Style and comfort for the discriminating crotch!

[dolari]

Websites that "punish" you for using Internet Explorer instead of Firefox or Netscape (usually by putting in malicious "Operation Aborted" javascripts or forcing our CPU cycles to run through the roof while brwosing) usually end with me still using Internet Explorer, and me not visiting your site anymore.

Comments

[wyndhover.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from there.

Still shouldn't be using IE tho. ;)

[jenndolari.livejournal.com]

I don't upgrade stuff till it becomes impossible to use (I used Windows 98 up till last year). IE has NEVER EVER given me any problems. I keep up to date with security issues, I don't visit sites that will crash it, and, frankly, I don't like Firefox or Netscape (used them both at work).

Until IE becomes obsolete, or an incredible risk that I can't control, I'm sticking with it. If browser snobbery says I can't go there, well, I won't.

[amw.livejournal.com]

Right on! I'm proudly anti-Firefox. I love the strictness of its HTML rendering, but the interface - all those tiny little keypresses and bits and bobs that don't work exactly like IE - really shits me.

[iqtech.livejournal.com]

Interesting - I have encountered more sites that won't work because I use FireFox than sites that won't work because I might have been using IE.

[tygerlander.livejournal.com]

Same here. I'm part of several survey sites and I lose opportunities because it won't work with firefox. I hate elitist IE Snobs :p

[http://users.livejournal.com/strangelv__/]

There's enough legitimate gotchas with MSIE (such as poor support for PNG transparency) that it's kind of pointless to artificially create them.

I'm hoping MSIE 7 will address at least most of these, but at least one Microsoft suit has been hostile to improving PNG support (using the stupid argument that since it hasn't always been supported and some people are still using MSIE 5.5 still there's no point in supporting it now or ever -- so why not stick to the Mosaic 1.0 feature set?).

...now if only it fixed these things AND ran on Windows 2000 (hint: my only upgrade paths from Windows 2000 under consideration at this time are Linux or MacOS).


SL

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

In most cases, it's a childish and pointless reaction to all of the sites that refuse to let you even try to view them unless you have the latest in crippleware from Microsoft or Netscape.

However, I've seen an increasing number of site designers following another backlash trend entirely:

Since there are so many sites out there that design for IE and nothing else, those who don't use IE have taken to not designing for it. Nothing malicious, really, but some code will do nasty things to IE.

[chrysalis.livejournal.com]

As an avid Netscape user, I often find that sites won't even let me USE their sites because I'm not using IE.

I think it's pretty ignorant to "punish" someone for their choice of web browser, but at least be pleased you're in the minority when it comes to browser problems. :)

[drkbish.livejournal.com]

Bleh.

Single-browser support asshattery irks me more than anything else. As the old saying goes, "Code to standards, not to browsers." It's rare that I encounter a website that's IE-only or Firefox-only, though. The only time I have encountered one that affected me was this one banking website I went to that temporarily wouldn't let me in because it didn't recognize Firefox and would only allow MSIE or Netscape 6 or higher. They must have gotten a lot of complaints, as that only lasted for a month or two.

As for what happened to you... it sounds like what happened when we first introduced V.7 of MK Online. (MK Online, for those not in the know, uses a CMS/forum/etc. written entirely in-house.) We wanted to add stuff like transparent PNG files and the like so that it would make switching themes and news headers extremely easy and painless for us. The only problem became the fact that even though Internet Explorer was the most used browser on the planet... it was also the only one that didn't support the features we wanted. During that time CCShadow went from IE's biggest supporter to its biggest detractor, because he was so pissed off that MSIE wouldn't support standards several years old that other web browsers did.

Eventually we did keep it the way it was but had the site load a Java library for MSIE users that would implement the functionality that was lacking. However, it made the site run EXTREMELY slowly for IE users, and we got no end of complaints. We finally gave up and had to hack a new system together using ImageMagick that would merge images and whatnot when new headers were created, and get rid of transparent PNG files altogether.

My point is the fact that these websites might not be trying to "punish" you, but actually have good (but misguided) intentions: they're trying to put their websites together as they see fit but are trying to work around MSIE's lack of functionality. In the end, hopefully they'll realize such shortcuts are rather detrimental.

Then again, even more hopefully, MS will put those damn standards in IE7. Personally, I think MS's monopoly was one of the worst things that could have happened to web browsing. MS never saw a need to add newly developed standards until they got real competition in the form of Firefox, and these are standard that are several years old. The web might actually have been much more advanced than it is now had it not been for IE's stagnantion.

(Sorry for the long rant, BTW... heh.)

[renahyrota.livejournal.com]

Honestly, all it amounts to is elitism. I use Firefox and have had problems with Internet Explorer, but if you've seen my website, I make it plainly obvious that my website looks better in Internet Explorer than Firefox, because Firefox has problems with part of my PHP code, and I was treated pretty rudely on the forums when I tried to submit it as a bug. As such, I still use Firefox, but I'm not going to bust my ass to recode my entire website just because of one small bug. Browser Elitism is just as pathetic and sad at Operating System elitism. I use what I use simply because it makes more sense. As I've said before, who wants to drive a car that's only compatible with 10% of the roads? Same goes for OSes.

[lisafreeborn.livejournal.com]

Interesting, I am the exact opposite: if a site is IE-only, I usually will not visit it a second time after it refuses to run in either Opera or Firefox. I do not like IE's lack of user controls on what it will and will not do when I visit a site (example: autotmatically running animations that I do NOT want to see EVER!)

There is only one site that I will visit with IE from home: my work's webmail site. Someone at work declared IE as "the only supported browser", so all our inter- and intranet sites (including the externally accessable webmail and the company's main website) are coded specifically to be accesssed only via IE.

Okay, I also make exceptions for Foamy and Strongbad, but those are online cartoons so they don't count :-)