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Windows Guru Calls For IE7 Boycott
Anonymous Cowherd writes "Paul Thurrott, a journalist that usually writes about all things Windows related (and sometimes about Apple affairs too), made a call in a recent article to boycott Internet Explorer, due to Microsoft's approach (continued in IE7) of not supporting web standards: 'My advice here is simple: Boycott Internet Explorer. It is a cancer on the Web, and must be stopped. IE is insecure and is not standards-compliant, which makes it unworkable for both end users and Web content creators... You can turn the tide by demanding better from Microsoft and using a better alternative Web browser. I recommend and use Mozilla Firefox, but Apple Safari (Mac only) and Opera 8 are both worth considering as well.'"
They claim they don't want to support all the standards because it will break poorly coded website. Well, there's an easy solution they already somewhat support... turn on the correct rendering engine with doctype switching! Regular users with badly coded sites are unlikely to have a correct doctype (or any doctype at all) that would trigger this mode. Standards supporters win, and users win.
After my third time removing spyware from my wife's grandparents' computer I did the following:
1. Install Firefox.
2. Change IE shortcut to Firefox.
3. Rename Firefox icon as "Internet"
4. I told them that their computer was slow because of the IE and AOL browsers.
This worked wonders. These are the same people that were told to defrag once to make your computer faster and interpreted it as a "defrag every day."
Except that other browsers pretend to be IE (e.g., Opera) or can be configured to pretend as such (e.g., Konqueror, Safari).
The above is the exact reason why browser detects are no longer used in Javascript: The user agent doesn't tell you jack or shit.
Sure, and eliminate 90% of my market?
Not likely.
No company that depends on selling MS for its livelihood will boycott MS (read: PC Retailers, which is the only place to hit MS in the pocket).
Companies cannot afford to boycott MS (too many apps not transferable to other platforms, and too much short-term cash loss).
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Oops. Well, I thought FireFox renders it badly, but IE makes me want to vomit.
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