Mobile Web Development Is the New Internet Explorer 6

Developing a website that works well across devices and browsers is an excersize in playing Whack-A-Mole. Once you get one browser working on a desktop browser, you go to the next browser and find that not everything works the same way. In 2014, it seems that there aren’t that many differences in functionality between desktop browsers, but that all changes once you start making a responsive website that must handle mobile devices as well as it does desktop browsers.

When making sure the site works for mobile devices, there are so many more variables that you have to take into account than you do for traditional desktop website development. While there are the same differences between the current browsers, there are still a ton of mobile devices out there that are running older browsers and are unable to be updated, such as Android 2.3. Other issues that cause fun interactions is that some device and browser configurations trigger hover effects, while others don’t trigger the hover effect. In addition, the iOS and Android devices have one set of touch events that they trigger and recognize. Unsurprisingly, the Windows Phone has an entirely different set of touch events. Leave it to Microsoft to come up with browser events that are incompatible with other browsers.

It would be nice if the company that always seems to cause issues for web developers would not be Microsoft. Just for a change, I would love to have Apple or Google or someone else do something that annoys Web Developers instead of it always being Microsoft.

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