If there's a lesson that's easy to forget, it's “Don't forget to try it in Internet Explorer for Windows”. It doesn't matter how many browsers your web site looks identical in, IE will almost certainly display it a different way.
So I was enjoying my Google Maps experience thoroughly until today, when it suddenly occurred to me I hadn't tested any Google Maps pages in IE6.
Oh dear. To say IE is in fact sub-beta quality software is to seriously over-rate it. Google Maps works fine in virtually all modern browsers, although there are some icon issues in Opera 8 on the Mac. In IE for Windows, though, there is a complete failure to work. I'm not talking about not rendering correctly. It actually proclaims the site is inaccessible due to a DNS error. It is that rubbish.
To be fair to Google, who might otherwise appear negligent in deploying a public mapping API that won't work in 96% of users' browsers. it doesn't happen all the time, apparently. It's only in specific nested DIV tags. There are workrounds, too, although I've yet to find one that works for me.
It's Microsoft, who have, yet again, produced a second rate bit of software the whole world ends up running and which ruins the life of everyone who has to write software (or web pages) for it. Please, would everyone use another browser instead?
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