Tom Rogers

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3 Reasons To Push Your Friend Away From IE

Posted on 11/11/09

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We all know Internet Explorer is the most popular browser out there but not for the right reasons. I am going to make quite a bold statement in saying that, most (not all) people who choose to use the browser are doing so because they don’t know that they have a choice and it also my opinion that Microsoft ought to be ashamed of themselves for psychologically forcing novice users into using their browser. If you hadn’t worked out already, I passionately disapprove of the software (something that isn’t aided by the fact that I am a web designer and a code purest). With that said, I figured I’d give you some reasons why switching a novice computer user away from IE can be your good deed for today.

Your opening their eyes.

Our job as experts in the vane of technology is to expand that knowledge to others who can use it. A simple way you can go a long way toward this is to tell people who use it that the Internet Explorer icon does not equal “The Internet.” You may just find that, by showing them some alternatives and what they have to offer and explain how x feature could help the person, they may see something they want in another browser they would not have discovered without you showing them.

You are helping the web to evolve.

This is close to my heart and, I’d hope, the heart of anyone also who is involved in web design and/or development. There’s all kinds of cool visual goodies we are able to include in our websites in order to give the user a fancier experience that simply isn’t supported in any version of the browser but have been implemented in nearly every other engine (eg. CSS only rounded corners). I am baffled as to Microsoft’s reasoning for not including support for such features in there browser updates.

Also, true to form, Microsoft also seem to think they have the right to bend their browser rendering engine in a way that contradicts web standards resulting in perfectly valid markup and CSS looking like crap for such a high percentage of today’s browsing market! The end result is a big fat headache for people like me because we then have to spend time that should have spent on design and being creative on testing and writing special stylesheets for IE in order to ensure they can even view it.

Microsoft will be forced to rethink their strategies.

Let’s face facts, every commercial company (even Apple) only cares about dollar bills! So, if people stopped using IE on mass, Microsoft will have no other option but to look at the product, admit they made mistakes, and change. One person (you) can make tons of impact because everything starts with one thing and then grows.

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