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?"

User Agent Switcher (for Firefox users)

[mackil]

Just use the User Agent Switcher extension (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 ) and have Firefox pretend it is IE. Nine times out of 10 the site will work just fine.

Re:IE!!!!!

[Icarus1919]

A flame war means page views.

Re:User Agent Switcher (for Firefox users)

[JonWan]

Just tried it, it just saye that it's loading and sits there.

Re:New technologies, "corporate design" and other

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit.

I'm currently working a VERY large site for a VERY large company that happens to be largest manufacturer of their product in the world. This is site has to be deployed in 7+ languages in 20+ countries on 4 continents. It has more AJAX (and other Web 2.0 buzzwords) than you can shake a stick at, it genereates *zero* script errors on any brower, EVERY page validates, and, apart from the innate differences in the way Macs and PCs render fonts, it looks EXACTLY the same in IE6, IE7, FF, and Safari (Still working on Opera).

There's no reason you can't make your site look and function great across all platforms. You just have to be willing to pay the big bucks for the kind of people who can build it for you.

The reason why our company does is ...

[dook43]

Firefox does not allow you to clear the Authentication cache (Basic or NTLM) unless you create a signed component. This forces us to close the browser to clear authentication data (We have kiosks where more than one user is viewing private healthcare information and this behavior is VERY undesirable)

Re:It says you must use IE.

[Akaihiryuu]

Sure can...it's very easy too.
https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59 [mozilla.org]

It's worse than that

[AlHunt]

No 98, no ME, no MAC, no Linux

Sorry, but as of May 2, 2005, Movielink no longer supports Windows 98 and ME operating systems.
Movielink also does not support Mac or Linux.

In order to enjoy the Movielink service, you must use Windows 2000 or XP,
which support certain technologies we utilize for downloading movies.

Poor programming

[Yobgod Ababua]

In those cases re-making a site/changing it for maximum browser capability doesn't make as much sense as some instructions for how FF users might get round the problem. It might be that they don't care, it might be its actually the most sensible action.

In 90% of the "IE-only" sites I've encountered, the problem is not that they would need to re-make their site but that they stuck some "browser verification" script on the front page that doesn't know anything about the capability of non-IE browsers and thus excludes them. Changing the site in these cases is as easy as removing the "you must use IE to enter" code. I usually test these cases by asking my non-IE browser to lie about what it is, and things then usually work perfectly.

What really drives me mad are sites that say you need "IE X or more recent, or Netscape 6 or more recent" but don't let Firefox or Opera in because they didn't exist when they wrote the script and no one bothers to update it, even though these "more recent" browsers would do fine.

Re:It says you must use IE.

[LordKronos]

I use the User Agent Switcher plugin for sites like this. Well, in this case it doesn't help. The page brings up a clock timer/progress meter and gets no further. Bringing up the error console, it fails on a javascript error. And a look at the javascript code shows that the site uses ActiveX (Microsoft.ActiveXPlugin.1, MediaPlayer.MediaPlayer.1, etc).

I beleive there is an ActiveX wrapper plugin for Firefox, though I'd never dream of actually using it. However, even that probably wouldn't help, because a bit further down the page.....VBScript. I'm pretty sure theres no way to get THAT working in Firefox.

In short, I think the page is absolutely hopeless.

Re:User Agent Switcher (for Firefox users)

[LordKronos]

As I just now posted in another reply, it uses ActiveX and VBScript.

My company's software requires IE compatibility

[Anonymous Coward]

I think the reason is that we are too lazy to test multiple browsers when we create the sites, and that we don't have any firm policies about standards adherance.

What about Firefox only sites?

[il1019]

I use Avant Browser, which is based on IE. I've tried Firefox, and I use it when in linux, but i can't stand gecko. It messes up Yahoo! for goodness sake. I find it frustrating when i find, however rarely, the firefox only sites. They are growing in numbers, and are annoying as hell for people that use IE. The only reason to create Firefox only sites is just to piss people off.

Re:It's worse than that

[Bogtha]

Actually, it's even worse than that.

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

So they've thrown out Mac users, thrown out Linux users, thrown out BSD users, thrown out 98 and ME users, and thrown out everybody outside the USA. The majority of web surfers aren't even allowed to see their homepage!

From an ISP whose billing page is IE-only...

[Yalius]

I work support for an ISP; our billing page is IE-only. How many complaints do you think we have on file regarding not being able to use Firefox or Safari or another alternative? 2 complaints for the last year. The vast, VAST majority of users, when told that the Ebill function is IE only, just shrug and say, "OK" and click on IE. Even if Firefox is their primary browser. What the heck incentive is there to recode the page when there's just no demand for it? IE's already on 90%+ machines, and most people just plain don't care which browser they're using, even the ones who switched to Firefox.

Re:Obvious

[masterzora]

I have been using Firefox since 0.9 and there has been vast improvement in rendering, stated or otherwise. For example, the Gamespot example you used just loaded up perfectly and quickly. These days I have yet to find a site render more quickly in IE than in Firefox, although there still do exist some websites that are specifically coded to handle IE's faults without handling the proper method, so they won't render the same in Firefox.

Does seem odd considering...

[stinkbomb]

...the fact that they're running Apache on a Unix platform [netcraft.com].

Re:Forcing people to use IE?

[PyroMosh]

Doesn't work. I use Mozilla suite as my browser (Firefox just has a slightly different "feel" that I never got to like). The site gives me the "You must use IE" message. So I change my User-Agent string to "IE 6.0 WinXP" through Mozilla PrefBar [mozdev.org] (an awesome tool for Mozilla or firefox users, basicly lets you change any config file variable direct through the toolbar). When I tried it changing my UA string, the site just didn't load.

I don't know what they use, but it does need IE. Probably ActiveX or some such.

Re:Obvious

[AJWM]

Nobody can reasonably argue that Firefox 1.0 was better than IE.

Sure they can, especially if they're arguing that Firefox 1.0 was better than IE 1.0. But I'd go further than that, it's certainly better than IE 5, and in many ways than IE 6. I'm posting this via Firefox 1.0.6. (Yeah, I keep meaning to upgrade. Real Soon Now.) CaptiveX doesn't mean diddly squat to me, I'm running 64-bit Linux.

Incompetence

[beadfulthings]

A wise person told me years ago that anything that said, "Best when viewed in [insert browser here] at [insert screen resolution here] was a very visible sign of laziness, incompetence, arrogance, and lack of interest in the ultimate "customer," the end-user. That advice was given when the browsers of the moment were IE and Netscape. It was good advice then, and with a modification or two, it's good advice now. So I'd have to say they are some combination of (a) lazy; (b) incompetent; (c) arrogant; and (d) not interested in their visitors. I always view such shenanigans as a sort of badge of shame, and it occasionally causes me to mistrust the content of such sites.

Re:eTRADE requires IE to access account

[emc]

That isn't true.

I've opened two eTrade accounts using Safari.

Maybe your problem isn't IE, it's Windows.

Proprietary Stuff That's IE Exclusive

[setirw]

Malware jokes aside, there are a few neat things that are IE exclusive, namely proprietary CSS filters [fred.net] (that allow things like embossing, color inversion, rotation, etc...) These, of course, are accomplished through DirectX. CSS filters can also be animated... it's sort of cool to have an entire page pixelate/warp/dissolve/rotate/... in.

Re:eTRADE requires IE to access account

[sasdrtx]

I've used E*Trade more or less daily for about seven years, both brokerage and bank. Not once have I used IE. I used Netscape 7 at the time, and Firefox now.

Maybe there's something "special" about the stock grant part.

Re:eTRADE requires IE to access account

[justinlindh]

If this had been true, you probably could have just spoofed user_agent easily enough. I've gotten through several "IE Only" sites by just lying to the web server using Opera (you can identify as IE/etc in the browser's "site preferences"). I'm sure Firefox also has the ability (plug-in?). If the site uses ActiveX, however, I'm pretty sure you're screwed.

try living in a COUNTRY that mandates IE

[naph]

I'm living in South Korea at the moment, and Windows/IE is pretty much 100% here because a certain ActiveX control is used by most sites for encryption (they use their own SEED encryption or something, here are some links...

"The key reason ActiveX is mandated by financial institutions is that Korea has its own national encryption scheme called SEED that is used in place of SSL. The reason this came to be stemmed from the fact that US export law in the late 1990s didn't permit the export of web browsers with more than 40 bit encryption. This meant that an ActiveX SEED plug-in was used in place of browser SSL. While there are Java and Netscape implementations of SEED, it was almost never implemented. ActiveX is so dominant that KFTC (Korea Financial Telecommunications and Clearings Institute) won't even assign users security certificates unless they're using Internet Explorer with ActiveX."

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=412 [zdnet.com]

http://www.zdnet.co.kr/etc/eyeon/internet/0,390369 62,39154849,00.htm [zdnet.co.kr] ...)

It's not a design issue. It's called DRM

[rainwater]

Maybe the original author didn't actually get the point, but MovieLink is designed for IE because their service integrates Microsoft's DRM into the browser so it is easy to use their service for Windows users. While this may suck, it has nothing to do with what 99% of the comments are referring too (design incompetence). Maybe a better site should of been used for this rant.

Re:eTRADE requires IE to access account

[aputerguy]

Problem was not accessing the account but OPENING the account. I only tried it for stock option accounts so I cannot comment on general accounts.

Re:Forcing people to use IE?

[ScriptedReplay]

From TFWebpage:

<script language="JavaScript">
<!--
function bhawkTest() {
...
try{ bhax = isHere('msxml'); if (bhax == 0) { bhax = isHere('Microsoft.ActiveXPlugin.1');}} catch (e) {bhax=-2;}
...
try{ bhmp = isHere('MediaPlayer.MediaPlayer.1');} catch (e) {bhmp=-2;}
...
// -->
</script>
...
<script language="VBScript">
<!--
Function isHere(chk)
...
// -->

So yeah, I would say MS crap. BTW, TFDetectionRoutine barfed at Firefox w/ UA changed to IE6, but accepted the same for Konqueror (hence the script info).

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Microsoft Visual Studio on a Microsoft Vista workstation, producing Microsoft ASP.NET applications that work with IE, Firefox, Opera, Netscape, and whatever that rotten Apple browser is. So bite me!

Oh yeah.. I use vb-scripting also, and make lots and lots of money doing it!

Re:What could be worse?

[Anonymous Coward]

The correct term is Hear, Hear. http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mhear.html [straightdope.com]

Re:Obvious

[Skreems]

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

Re:eTRADE requires IE to access account

[MobyDisk]

This is odd. I just close an eTrade account that I've had for years and I always use Firefox. This must be something with their open account page. Ironically, I am leaving them for a host of other reasons, many of which are technical problems. I recommend moving your stocks elsewhere before they get hacked.

Re:Obvious

[ThePromenader]

...the beauty with Firefox is that its non-standard functions are but a <i>second layer</i> on top of the usual standards - all the widespread standards still work as they should in all browsers. The same is not the case for IE - even some of the simplest CSS functions behave differently therein.

Re:What about Firefox only sites?

[lahvak]

If by firefox only site you mean a site that won't let you in unless you are using firefox, I agree. If you mean sites that don't work well in IE, that's quite different.

I have a site that looks like shit in IE. It looks fine in any other browser, including Lynx, but it just looks horrible in IE. You can still access everything with IE, but it just looks really weird. I don't care. It's not a commercial site, I have no profit from it, if you want to look at it using IE and have your eyes hurt, that's your problem. The site uses valid HTML and CSS, and I refuse to spend the time work around IE bugs.

ActiveX is an invitation to hump your butt.

[Dr_Barnowl]

I'll second the sibling poster - ActiveX plugins are the most enormous security hole ever.

I mean, you can mark them "Safe for Scripting" just by flipping a bit. There's a tool in the SDK to do it. Doesn't make it so, and IE can't verify that they are safe because it's compiled code.

They don't run in a sandbox. They are raw, native code, running in your browser process. They are allowed to access files. Hell, they can poke around in your BIOS - Dell has one that identifies your system service tag. Most of the exploits that used to involve hanging up your modem silently and dialling a premium rate number to replace your connection were mediated through ActiveX controls.

It sounds quite a cool idea though, it makes for a rich browser experience, it just wasn't done with any thought of the potential security implications.

Re:And he's right

[Anne Thwacks]

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:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, after you turned off the "downlevel" browser feature that treats IE as CSS 2 compliant and sends hacked-up malfunctioning tables to other browsers.

Actually it's had separate Firefox detection + support since ASP.NET 2 (November 2005 I think).

Re:Obvious arrogance.

[chenjeru]

We've never seen that word on Slashdot because you've misspelled it. The correct spelling is 'Sisyphean'.

Re:Lack of IT expertise

[lancejjj]

You make some excellent points. Let me clarify a couple things:

the parent poster got something that worked cross-browser, at the cost of a few days labor by three developers. Can that much developer time be spared on every project? I'd say on a lot of mine it couldn't

In my case, the initial project length wouldn't have been any different if it was done right the first time - the three additional days were to fix code. If it was implemented with a good starting plan, it would have taken virtually zero hours. We would have ended up doing this class of change anyway, due to subsequent release of IE7.

In my case, poor knowledge of IT was the cause of failure. It was that the people in charge simply didn't know what they didn't know ("Firefox? What the heck is that?", and "Macintosh? Are they still in business?").

The replacement IT Chief, an outsider with broad knowledge and expertise, came in and quickly saw something that others were simply oblivious to. Of course many of us insiders knew the deal, but were well-suppressed.

I recall one client who had a massively thick corporate branding standards document which had to be obeyed meticulously in all development for them. Who really cares that the company logo is no less than X pixels from everything else and positioned according to a bunch of other guidelines? No one sane, but they sure did.

Their funeral, but he who pays, says.

You said it.

Same thing in my place - some IT managers (and those paying their salary) simply aren't saavy enough in the IT arena to know what is important, even to the detrement of their business. In my case, IT and business managers simply made a common error - it looked good, so it must have been the best it could be. Instead, their lack of knowledge and poor decision making led to the potential loss of millions of dollars per month.

The CEO now uses the names of the (former) managers responsible for the old implementation, from both the IT and the retail sides, as the example of short-sightedness and management failure. "Don't give me a Rob-n-Randy Show" - Rob being the former retail VP and Randy being the former IT VP.

But let's assume you really can always do it right in ten developer-days of work. Are those extra days worth the gain of the non-IE chunk of the market? In most cases I'd say yes, but depending on the target audience, not necessarily so.

I completely agree, but I'd add that if it's a project that will need to be maintained over time, then clearly you'll want to make sure that it supports the standards so you won't be totally hosed as browsers change over time. So it is more than just supporting users - it's also about having an inexpensively maintainable system - something that caught many businesses with their pants down when IE7 was released.

Intranet apps can use IE for easy logons

[GoatMonkey2112]

IE has a feature where it passes the username of an authenticated user on the network if you're in the same domain. This is a great feature for internal apps that I have not seen anyone duplicate with Firefox. Saves a ton of support calls.

Re:Obvious

[garwain]

Actually, I'm just doing what my boss wants. One of our websites was originally set up with a rolling menu navigation system (borrowed from the old MSDN site), whihc never worked with anything but IE. Tried to convince boss that we should redesign the site to work with all browsers (since I use firefox whenever possible) but the response was "99.9% of our clients probably use IE, and the sysem works as. We are not spending money on fixing something that's not a problem". My response was that the web logs show 99.9% of all hit being from IE because nothing else can get past the front page, and was told that if the other browser users can't access the site, then put up a sign on the front page saying IE required.

Re:Don't go there... and request change!

[muellerr1]

We've had people complain that stuff didn't show up right in browser X and we'd do a cost/benefit analysis on how long it would take to get our site working in X and usually the benefits far outweigh the costs. If somebody actually spends their time to call and says their browser doesn't work, chances are that a dozen more people just gave up and went elsewhere. Your 90% figure is a bad business decision: if you're trying to sell things to 100,000 people and 10,000 of them are turned away for browser issues, that's a huge incentive to work on that last 10%. My company will be happy to provide for the customers you are turning away.

As a consequence, we've made sure our sites work with 99% of the browser types that hit the sites, and we're always looking to include as much of the last 1% whenever possible.

Re:Obvious

[Zaiff Urgulbunger]

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:Web Designing for IE

[microfud]

I have been a web designer for 20 years. I have hated Internet Exploder for almost as long

Wow! Are you posting from the future?!

I ask because we ought to alert the authorities that Sir Timothy John "Tim" Berners-Lee didn't invent the worldwide web -- you did.

You see, history records that Berners-Lee [wikipedia.org] created the first web site at CERN on Aug. 6, 1991. So, by my reckoning, you beat him by more than four years!

You remind me of a former boss I once had at a web site in NJ. She was so prone to misrepresenting the truth (she would have called it marketing) that she sometimes believed her tales.

the real problem

[EdelFactor19]

The real problem isn't so much that they aren't developing for Firefox, it's that they aren't developing to the accepted W3C standards, and validating their html/source/whatever. IE allows you to do things that are otherwise illegal according to the standards. Firefox and many other browsers force you to adhere to those standards... Heck that's the point of standards in the first place.

web developers, publicly traded companies, and etc should be held accountable to have equally accessible web-content that is not browser dependent.

The reality is that the user-agent should not be a factor in anything working. If you have an MP3 you expect any reasonable MP3 player to be able to play it... If you have a website you expect any web browser should be able to 'play' it as well.