I’ve returned from @media ajax a few days ago, a fantastic event I hope to be able to visit next year. This post is not about what happened there. There are better summaries published, easily accessible by search engine of your choice. Well, good ones anyhow. Besides, I have a cold so I’m even less coherent than usual, so those who’ll continue, beware.

I was however reminded again of a premise I’ve been thinking about every since Andy Clarke’s talk at @media 2006. Should websites look and behave the same way in all mainstream browsers or not?

I’ve been flipping my opinion on this through time, but it seems to me striving for same experience everywhere is not only tiresome, time consuming but also strategically counter-productive.

If a site works the same in all browsers, what incentives do browser laggards have to upgrade their browser?

Not many if any. I think same experience for everyone approach has other downsides as well. New features should be tested before they can be standardized and by tested I mean used. Otherwise we’re left to perpetually build to the lower common denominator. Just like we do now and it simply sucks.

There are arguments in favor of same experience everywhere. In my opinion most sensible one is that a significantly different experience between browsers can be confusing to users. I do, however, think this is not worth worrying about. In my experience, which is what I use when lacking better source of data, people in general don’t use multiple browsers. Those who do, will cope by either sticking to one browser per site or adjusting to differences. We’re not as dumb as we behave.

I used to despise “best seen on” or “optimized for” signs on websites and I still do when they mean they only work with a specified browser. I don’t think there’s anything wrong if website doesn’t shut out anyone, but it’s a bit nicer to some. In fact it’s what we already profess and do. We certainly don’t test all browsers that we used to even though there are still people using them. Not only don’t we test, we KNOW our sites don’t work the same in them. And if we already know and do this, why not also promote a better choice if we think there is one?

So what I’m trying to say without getting too deep into why is that I’ll try to build sites open to users of all browsers, but won’t be too timid to offer improved features when consistency is too difficult or impossible.