I work in the website support department of a big huge company who I’m not going to name here, and I’ve got a degree in software engineering, so I’m well-versed in the financial expenses inherent in software testing and development.

Still, it does nothing but piss me off when a cool marketing gimmick like the Target Red Hot Summer Sweepstakes looks like it’s going to be all-browser friendly (flash interface, cool effects) until you try to do something useful like take advantage of the “free music” offer and then find out that hey, since I’m not running Internet Explorer on Windows, I’m not invited to play.

I know there are some folks who hate the little “Best Viewed With” messages that adorn many websites, but frankly, I’d rather be told at the beginning that “hey, this cool thing? NOT YOURS.” than get halfway in and find out. (I’d also rather have a “feedback” link right under it.) I mean, dammit, if a company’s going to be lazy-ass and not write code that everyone can use, they should at least be courteous enough to tell us.

Fun fact of the day:
Based on my web stats for July, around 80% of the humans who hit my site are on Internet Explorer on Windows. (18% of you brave souls are on the IE 7 beta!), around 7% are on Firefox on Windows, around 7% are on Firefox on Mac, and 6% are on Safari on Mac. My mystery Netscape 3 user has finally given up the ghost.