Each browser interprets code differently, so when one writes code which renders correctly in one browser it doesn’t necessarily render as well in another browser. The thorn in all web developer’s sides is good old Internet Explorer 6 or IE6. One can build a webpage which looks fantastic in the world’s best browser Firefox (yes I am biased ) and then look at it in IE6 and it will most probably have layout issues.

There are numerous tricks and hacks to get web-pages looking good in IE6, so one just learns to deal with how bad the browser is.

So, what’s the real issue?

Just to re-enforce how bad the browser actually is, I was recently told about how Internet Explorer (all versions) have a built in default error page which will always be displayed even if you have added a customized error page to your web project.

What it boils down to is that if your custom error page is less than 512 bytes, it will never be rendered in IE. I seriously could not believe it when I saw the article by Jeff Starr, but it’s true. So, some Microsoft employee specifically wrote code to do this…one has to ask why? I mean seriously, what was the logic behind this decision? What a bunch of jokers!!!

To make matters worse, there even settings for this in the Windoze registry which differ according to the type of error….craziness!!

\HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Internet Explorer\Main\ErrorThresholds
Error - threshold (default)
400 - 512 bytes
403 - 256 bytes
404 - 512 bytes
405 - 256 bytes
406 - 512 bytes
408 - 512 bytes
409 - 512 bytes
410 - 256 bytes
500 - 512 bytes
501 - 512 bytes
505 - 512 bytes


Useless tip of the day: Ensure that your custom error pages have enough useless content in them to make them larger than 512 bytes

Even though I am a huge Firefox fan, I am fully aware that the majority of internet users still use Internet Explorer. What makes this statistic even scarier is that about a third of these users are using IE6 or IE5.

Now as a web developer, I spend a lot of my time building user interfaces (UI) and if I am going to be taken seriously by anyone, my work has to look good in all browsers. So, this causes a number of headaches when trying to get a site looking good in IE6 because of its lack of support for certain CSS rules.

I have got two machines at the moment, one of which is running Ubuntu and the other has Windows Vista on it. While I was still on Windows XP I used to use multiple IE’s so that I could get my sites looking good in all the browsers. However multiple IE’s doesn’t work on Vista, so I have felt a bit stranded for the last few months and had to resort to virtual machines with Virtual Box.

There is however a new browser application called IETester which allows you to have multiple tabs open in different IE versions – just brilliant!! I use the IE Tab plugin for Firefoxwhich allows Firefox tabs to render like IE7, but with IETester one is able to view all the versions of IE, even IE8…which is pretty cool.

Although this is a pretty good scenario, it would be much better if everyone started using Firefox, but there is more chance of a global financial recession and a black American president…wait, those things have already happened, so maybe there is a chance