Via Tim Bray, this amusing little story about how IE is not quite as universal as it once was. I for one, wouldn't miss it for a second if it went away tomorrow: I use Firefox, which is far superior.
Actually, I would miss it a little, but only because there are a few important sites that are busted in anything but IE. Sadly, all FlexWiki sites fall into this category (but hopefully not for much longer).
When I switched from IE because I wanted tabs, FlexWiki and MSDN were the reasons I settled on MyIE2. This, it seems to me, is the best of both worlds - tabbed browsing plus perfect IE compatibility (because it IS IE underneath). So why do so many people choose Firefox? What are the OTHER advantages?
ReplyDeleteTabbed browsing is certainly nice, but for me there are a number of other advantages:
ReplyDelete* Better google integration
* A rich community of plugin developers, or, more generally, because it has serious momentum.
* Incremental search built-in
* Better pop-up blocking
* The ability to change the font size regardless of what the stylesheet says (great for presentations)
But the main reason for me is to put the fire to the feet of MSFT: they walked away from IE and let it languish. Fine: let's see how they react when we walk away. If they choose to make a better browser than Firefox because of it, then I'll switch back.
Another reason to switch is to make me aware of the fact that IE isn't the only thing out there. When you feel the pain, it changes the way you code. For my part, I've become much more highly motivated to fix FlexWiki's IE-specificity since moving to Firefox.