To clarify why this problem did not occur to us, it is important to note that Felicity uses Mozilla almost exclusively (as do I). She has IE for OS X at work, but no IE at home (we run Linux).

Mozilla replaces broken images with a small piece of text describing their content. Alt or title text is used if provided, otherwise Mozilla does its best.

Of course, you all know that you really should ditch IE in favor of Mozilla (or Firebird), don’t you?

Damn straight! Image really is important. There’s a fascinating book called…I can’t come up with the name just now (I’ll post it once I get home tonight) but it’s about the development and redesign of the post 1965 British Railways brand. Really, truly incredible, down to the last detail. Not everyone is as meticulous, but the point was driven home. Image may not be absolutely everything, but it is indeed very, very powerful. Glad to see your new logo! It feels right.

I would have agreed a while back, but I’ve found Opera to be better, actually. Easier to skin (a small detail), the tab system is absolutely great, but what I’ve really noticed is that a lot of CSS breaks in mozilla. Perfectly validated websites that work fine in explorer, opera and other browsers tend to crash and burn in mozilla.
Okay, so they don’t burn, they work, but they don’t look as pretty. Use mozilla and look at my site, http://actionplant.com and then view it in explorer. Explorer displays all the pretty little things (like the correct scrollbar) that mozilla just ignores or fudges. Lots of other sites react the same way.
I still use it though to check compatabilities. I know lots of people use it. It’s my preference to use Opera.

My two bits.

Whaddya know. Stupid me; it’s titled, simply enough, “British Rail Design”. Unfortunately it’s out of print, but if you’re lucky you can find it at your library. Trust me, it’s awesome, whether you like trains or not. (I’m impartial.)

Maybe the CSS breaks because it’s not valid.

I’ve never seen a site with valid CSS that Mozilla didn’t render better than any other browser. IE is really lagging behind these days, and Opera has some real ugly quirks with certain parts of the specification (and other parts aren’t even supported at all). Konqueror is about as good as Opera, but still nowhere near as good as Mozilla.

What my husband fails to communicate is that I only use IE at work as a blind to confuse the people at work who might notice I’m using the web for non-work things. I use Mozilla for fun, and therefore have never seen Faerye Net on IE.

Interesting. I’ll keep it in mind. Branding isn’t something I’ve been very into in private life, but it comes up a fair bit at work.

Now THAT’S embarrassing…

You’ve put me in my place. I will now slink away to my corner.

I happen to see it as a fancy term for identity; the way you present yourself to the world. Stylistically, it works down to the smallest details, the most subtle shades, the depth of the dust. I think we’re all self-branded. The question is how many of us are aware of it, and to what extent?

Ah, I see your point now. Your new logo looks very Fearye, as opposed to merely Celtic. Looks good! If I should make a suggestion [==can’t keep my big mouth shut], perhaps a suitable Elven poem in faint red-golden Sindarin italics would be in place as a background texture.

Hmm. That is an idea for the “background effects” stuff I’d told you I was having trouble with—sticking with cool colors though, I think.

Sounds cool. (Hah) I just have to show you this page. There’s even instructions on Tengwar Calligraphy. These people really get into the world of Tolkien.

Very cool. It is good that the work that spawned the books, Tolkien’s imaginary linguistics, is getting the loving attention it deserves.

Aaah, the ancient (sort of) and subtle art of surfing at work without getting noticed. The last few months I was at Intel, I think about all that I did was read slashdot and other such things (project gutenberg, anybody?) and was able to somehow look busy throughout.

I never thought of the IE/Mozilla (probably would’ve been Netscape back in those pre-mozilla days) trick, though. I typically have a lot of browser windows open at any given time, which means that each one’s icon in the taskbar is about twenty pixels wide- much too short for the title to be visible. When, oh when, will Microsoft implement tabbed browsing in IE so that us poor sods who have to use their demon-spawn “browser” at work will have some relief?

Well, it’s good to have separate applications under Mac OS cuz then you can just command-H[ide] the whole kablooie.