There are two parts to an interesting overall article over on Derek Featherstone’s Box of Chocolates. He poses the questions: Are there browser elitists? If so, why are we that way?

For instance, most of us know that Firefox is a better browser. We have all heard about the better security, but as web designers, some of us know that Firefox also obeys more of the rules and tricks in CSS. Featherstone, like me, and like most other standards-focused web designers will implelement little tricks and “features” into a site. It will work great with Firefox, but for IE it might not. Instead of using javascript or a small hack to get the effect to work in IE, we just brush it off saying “IE sucks.”.

Although “IE sucks.” is a very true statement, shouldn’t we suck it up and make the effect work in IE? I think so. I’m not perfect, but I do try to get most of the features and tricks that I find “important” to get to work in IE. For instance, the Quick Hits section on the right of the front page, didn’t always change to black text when moused over in IE. Why? Because IE doesn’t support the :hover pseudo class in anything other than a < a > tag. If fixed it my incasing the who block of text in a < a > tag. Not perfect, but now it works in IE.

Whether we like it or not people still use IE (As of yesterday 53.7% of the visitors to this site, still use IE) so we need to do something. However there must be a careful balance in place. I have spent too much time at work trying to get a simple effect to show up in IE…there needs to be a limit where you need to stop. Not just for your own sanity, but as Joe from Gadgetopia wrote, it could be costing your clients money too.

Links: Browser Elitism Part 1 | Part 2

So as I causally stroll through the new featured sites on CSS Beauty today, I stumbled across a firefox extension called Aardvark. This is a neat little extension. What it does is nothing…until you activate it on a page and then it will place a red border around each CSS element on that page when you mouse over it. It also displays a label on what the tag is and what is the ID or CLASS is for that element. Don’t understand what I’m saying? Go to their page, and click the demo link on the top of the page.

Now, the site says its “for everybody” but I really don’t see my girlfriend using this extension. However web designer, or hobbists, especially those just getting into CSS, can and should use this alot. I still will go into my CSS file and add a red border around objects so I can get a better handle on the spacing, with this nice little extension, I won’t have to.

There are also some keystrokes you can make to remove or move an element within the page, but I just really like the border thing.