Well this is interesting, if you are a person who is somehow related to web, who spend ridiculous amount of time fixing CSS & XHTML that should work perfectly in IE6, IE7 then i guess this is an interesting discovery.

Microsoft recently revamped there windows website with a new layout to tell  the world “What is windows Live?” so instead of checking out windows live i said why not check out how Microsoft writes its markup and what i found was a bit disturbing, on the top of the page was a css hack to load a separate style sheet for IE7 as the original style sheet was not compatible with IE7.

<!–[if IE 7]><link rel=”Stylesheet” href=”Framework/styles/base_ie.css” /><![endif]–>

While stuck in traffic i receive an SMS from Mobilink Informing me about there another portal service “Mobilink World” . Being a net addict to the internet i went over to the site and once again just like Wateen i witnessed the sentence written in the footer “Best Viewed in IE6″ is it me or all the IT experts working in big companies like Mobilink are blind as to what they have mentioned on the footer of there site. Let me explain what they meant by “Best Viwed in IE6″ the sentence clearly states that

“We have build this site on Windows Based system using HTML tables drawn in Dreamweaver we don’t know even HTML, although the technology we used to build dynamics of the site is PHP which is an open source platform, we have learned to write this sentence in 1990’s when there was Internet Explorer & Netscape Communicator, we have no idea about Firefox, Opera, Safari, we really don’t know if this site will open in a cell phone browser either, we don’t know what accessibility, usability and cross browser / cross platform accessibility is we have never heard of W3C standards”

Unfortunately for me this kind of statement goes personal as every single day i spend hours of my work drafting, refining, optimizing & studying CSS  i work hours optimizing a site to work perfectly with IE6,IE7, Firefox 1, Firefox2, Opera, Safari, i try to figure out a way to make a site look perfect in all resolutions. But for some people its just collection of the check without caring as to what image they are projecting to there work. I dont claim my site to be perfect but at least it stands at a level where its code is optimized, it works in all browser, its written in clean CSS and validates w3c. But in Pakistan the web is evolving & becoming a necessity for every corporation but the people ending up getting the projects are not qualified for the work they land in. As long as corporations make decisions on the basis of reference and connection the end result will be “Best Viewed in IE6″

Mobilink World developed by Evamp & Saanga