Should we as developers charge extra for making code work with ie?

Question

I ask this question because so many times i build a website then i have to spend sometimes as much time i took building the website, modifying code so it works in ie. it takes a long time because at present debugging tools for ie are appalling. definatley not up to the standard of firebug.

in a few years gone, if i was to create a flash website and an html version of that site so people who didnt have flash could view it i would charge for the flash site and the html site as seperate entities.

The way ie which ignores so many web standards effectivly makes it a non standard application, therefore should we charge for making websites compatible with ie.

I personally would prefer to have a note on sites i create saying that ie is a heap of junk and if visitors want to view the content get a better browser, however my clients i dont think would agree!!!

EDIT

I'm not trying to start an argument of what is the best browser, what people should use, as everybody has a personal preference and its not for me to say what people should use, i simply wanted to know if people thought its ok to charge clients for the time it takes to test and fix code so it works in ie.

Answer 1

The way ie which ignores so many web standards effectivly makes it a non standard application, therefore should we charge for making websites compatible with ie.

Who except us developers cares about standards? IE is a web browser with a huge market share. Deal with it. The right thing to do is to calculate the additional effort into the initial price, and use techniques that reduce additional work to a minimum.

It's not that you're not right. I totally agree with you. It's just that outside the tech world, nobody understands, or cares for, the issue.

Answer 2

Hi,

I agree with you, as a developer is hard and requires extra work to make a site load ok in all browsers. However, we need to show respect for the users that are (still) using IE.

http://gs.statcounter.com/

They are around 50% right now.

Hopefully in the future Microsoft will come out with new versions of the browser that will respect all standards and this problem will disappear.

Thanks, Flores

Answer 3

Regardless of all, Internet Explorer 6 and 7 are widely used yet. In my business we only code to IE7+ compatibility and show a browser ballot screen (whatbrowser.org has a good example) for IE6 and lesser.

Compatibility (with most used browsers) I think that's an essencial task that every good web programmer should do in their projects, but if our clients needs IE6 compatibility we could charge an extra fee, depending on the complexity.

If you're planning to make a HTML5/CSS3 -intensive web project, of course, forget targeting IE < 9, or charge a fee for it (but it would be a big headache).