You won’t be cool, hip, or even effective until you understand design. When you made your rise to hegemonic ruler of the software world back in the 90’s, being ugly and ill-presented was ok as web-culture had not split presentation from data yet. Newsflash: Kerning matters. Don’t stop there: Tracking matters. Product honesty matters. To pretend as if Microsoft is advancing the web conversation by making browsers more robust is like saying GM was advancing the bar of how the public perceived fossil-fueled cars. It’s just not true. Most hacks that web developers have to implement are because IE is so behind the times.

There is no excuse for not having your tracking and kerning down… I mean at very least, your type should remain on a solid baseline, not jumbled up like some 2003 Macromedia Flash text rendering error. Get a clue, you can’t subvert the subversive: you are big brother, not the rebellion. D’uh.

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