Hold Fast Creative

I’ll preface this entry with this: There isn’t a soul on this earth that despises hacking styles for Internet Explorer more than I do.

I have no intentions of kicking a dead horse here, everyone on the planet is fully aware that the sixth version of Internet Explorer is outdated and a total pain in the ass for designers and developers; but I still write CSS for it and would like to tell you why.

A few months ago I received a call from a potential client (who just so happened to be a Finnish handset maker) regarding some custom icon development for an upcoming project. The woman who called me had discovered my portfolio by asking uncle Googs on her personal computer using Firefox.  Upon reviewing my site and deciding I was a worthy candidate for her UI considerations, she decided to take note of my portfolio and give me a call.

So far, off to a good start. Every part of this story is awesome: A high profile client is in need of a service and discovers a suitable vendor and all is right with the world. Not the case, friends.

There is nothing more uncomfortable (except for wearing newborn baby vomit) than experiencing the following conversation that shortly ensued:

“Hello, thanks for calling Hold Fast Creative, this is Derek.”

“Hi, I found your portfolio online last night and really like your style! I work with [Finnish handset maker] and we are in need of some custom icons for a new project.”

“Great, I would love to help out! Can I ask how you found me [nods head and makes air hump gestures at wall]?”

“Sure, I found your site… Let me just pull it up here… Oh, hmm… I’m sorry. I guess I’m using the wrong browser here at work apparently… Chowderhead, it says?”

This potential new client has just tried to access my site using IE6. Instead of viewing my portfolio, she’s greeted with a clever little quip about IE6 being lame, and all content is completely without style. At this point, my clever IE6 strip-all-styles-away-and-insert-some-bonehead-remark doesn’t sound all that clever. It’s not clever. It’s downright embarrassing. I try to explain my humor and why my portfolio looks like a grenade of stale wit and Times New Roman, but it’s to no avail. Needless, to say, this potential client didn’t call back.

So what did I learn from this? Well, for starters, if you are in the business of making websites: Ensure your personal website looks great in all browsers. I also learned that there are a ton of folks who are bound to IE6 in the workplace, and their employers are the types of clients all studios strive to obtain. If you’re like me, and your website is responsible for your family’s only source of income, write the extra 102 lines or so of code. It’s much easier than explaining why your site looks like shit in IE6 to a potential client over the phone.

With that being said, if your site is a personal project, or you don’t rely on it to survive; screw ’em, do as you please! You could also hire the awesome John Martz to illustrate a custom IE6 denial cartoon for you like we did for Momentile.