Why are Websites Still Forcing People to Use IE?

DragonTHC asks: "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?"

Re:Obvious

For the same reason people use IE in the first place: They are stupid and/or lazy.

They could also have a passionate love for Microsoft. Oh wait, I guess that falls under the "stupid" category, doesn't it?

Re:Obvious

Or they are stuck using Microsoft Visual Studio on a Microsoft Vista workstation, producing Microsoft ASP.NET applications for bosses who enjoy the occasional dinner and/or trip by... Microsoft!

Why yes, I am bitter. Why do you ask?

Re:Obvious

I have mod points, but there is no "-1 dumbass" mod.

Re:Obvious

Nonsense. I've worked on a number of ASP websites that behaved perfectly under Firefox.

Re:Obvious

Yes, after you turned off the "downlevel" browser feature that treats IE as CSS 2 compliant

Or you could not use all the compound controls and wizards, and just code it by hand. People bash ASP.Net for the poor automated HTML output. Well you don't have to use that.

Re:Obvious

You don't get it. It is the old "Nobody gets fired for buying IBM" mentality, replacing IBM with Microsoft. We do everything the Microsoft way. There are some features that don't work the same under FireFox -- not that it couldn't be done on FireFox, but when all your tools are Microsoft based and all your users are Microsoft equipped, you just fall into doing thing the Microsoft way. Even if something would just work perfectly with FireFox, it is hard to justify (at this company) testing with other browsers. It is easier to just throw in a browser check and call it good.

The issue isn't if we could support something other than IE, the issue is why in the world would we want to? Oh, and those trips and dinners sponsored by Microsoft are apparently pretty good.

Now I'll wait for some smart ass to point out I should just quit.

Re:Obvious

One thing is certain: You're doing exactly what Microsoft wants you to do. What's odder: you seem to be enjoying it. No matter, to each his own, but I know very few webmasters who would 'impose' IE - most I know spend most of their time pulling their hair out because of it.

With that thought in mind, I wonder if there's some way to calculate how much money IE has lost webmasters trying to make their websites look the same in both IE and web-standards compliant browssers?

Re:Obvious

You're doing exactly what Microsoft wants you to do.
Yes, obviously.

you seem to be enjoying it.
No, not at all. It is, however the job that pays for my current lifestyle. The original question was Why are websites still forcing people to use IE? I'm trying to provide some insight.

I know very few webmasters who would 'impose' IE
Gee, my bank imposes it on me. (Heck, they don't even support IE7 yet.) Our "customer" is actually another organization, and they prefer their users having little choice in browsers (and other things). They certainly don't want to pay for the extra effort to support other browsers -- never mind how much that might cost. Think highly conservative here, low (perceived) risk. Decisions are being made by people influenced by Microsoft but who don't have to deal directly with the headaches those decisions cause. In particular, no one from Mozilla or Apache or MySQL have taken my management out for dinner lately. None of the reps from PHP or Python or Perl have flown them to Seattle. Hell, you'd think the guys at the Free Software Foundation would at least buy my boss a beer to explain the advantages of emacs over vi.

But now you think my management are being simply wined and dined to purchase Microsoft Solutions. Not so: I'm pretty sure it has a lot to do with ego stroking too.

I'd rather do things right, but this decision is way over my level.

Re:Obvious

I've never done IE only sites, so I can't exactly quantify the additional work for standard-compliant browsers, but I do know that MSIE 6 (I no longer support IE 5.x) perhaps as much as doubles the amount of time I spend developing a website. MSIE7 on the otherhand, whilst rather poor in comparison with *all* the competition, does at least behave in a predictable manner, and as such, it fairly easy to support. But my personal irritation as MSIE 6 is... well.... epic!

For anyone unfamiliar with developing websites for IE6, basically, you get given (or design yourself) a page layout; columns here, images there, content centred, etc, you create a fairly simple XHTML document to contain the content, you create CSS to position stuff. And I can do all this whilst testing only in Firefox and know that there will be few if any issues with other browsers. Even IE7 which as mentioned, isn't perfect, but at least I know (as with other browsers) that any slight issues can be dealt with later on.
BUT with IE6, it'll throw all sorts of weird and wonderful bugs at you. Bits of content might appear fine as you tweak XHTML/CSS and refresh, but when you fire up the browser afresh, it'll screw up. Or content will appear, but when you scroll the page, it'll disappear.

So I'd be more forgiving of Microsoft if they'd allowed IE7 to run on pre-Windows XP machines since this would allow me (and all the millions of other poor-sods) to drop IE6 support in the forseeable future! For the most part, IE7 is just a bug fixed IE6. At the very least, the bug fixes should've been back-ported.

PS apologies for the above turning into a bit of a rant!

Re:Obvious

I do understand the 'majority of browsers are IE' argument - that figures in even in a company's financial decisions - but this has nothing to do with the quality of the browser. With the increasing amount of 'other' browsers climbing, there may come a time where a company may actually lose money by taking the 'IE only' option. In any case, companies are already losing money because of IE, because of all the time (and bug research) it takes for webmasters to make a website look the same in all browsers. I'm talking from experience.

Re:Obvious

It is, however the job that pays for my current lifestyle.

You sound like a porno queen.

Re:eTRADE requires IE to access account

Huh? I opened accounts with Safari and have used their system with it for years with zero troubles.. They do have 1 problem with Firefox ( at least on OS X ) where it will log you out if you try to go to the market research tab, but certainly they are not IE only.

Re:eTRADE requires IE to access account

I'm in the same boat as AC. I have company options at ETrade and we don't permit the use of IE at my company (It's good to be the king). Everything I've needed to use has worked perfectly using Firefox and I can also access everything from Safari on my Mac at home. I'd have to say your problem was:
a. your computer
b. a lousy support person who didn't want to help with something they didn't know about.

Re:Obvious

Ever heard the phrase "you only have one chance to make a first impression?"

Applies to software, too.

Sure you say he should try Firefox again now that it's bumped up a version and improved. But I'm going to wager (this being Slashdot) that you're unwilling to install and try out RealPlayer again. Right?

Re:Obvious

> Ever heard the phrase "you only have one chance to make a first impression?"
> Applies to software, too.

Unless it's Microsoft s/w, apparently - I don't recall it being particularly good when it first came out, but they have the 'advantage' of being able to put it on everyone's desktop, so people used it, *despite* their first impression.

Re:Obvious

I believe it's more like website project managers saying:

92% of our server logs show people using IE7.

Except that there are two problems with that argument.

1) It's not 92%. I mean I *suppose* there could be some Microsoft fansite out there that does nothing but talk about how great Microsoft is all day that gets 92% of their audience from IE. But at my company, which is a mainstream entertainment company, IE usage is currently at 64%. That's all versions, including AOL, including IE4, even including Opera identifying itself as IE.

2) So the question then is how does that website project manager turn to his executive VP for marketing and say "oh, sorry, we're not going to develop for that other 36%, even though that's a couple million visitors per month." If you're at all familiar with the modern corporate environment, you know that the "but we don't have time!" excuse doesn't fly anymore - whether it's actually the case or not. Every web department I've ever worked in has been staffed with overworked, burnt-out, disgruntled workaholics that are on the job 18 hours a day, about 15 of which are spent doing browser QA. (Yeah, you can tell I'm saying this from experience.)

Even if it *is* only 8%, that's still potentially a million visitors or more at some sites. No company in the world is going to say that's not worth making an effort for, even if it means hiring one more person.

We've leveraged scripting technology that only works with ActiveX. If you want to replace it, I'm going to need the following additional server, developers, and it's going to delay the $NEW_CONTENT_PROJECT by 4 months and cost $LARGE_AMOUNT_OF_MONEY.

Or, in other words, time to start looking for a new job while your boss hires somebody who will actually do the work he wanted you to do. It sucks, but that's modern corporate life.

So really, the only reason a modern site would be developed for IE only is gross ignorance on the part of company executives. They'd have to have no interest in or knowledge of the company's own web site. That's certainly possible, but less common these days than it used to be. Because no company these days would knowingly exclude a large portion of their potential audience unless they had some vested interest in doing so (e.g. an MS-affiliated company - though even sites like msnbc.com now use Flash video made to work across all browsers, rather than the ActiveX-enabled Windows Media that they used to use).

Re:Thanks so very much

"And there's nothing wrong with that. Isn't it, ultimately, about choice? Right?"

I got the impression that the article was discussing the server-side requirement for IE, not the user's voluntary browser selection. If you like IE, good on you.

But if, as you say, it's ultimately about choice, the article is pointing out how odd it is that people running websites would still design new sites demanding one particular browser.

Re:Not Obvious

Or...there are people who simply do not know about Firefox.

TFA is about websites which are coded to be IE only.

Any web developer who does not know about Firefox is stupid or lazy.

In any event, there is no need to support Firefox, Safari, IE or any browser at all. There is only a need to code to W3C standards, not to browser-specific hacks. IE's extensions to standard HTML were made specifically to Embrace, Extend, then Extinguish the free internet. Don't contribute to the trap.

Re:How many people HAVE to use something else?

Well the question is better stated: Is your website worth enough to those users for them to open up IE every single time they wish to look at it. Most of the time the question is "no." In the end most people would just say "fuck it" after a while and use another website that provides the same service (welcome to capitalism).

Re:Obvious arrogance.

How about IE has functionality that your sacred cow doesn't?

Such as? What necessary piece of functionality does IE have that Mozilla (or Opera, or others) don't have?

The GP is absolutely correct most of the time: In the vast majority of cases there is no justifiable reason, and the only explanation is a lazy and/or dumb development team that couldn't be bothered to support another browser. Many of these projects were developed or began back when such a lazy choice wouldn't impede them much, but nowadays it can be deadly (if I encounter an IE-only site, I presume the operators are just grossly incompetent and go elsewhere).

Re:Obvious arrogance.

Such as? What necessary piece of functionality does IE have that Mozilla (or Opera, or others) don't have?

Backdoor exploits into your OS? Ha! Try doing *that* on Firefox or Opera.

Seriously, I'm guessing that's simply an unwillingness to code for more than one browser, either because of laziness or lack of resources or they don't care about the growing market share or firefox.

I don't know if that site is good enough to make people open an IE window or tab just to visit it, so I don't know if their arrogance (if that's what it is) is justified.

Thanks for your interest in Movielink, the leading movie download service. Sorry, but Movielink is presently unavailable to users outside of the United States.

I guess I'll never know.

Re:Obvious arrogance. (IE dependence war story...)

Well, my program uses a commercial product that shall remain nameless. A previous version exploited a bug in IE, where HTML code/Javascript was interpreted by IE, although the HTML standard said that such content was not legal HTML. The amount of $$$ we're spending on this product is outrageous (but that's another problem...)

I publicly embarrassed a manager saying, "Geez, can't you at least require [the product] to use standard HTML, considering what we are paying for it? Doesn't it bother you this product requires a specific version of Internet Explorer, so it can exploit a bug in that version?" My supervisor got his butt chewed for my remarks.

About 3 months later they submitted their HTML for W3C testing, and the site started working with FireFox...

          dave

Obvious denial

I want the audience to read this thread because it proves my point. MS says "You have a problem? I have a solution". The OSS community starts you off with a "you don't have problem". The poster didn't even suggest OpenOffice or any other OSS software that might give the needed solution (assuming it can). That's why some sites code to IE, and if they're "stupid and lazy" for solving problems instead of denying them? Then so be it. IE will still be there to take up the OSS slack.

Re:Obvious arrogance. (IE dependence war story...)

The amusing thing was when crafting my own website, I tended to find it extremely difficult to create a page that worked identically between both browsers, and that having w3 compliant code tended to break the site in IE.

These problems immediatly compound when trying to add CSS to the mix.

Re:Obvious arrogance. (IE dependence war story...)

It's surprizingly nice to work with if you're building a site that you may change the layout of frequently. It also makes the code significantly more manageable in the page itself if you tend to use the same styles of text repeatedly.

In the same breath, I don't generally make sites using ajax (the source of many of these problems), and so it's hard to end up with a static page that doesn't 'work.'

In my personal belief, HTML was not designed to handle the crap that it's being used for today. All the languages that have been tacked onto it are such hacks that it's not surprizing they don't quite work the same on all browsers. Ideally, someone comes up with a good, clean standard that allows for the creation of dynamic components in the native language. Sure, it's 'Just another language,' but if it solves the issues associated with ajax, non-compliance, etc, then it's worth it.

Plus, it's a hell of a lot nicer than having to know dozens of languages just to make a simple website.

We only support IE because...

...our boss said to. Every techie on my dev team uses firefox at home and has it installed at work as well. We are keenly aware of its advantages and market support.

Our boss, however, doesn't care. He likes some of the fancy IE frills, and also doesn't want to spend any dev time at all resolving javascript or CSS conflicts between the two browsers. He believes that IE has a strong enough presence that forcing our users to use it is acceptable...the deciding factor for our users is in system functionality, not browser choice.

So, that's why. Nobody here is dumb or lazy. The boss wants to cut costs and doesn't see the choice driving away clients.

Re:We only support IE because...

"The boss wants to cut costs and doesn't see the choice driving away clients."

And then you say "Nobody here is dumb ..."???? Come ON!

And he's right

"The boss wants to cut costs and doesn't see the choice driving away clients."

And then you say "Nobody here is dumb ..."???? Come ON!

About three comments further up, someone posts a story about trying to use an IE only site to open an account. The poster in that comment went through a long, fruitless call to the companies tech support, complained bitterly to them that they did'nt support firefox, and then caved in and used IE.

The simple fact is that Windows has over 90% of the OS market, (Probably over 99% of certain demographics) and every single windows user has a copy of IE. If a firefox user tries to access a site and gets an "IE only" message, he will just click the blue E and get on with it. Both my desktop and my laptop run ubuntu, but if I really needed to access an IE only site, I'd just boot into windows.

It's not a question of how many people use firefox. It's a question of how many people will boycott your site rather than use IE.

Re:And he's right

It's a question of how many people will boycott your site rather than use IE.

As you business plummets downhill backwards, remember this: the answer is You'll never know.

To ensure ongoing salary payments, you might wish to explain this to your boss now!

Re:We only support IE because...

Nobody here is dumb or lazy.

Yes they are - the boss deciding this policy is fundamentally stupid. If he worked for me he'd have 1 month notice to realign his attitude or it's goodbye. Anyone stupid enough to reduce the availability of a commercial website by making it browser specific doesn't deserve a job in the IT industry (unless he's downgraded to Janitor!).

As a maintainer of a Top 10 website (it's the only British one listed in the Netcraft Top 10), I can tell you that Internet Explorer accounts for less than 50% of our visits right now and has IE use has visibly declined in the last year. Indeed "other" Operating Systems now account for over 45% of our site visits. We will not be using proprietary codecs in future for our on-line programme services.

Game Over, Microsoft!

Re:Proprietary Stuff That's IE Exclusive

it's sort of cool to have an entire page pixelate/warp/dissolve/rotate/... in.

no...no it's not