Dethroning Internet Explorer
I’ve been flipping through More Eric Meyer on CSS (excellent book by the way) and realized that despite what I’ve learned in the past year about CSS, there are several things I still need to refine and improve upon.
My achilles tendon is the 3-column fluid layout, which I’ve experimented upon, but as of late the layout tends to break in Internet Explorer 6 (and below). I’ve been reading various sources about clearing floats, namely Clearing floats without structural markup and Floatutorial. It makes sense that floats were essentially designed for floating images (similar to applying an image wrap in a word processing program), however, it still puts a tack in my side when I’m coding a site for a client and keep running into the same brick wall, or the obstruction better known as Internet Explorer.
I scratch my head over the fact that 87% of Internet users still use IE as their main browser of choice, when there are other alternatives that just do the job better. When I praised the benefits of using Firefox (or a more conformant browser) at work, my co-workers shrugged it off. Their reason being that they were comfortable with Internet Explorer and didn’t want to change what browser they used. Likewise, it seems most people (outside of the Web Standards generation) could care less if their browser is conformant nor do they lose sleep over display bugs, they are just comfortable and would rather not change their browser.
That shouldn’t stop those who are willing to promote standard compliant browsers, but it does mean the use of hacks to make sure the site is cross-browser compatible, which is a headache in itself.
I simply cannot wait for the day when more conformant browsers are adopted by the bulk of the population and IE is dethroned. Unless Microsoft has plans for releasing a more compliant version of Internet Explorer or patch up 6.0, they will eventually lose the market on browser dominance and the sun will shine again for those still in the shadow.
8 Comments, Comment or Ping
Jarek Piórkowski
You might want to improve your praising techniques. Show off some cool Firefox features. Laugh in their face every time they get a pop-up or their IE crashes (you might want to avoid doing that to the boss). Use a little tabbing & opening in background trickery. Mouse gestures can be very interesting too.
Average users don’t care about standards. They even tend to ignore all the security issues, even after they’ve been hit by one of them. But be cool, and they’ll come.
May 25th, 2004
kartooner
Oh, I’ve touted over the features of Firefox. My favorites being tabbed browsing (as mentioned), automatic popup blocker, support for heaps of extensions and themes, etc. etc.
It’s just that it seems that most people are afraid of change, what am I saying, everyone is afraid of change at some point. I won’t discount their fear of change, but rather mention that they should welcome it.
Once we’re too comfortable in something, it’s a red flag telling you to add a bit of spice into your lifestyle (be it surfing habits, your favorite bookstore or brick and mortar shop, food tastes, etc.), change is good.
May 25th, 2004
beto
Hey Erik,
I’ve tried to play the web standards evangelist at our workplace - even show them the virtues of Firefox, etc. Response was along the lines of “tried it a couple of times, it’s fun” and little else.
Unfortunately, web standards by themselves aren’t something you can use in a sales pitch - the only thing clients care for, understandably, is that their sites work and look fine on whatever browser they are using (more often than not, this means IE/PC) and they really won’t give a hoot about what holds it all together as long as it works. Me, what I try to do is to strike a balance for sites to work as flawlessly as possible in both browsers using web standards.
What is really needed here is some marketing muscle -and mucho $$$- the size of Microsoft or similar (which company is second most influential in the computing industry? Apple? nah..) to get Firefox beyond its geek toy status and position it as a serious competitor to IE. But who’s going to pony up the cash, even more so when everybody knows there’s no money to be made in marketing browsers?
Microsoft’s own case is one where their dominance in market share is fueled by ubiquity, not quality…
May 26th, 2004
Todd
At my current job no one cares at all about web standards so trying to get them to use Firefox is a pain. The best thing I’ve found to sell it to people is “built in pop-up blocking”. The fact that it doesn’t need an external program to do this makes it a little more enticing to people.
The tabbed browsing usually catches peoples interest as well but not enough to move over from IE.
I’ve only successfully switched one person over to Firefox. It’s hard to get people out of what they’re used to even if it’s a better product.
May 26th, 2004
Scott
There are a few IE based browsers that have tabbed interfaces, automatic pop-up stopping and are skinnable.
These are great, but they still render problems. Firefox isn’t perfect and there are a few things it does/doesn’t do that drive me nuts, but it renders pages nicely.
May 27th, 2004
Richard@Home
Maybe you’d like to get involved with International Internet Explorer Conversion Day?
http://richardathome.no-ip.com/index.php?article_id=234
May 28th, 2004
kartooner
Sounds like a well-devised plan, Richard. I’m in. :)
May 28th, 2004
Richard@Home
Psst… tell all your friends ;-)
May 28th, 2004
Reply to “Dethroning Internet Explorer”