Last night I spent an hour or two visiting unfamiliar websites while researching a topic for an upcoming column. In the process, I discovered a new and exceedingly obnoxious trend: Some members of the Firefox community have decided that you shouldn’t be allowed to view their sites correctly – or, in some cases, at all – unless you’re using the One True Browser.
On at least three sites I visited last night, the home page has been coded so that it looks different if you visit using Internet Explorer. Specifically, the top of the page – a region approximately 180 pixels deep, occupying the full width of the page – is taken over by a large banner that reads: “We see you’re using Internet Explorer. Try Firefox, you’ll like it better.” That’s followed by a bulleted list of the advantages of Firefox, and a big bold arrow pointing to a button where the hapless visitor can download Firefox with the Google toolbar.
This is bullshit.
I’ve already got Firefox installed on this computer, and I use it more than half the time. But for this project I’m using Internet Explorer. In this case, the web designer says he wants me to have a better browsing experience, so he has deliberately created a degraded and obnoxious browsing experience for me. What’s wrong with that picture?
And despite the altruistic language, let’s be clear – this is about money. If I click that button and download the software, the website owner gets paid by Google. In fact, this is worse than a pop-up ad, because I can’t get rid of it. Every time I visit that site, the obnoxious oversize banner appears, telling me how stupid I am and how smart the website designer is.
This campaign is being run by a site called Explorer Destroyer, which offers three versions of its punish-IE-users code. The one I ran into is the Gentle Encouragement version. There’s also a Semi-serious version, which forces the user to view a splash page before seeing the site, and a Dead Serious version, which completely blocks the site from viewing by any browser that uses the IE user agent. (You can see a demo here.)
I thought the open source movement was about giving people options and about adhering to standards. Hey, Asa, here’s a question for you: Does the Firefox community really advocate designing websites so that they’re deliberately broken if you view them in any browser other than Firefox? What would the community say if Microsoft did the same?
OK, guys, you each get one post to wrap it up and then I’m closing the comments. Seriously.
The last couple comments got too long to read, so I don’t know if this was already said explicitly, but I was trying to look for a Win32 API call today, and http://msdn.microsoft.com’s search button doesn’t appear to work in Firefox. What is the “technical reason” that is appropriate for Microsoft to shut out Firefox users from using the search button on their site?
Glancing at the source, I see <a onclick=javascript… href=#><input type=submit>, which I am not familiar with that syntax, or why you would want the a href at all.
BTW, it is possible that my ad filter is not allowing the javascript to run, but I am pretty sure I disabled it in order to not be totally clueless before I wrote this comment.
Jon,
That’s a bug. You should report it. In my experience, MS has been pretty good about making sure its stuff works on Firefox.
This exam,ple is totallly irrelevant here. It’s not an example of a web developer deliberately writing code designed to degrade the browsing experience of visitors using another product, for no valid technical reason.
PS: That search box in the top right is a sitewide control. If you go to one of the MSDN developer centers on the left sidebar, you’ll see a search box on the left. It works just fine in Firefox. If MSDN were really locking out Firefox users, this would not be so.
We could fire examples back and forth at each other of sites that for one reason or another don’t render properly in a particular browser. But unless it’s done deliberately and aimed specifically at one platform, it’s a topic for another discussion, somewhere else.
Oh, I forgot to say – I guess I am a “firefox fanboy” but I think it is silly for people to put up stuff based on the user-agent.
Aaron,
You stating I am lying without provinding an ounce of proof is a typical fanboy tactic. It doesn’t work on me. You also keep reading what you want to read and not what I am saying.
Securing IE is elementary, apply all patches and uninstall MSJVM, install an updated AntiVirus program and an updated AntiSpyware Program. Done.
I sure have a much better understanding of the problem then the raving fanboys consider I do this for a living. People that say it can’t be done don’t understand how the infections happen. There is absolutely nothing you can do to stop someone from manually installing something. But it is very easy to protect them from any auto-installs. People keep making all these claims but don’t provide an ounce of proof. None of them can confirm something auto-installed and none can confirm they uninstalled MSJVM. It is no surprise people such as yourself rush to blame things they don’t understand.
“Clueless Users” for the majority do not update their machines, do not install an updated AV program and the rest supposed “knowledgeable” users do not uninstall MSJVM (which is used by CoolWebSearch infections). Of course people have problems but once you analyze why you can easily correct the problem which does not include an alternate browser as a solution. I am meeting new people everyday who have fully infected Zombie PCs but browser away with Firefox thinking they are invulnerable all the while the processes in memory use their computer for all sorts of malicious purposes. And that started from some unknowledgeable user recommending Firefox as the cure all.
I would like you to demonstrate or provide documented reproduceable proof of all these fully patched machines getting randomly infected. It is easy to spew rhetoric is quite another to back it up with actual evidence. I know why most people get infected, I see it everyday.
I deal with thousands of clients, which runs the gamut of society. I cannot control what people do with their computer unless they work for me. There are some people who will always have problems and there is very little you can do about it. The ones that listen to reason do not have problems anymore.
The fact that you think people just get randomly infected with no fault to their own is 100% wrong. People are just as much to blame as the makers of the malware. Who are the ones going to porn and warez sites? Who are the ones downloading anything off P2P? Who are the ones download any shareware application they can?
What part of this do you not understand? The listed examples in no way are the sole source of these Myths. They are ONE example. Every single Myth has been heard multiple times.
The system requirement Myths are never stated by a user as “System Requirements”, they are worded in various ways. And claiming FF uses less memory would be considered a system requirement. Your obsession with mentioning memory leaks has nothing to do with system requirements.
Alot of the Myths I have heard directly or are received in emails. The only people that dispute the validity of them being Myths are the fanboys.
Funny you think that wording like innovative and popularized would not imply creation in many contexts. You think Aza just added the concession because no one believe that Myth? Please many, many people are shocked to find out that Firefox did not invent many of the feature it touts all believing Firefox invented them. There have been lengthly arguments about this on the Internet for good reason. Firefox Propagandists use creative wording implying all sorts of ownership to ideas they simply stole.
There is not a single lie on the website. And no you haven’t proven one thing. The Asa example was used because he doesn’t concede the other features like he did with Tabbed Browsing and he is called on it in the comments. Read it yourself. Again you have nothing, the problem with the examples is as soon as I link to them some get reworded or deleted. Anything to cover up them being said. But it doesn’t matter the point is the Myths are false and the sources true. You know this is true which is why you are wasting so much energy looking for anything on the examples. You have nothing.
You comments on IE’s integration have nothing to do with the Myth. Firefox is not more secure for not being part of the Operating System. You are misinturpretting the meaning of the warning. While it is true that you don’t have to have IE running in some instances, you do have to use an application that uses IE functionality such as an HTML help file. This has nothing to do with Integration but application dependancies. Integration is irrelevant to security. The way you are wording it implies that people can just get infected at will without using IE. A more accurate description would be IE dependant applications are vulnerable too.
Using the word “lie” over and over does not make something a lie.
jondaley,
You comment is a good one for it explains why alot of people think this is ok. Firefox users go to a site that was only ever tested in IE and it breaks and some irrationally think the web designer did this intentionally. I am consistently hearing people blame Web Designers as being clueless to standards or deliberately breaking pages with Firefox but this is just not so. Many Web Designers simply only code for IE and leave it at that. Their is no malicious intent.
Ed that might be a good topic for another post sometime. Do web designers deliberately not follow W3C standards and break pages in Firefox?
It is simply not true yet many Firefox users believe it and this fuels these absurd IE Destroyer campaigns.
Ed,
I almost completely agree with you. However, as a member of the so-called “Firefox community,” I’d like to say that the views of the idjits who run Explorer Destroyer are NOT reflective of individual members of the community. And I can’t imagine that Mozilla would endorse these tactics either. Personally, I deplore these tactics. Evangelism works best when it’s not a full frontal assault like that used by Explorer Destroyer’s scripts
Yes, I see there is a difference in the two examples, one being intentional, and one not caring enough to see if the page meets standards, rather than just IE.
I believe the anti-Opera stuff that Microsoft did was already mentioned. I haven’t used Opera in a while, so I don’t know if you still need to do the changing user-agent to IE tricks to get pages to view properly.
BTW, the MSDN site works if you use the enter key, because then the designer’s attempts at overriding the default behavior are circumvented.
Outside of microsoft.com, I no longer run into sites that aren’t Firefox compatible. All of my banks have stopped using IE specific stuff. My point is that Microsoft should stop that as well. If they don’t they are intentionally making code that doesn’t run on other browsers, and so goes in the (almost) same category as the example you point out. The result to the user is the same, it causes me to switch browsers, I don’t really care if it was malicious or just ignorant.
OK Andrew, I gave you every opportunity to back away from the lies, and you refused, so I guess you’ll just have to go down looking like a liar when Ed closes the comments. I have made it abundantly clear to anyone with a bit of intellectual honesty that multiple statements on your site are either severe distortions or outright lies about what people have said about Firefox. No reasonable person would think those quotes from Asa are equivalent to him saying Firefox invented tabbed browsing and integrated search. And those were only two of the examples, I could have listed even more.
And now let’s move on to some even more egregious lies. (And Ed, if you’re still reading I would be interested what you have to say about these issues, especially the ones I’m about to show).
At the end of your page you claim that Digg blocks any mention of firefoxmyths and bans your account if you submit it. What you conveniently failed to mention is that the reason they did this is because you were spamming any firefox articles with a link to your site, and you also submitted your site to digg more than 10 times under the username Mastertech. You got banned because of significant spamming, and when you tried spamming some more with different identities (your IP was confirmed submitting your site to digg under different identities after your first one got banned) they decided to just ban the site to prevent you from spamming any more. So it’s another lie for you to suggest they were trying to censor any anti-firefox information.
But the most blatant of your lies, and i can’t believe I missed these before, is the supposed “fanboy quotes” you have on the left sidebar that would appear to be praising your site or agreeing with you. Let’s look at some of those:
1) “…Firefox Myths. Good stuff – give it a read.” – Asa D.”
Here’s the acual quote:
“Robert Accettura has a nice response to the poorly constructed and mostly worthless article Firefox Myths. Good stuff – give it a read.”
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2005/12/accettura_tears.html
You suggest that Asa is calling firefoxmyths a good read, when in truth he is praising an article critical of the site. LIAR!
2) ” “I’m not a big fan of evangelism or hyperbole, so when a page called “Firefox Myths” entered my radar recently, I was very interested.” – Trevor (Mac User)”
Here’s the full quote:
“I’m not a big fan of evangelism or hyperbole, so when a page called “Firefox Myths” entered my radar recently, I was very interested. Then sadly disappointed. Rather than a balanced analysis of some of the folklore surrounding Firefox, it is merely a stream of weak arguments against imaginary “myths” supported by misquoting or deliberate misreading of sources. I’m not even going to reference the page.”
http://www.thingoid.com/2006/01/the-myth-of-firefox-myths/
Again, you make it appear that he is supportive of the site, when instead he blasts it for being inaccurate. LIAR!
3) “…all web sites are IE compliant, use a browser with IE engine and tabs, and a fully patched system = 100% security.” – FreewheelinFrank (MrFlibble)
Here’s the actual quote:
“This includes 1 of Mastertech’s typical phrases designed to suggest he is not the author (‘Makes interesting reading’) but then goes on to use the first person. Strange- that would be the first time for Mastertech. The notions are his: all web sites are IE compliant, use a browser with IE engine & tabs, & a fully patched system = 100% security.”
http://www.webdevout.net/forums/viewtopic.php?p=456#449
So you quote him as saying that using IE means 100% security, when he is actually stating what your opinions are. LIAR!
3) “Any browser is more secure by not supporting… Firefox”
Here’s the actual quote:
“Any browser is more secure by not supporting ActiveX, not just Firefox.”
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic44405.html
So you claim he is saying not supporting Firefox makes a browser more secure, when in reality he is making that claim about ActiveX. By removing those three words you have completely changed the entire meaning of his statement. It’s equivalent of quoting someone who says “My name is not Aaron” with “My name is … Aaron”. LIAR!
Everyone of those is an unbelievably blatant lie, and anyone who would intentionally misquote people so egregiously has ZERO credibility. Those are indefensible; it’s really too bad that Ed is going to close the commments, because I would LOVE to hear you try and defend those. (Ed, please indulge us, let’s hear him try to defend himself for these ones.) Just above you said “There is not a single lie on the website.” That is absolutely laughable.
I’d come across that site before and written it off because I immediately spotted some inaccuracies and out-of-context quotes. Until I got into this discussion on Ed’s site I had no idea just how far your anti-Firefox evangelism had driven you into complete lunacy. I can’t believe how many sites and forums I came across where you were spouting off the same tired old inaccuracies about Firefox. Had I known I wouldn’t even have bothered.
So now it’s settled, Andrew is a liar.
Aaron (and Andrew), I’m a busy guy, and this is not a BBS. I think I’ve been pretty indulgent in allowing the comments to go on even though they’re pretty far afield from what I originally wrote about and what a comments section should be.
Aaron, I went and looked at the quotes you referred to. They’re way down at the bottom of a sidebar, under the heading “Fanboy quotes,” and I took them to be satire, although I can see how a casual observer might see them otherwise. Personally, I would have linked the quotes to their original material so that people could get the joke more easily, but that’s just me.
Anyway, that’s it for this edition of comments. Thanks for playing, everyone.
Honnestly Ed, you don’t think it’s fair that Firefox uses that kind of method to gain users? What do you think about the method Microsoft used to flood the market with IE?
In my opinion, it’s payback time…
And I just arrive from a nice website totally pro IE. Quite funny, they say they use fact but it’s so obvious it’s biased. Take a look, it’s worth it. http://mywebpages.comcast.net/SupportCD/FirefoxMyths.html
I know this is an old article, but I can’t really believe that someone could miss this:
“And that’s why Visual Studio uses XHTML 1.1 Transitional (and not “IE 6.0?) as it’s default page language?” – Nicholas
There is no XHTML 1.1 Transitional…
Though, he maybe meant to say XHTML 1.0 Transitional?
http://www.w3.org/QA/2002/04/valid-dtd-list.html
Actually they’re left wing activists, not open source enthusiasts, and they fell prey to an enticement by Microsoft’s corporate rival Google.
Well, Its their site… should they be able to do what they want to it? Its kind of like no dogs allowed or no shoes no shirt no service… What would the dogs do if your shoes?
I use firefox more than anyone, and I cringe at the thought of having to make my sites compatable with IE. Nonetheless, I do it because I know 90% of people in the world use Internet Explorer, and a suggestion to “Download This” is only going to frighten users into thinking they have downloaded some sort of malicious software.
Microsoft’s practices are exactly the reason more and more people are switching to Firefox, so as far as it being “payback time”, I can only see this as an oppurtunity for less people to be attracted to “open-source” software.
In a way it’s sad of course, OTOH there’s merely banner ads or stupid programming of the site — there’s endless amounts of pages which show correctly only in IE, and you rarely hear someone rambling.
Payback time.
TBH, I’d make the page viewable in any and all browsers EXCEPT Internet Exploiter
I Blame Google. They are so violating their ‘Don’t be evil’-policy by pushing people to force their visitors to use another browser than they want. Unless you consider IE to be evil, then this is a totally justified crusade.
This sort of thing is actually very easy to do. It’s been easy to do for a very long time. There’s a function of the webserver that returns what type of browser is accessing the site. You just put a little code into the site that says ‘if this, load this page’ ‘if that, load that page’.
It’s supposed to allow you to create sites that anyone, with any browser, can view… so you don’t lose viewers or customers.
My advice on sites that block your browser is… avoid them. It’s not like there aren’t thousands more sites out there, and probably hundreds which are very simular to the one that blocks you.
That or load the browser they prefer long enough to go to their site, harvest the urls from it you need or whatever and then go back to your prefered browser.
Oh, and for the people that ‘blame google’, they have nothing to do with it. It’s entirely the fault of the person that wrote the website code.
Ed Bott wrote: “Aaron, I went and looked at the quotes you referred to. They’re way down at the bottom of a sidebar, under the heading “Fanboy quotes,” and I took them to be satire, although I can see how a casual observer might see them otherwise. Personally, I would have linked the quotes to their original material so that people could get the joke more easily, but that’s just me.”
Yeah, that’s true, Ed. However, what you don’t know is that before that (i.e. before posting them under the “Fanboy quotes” section), those comments were listed beside other ones, let’s say trully supportive comments. And nomather what, he is misquoting these folks anyway, which is bad IMO.
P.S. – And just for the record, here’s also a link to another interesting no less that 12-pages long thread that Andrew K/Mastertech opened back then on the Ars Technica forum that I frequent: Firefox Myths (btw. my nick there is “shirker”), where many of his, errr should I say “mistakes” and “unfair practices”, were revealed.
Ivan Tadej, Slovenia