I got annoyed today at the attitude some web designers seem to take to a large section of potential web users. Yes, I’m talking about that whole Internet Explorer 6 issue. I’m also talking about the patronising attitude that some designers seem to take to the end user. The idea that users who aren’t using the latest technology have only themselves to blame, and don’t deserve a reasonable web browsing experience.

An excellent article on Lee Munroe’s blog this week talked about maximising the capabilities of the latest browsers, while maintaining reasonable appearance and functionality for older software. Good points, well made. There was a comment in the subsequent discussion that stood out for me:

I use CSS3 rounded corners, but it’s not because I think IE users don’t care about them, it’s because I don’t care about IE users.

…

Honestly, I’m just not going to work hard enough to get my site to look just the way I want it in a broken web browser because most people are too stupid to download a decent one.

That was followed up by a tweet I