A browser lesson learned from Microsoft

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It's all a matter of opinion

For starters, people started using IE30 because it was bundled and it was just barely good enough, like most other applications that are bundled with Windows.

There are a three ways that a site's support is limited to IE: proprietary technology (ActiveX, VBScript, MS Javascript, etc), looking at the user agent (although many of these sites would work with most browsers), and support for broken html. As a developer, I am leaning to broken html as the primary reason as a result of some of the projects I have worked on and looking at source code of sites that did not render properly with non-IE browsers. Multiplatform developers know that if they develop for a Mozilla based browser using 'open standards', it will render on anything. Lazy developers who develop only on IE using 'open standards', it may or may not work on other browsers.

Exactly. What that means is that if they go to a site that REQUIRES IE using Mozilla, they will conclude that Mozilla is broken. The way you beat IE is by catering to non-technical users. They are the majority.

Lately, I have made a few bucks setting up new machines and removing spyware. There is even a good amount of spyware on machines with firewalls and antivirus software and no IM or peer-to-peer programs. When I tell them why they have spyware, and why using Netscape or Firefox will prevent it and make using using their addon popup blockers and antispyware programs unnecessary, not to mention their more robust feature set, especially Firefox's, they are sold. They really like it when their home page does not change on them and unrequested popups stop appearing (yes, some of these people noticed that their popup blockers could not stop popups that appeared when IE was not running). It's a no-brainer for those neophytes with brand new p4s that were running like 486s: Zone Alarm and Mozilla.

So there you are. I'll wager that all non-technical users that have not been set up by someone who knows something are infected with something, and even if those are left to use IE and Outlook Express, they will be infected with something with or without a firewall. This is how you cater to nontechnical users: cure their online ills. Now when these people encounter a site that requires IE, they now conclude the site is broken, and there must be some ulterior motive that the site requires IE (I'll admit is as irrational as concluding Mozilla is broken, but since they have already been burned, they won't stick their IE in the fire again). They have also learned not click on the link in their email for low interest rate mortgage loans with a MS based product.

Posted by: Taz_z   Posted on: 08/30/04 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use

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