Internet Explorer 6 Ballad

One of the major problem that I face when I develop an interface is the cross browser compatibility. Especially on IE 6! Something always ends up messed up. It just happened last week when I stumbled across an IE 6 bug called “Peekaboo Bug”. We just did a release of new version of HouseMovie when suddenly the client phoned us and told us that She can’t see all the text on the Banner manager page. I asked her, what kind of browser that She is using and Surprise…Surprise!! It is IE 6!

The so called “Peekaboo Bug” is one of the nastiest bug on IE 6 that I’ve found so far beside doubled margin on floated-divs.  You can read more about the “Peekaboo Bug” in here. To fix this bug is actually simple, just set position:relative; in the div that are missing the text inside, and it should work.

I do personally believe that as a web developer, we shouldn’t fix this. We shouldn’t pampered the IE 6 user by trying to make everything work in IE 6. Because as long as we fix this bug, they never update their browser to a much more decent browser say IE 7 or Mozilla Firefox. So Mr. Architect, I feel you!