Why I should use Windows - and why I don’t.
Every design class I have ever taken tells you to design for your audience. This is pretty obvious, goes without saying I’m sure. So, without a doubt Microsoft Internet Explorer is the most popular browser. How popular? I pulled the stats for several of the websites that we’ve done at work and found that 83% of users use IE, 70% of those are using IE7, which is promising. Firefox has 10%, Safari has 6%. There were 7 Opera hits, and 2 Camino ones.
So, with 83% of the users on Windows, why am I not? It would make a little more sense to be designing and developing on the same platform that users are on. However, after being a long-time Windows user, I just can’t stand the experience on it. If I’m going to be at a computer for long hours of the day, I prefer to enjoy my time on the computer. You can pretty much do anything on one that you can do on the other. To me though, the Mac operating system is just so much more user friendly. The same reason I choose not to work in Linux I choose not to work in Windows. I want my OS to work for me, not the other way around.
When I’m making a website I check all my stuff regularly in Firefox or Safari. Usually Safari unless something isn’t working right - then I fire up Firefox with the web developer plugin which is a must if you make websites. I feel that these two browsers offer the best support for pure CSS. Once I’m happy with everything I’ll go back and do my conditional work for IE7 and IE6. I don’t wait for the end of the development to check these, but I only check these after certain milestones, like after the navigation is complete. I figure you should always start out with the right way before you start using hacks and conditionals. When I do check in IE I check in virtual machines via Parallels. I have two virtual machines set up, one that runs IE6, the other running IE7.
I don’t really have a problem with Microsoft, or Windows, I just have a more pleasurable experience on a Mac. The more you enjoy the process, the longer it takes to get burnt out.
Tags: firefox, ie, mac, safari, windows
This entry was posted on Monday, May 26th, 2008 at 3:37 pm and is filed under web development. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.