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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.
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.
Spelling mistakes, grammatical errors, and stupid comments are intentional.
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!
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).
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 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.
...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.
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.
no...no it's not
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.
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
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.