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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?"
Semi off-topic, but I'm angry when sites don't work if you have scripting disabled on your browser. The vast majority of web-based attacks are vectored through scripting (javascript, activex). Until scripting is a secure thing, it should be done away with on all sites except for those that absolutely require it (like Google Maps - though it does work like a cheap version of Mapquest when you use it with scripting disabled).
[/rant not over]
My websites on my web-host were hacked today (not my fault, theirs), and the attackers placed exploit javascript code in all of my index.htm/html files (looked like buffer overflow code, but I didn't research it). Any browsers pointed to my sites with scripting enabled likely got hit.
[/rant over]
Backdoor exploits into your OS? Ha! Try doing *that* on Firefox or Opera.
Seriously, I'm guessing that's simply an unwillingness to code for more than one browser, either because of laziness or lack of resources or they don't care about the growing market share or firefox.
I don't know if that site is good enough to make people open an IE window or tab just to visit it, so I don't know if their arrogance (if that's what it is) is justified.
I guess I'll never know.
No sig
Or they are stuck using Microsoft Visual Studio on a Microsoft Vista workstation, producing Microsoft ASP.NET applications for bosses who enjoy the occasional dinner and/or trip by... Microsoft!
Why yes, I am bitter. Why do you ask?
The thing that amazes me even more is that some of the biggest eCommerce sites are broken without IE.
Recently, I needed to open an account on eTRADE in order to access a stock grant given to me by one of my clients.
Well, it turns out that it is impossible to open an account without IE.
I then called tech support to complain. Well, the rep said that I had no choice but to use IE. I then said that I don't use IE because of security issues and that I was surprised that the leading eCommerce financial services company requires users to exclusively use buggy and insecure Micro$oft software. He kept insisting that I couldn't open an account and access my stock grants without IE. In fact, he couldn't even access my account until I used IE to first open the account.
I then suggested that maybe he could open it for me but he said that too was impossible. Finally, I got him to go to a supervisor to ask whether there is any way for me to get access to my money (i.e. stocks) without being required to use IE. After a long time on hold, he said that if I was willing to wait for 3-4 weeks they could snail mail out a written form that I could then fill out and return by snail me -- he warned that even after I returned it, manual processing would delay opening of the account. He was not even able to fax or email the form.
Even I was not willing to take that much time and effort to stand on principle. So, after haranguing the poor rep a little longer and finally getting him to file a complaint and bug report, I had no choice but to break down and launch my dusty copy of IE on my laptop.
...our boss said to. Every techie on my dev team uses firefox at home and has it installed at work as well. We are keenly aware of its advantages and market support.
Our boss, however, doesn't care. He likes some of the fancy IE frills, and also doesn't want to spend any dev time at all resolving javascript or CSS conflicts between the two browsers. He believes that IE has a strong enough presence that forcing our users to use it is acceptable...the deciding factor for our users is in system functionality, not browser choice.
So, that's why. Nobody here is dumb or lazy. The boss wants to cut costs and doesn't see the choice driving away clients.
The primary reason why a company can only support IE is a lack of IT expertise.
With my employer, they hired contract staff to do a lot of web programming for internal use. And IE was our corporate standard. After a while, both the internal staff and the contract staff only knew about IE - my local management and the contract staff wasn't too on top of the reasons why you wouldn't want to build IE-only software.
Then my company was doing more on-line retailing, so they used the same flawed principles to build the retail site. It was basically broken on anything other than our "internal standard" browser. Corporate management was kept in the dark regarding compatability issues - sales are sales, and there was no loss of customers - we simply ignored a subset of the population.
Finally, last fall, a new IT chief was hired (the former one left on his on accord), and the new IT guy was interested in the numbers. And within about 30 seconds he saw that 0% of sales were to Safari and Mozilla users.
The 2nd in command (within IT) claimed that nothing but IE was a popular browser. He was fired in, quite literally, five minutes. Three developers (including me) were then tasked to fix the issue with the site, and within a couple days we had a well-tested site that worked with any modern standards based browser. And it was accessable too (unlike the old site). Happily, we did all this just in time for IE7.
Now, non-IE browsers account for about 15% of our on-line sales, and the new IT guy is considered by all (remaining) to be a hero.
PS - you've heard of my employer.
Well, my program uses a commercial product that shall remain nameless. A previous version exploited a bug in IE, where HTML code/Javascript was interpreted by IE, although the HTML standard said that such content was not legal HTML. The amount of $$$ we're spending on this product is outrageous (but that's another problem...)
I publicly embarrassed a manager saying, "Geez, can't you at least require [the product] to use standard HTML, considering what we are paying for it? Doesn't it bother you this product requires a specific version of Internet Explorer, so it can exploit a bug in that version?" My supervisor got his butt chewed for my remarks.
About 3 months later they submitted their HTML for W3C testing, and the site started working with FireFox...
dave
The amusing thing was when crafting my own website, I tended to find it extremely difficult to create a page that worked identically between both browsers, and that having w3 compliant code tended to break the site in IE.
These problems immediatly compound when trying to add CSS to the mix.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
Why do they not waste time ensuring firefox compatibility?
1.) Most software engineers know HTML and JavaScript from learning it on there own, or taking a crash course in it. Unless they have been working with it for a long time, they don't know the good coding practices that allow compatibility with all browsers, however most awful habits work with IE just fine. Unfortunately, not all code that renders correctly in firefox, renders correctly in Internet Explorer. So if you ensure firefox compatibility, you may find I.E incompatibility, which is the worst case scenario.
2.) Good web designers cost more money. And what the company gains is not irritating the niche audience who have to switch to I.E from whatever browser they were on. Thats just not worth it to them.
3.) The things that make the most money are the stupidest. Ringtones, Porno, screensavers, and anything else that they can make a popup for. And the people who spend the money on this kind of garbage are again people who think that the internet is the Internet Explorer Icon. Again, no need to worry about the niche audience.
4.) Considering how fast developers have to make projects live, spending less time getting it to work is more important than spending more time getting it to work good (see Microsoft). Although this isn't ideal, it happens to allow companies to be competitive. For example, Movielink had to get out there fast or see Netflix and Blockbusters domination grow while they ensured compatibility.
It is interesting to note though, that with Dell now shipping systems with Linux or just not Windows, that the I.E. market share could start dropping quicker, in which these will become more of a problem than an inconvenience.
It's surprizingly nice to work with if you're building a site that you may change the layout of frequently. It also makes the code significantly more manageable in the page itself if you tend to use the same styles of text repeatedly.
In the same breath, I don't generally make sites using ajax (the source of many of these problems), and so it's hard to end up with a static page that doesn't 'work.'
In my personal belief, HTML was not designed to handle the crap that it's being used for today. All the languages that have been tacked onto it are such hacks that it's not surprizing they don't quite work the same on all browsers. Ideally, someone comes up with a good, clean standard that allows for the creation of dynamic components in the native language. Sure, it's 'Just another language,' but if it solves the issues associated with ajax, non-compliance, etc, then it's worth it.
Plus, it's a hell of a lot nicer than having to know dozens of languages just to make a simple website.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
See this is the part I am just dumbstruck by. . . . I'm a web developer and for me, getting my layouts to look great in Firefox is cake. Getting them to still look great in IE is almost always a herculean, nearly sysiphean (how many times have you seen THAT word on slashdot?) effort. If I were lazy, I'd just get everything to render okay in Firefox, maybe in Safari too.
Since OS X was released everyone has known the /. community embraced Macs more so than in years past, but this poll tells us that at least 20% have. Knowing that technically savvy Mac folks tend to be split down the middle when it comes to Firefox / Safari usage, you might be able to add another 10-20% to that number. Very interesting to see what an effect OS X has had on the average geek's perception of Apple.
Well the question is better stated: Is your website worth enough to those users for them to open up IE every single time they wish to look at it. Most of the time the question is "no." In the end most people would just say "fuck it" after a while and use another website that provides the same service (welcome to capitalism).
Try getting a rental car quote from Hotwire in Firefox. Then try the same in IE and Safari. Note that the Firefox price is $1 more for every class of car. Remember that Hotwire is owned by Expedia which is an M$ shop. Guess there's still a M$ tax out there....
As it is, running full regression tests for one browser takes days.
There is no ROI for supporting firefox yet.
I use it personally.
I'm using it now.
I do personal testing of the site with firefox to make sure we are a little compatible but I'm not going to run 4,000 tests for each browser.
It's bad enough as it is now with Sarbanes Oxley.
She was like chocolate when she drank... semi-sweet at first and then increasingly bitter.
The issue isn't if we could support something other than IE, the issue is why in the world would we want to? Oh, and those trips and dinners sponsored by Microsoft are apparently pretty good.
Now I'll wait for some smart ass to point out I should just quit.
One thing is certain: You're doing exactly what Microsoft wants you to do. What's odder: you seem to be enjoying it. No matter, to each his own, but I know very few webmasters who would 'impose' IE - most I know spend most of their time pulling their hair out because of it.
With that thought in mind, I wonder if there's some way to calculate how much money IE has lost webmasters trying to make their websites look the same in both IE and web-standards compliant browssers?
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
You're doing exactly what Microsoft wants you to do.
Yes, obviously.
you seem to be enjoying it.
No, not at all. It is, however the job that pays for my current lifestyle. The original question was Why are websites still forcing people to use IE? I'm trying to provide some insight.
I know very few webmasters who would 'impose' IE
Gee, my bank imposes it on me. (Heck, they don't even support IE7 yet.) Our "customer" is actually another organization, and they prefer their users having little choice in browsers (and other things). They certainly don't want to pay for the extra effort to support other browsers -- never mind how much that might cost. Think highly conservative here, low (perceived) risk. Decisions are being made by people influenced by Microsoft but who don't have to deal directly with the headaches those decisions cause. In particular, no one from Mozilla or Apache or MySQL have taken my management out for dinner lately. None of the reps from PHP or Python or Perl have flown them to Seattle. Hell, you'd think the guys at the Free Software Foundation would at least buy my boss a beer to explain the advantages of emacs over vi.
But now you think my management are being simply wined and dined to purchase Microsoft Solutions. Not so: I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with ego stroking too.
I'd rather do things right, but this decision is way over my level.
Do you honestly believe there exists a /. webmaster who would require IE?
...)) aren't implemented in that version, although they do apparently work if you use a nightly build of AppleWebKit. So, essentially, yeah, we produce a web site that only works properly in IE and Opera.
And if such a monster exists, do you honestly believe he'd admit it?
I'll nearly admit it. My company produces a web content management system whose admin interface was IE-only in the previous version. The current version adds support for FF, Opera and Safari, although we're considering officially recommending that our clients not use FF with it: FF's implementation of HTML design mode ("midas") is severely fucked. So far, we've spent hundreds of hours working around bugs in it, and they're not all finished with yet. Safari support isn't entirely there on the current official versions of Safari, because some of the features we need (specifically execCommand("inserthtml",
I do understand the 'majority of browsers are IE' argument - that figures in even in a company's financial decisions - but this has nothing to do with the quality of the browser. With the increasing amount of 'other' browsers climbing, there may come a time where a company may actually lose money by taking the 'IE only' option. In any case, companies are already losing money because of IE, because of all the time (and bug research) it takes for webmasters to make a website look the same in all browsers. I'm talking from experience.
No, no sig. Really.
ThePromenader
I work for a 45,000 employee defense contractor/technology company. At my site we are forbidden from using IE because of security issues and must use firefox or some other browser. Our corporate HR website, which we must use to do our performance evaluations, benefits changes, and other administrivia doesn't work (actually rejects, won't even try to work) with anything other than IE. WTF?