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Aussie Online Retailer Impose IE7 Tax
First time accepted submitter Techy77 writes "Online retailer Kogan will impose a new tax on its customers that visit its website using Microsoft's outdated Internet Explorer 7 web browser, which means they will spend 6.8 percent more than customers on browsers like Firefox, Opera, Safari and Chrome. From the article: 'Kogan said his company was able to keep prices low by using technology to make its business efficient and streamlined. however its web team was having to spend a lot of time making its new website look normal on IE7.
"It’s not only costing us a huge amount, it’s affecting any business with an online presence, and costing the Internet economy millions,” Mr Kogan said.
“As Internet citizens, we all have a responsibility to make the Internet a better place. By taking these measures, we are doing our bit.”'"
Not only have they campaigned to get people move from v7, Internet Explorer 9 and 10 are actually pretty awesome browsers. They're finally lightweight and share similar design to Chrome and Firefox, they are standards compliant and they feel great to use. On top of that they are currently the most secure browsers because of heavy sandboxing, JIT hardening and so on. Microsoft did a really good work with the new versions.
Microsoft provides Virtual PC images for a range of IE + Windows versions to test your website with.
Check it out at http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=11575
Kogan is reasonably well known: founded in 2006, they are one of the fastest growing Australian companies. They aimed to release the world's first Android phone back in 2008/2009, were the first with a ChromeBook, and they produce their own Agora line of Android devices.
This particular move may be clever marketing, but they also have a recent history of ambition and innovation beyond what you'd expect from a medium sized Australian consumer electronics retailer.