A letter from one of our users (or the importance of cross-browser support)

Hello writeLaTeX team,

I want to praise you for your great site :)

I recently got unemployed and was enrolled into a programme for training me to find a new job.

On the computers there, we only have a restricted environment where we can't install additional programs (like TeXworks). We're stuck with Microsoft Office 2007 and Internet Explorer 8 on Windows XP and old hardware.

I took a resume and application with me that I had previously prepared in TeXworks, but since we are unable to process it there, they asked me to rewrite it in Word instead. I tried, but I couldn't even find a template for a plain and standard business letter without bells and whistles.

So instead of going through the torture of fiddling around with Word, I opted to search for an online TeX to PDF service.

I tried many of them, but they either didn't render my documents correctly or refused to work under IE 8 (unfortunately, I can't do anything about that).

But then I found yours and apparently it works very well even on that deprecated environment. Thank you so much, it will make my life easier. :)

I know it's not easy to stuff your code with all kinds of shims to make it work the same in different browsers, so I just hope it will stay compatible to IE 8 at least for as long as I'm looking for a new job ;)

Regards,
Niels Böhm

Editor's note: We received this letter from Niels, and with his kind permission are reproducing it to highlight the benefits of providing cross-browser support. We will aim to continue supporting IE8 for the foreseeable future (we only recently gave up on IE7!), and maintain compatibility with other older browsers for as long as possible.