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Why are Websites Still Forcing People to Use IE?
DragonTHC asks: "I just visited Movielink's website for research. Their site has a nice message saying, 'Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 (or higher) or Mozilla/Firefox with an IE Tab Extension (IE installation required).' While allowing the IETab Firefox extension is somewhat progressive, why do companies still force people to use Internet Explorer? Surely the site should work just fine in Firefox? With Firefox's steady gains in market share, you would think that webmasters would get the hint. If you are a webmaster, what are your reasons for forcing IE?"
I think you mean forcing people to use other sites.
As I understand it, IETab simply embeds Internet Explorer inside the Firefox window and allows the chrome to control it. As far as the website can tell, IETab is IE.
What's (somewhat) progressive about MovieLink isn't that they're allowing IETab... but that they're recommending it.
They have no power over you. Just go somewhere else for your research. That's what I do when I come across a stupid website like that.
Well, however it may be, browsers still display different content differently. There is still no full consensus over how certain things should be displayed.
Now, of course, everyone has to use the latest technology in webpage design. In other words, the most incompatible technology. What looks lovely in IE looks aweful in Firefox and even worse in Opera. Ok, ok, maybe not aweful. But not JUST the same way. So you'd have to do the page two or three times to make it compatible with every browser. But that, in turn, would cost more money.
And here's where corporate design comes into play. It HAS to look exactly the way intended. The colors have to be JUST right, the placement, the spacing, everything has to match so it is immediately identified as THAT page. Since this cannot be warranted, the powers that be usually decide it's the lesser evil to "force" people to use a certain browser. Since you can assume that everyone has IE (at least everyone who uses Windows), but the amount of people who'd have Firefox is way smaller, IE is usually the browser of choice.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I would guess two reasons, which are related. IE was VERY popular a few years ago. It was a relativly good browser, up to date, and thanks to Windows coming with IE by default it held a massive market share. The biggest competitors were Opera (not free) and Netscape. Even Macs had IE. If you made a website, you had to make it work in IE, and making it work in something else was a luxury, it wasn't that necessary.
I think what we are seeing is the result of that, at least in part. Web sites were designed for that and things have continued. You update your site, update your site, update your site. It's still setup for that browser. You may bother to fix it for FF and such.
Don't get me wrong, I HATE this. I especially hate sites that tell me I must use IE then work fine when I tell Safari to fake being IE. And this is becoming less of an issue as the market share of Macs goes up, and FF reaches like 20% here in the US and up to 50% in some European countries (see story from the other day).
Ignoring other browsers used to be safe. Now it can mean a big share of the market.
Also, in the (smaller) shop where I work, things MUST work on IE simply because it is such a big part of the market. That said, we all use FireFox and design for it first then go fix stuff for IE. Safari tends to work with whatever FireFox does for the most part.
PS: Installing IE tab is not a solution. Saying you are "FireFox compatible with IE tab" is like saying a paddle boat is gas compatible when you duct-tape an outboard motor on it.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I'm sure this is a great way to propagate malware -- force the user to use an insecure browser so that the site can install malware on the person's PC.
"This site works best (for us, not for you) with Internet Explorer"
Two wrongs don't make a right, but three lefts do.
The only people who require IE are the ones that purchassed some dumb HTML book by some other clueless n00b that uses IE, realised it was all too hard and went out and got frontpage to do the dirty work for them. There's a proliferation of them out there. They jumped in at the dot bomb boom thinking that calling themselves "web developers" would make them rich. It probably did, but it doesn't mean they're any good at it.
I mean c'mon it's not hard to write a brilliant page that works everywhere. Look at how Gmail works. IE, FF and Opera all render it correctly. Even Konqueror does a good job but its javascript implementation is a bit lax.
We have two "web applications" that we need to run at work. One is a time management package that used to be simply web-based using forms/java. There was nothing wrong with it except Java took a little time to start. They upgraded to the latest and greatest version that is now fantastic ActiveX. I pointed out that now us Linux users can't use it and will have to revert to the paper forms. Their first solution was "but everybody has 'The Internet'". It took over a week to demonstrate the Linux doesn't come with that (Internet Explorer) installed by default. They then reverted to "just borrow someone else's PC when you need to use it".
The other is an employee workflow manager. It works in FF but only barely. The HTML is that crap that you can hardly figure out what it's doing. Funnily IE renders the poo just fine, and is the only browser that does.
The people who recommend, install and run these services know nothing about Linux and wouldn't know what a web browser was if you showed them. They actually think "The Internet" is the Internet Explorer icon on their desktop.
I drink to make other people interesting!
Never mind IE, the idiots I'd like to kick the shit out of are the ones who do a website entirely in Flash!
You're using her as bait, Master!
Such as? What necessary piece of functionality does IE have that Mozilla (or Opera, or others) don't have?
The GP is absolutely correct most of the time: In the vast majority of cases there is no justifiable reason, and the only explanation is a lazy and/or dumb development team that couldn't be bothered to support another browser. Many of these projects were developed or began back when such a lazy choice wouldn't impede them much, but nowadays it can be deadly (if I encounter an IE-only site, I presume the operators are just grossly incompetent and go elsewhere).
Certainly, it's easier to write one-platform one-browser code. I guess as long as the extra effort would cost more than you're losing in users, it makes sense...
A browser displays a mark-up language. It was never designed to be a page layout language.
If you want that kind of control over presentation, use GIFs, PDF or Flash to do your presentations.
Of course, if you're too lazy to do all that work go ahead and assume that all IE users have their system set up exactly like you do--same screen resolution, same color depth, same fonts, no changes to default browser settings--and, by all means, use IE. Every once in a while someone gets it but I think, as another poster mentioned, they're too lazy to bother.
"And there's nothing wrong with that. Isn't it, ultimately, about choice? Right?"
I got the impression that the article was discussing the server-side requirement for IE, not the user's voluntary browser selection. If you like IE, good on you.
But if, as you say, it's ultimately about choice, the article is pointing out how odd it is that people running websites would still design new sites demanding one particular browser.
With reasonable men I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter. -- William Lloyd
Ever heard the phrase "you only have one chance to make a first impression?"
Applies to software, too.
Sure you say he should try Firefox again now that it's bumped up a version and improved. But I'm going to wager (this being Slashdot) that you're unwilling to install and try out RealPlayer again. Right?
Comment of the year
Wow. So many of the comments here just assume the worst about people. The users are lazy or stupid, the developers are "n00bs" or the people that run the websites are arrogant. And, yeah, I'm sure that's the case for some.
I propose a much simpler answer: Return-on-investment.
Here's an example: When the site was created, it was around the time that building for IE was considered a must-have and getting a presence on the Internet meant untold riches coming your way. Companies hired designers based on those premises. The designers delivered. The companies sunk a chunk of money into it.
A few years later, designing for _ALL_ browsers is a must-have, but... The company didn't make the untold riches they were promised (turns out people would rather buy tube bending by phone and email). They don't see the point in sinking money into a redesign for a website that doesn't amount to much in the company's overall income.
Yeah, it annoys me when Firefox doesn't work on a site, but I have alternatives and, for the most part, some of those sites are indeed being retooled little by little. All of my bank sites support Firefox without question. Something not true a couple of years ago.
Cheers,
Mike...
If Nalgene water bottles are outlawed, only outlaws will have Nalgene water bottles.
> Ever heard the phrase "you only have one chance to make a first impression?"
> Applies to software, too.
Unless it's Microsoft s/w, apparently - I don't recall it being particularly good when it first came out, but they have the 'advantage' of being able to put it on everyone's desktop, so people used it, *despite* their first impression.
Max.
True, and, further, more than Z% of the market will not use your site. Even though I have IE available to me, and even though 90% of IE-only sites render just fine if I spoof the user agent, I usually don't go back to sites that are IE-only because I assume the operator will be similarly myopic in other respects.
Consider also that non-IE users are likely to be disproportionately tech-savvy, and therefore will probably have an outsize word-of-mouth impact.
I don't know how many users feel like me, but it's got to be enough to change the "extra effort > cost of lost users" equation a bit...
Not sure your exact meaning of authentication cache... however if you are talking http authentication (Popup login password window brought on by .htaccess or such) then I know that it can be done with the web developer plugin in Firefox.
Miscellaneous -> Clear Private Data -> HTTP Authentication
It should be a quick trip through their code to find out how they did it and make a little plugin of your own to do it for you.
In fact... while you are in there grab the code that lets it clear session cookies and run that at the same time also. That will kill ANY authorization system they have been in for 99.999% of the web.
Telcos have alot of dark fibre in the States. Most people assume that's optical fibre...but it's actually moral fibre.
no...no it's not
TFA is about websites which are coded to be IE only.
Any web developer who does not know about Firefox is stupid or lazy.
In any event, there is no need to support Firefox, Safari, IE or any browser at all. There is only a need to code to W3C standards, not to browser-specific hacks. IE's extensions to standard HTML were made specifically to Embrace, Extend, then Extinguish the free internet. Don't contribute to the trap.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I want the audience to read this thread because it proves my point. MS says "You have a problem? I have a solution". The OSS community starts you off with a "you don't have problem". The poster didn't even suggest OpenOffice or any other OSS software that might give the needed solution (assuming it can). That's why some sites code to IE, and if they're "stupid and lazy" for solving problems instead of denying them? Then so be it. IE will still be there to take up the OSS slack.
But: this is Movielink, a service that is renting and selling movies over the internet. In other words, they are selling something that you cannot get by fax or phone - you need an internet connection, a computer, and a reasonable amount of knowledge to be their customer in the first place.
So: by restricting their customer base to IE only, they are artificially limiting their customer base. They could target 100% of people on the Internet, but they choose voluntarily to limit themselves to only selling to people who are able to (and want to) run a recent copy of IE.
In short: they are artificially limiting themselves to maybe 50% (and falling) of their potential customer base. What a grand business model that is.
Nobody here is dumb or lazy.
Yes they are - the boss deciding this policy is fundamentally stupid. If he worked for me he'd have 1 month notice to realign his attitude or it's goodbye. Anyone stupid enough to reduce the availability of a commercial website by making it browser specific doesn't deserve a job in the IT industry (unless he's downgraded to Janitor!).
As a maintainer of a Top 10 website (it's the only British one listed in the Netcraft Top 10), I can tell you that Internet Explorer accounts for less than 50% of our visits right now and has IE use has visibly declined in the last year. Indeed "other" Operating Systems now account for over 45% of our site visits. We will not be using proprietary codecs in future for our on-line programme services.
Game Over, Microsoft!
3 things about computers: they're alive, they're self-aware, and they hate your guts.
Obviously the typical answer to why some sites still only work in IE is "stupidity" and "laziness" but it boggles my mind that there are still sites out there like this. It is 2007 for crying out loud!
Just a few weeks ago I went through and updated my "Sites that Make Firefox sad" page: http://toastytech.com/good/badsitelist.html I was able to remove a large number of sites from this list as they appeared to be working in Firefox now, but I wound up ADDING almost just as many new sites to my list.
And my list still focuses mainly on sites that completely forbid Firefox, there are incredibly many sites that have various small glitches (like menus or spacing) in Firefox and no fix in site. And the WORST offenders are corporate Intranet applications. Companies are still "sold" on Microsoft. Heck, brand new "web" apps from Microsoft such as Exchange Web Access, Sharepoint, Project Server Web Access still either require IE or give other browsers a "downlevel" experience.
And the thing that really gets me is that Firefox can be a very good thing for companies - it is available for so incredibly many different platforms and works mostly the same on each - Firefox can help turn operating systems in to a true commodity! Each app that only works in IE (and arguably if it is IE only it really can't be called a true web application) just ties you down to Microsoft just that much more.