At work the other day I was approached by one of our sales guys. He had a quick question about his mates websites who we do SEO for, let’s call him Raul. Now, Raul has a few websites managed by his “web guy” who is a local, Melbourne based web designer who shall be known as Julia.
Now this Julia, had sent an email to Raul, clearly in an attempt to squeeze just a tad bit more dollars from Raul’s ever so squeezable wallet. Basically this email went like this…
Microsoft IE8 release
With the recent release of Microsoft’s new browser, IE8, it has brought to light that websites previously designed for IE7 and older versions will render incorrectly in the new IE8.
… blah blah blah …basically meeting IE7 needs and not industry standards.
The websites I am monitoring for you, ??? and ??? both require Style sheet adjustments (CSS) and possible page templates to make them compatible in IE8.
I can offer you 2 solutions,
1. A “quick fix” for both sites which would force IE8 to render its content as IE7 internally from the page templates. This would take approximately 2 hours total.
2. Amend the CSS (Style Sheets) and affected page templates to industry standards on both sites. This would take approx 6 hours total for both sites.
… blah blah blah Regards, Julia.
Now you’re probably thinking that, yes, this email is correct about the potential rendering differences, although solution 1 is a bit expensive for a copy and paste job. To some extent I agree, but then I hear that due to the fact “IE7 needs and not industry standards,” Julia has taken down both of Raul’s websites until the CSS has been fixed. What a joke!
Due to some minor CSS differences between browsers, Julia has attempted to force Raul to hand over some extra pennies, claiming that the site will not work until it has been fixed.
 Above: The Real Raul Julia |
I immediately told the salesperson to get Raul on the phone to Julia and make him put the site back up immediately, which he then did, but I just couldn’t believe it. I mean, imagine that, upselling every client in your database between 2 – 6 hours of work everytime a new browser is updated or released.
Firefox 3.0.12 was just released a few days ago, now… if I play my cards right I could have a lot of work coming up. |