FireFox & IE by Darrin Chandler [24 January 2005 13:15 MST]
If you pay any attention to Internet happenings then you've heard of FireFox, and how it's made impressive initial inroads in market share against Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Not surprising, since almost anyone with any tech savvy has recommended abandoning IE due to its long history of security problems, and Microsoft's apparent inability to change the programming culture that has produced such a nightmare for home and business users.
What's surprising is that some people who should know better still don't get it. A recent Op/Ed piece Business Must Be Cautious With Firefox by Michael Gartenberg warns that switching to FireFox can cause trouble, since you can't run ActiveX components. But wait! ActiveX has been one of the most exploited areas of IE. That FireFox doesn't use ActiveX is a major reason to switch to it!
That some sites only work with IE is a (lamentable) fact. The web started as a way to share information between people in different countries using different computers. It's huge success is built upon that very ideal. That's what's good about the web. Really, that's why you like it. When Netscape and Miscrosoft had their big showdown they introduced as many proprietary extensions as they could to try to lock users into their products. We should never have accepted this, but we did. But it's not too late.
Grow a spine and use a standards compliant browser. I use FireFox, but you don't have to. There are several to choose from. Just don't use Internet Explorer or any other browser that locks you into a single vendor. If you can't use a certain web site because of that, then email them and tell them they're losing you because of their restrictive choices. They'll listen. They may not change their site overnight, but they will sooner or later.
I can access my bank or buy books at Amazon just fine with FireFox. Amazingly they didn't lock me into IE. Why not? Why should they?! Why alienate all the Mac users in the world? Or the Linux users? Or people using Windows, but not using IE? They'd rather have their Internet services available to ALL of their users. Who wouldn't? The problem usually lies with smaller companies who haven't evaluated the impact of their web developers' decisions. Just let them know that you'd like to do business with them on the Internet, but their web site has made that impossible for you.
This is comparable to a drive-thru only working for Ford automobiles. It's easy to see why Ford would like that, and offer all kinds of incentives. But no business would accept that. No consumer would accept it. Why has it been accepted on the Internet? One may speculate, but it doesn't have to be that way. Do your part and abandon Internet Explorer. It'll do you immediate good, and in the long run it'll do everyone good.
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