Web Page Standards
For all who have ever designed or created a Web page from idea to html knows the frustration of designing for various browser quirks and peculiarities. Not only is design for two browsers frustrating but they aren’t even the same in different versions or on different OSes. A page in Internet Explorer on a PC is very different on a Mac.

The solution has always been to “dumb down” pages and use only design techniques that all platforms render uniformly or to create multiple pages to be served to each quirky browser on each different platform. This has always been a problem and will continue to be one until designers begin implementing Web standards.

History
When the Web was created several years ago it was envisioned to be accessable by ALL on ANY platform. While Tim Berners-Lee did not forsee all of the specific uses for the Web he did understand the need for some sort of consistent standard to tie the Web together so this accessibiltiy principal would survive the years of change.

This is why he created the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). This organization provides standards recommendations after collaborating with others around the globe. However, until recently it seems that many of these recommendations went unheeded by the two browser giants.

Old Browsers?
With the latest browser releases much more compliance has been achieved yet one issue still remains -- the old browsers. What is a designer to do? Design for the new Web standard “compliant” browsers AND the old non-compliant browsers as well? The answer should be NO.

There is a growing movement to create pages that are compliant with W3C standards and simply making the content readable with old standards. Jefferey Zeldman and his alistapart.com and webstandards.org have proposed (and rightly so) to create pages that are standards compliant while at the same time still navigable and legible in old browsers. I say screw old browsers.

If people can still get content on older non-compliant standards there is less of a motivation to upgrade to compliant browsers. By designing pages that totally ignore any quirks of old browsers (or even new ones for that matter) will eventually force browser makers to follow a single standard for compliance. Only then will design truly become a process of true design and not the technical morass that it is now.

Conclusion
While the sensible may argue that this isn’t an entirely practical method of Web design just yet I argue that it is not only practical but required. The fact that most newer browsers come very close to supporting Web standards is proof that the Web at large can handle such “disregard” for non-compliant browsers.

By forcing users to upgrade to the better browser we aren’t alienating anyone...we are including everyone. When the Web was just getting started the newer, better Mosaic browser was almost universally used and downloaded within a year even though other browsers worked just as well. The reason was because it was a better browser. The comparison holds true today.