Web developers that follow web standards can often be heard muttering obscenities very near to the words "Internet Explorer" or the letters "IE".
Why? Well, we code our semantically correct markup and our lovely CSS and everything looks great... before we proceed to test the site in IE 6 and IE 7.
We then discover issues that require us to butcher our elegant work in order to get it to look right. We have to do this with an eye on our standards compliant browser (usually Mozilla Firefox) to ensure we don't mess something up in the process.
As a developer that has been using web standards since they first became a realistic way of developing, I've come across a lot of its quirks with IE 6 and IE 7. I can usually pre-empt issues when coding so that I can avoid nasty surprises later on, but we developers shouldn't have to do this.
Unfortunately, Microsoft Internet Explorer is the most common web browser. Microsoft's monopoly position means it can impose the use of a particular web browser on just about everyone.
Microsoft has made improvements to Internet Explorer, which has come a long way since the horrors of IE 5.
Microsoft promised a lot with IE7 but there are still many issues.
SitePoint is a great resource for website developers and recently they attempted to give IE 7 every chance of proving itself. The result:
Obviously, with IE7 Microsoft made great strides in correcting the most glaring and painful issues that plagued developers in IE6. But the unavoidable truth revealed by this reference is that Internet Explorer is still miles behind the competition.
SitePoint: In All Fairness... Internet Explorer Still Stinks