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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.
Just use the User Agent Switcher extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 ) and have Firefox pretend it is IE. Nine times out of 10 the site will work just fine.
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.
For the same reason people use IE in the first place: They are stupid and/or lazy.
They could also have a passionate love for Microsoft. Oh wait, I guess that falls under the "stupid" category, doesn't it?
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!
If you are a webmaster, what are your reasons for forcing IE?
/. webmaster who would require IE?
Do you honestly believe there exists a
And if such a monster exists, do you honestly believe he'd admit it?
Pulp Audio Weekly - Geek News and Reviews
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!
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]
by a tech support person, "because Linux and free software are hacker tools".
"Some books contain the machinery required to create and sustain universes."-Tycho
Firefox does not allow you to clear the Authentication cache (Basic or NTLM) unless you create a signed component. This forces us to close the browser to clear authentication data (We have kiosks where more than one user is viewing private healthcare information and this behavior is VERY undesirable)
This comment was randomly generated by a school of piranhas chewing on the PCB of a Microsoft Natural Keyboard.
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.
What really drives me mad are sites that say you need "IE X or more recent, or Netscape 6 or more recent" but don't let Firefox or Opera in because they didn't exist when they wrote the script and no one bothers to update it, even though these "more recent" browsers would do fine.
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
...I use an XHTML mime-type on all my pages.
I know! Firefox doesn't even run ActiveX controls, and those awesome search bars that give you free stuff don't even install into it!
Speak before you think
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?
Huh? I opened accounts with Safari and have used their system with it for years with zero troubles.. They do have 1 problem with Firefox ( at least on OS X ) where it will log you out if you try to go to the market research tab, but certainly they are not IE only.
"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
I'm in the same boat as AC. I have company options at ETrade and we don't permit the use of IE at my company (It's good to be the king). Everything I've needed to use has worked perfectly using Firefox and I can also access everything from Safari on my Mac at home. I'd have to say your problem was:
a. your computer
b. a lousy support person who didn't want to help with something they didn't know about.
...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.
Bank of America works...Of course, they're the official bank of the antichrist, so there's that.
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
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...
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.
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."
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.
I'm living in South Korea at the moment, and Windows/IE is pretty much 100% here because a certain ActiveX control is used by most sites for encryption (they use their own SEED encryption or something, here are some links...
9 62,39154849,00.htm ...)
"The key reason ActiveX is mandated by financial institutions is that Korea has its own national encryption scheme called SEED that is used in place of SSL. The reason this came to be stemmed from the fact that US export law in the late 1990s didn't permit the export of web browsers with more than 40 bit encryption. This meant that an ActiveX SEED plug-in was used in place of browser SSL. While there are Java and Netscape implementations of SEED, it was almost never implemented. ActiveX is so dominant that KFTC (Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute) won't even assign users security certificates unless they're using Internet Explorer with ActiveX."
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=412
http://www.zdnet.co.kr/etc/eyeon/internet/0,39036
"if i'd known it was harmless, i'd have killed it myself"
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.
Nonsense. I've worked on a number of ASP websites that behaved perfectly under Firefox.
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
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.
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
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.
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?
I have mod points, but there is no "-1 dumbass" mod.
I've never done IE only sites, so I can't exactly quantify the additional work for standard-compliant browsers, but I do know that MSIE 6 (I no longer support IE 5.x) perhaps as much as doubles the amount of time I spend developing a website. MSIE7 on the otherhand, whilst rather poor in comparison with *all* the competition, does at least behave in a predictable manner, and as such, it fairly easy to support. But my personal irritation as MSIE 6 is... well.... epic!
For anyone unfamiliar with developing websites for IE6, basically, you get given (or design yourself) a page layout; columns here, images there, content centred, etc, you create a fairly simple XHTML document to contain the content, you create CSS to position stuff. And I can do all this whilst testing only in Firefox and know that there will be few if any issues with other browsers. Even IE7 which as mentioned, isn't perfect, but at least I know (as with other browsers) that any slight issues can be dealt with later on.
BUT with IE6, it'll throw all sorts of weird and wonderful bugs at you. Bits of content might appear fine as you tweak XHTML/CSS and refresh, but when you fire up the browser afresh, it'll screw up. Or content will appear, but when you scroll the page, it'll disappear.
So I'd be more forgiving of Microsoft if they'd allowed IE7 to run on pre-Windows XP machines since this would allow me (and all the millions of other poor-sods) to drop IE6 support in the forseeable future! For the most part, IE7 is just a bug fixed IE6. At the very least, the bug fixes should've been back-ported.
PS apologies for the above turning into a bit of a rant!