Forcing Webbrowsers.

Let’s get into a dangerous you-should-not-go-there zone… Browser wars… Well, to start there isn’t really any, now is there.. Each person has the right, and the possibility to choose their own browser, regardless of the operating system. Windows users have – obviously – Internet Explorer but don’t forget Opera or Firefox. Linux users have a plethora to choose from : Konqueror, Netscape, Firefox, Mozilla. Mac users also have a selection between – at least – Safari and – again – something Mozilla based. And to continue Amiga has aWeb and iBrowse, C64 has the Wave or Contiki, even BeOS has multiple browser.. So you see, enough choice !

Now where’s the problem ?

Some people will actually FORCE you to use the browser of their choosing. An example that pissed me off is the new design of Fallen Angels “Denktank”, designed by MrVazil. The CSS will not work in Internet Explorer whatsoever and the blaming is just done onto the Internet Explorer CSS interpreter… To go on with the politics there is a “Stop IE” button in the sidebar but to totally top it off, there is a fake, viral and utterly misleading “Internet explorer is not rendering this site correctly, please click here for more info” (the reason why I noticed something fishy is because, although my regional settings caused the banner to be displayed in Dutch, my system is configured in English. Many users are used to this banner popping up because ActiveX controls have been blocked (that is good) but this leads to a site called BrowseHappy, a site that tries to convince you to use something else.

Is there something wrong with websites trying me to convince another browser ? Hell no.. What DOES bother me is that some people will force you to use another browser in order to get their site shown correctly. It makes you no different from the top argument you use against Internet Explorer, namely that people are forced to use it.

Yes I am an Internet Explorer user, yes I use Opera as well, yes Firefox is a piece of bloatware. And the “Internet Explorer is more/less secure” argument is a no-go as well, as each browser has bugs – on any platform.

Links :
Konqueror
Opera
Mozilla and its derivates (Firefox, Thunderbird, …)
Internet Explorer
Safari
aWeb
iBrowse
Contiki
Browsehappy
Fallen Angel’s Denktank

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