As part of an article I had read about a new brand, there was an interesting paragraph that I felt I had to write about.
The brand that was being written about was HTV (Hispanic TV) which is available in the US, Europe, and Latin America. I personally have never heard of it, I doubt many have, but that’s not really the issue. The paragraph that caught my attention was this one: “Unfortunately the HTV web site requires that you use Internet Explorer so, because this is not 1999 and Microsoft abandoned the OS X ship years ago, there is probably some information or visual application that I may be failing to provide. But I believe you get the gist.”
For those of you whom aren’t web designers, the concept might be a little foreign to you, but one of the major issues associated with web design is the variation that occurs based upon which browser is being used. Something viewed in Firefox might not read the same in Internet Explorer if you are doing something more complex than basic html. This causes a whole lot of issues cross-browser and is a thorn in the side of most who work on websites. But, a weird decision (or an extremely lazy) decision by the creative team at InJaus (pronounced In-house, a cleaver play-on-words) to have a site that only works in Internet Explorer.
Now, it is most likely that you are viewing this in Internet Explorer, it’s the most widely used browser at around 74% of internet browsers. But that leaves 26% of viewers who can’t view your site and will not go through the effort to get a new browser to see it. In fact, Internet Explorer hasn’t made a version for Mac in almost 10 years, so if your a mac person you have no chance of getting to it unless you hunt down a pc. A very curious decision to actively design a site that is not accessible to a quarter of the internet population.
If you get a chance, go check out their site www.htv.com. If you happen to take a look, let us know how it works, because we don’t have a clue.