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10 Percent of UK Sites Incompatible with Firefox 340

Posted by Zonk from the share-the-web dept.
Bimo_Dude writes "The BBC News is reporting that ten percent of UK websites alienate Firefox users. From the article: 'While most people still use Microsoft's browser, Firefox is slowly making inroads. Its share of the browser market grew to 8% in May, up from 5.59% at the beginning of the year, according to US-based analysts NetApplications. Microsoft IE's share of the market dropped to 87.23% in May, compared to 90.31% in January.'"
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10 Percent of UK Sites Incompatible with Firefox More

10 Percent of UK Sites Incompatible with Firefox

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  • standards compliance (Score:2, Insightful)

    by PurPaBOO ( 604533 )
    MS is nolonger the standard. Woohoo

    • Time to dust off this page:

      How to Detect Internet Explorer [ericgiguere.com]

      But only encourage switching to a different browser, don't harangue them into doing it. Remember that some companies/organizations still require the use of IE, especially to access internal systems. If your surfers are coming from such a place, getting mad at them won't help either of you.

      Eric
      Recently interviewed in The Waterloo Chronicle [tinyurl.com]! (OK, so it isn't The Globe and Mail)

      • Re:standards compliance (Score:4, Insightful)

        by masklinn ( 823351 ) <<ten.nnilksam> <ta> <gro.todhsals>> on Thursday June 23, 2005 @10:25AM (#12889728)
        That thing is fricking stupid, UA sniffing is sheer bullshit 99% of the time (part of which is cause modern browsers can camouflage themselves with 2 clicks, or you can create custom UAs, or block UA alltogether).

        How about using sensible detections for a change?
        For example, MS provided us the wonderful thing called Conditional Comments.
        <!--[if lt IE 7]>
        your code
        <![endif]>
        Your code will only be read by MSIE browsers under version 7 (aka up to and including IE6), presenting them with unique content without tracking tricky or dumb things.

        Same thing in Javascript, don't use User Agent sniffing, use Object sniffing for exemple. Aka if your script uses document.createElement, precede the script with
        if(!document.createElement)
        return;
        Which will only try to feed the script to browsers which can actually handle it (those who have implemented document.createElement)

        Then, if you're a really good and tricky web designer, you can do it Malarkey Style [stuffandnonsense.co.uk], presenting both different presentation and suggestion to switch to a better browser to crappy browsers users... using CSS advanced functions (one design uses CSS1, the other one uses CSS2, CSS2 non compliant browsers will only get v1 black&white, and as soon as a CSS2 compliant MSIE is born it should be allowed to see v2 design). Try it out with MSIE, then with any CSS2 (somewhat) compliant browser (Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, ...)
  • I'm from the UK and my site, www.xearix.com (the XearixNET IRC network) isn't. I remeber my old schools website only worked in IE, was a real hassle working around all the glitches to get my work downloaded - quite often I just thought screw it, if they can't be arsed to design a website which is actully complys with standerds, I can't be arsed to do my homework.
    • Your site isn't compliant with standards, or your site isn't one of the ones that is incompatible with Firefox? /using lynx, can't check in firefox if I wanted to.

  • In other news... (Score:5, Funny)

    by mrighi ( 855168 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @07:58AM (#12888301) Homepage
    ...10 percent of UK web sites are hosted at the domain http://www.msn.co.uk./ [msn.co.uk]

    • Re:In other news... (Score:2, Insightful)

      by drspliff ( 652992 )

      Eh?
      Microsoft have recently re-done their entire MSN site in most countries to take advantage of pure xhtml and css.. with one of the main incentives being that sure people may run other browsers, but they want to use MSN.

      What would happen if Microsoft stopped Hotmail from displaying properly in any other browser, there would be some very big critics giving them an ego bashing...

      What the article was actually refering to was the suprising number of business sites owned by reputable companies that hire c

    • IE only sites (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DeadSea ( 69598 ) * on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:26AM (#12888537) Homepage Journal
      Are sites IE only because IE has features that firefox does not, or because developers are lazy and don't check in multiple browsers.

      In the later case, of developing in IE, and not checking with Firefox, does anybody know what the most common things that break are?

      In the IE features category, I have seen one thing that IE does really well that Firefox does not do: Image transition filters such as the fade in/out effect when you switch photos [tripadvisor.com]. Are there other things the you as a developer want, but are only implemented in IE?

      I know on the other side, that I want rounded corners on divs and alpha transparency in pngs to be properly implemented in IE.

      • If I Remember Correctly, the new flavour of the month on the Internet, XMLHttpRequest, was an Internet Explorer only feature, until it was copied by the other browsers for eventual integration with their own codebases. And, as you brought up, there are differences in rendering and transitions between the browser types, so I dare say that the browser unique features would account for a fair portion.

        The remainder, I would guess, are sites that require an Active X control, have poor DOM checking / browser sn

      • However, those features can be implemented using standard javascript and CSS, people just choose not to: http://nocturne.net.nz/webdev/imgfade.php [nocturne.net.nz]

      • Photo Transitions (Score:3, Informative)

        by Lagged2Death ( 31596 )
        They can be done [everydaythingsscene.com] under Mozilla/Firefox with a bit of Javascript, I beleive.

        And personally, I think style issues like these are better handled by scripts or other non-browser-specific systems. Styles change, and it would be just as well to avoid changing the browser for every little whim of fashion.

  • Standard (Score:3, Funny)

    by myukew ( 823565 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @07:58AM (#12888303) Homepage
    Why don't webdesigners simply use standard compliant ways to make their websites?

    • It's a commercial decision. Making your site work completely with IE gets you around 90% of the market. Making your site work completely with W3C standards gets you around 10% of the market. Making your site work completely with both costs you more money. If the extra money is more than the 10% of the market is worth, you're going to go with the 90%-only option.

      It sucks, but businesses don't run to make Firefox users happy, they run to make a profit. When the cost of losing the smaller market share (and t

      • It doesn't cost extra money, if you have coders that at least half knowledgable on the subject. I think people stay away from it because people *say* it costs more money. Writing something from scratch, it shouldn't take any more time to work across browsers. I'll admit that porting an existing web-layout/javascript to work in multiple browsers can be time consuming, and a pain in the ass. But ground up shouldn't cost you anything extra.
        • So coders that know more about the subject don't cost extra money?

        • It doesn't cost extra money, if you have coders that at least half knowledgable on the subject. [...] Writing something from scratch, it shouldn't take any more time to work across browsers.

          Yes, it really does, and yes, it really will.

          For a start, there are numerous standards bugs in all browsers, IE more than many. You have to include numerous hacks in things like CSS to get consistent rendering across the range of browser software in use.

          Then there are issues with tools. IE lets you use ActiveX

      • Re:It's just business (Score:5, Insightful)

        by rpjs ( 126615 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:23AM (#12888514)
        Except that if you code to W3C standards it will work in IE and Firefox and a whole lot more besides, so how does it cost more money?

        On the site I work on, a major UK mobileco, we code to XHTML 1.0 now and browser compatiblity is usually a non-issue - in fact I find it easier to code using Firefox (with the utterly wonderful Web Developer extension) and then cross-check in IE.

        We used to have far more headaches back when we had to provide backwards-compatibility with NS4.0, but now that the numbers of such users have dropped to single-digit numbers per month, we're XHTML all the way.
        • ...at least if you use CSS layout, and IMO XHTML/CSS is the way to go.

          1. Every CSS box needs to be duplicated, to fix IE's flawed box rendering model.

          div id=foo
          div id=foo-design
          ../div
          /div

          2. IE can't handle objects close to a float

          div id=floatright
          (...)
          /div
          div id=imagemap
          img src="...-full"
          /div

          must become

          div id=floatright
          (...)
          /div
          div id=imagemap+image_as_background
          img src="...-cut"
          /div

          so the cut image doesn't come close to the edge.

          3. If you ever adjust the width of a div tag which has

      • There's also the thing that it might not even be 10% of the market. I'd like to know which % of the people that use firefox use it in windows, so they have internet explorer installed.

        I'd guess that most of the people using firefox in windows, when they find a website that they want to go to and doesn't work, will just load IE and open it (I know I do at least, with the open in IE extension). If course there are quite a few geeks that will refuse to open a site that doesn't support their choice of browser
    • The biggest problem with that is, the goal of webdesigners is to basically make an attractive site (to the highest percentage of viewers as practical). There is no browser which is 100% standards compliant, so going with the official standards isn't that practical since there are no browsers which fully support the standards. The practical solution (like it or not) is build for the defacto standard (the browser with 90% market share).

      • Re:Standard (Score:5, Insightful)

        by ErroneousBee ( 611028 ) <neil:neilhancock DOT co DOT uk> on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:32AM (#12888590) Homepage

        No, you are selling the website to the client, not thier customers. If the client is thinking in terms of pretty pictures instead of useability and robust technology, then you give them pretty pictures.

        There are still plenty of retailers that havent got a clue about the market or the technology. boo.com was the classic example, but theres plenty of retailers that are happy to give every 10th customer a sharp poke in the eye. These retailers will always be at a disadvantage and will dissappear over time.

        The last one I saw was Abel and Cole selling Organic Food. Last year they were on the Google first page for 'Organic Food UK' but now thier competitors are stealing thier market. Searching for 'Able and Cole' leads to the competition, thier website lists products by code rather than product name, they used to be unusable with Mozilla. I expect they will dissappear in a few years.

        Other sites I find hard to use are:
        Ebay/Paypal. It took me a week to get set up to sell something. Google or Amazon will overtake them because they understand 'easy to use'.
        Dabs.com Havent used them for a year, but it was so hard to find technical info that I had to go to other retailers to find out about the product.
        WarehouseExpress. Horrible site, only made useable by the price, range and because they arnt as bad as Jessops.
        Jessops. Already seen a dive in shareprice. Expect them to be dead by next year.

    • Re:Standard (Score:2, Insightful)

      by DMNT ( 754837 )

      Why don't webdesigners simply use standard compliant ways to make their websites?

      Because, it's far more easier to write web pages for one OS, one browser and one version. Especially, if you have bells and whistles to put to the site. Dominance of IE has lead to a situation where WWW means Windows Wide Web: Even when web designers want to write standard html they are forced to check it against IE bugs. Usually this leads to poor structure, like using tables for layout. See why using tables for layout is [hotdesign.com]

  • Other browsers too then, I guess (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Peter Cooper ( 660482 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @07:58AM (#12888304) Homepage Journal
    Perhaps what they're really trying to say is that 10% of the sites are IE-specific, as if a site does not work in FireFox, it is unlikely to work in Safari, Opera, and other browsers. It's not a FireFox specific problem.

  • Heh (Score:2, Funny)

    by Ailure ( 853833 )
    When I see a site that don't work in Firefox, I usually don't bother open up IE for that site.

    Damn, it reminds me when I told about a certain webmaster how his page wasn't working good with other browsers than IE.

    He added a "Designed for IE" claim... -_-
    • To which the correct answer would be: I prefer web pages designed for visitors. If it's a commercial web site, replace "visitors" with "customers".

    • Re:Heh (Score:3, Interesting)

      by mrjb ( 547783 )
      Reminds me of a banking website that didn't work in Firefox due to non-standard Javascript. I sent them a fix, they put it online a few weeks later. From then on I could use their site for online banking.

  • Stats (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Penguinoflight ( 517245 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:00AM (#12888319) Journal
    No matter how accurate these statistics are, there will be plenty of people arguing about them. What makes this study any more accurate than others?

  • Well... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ImaLamer ( 260199 ) <john.lamar@g m a i l . com> on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:00AM (#12888321) Homepage Journal
    Ten percent isn't bad. At one point, for about ten seconds in Internet time, you couldn't do *anything* on the web without IE and some ActiveX control.

    I'm happy that I can switch clueless users to Firefox now because sites like Yahoo! know to play nice. No longer do I get calls late at night asking why Euchre doesn't work.
    • Are you saying that Yahoo now fully supports Firefox and that its music/video service (launchcast?) works without a hitch? I cannot check it out now, as our internet activities are always monitored. I'm posting this from an HP SuSE Linux server with Lynx!

  • More details (Score:4, Funny)

    by k4_pacific ( 736911 ) <k4_pacific@yahoo . c om> on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:00AM (#12888323) Homepage Journal
    It turns out that on these 10%, they render just fine. It's just that the content is an insult to the intelligence of the average Firefox user.

  • Microsoft.co.uk (Score:4, Funny)

    by OctoberSky ( 888619 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:02AM (#12888335)
    What TFA doesn't tell you is that the UK is a tiny little island inhabited by hobbits, leprechauns and the Oasis brothers. A tiny little island where www.microsoft.co.uk makes up 9% of the accessible websites.

    The other 1% is the Beckham/Adams fansite, which we all know is poorly coded.

    • Re:Microsoft.co.uk (Score:5, Funny)

      by I confirm I'm not a ( 720413 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:06AM (#12888373) Journal

      the UK is a tiny little island inhabited by hobbits, leprechauns and the Oasis brothers.

      Strictly, the leprechauns come from Ireland. You're maybe thinking of Robin Cook, former Foreign Secretary?

    • Comment removed based on user account deletion
      • 1. Leprechauns are from the Republic of Ireland which is part of the British Isles not the UK.
        I was aggressively informed that they prefer the term "Northwest European Archipelago" by an Irish friend of mine.
  • How is it possible for so many sites to be like this? I have designed a fair number of websites but I really don't know how I'd go about making it difficult for Firefox users (not that I'd ever want to). Surely it's easier to just follow the standards? After all, there are whole shelves of books and online tutorials telling people how to follow them; there aren't many books with titles like "Creating Non-Standard Websites" or "How to Create Inaccessible Sites". It seems this 10% of sites must have been tryi

    • Re:How do they manage? (Score:5, Funny)

      by I confirm I'm not a ( 720413 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:11AM (#12888418) Journal

      How is it possible for so many sites to be like this? I have designed a fair number of websites but I really don't know how I'd go about making it difficult for Firefox users

      (Aside: web standards seems to be replacing SEO as the new web buzzword). We've got a client who runs his own web development house, focusing on standards. His methodolgy is: (1) we develop an accessible, validating site. (2) since he's the boss, and also an *expert*, he tweaks everything in Frontpage. (3) some sarcastic barstard actually validates the site, and discovers it no longer validates. They email our client. (4) our client contacts us to complain that the site "isn't valid HTML and CSS!" Et voila, instant pile of non-validating, Firefox-hating poo.

      It'd be funny if it wasn't so sad.

    • One word: "Active-X"

  • Books suggest designing for IE only (Score:4, Interesting)

    by acomj ( 20611 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:03AM (#12888341) Homepage
    My GF picked up a book on CSS (for dummies). The author suggested that standards didn't matter so much as the market was pretty much all internet explorer, so why bother checking with any other browser.

    I couldn't beleive I was reading this. Its actually repeated in a different section of the book. But then again the book was for dummies.

    For what its worth firefox plugins like webdeveloper make designing/checking web pages (especially css) so much easier, hopefully it will make traction into web development shops.

  • 10% - don't think so (Score:3, Informative)

    by Hieronymus Howard ( 215725 ) * on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:04AM (#12888346)
    I doubt that it's anywhere near as much as 10% of sites that don't work with Firefox. I use Firefox as my main browser on my work PC and my home Linux, Mac and PC. I very rarely find a site these days that doesn't work properly with Firefox, the Odeon and Jobcentreplus sites mentioned in the article being a couple of the most notable exceptions. I'd put the figure at far less than 1%.
    • I doubt that it's anywhere near as much as 10% of sites that don't work with Firefox.

      Being that I use Safari 99% of the time, and only switch to Firefox for compatibility I would have to agree. But perhaps they mean 10% of sites have some isolated feature or layout element that doesn't work in Firefox.
    • Odeon's site is very strange, I've found it doesn't work with Firefox but does work with Opera 7/8. Normally Opera tends to be the most pedantic about different sites, so I thought it was quite a strange occurance.

      Fortunately Opera is my primary browser, it just means I can't check film times on my Parent's PC, who I have given Firefox and Thunderbird. (The combination is a huge success, I haven't had to format for them since I switched them to the Moz programs 100%)

      For my parents I chose Firefox rather

  • Government sites should leed to show proper behaviour and standard compliance and work hard not to tie users to a specific brand or configuration.

    How does Uk compare to other countries in Europe and around the world on that matter ?

  • IE/Firefox/BBC (Score:3, Interesting)

    by curtisk ( 191737 ) * on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:05AM (#12888356) Homepage Journal
    That's interesting, I wonder what percentage of US sites are IE biased? And really how thorough are these studies?

    TFA mentions that this is due to devs targeting IE, or testing their work under IE. I do just the opposite. I work in mozilla/firefox, THEN test in IE. If any issues arise, its alot easier coming from a "mozilla" than from "ie" build and working out the kinks.

    Although it is annoying that MS tends to make their own tags, leading to situations like this...its a competitve market, so any bells, whistles or extras you can throw in makes your product stand out. Most people don't even know or care about W3C standards, valid CSS etc. Does it look cool and work for them, thats all they care about. Hell, even the latest PHPBB uses IE only tags...

    In somewhat related news, British Comedy stylings alienate 10% of world population.

    • Re:IE/Firefox/BBC (Score:3, Insightful)

      by TheRaven64 ( 641858 )
      The thing I found most interesting was that they described Firefox as an open source web browser, without any explanation of whay open source means. While I would expect this from a tech site, the BBC technology section is very much mainstream press, and I find it interesting that they now believe that open source is a sufficiently well-known term that they don't need to define it for the general public.
  • Its not just firefox and safari that have problems with these sites, more folk are using pdas of even mobile phones to browse for info on the net, and Sites with fancy frontpages especially using flash or IE specific javascript are alienating customers every day.

    Isn't there someway we can shame the developers into always ensuring there is a simple way into their sites.

    This also applies to blind surfers who use browsers that speak the page to them. So many sites are inaccessible to them
  • What would be good is if there was a greasemonkey script for these sites that rewrote the broken javascript into something standards compliant, then firefox users need not worry. ... or would that be a bad thing because the site owners would no longer have as much incentive to fix their sites properly?
  • What we, tech savvy people, should do, is open a website where we'd list all the websites compliants only with IE, and list portions of their source code that make it so. Maybe it's time to educate webdesigners and decision makers of the cons (and pros, if any) of being compatible only with one browser, all possible exploits, etc...

    Basically, just being productives instead of just looking at the market share figures. Like, pro-active, you know.

  • From the actual study located at http://www.scivisum.co.uk/press-releases/200506_Fi refox_Web_Test_Study.htm [scivisum.co.uk]

    "Guilty websites

    Odeon (http://www.odeon.co.uk/ [odeon.co.uk] a major cinema chain has received criticism for months for accessibility issues - even now its' opening 'splash page' seems at first glance to be working fine but click on the 'enter' button and Firefox users are offered a blank page.

    On the Jobcentreplus (http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/ [jobcentreplus.gov.uk] home page, Firefox users find that the 'Job search' button open

  • Vindication! (Score:2, Insightful)

    by saintp ( 595331 )
    And this, ladies and gentlemen, is why Opera self-identifies as IE [slashdot.org]: Fully 3% of the sites they tested turned away non-IE users without even trying.

    • Re:Vindication! (Score:2, Interesting)

      by GigsVT ( 208848 )
      All the more reason for browsers to identify themselves correctly. If no one is aware of the problem, no one will complain to get it fixed.
      • Slow down there, Mr. User Friendly! You think that Opera would *win* if it broke more websites for its users? Your key element of design is, "It Doesn't Work, so complain"? Here's some advice: don't apply for a job at Apple any time soon.

        In case you didn't notice, it's not a problem for Opera users. (Or much of a problem for Firefox or Safari users who know how to change how their browsers self-identify.)

  • The BBC article and the original SciVisum article [scivisum.co.uk] (and of course the slashdot article) are all aimed at Firefox users. However, this survey is just pointing out that these web sites are IE-centric and don't work with most other browsers, not firefox specifically.
    I guess the reason they pick on Firefox is because they're starting to become a very popular competitor to Internet Explorer for Linux and Windows users, and of course this means that we've got to make it look bad in comparison.
  • So? One of my sites doesn't work so well on IE, a moving progress bar doesn't update if you use IE but does work if you use Firefox.

    (Its just an animated GIF I set to visible before a slow page switch, for some reason it didn't work on IE).

    Because I used FF for the better Javascript console to develop it with, the site works slightly better with FF and I only noticed it when I came to test it on other browsers at the end.

    The way I figure it, Firefox is increasingly being used by the tech savvy people and

  • Odeon is terrible (Score:5, Informative)

    by Mr_Silver ( 213637 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:16AM (#12888463)
    Although it'll probably annoy a lot of people here, I can generally put up with sites that render stuff badly or try to get you to "upgrade" to IE when you're using Firefox because at least I can still get at the content.

    However, the Odeon site is completely inaccessible. It's not a case of stuff not looking or formatting correctly, but once you followed the "entire site" link it was more a case of nothing actually being displayed to the user - no listings, no cinemas, nothing.

    Even worse, if you emailed them to complain, they told you the site was undergoing a re-design. To my mind that has had to be at least a couple of years ago all because they couldn't be arsed to change some IE only javascript.

    Anyway, if you've got GreaseMonkey this script [dracos.co.uk] will make the site accessable again.

    ps. Whilst we're at it, if you have a phone or PDA then you might be interested in Movie Guide [fourteenminutes.com] which provides you with you with detailed listings of all films showing in UK Cinema's.

  • As someone who uses Firefox and also is a novice at making websites, I find it is difficult to create a dynamic site without extending it beyond someone's standard.

    However, many times when I am faced with a site with which I must do business (i.e. insurance, commerce, etc...) and they are not accessible via Firefox, I call and complain. Otherwise they will not know. If I can, I will let them know I have chosen a competitor.

  • ActiveX (Score:3, Insightful)

    by Szaman2 ( 716894 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:20AM (#12888492) Homepage

    Some companies simply do not care about this. I'll give you an example:

    My company has a web based time tracking system where you enter your hours. It is the most horrible piece of garbage I have seen in my life! It requires ActiveX to display stupid menus which could have been done in javascript, and the layout is nested frames. If you view that thing in antything but IE you get empty frames all over the place - half of the content is somewhere off screen and you can't navigate the site at all

    When I brought it to their attention they had three questions:

    1. What is that firething you talk about?
    2. Who uses it except you and the other computer nerds?
    3. Why should we care if it works fine for all of us except you Mr. "I'm to good to use IE"?

    Needles to say I work with technically retaded people - but they make the decissions, not me...

  • I'm from the UK and I have to say theres next to nothing I care about here website wise. Other then the BBC and a Tv guide I couldn't carless if it's hosted in the UK or else where, if it doesn'twork with my browser I'll google what I want and find it that way.
  • All big sites now support Firefox (which means they're somewhat standards compliant). The 10% of all websites will consist of a lot of obscure, badly maintained and small sites that nearly noone cares for (of course exeptions proves the rule).

    Bye egghat
  • Our intraweb apps (mostly SAP) are IE only. And these should be made by people who actually know something about coding. Seesh..

  • Easy standards for those who are "not so stupid" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by standards ( 461431 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @08:35AM (#12888608)
    Firefox is slowly making inroads. Its share of the browser market grew to 8% in May, up from 5.59% at the beginning of the year, according to US-based analysts NetApplications.

    That may be true over all, but in my world (a large site primarily attracting the 18 - 29 year old demographic within the US) we see something different: FireFox (16%) and Safari (5%).

    We have a small development shop (5 developers), but we find it extremely easy to build and deploy a sophisticated web user interface that is compatible with IE, Mozilla + varients, Safari, Opera, Konqueor, and more.

    The "trick", if you want to call it that, is to reuse good UI code. Such a strategy saves us time and money, and keeps us lean and keeps us (at least usability-wise) well ahead of the competition. Oh, and we also support accessibility standards.

    I have a feeling that we do it well because most all of our developers are professionals - they didn't just "stumble into the webmaster job by creating a webpage".

    Anyhow, just as well - our competitors' sites look and work like crap.

    I remember when a competitor's site crapped out was broken for weeks when a new version of IE was released... they had many versions of their UI code splattered throughout their site - I feel bad for the people that have to deal with all that crap.
  • What I want is a button at the top of Firefox that automatically sends an email to webmaster@whateversiteI'mlookingatnow.com that complains about viewability and notifies them that they just lost my business/eyeballs.

  • Sounds like a winner to me!
    • I'm sorry, but it's not. What about those few sites you actually need? MSIE is compatible with 100%, and that is what people think they need.

      I use firefox myself. Msft anti-competitive practises piss me off. But I must admit, they do work.

  • This incompatibility would not be a surprise if Microsoft's default settings for Visual Studio .NET are the same as last time I used it. It has been a while since I worked on a .NET project, so I don't if Microsoft has "fixed" this, but I'm guessing not.

    It's an effective approach by Microsoft.... We discovered almost immediately incompatibilities with .NET code/projects and Mozilla, but even after admonishing team members to ensure their settings were appropriate to create Mozilla compatible code, we wou

  • I write the companies website & intranet for firefox, then force my users to only use IE.

    Next, I'll force them into IMAP and make them use OE.
  • it is the 10% that I don't care about. I can live with only being able to use 90% of the InterWeb.

  • So someone did a survey of 100 websites and ten didn't work with Firefox. That doesn't mean that 10% of all UK websites don't work in Firefox does it? If I look out the window and see 3 blue cars and 2 red cars does that mean that 60% of cars are blue?
  • ten percent of UK websites alienate Firefox users.

    Damnit, first a huge tax on tea, and now this.

  • Incompatible? Go to a competitor. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Animats ( 122034 ) on Thursday June 23, 2005 @10:36AM (#12889901) Homepage
    I encounter incompatible sites now and then. But so far, I haven't found an incompatible site that didn't have a compatible competitor. So what if "Weather.com" goes into an infinite redirect loop? There's Yahoo Weather.

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