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10 Percent of UK Sites Incompatible with Firefox
Bimo_Dude writes "The BBC News is reporting that ten percent of UK websites alienate Firefox users. From the article: 'While most people still use Microsoft's browser, Firefox is slowly making inroads. Its share of the browser market grew to 8% in May, up from 5.59% at the beginning of the year, according to US-based analysts NetApplications. Microsoft IE's share of the market dropped to 87.23% in May, compared to 90.31% in January.'"
...10 percent of UK web sites are hosted at the domain http://www.msn.co.uk./
Perhaps what they're really trying to say is that 10% of the sites are IE-specific, as if a site does not work in FireFox, it is unlikely to work in Safari, Opera, and other browsers. It's not a FireFox specific problem.
What TFA doesn't tell you is that the UK is a tiny little island inhabited by hobbits, leprechauns and the Oasis brothers. A tiny little island where www.microsoft.co.uk makes up 9% of the accessible websites.
The other 1% is the Beckham/Adams fansite, which we all know is poorly coded.
How is it possible for so many sites to be like this? I have designed a fair number of websites but I really don't know how I'd go about making it difficult for Firefox users
(Aside: web standards seems to be replacing SEO as the new web buzzword). We've got a client who runs his own web development house, focusing on standards. His methodolgy is: (1) we develop an accessible, validating site. (2) since he's the boss, and also an *expert*, he tweaks everything in Frontpage. (3) some sarcastic barstard actually validates the site, and discovers it no longer validates. They email our client. (4) our client contacts us to complain that the site "isn't valid HTML and CSS!" Et voila, instant pile of non-validating, Firefox-hating poo.
It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.
This is where the serious fun begins.
However, the Odeon site is completely inaccessible. It's not a case of stuff not looking or formatting correctly, but once you followed the "entire site" link it was more a case of nothing actually being displayed to the user - no listings, no cinemas, nothing.
Even worse, if you emailed them to complain, they told you the site was undergoing a re-design. To my mind that has had to be at least a couple of years ago all because they couldn't be arsed to change some IE only javascript.
Anyway, if you've got GreaseMonkey this script will make the site accessable again.
ps. Whilst we're at it, if you have a phone or PDA then you might be interested in Movie Guide which provides you with you with detailed listings of all films showing in UK Cinema's.
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Except that if you code to W3C standards it will work in IE and Firefox and a whole lot more besides, so how does it cost more money?
On the site I work on, a major UK mobileco, we code to XHTML 1.0 now and browser compatiblity is usually a non-issue - in fact I find it easier to code using Firefox (with the utterly wonderful Web Developer extension) and then cross-check in IE.
We used to have far more headaches back when we had to provide backwards-compatibility with NS4.0, but now that the numbers of such users have dropped to single-digit numbers per month, we're XHTML all the way.
In the later case, of developing in IE, and not checking with Firefox, does anybody know what the most common things that break are?
In the IE features category, I have seen one thing that IE does really well that Firefox does not do: Image transition filters such as the fade in/out effect when you switch photos. Are there other things the you as a developer want, but are only implemented in IE?
I know on the other side, that I want rounded corners on divs and alpha transparency in pngs to be properly implemented in IE.
No, you are selling the website to the client, not thier customers. If the client is thinking in terms of pretty pictures instead of useability and robust technology, then you give them pretty pictures.
There are still plenty of retailers that havent got a clue about the market or the technology. boo.com was the classic example, but theres plenty of retailers that are happy to give every 10th customer a sharp poke in the eye. These retailers will always be at a disadvantage and will dissappear over time.
The last one I saw was Abel and Cole selling Organic Food. Last year they were on the Google first page for 'Organic Food UK' but now thier competitors are stealing thier market. Searching for 'Able and Cole' leads to the competition, thier website lists products by code rather than product name, they used to be unusable with Mozilla. I expect they will dissappear in a few years.
Other sites I find hard to use are:
Ebay/Paypal. It took me a week to get set up to sell something. Google or Amazon will overtake them because they understand 'easy to use'.
Dabs.com Havent used them for a year, but it was so hard to find technical info that I had to go to other retailers to find out about the product.
WarehouseExpress. Horrible site, only made useable by the price, range and because they arnt as bad as Jessops.
Jessops. Already seen a dive in shareprice. Expect them to be dead by next year.
**TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
I think you missed this: "Of 100 UK leading consumer websites that SciVisum tested...".
I imagine they chose that sample size to make the percentage calculations perfectly accurate.
I couldn't believe that, but look at this exerpt of the book (pdf).
On page 19, the author actually says:
In my view, you should design Web pages for Internet
Explorer (IE) version 6 running on a typical 17'' monitor. Why? Here are the reasons:
-more than 95 percent of the people visiting your Web site use IE 6.
-You can take advantage of lots of cool effects that work only in IE or IE 6. Your job is much easier if you're designing for a predictable, stable canvas.
It's extremely stupid to give such an advice. I suggest that people email either the author, Richard Mansfield or the publisher, Wiley.