Firefox 31% market share, why are websites still forcing IE use?

Firefox 31% market share, why are websites still forcing IE use?

"I just visited Movielink's website for research. Their site has a nice message saying, 'Sorry, but in order to enjoy the Movielink service you must use Internet Explorer 5.0 (or higher) or Mozilla/Firefox with an IE Tab Extension (IE installation required).' While allowing the IETab Firefox extension is somewhat progressive, why do companies still force people to use Internet Explorer? Surely the site should work just fine in Firefox? With Firefox's steady gains in market share, you would think that webmasters would get the hint. If you are a webmaster, what are your reasons for forcing IE?"

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

http://ask.slashdot.org/askslashdot/07/04/18/235204.shtml

cy said:

[...]why do companies still force people to use Internet Explorer?

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They hate money.

It's called 'head-up-***' syndrome.
Poor website design and non-compliance should result in the webmaster's firing.
It's plain short-sightedness for any company to function such a way.
I make it a point to take my business elsewhere if their web portal is IE-only.

I went to Movielinks site using IE 7 and it did not work for me either...said I need to download something. My IE 7 does not have problems elsewhere!!
I feel the same way about Java, Flash, Real Media, and Quicktime sites. Let's get rid of all of them.

Because they lack the necessary skills to make it compatible. It's very easy to slap up an IIS (Internet Information Server by Microsoft) website with .NET if you have the software. The hard part is making sure it follows standards and is compatible with other browsers.

Where do you get the 31% other than from a web site developer?
OneStat.com shows half that and the sidebar at this site shows the same.

As for "standards" good, bad or indifferent they are set by what people buy and not by committees.

It's been a spell since I checked stats for my site...my recollection is that hits are dominated by Mozilla Firefox followed by IE.

It's not like the past years where there was heavy browser war competitions...the market is much more open. To stick with IE only will chase some off. If I get those messages and I haven't in a while, I just click onward and away.

could it be because those sites want to upload ads or spyware onto your computer and know firefox doesnt work well?

I don't know what the market penetration is for Firefox, but it is not an insignificant amount.

When I hit a site that requires IE I just pass it by. The only valid reason for insisting on an IE engine would be to allow active X or some other MS specific nonsense. Since I would not allow an active-X applet from an untrusted system to run on my systems anyway, I just move on.

I find that I do not miss much.

Daniel

Seconding the "It's easy to slap up a IIS server" thing here - although browser checks that chuck you out if you don't have IE are the sign of someone who's just lazy. I'm running a beta of Camino on OSX so far, and everything I've tried in IIS up to and including OWA work just great.

It's a little bit extra work to write pages that work well in IE and Mozilla derivatives - our Web guy here beat his head against IE6's...unique handling of CSS for a while before discovering how to tag certain commands to be browser-specific so that the page renders correctly in all the browsers we've tried (IE6, IE7, Camino 1.03 stable, Camino 1.1b, OmniWeb, Safari, Firefox 1.5 and Firefox 2.0). It's not that many lines of extra code but it can be a little bit of a hunt-and-peck job...there's right ways and lazy ways to do things, and we tend to do the right thing where I work.

The simple answer is it means more work for web builders. I use Opera which works almost everywhere but use an IE clone when needed. Frustrating but just the way it is right now. I found PayPal won't let me print a mailing label without IE and I think that's too bad because I consider Opera much more secure than IE - something that's quite important for a web site like that.

I wont open IE for any website. I feel it's just too insecure. Coders don't want to comply to the standards, and correct the errors in their code which IE will go a head and understand since that's more work. They have gotten sloppy and IE has allowed them to do this and get away with it. If you ask me that is bad, a webbrowser should stick with the standards and display broken design if it reads broken code...

IsaacHayes said:

[...] a webbrowser should stick with the standards and display broken design if it reads broken code...

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Absolutely! If websites were designed to the published standards, that would put pressure on everyone making a webbrowser to ensure they were absolutely compliant.

Of course ... that would mean that web browsers would (ideally) be completely interchangeable, and Micro$oft really doesn't want that to happen.

Mike Painter said:

Where do you get the 31% other than from a web site developer?
OneStat.com shows half that and the sidebar at this site shows the same.

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I agree with Mike, what's with the 31%. I've tried all a number of web browsers and would have agreed that Firefox was a good choice until I tried IE 7. I've removed Firefox and have not looked back.

no way... read this and tried IE 7. it's no way near functional as firefox.
no extensions to control what your browser does, instead of the other way around.

SoundMix said:

I agree with Mike, what's with the 31%. I've tried all a number of web browsers and would have agreed that Firefox was a good choice until I tried IE 7. I've removed Firefox and have not looked back.

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bitslammer said:

The hard part is making sure it follows standards and is compatible with other browsers.

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Actually, that's quite easy to do.

I too am skeptical of the 31 percent usage statistic. I would think it could only be that high for a selected group, not the mass population in general. I know at work with our thousand employee plus company, like it or not, some of the engineering apps we run will only work with IE. I use Firefox whenever I can but must admit I could live with IE7.

Just use the IE tab extension for Firefox. Whats the big deal?

I think IE gets a lot of it's user share from casual/uninformed users. I can not count the times I've been questioned about a computer/browser problem from friends and relatives and when I bring up FF I hear, "I've never heard of it"!

Minjin said:

Just use the IE tab extension for Firefox. Whats the big deal?

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From what I understand... You are just using the guts (code) of IE in a FireFox window... So you are back to having security issues with IE.

-Bill