Beauty of the Web - IE9
beautyoftheweb.com
beautyoftheweb.com
I think back of all the hacks to fix the many many css bugs out there, and at least for me, dealing with and debugging older versions of IE has left a very bitter taste in my mouth.
A couple years ago it was even worse when IE8 was not out yet and there were zero developer tools to help try to understand how IE was rendering things.
And, the final kick in the pants is that IE7 and IE8 are still very pervasive and will not go away quickly, AND IE9 is for windows 7 and greater only, and thus the entire state of the art of modern web development will still be as follows: - design and test using modern browsers and tools like firebug - test in IE and realize there are rendering bugs everywhere - look longingly at the awesome strides that HTML5 and CSS3 are making, and realize that these awesome things are at least 5 years away from the mainstream, once IE9 and other modern browsers get more of a foothold.
If microsoft really wanted to push the state of web development, they would build IE9 for earlier versions of windows, OR retrofit the rendering engine of IE9 into earlier versions of IE.
Thanks microsoft, for finally giving a fuck. But fuck you for taking so long.
For all of us who, in the past, had to fight the unbelievable crap that was -- and for some poor souls still is -- IE6, view this link and savour the memories.
Sleep well.
The animations are nice but, for example, the "download IE9" popup at the top right looks amateurish, as does the orange button compelling us to Download Now.
Compare this to the beautiful design of even Firefox's update pages and be disappointed.
Anything less is not enough.