Develop your sites for a standard compliant browser first then modify for IE/Win
Added on Monday 2 Aug 2004
This weeks tip: develop your sites for a standard compliant browser first, and then add workarounds for Microsoft Internet Explorer on Windows (MSIE/Win).
I picked up this tip while reading through, 'Throwing Tables Out the Window', by Douglas Bowman; an article about how he used CSS to re-do the layout of the Microsoft home page.
Instead of concentrating on getting your design to work in Internet Explorer on the PC (the most popular web browser), he recommends that you do all your initial work and testing using a more standards compliant browser. This approach will cut the time you have to spend creating the inevitable workarounds required once you discover that your design falls apart in every other browser apart from yours. :-)
The thrust of the argument:
It is easier to tweak a standards compliant website to work in the Internet Explorer, than it is to fix a site optimized for IE/Win to work in more standard compliant browsers.
Throwing Tables Out the Window by Douglas Bowman: