the right direction.

That said and done, my ‘inspiration’ for writing this post came after viewing some rather horrendously coded MySpace profiles – not that MySpace is easy to work with in the first place… But just a note for all those with an account – especially those who used a theme generator to create a profile – do yourself a favour and check your page with a different browser or two – your profile may not look like what you were expecting…