Ok, as an inaugural first “real” post to the vinernet I figure I’ll contribute something from my area of expertise.

I’m a web designer / front end coder by trade. I work mainly in XHTML / CSS for front end coding because … well, no one should use tables anymore when coding a website. They’re outdated, bulky, and make for very unfriendly to look at HTML. This isn’t entirely the point of my post today, rather, I’d like to talk about standards for CSS.

A long time ago, a man named Jeffery Zeldman fought for a universal standard to be met between all browsers and how they render HTML and CSS. He’s still fighting that fight today, and his army has grown. The problem? Certain browser-making companies just flat out refuse to adopt these standards. Why? WHO KNOWS. A microsoft engineer has even been quoted as saying “standards compliance is not a high priority” for them in developing their browsers. Unacceptable.

One of my greatest woes is building out a site, and then loading up that PC to check it in IE 6. Nine times out of 10, I missed something when applying a generous amount of IE hacks in my css, and something is not rendering properly, thus forcing me to go through my code and figure out what I didn’t include that I should have. There’s a fun word, should, because honestly I shouldn’t have to put in hacks at all. They may make my page display properly in IE, but they then cause my code to become invalid. Why do I keep doing it? Because about 30-40% of the internet population still browse using IE 6, despite it’s flaws. Most of these people are doing it simply because of lack of knowledge, they don’t know that their browser is a steaming pile because most people adjust their sites accordingly. It’s a big shame spiral, really. IE 7 is a step up, indeed, but even it is still not completely standards compliant, showing thatMicrosoft couldn’t care less about standards, they would rather people make things work for them.

So what is the solution? Many are calling for developers to stop hacking their code to work in IE, especially IE 6. I like this solution a lot. It brings the issue out into the open, forcing people to see what valid code looks like displayed in this inferior browser. Most people will eventually wise up and switch to a better browser…ANY better browser. Unfortunately, the likelihood of this actually happening is slim. While a few people stick to their guns and refuse to hack their CSS to display in IE 6, most of us do not have this luxury. People like me, who work for design firms, have to do it because most clients won’t accept “it’s not going to work in IE 6″ as an answer.

So how else can we spread awareness? Seriously…I’m asking…