IE Free Experiment: FAILED
Well, it’s been less than two weeks since I announced that I’d be blocking Internet Explorer from the site, and put up the code from ExplorerDestroyer.com on the site, and I’m closing down this little experiment early. Response from users was mixed, at best, and the actual code from the ExplorerDestroyer folks was a buggy mess that didn’t even work half the time, and blocked all sorts of other browsers other than IE, such as Lynx and Opera. So that’s the end of that, the code will be taken down tonight, and it’s back to business as usual.
However, a few interesting tidbits popped up while doing this whole thing: a general resistance to change, even when, on average, it’s for the better. I understand that some people have no choice but to use IE, simply because their IT manager’s made the boneheaded decision to use IE only, or something like that. This question is not for the people who have no choice about what browser to use. This one goes out to the people who simply don’t *want* to change: they have the option, they know it’s there, but they willingly choose to remain using IE. Why not? Honestly, I’m curious. I make no bones about my opinion that Firefox is, in pretty much every way, superior to IE. Faster, more secure, expandable, with better features and usability. I can’t live without tabs anymore, and I’ve almost forgotten what it’s like to see ads and pop-ups on the web thanks to the Adblock extension and FF’s built-in popup blocker. While I’m using Linux at home, at the office and at several clients I use Firefox, and have had absolutely zero spyware or virus issues on those machines. Contrast that with the boxes where people continue using IE, which are, usually infected with all manner of spyware, browser bars, so-called search helpers, etc.
So, I honestly want to know, why do so many of you folks willingly stick with IE, especially when you actually know about Firefox (I can understand the people who just don’t know better yet)? Satisfy my curiousity. 
May 10th, 2006 at 11:25 am
Most users don’t install operating systems or use nonstandard software. Many don’t even know that alternatives to IE exist, I remember being amazed when I learned about the client-server structure and that one did not need IE to connect to the web. Long story short, I’m now knee deep in ‘alternative’ software, running, as you do, Kubuntu 6.06.
May 10th, 2006 at 12:20 pm
I am still amazed by the amount of people who think *I* (of all people) am a computer whiz. Just as Pablo comments….it’s not just knowing about the software, or even daring to muck about with htings (even something as apparently simple as software installation). It’s the whole underlying concept of how things work, both for software and hardware. To us a lot of these things are so obvious, we don’t even think about the conceptual framework. Remember, some people out there still say things like”I don’t need a new computer, just the boxy thingie where the disks go.”
May 10th, 2006 at 1:56 pm
Simple. I’m lazy.
May 10th, 2006 at 1:59 pm
That and I don’t appreciate change being shoved down my throat, honestly. It’s one thing to write a post about how awesome Firefox is, quite another to state “Hey, if you don’t switch to Firefox I’m not gonna let you access my site.” It just makes me instinctively rebel.
May 10th, 2006 at 5:24 pm
FIREFOX FOREVAR!!1!!!
Honestly… it rocks.
May 11th, 2006 at 8:33 am
I do agree with Jose though. No one likes getting someone else’s preferences shoved down your throat. Honestly, if you can’t win by persuasion, how far are you willing to go? Especially taking into account the natural instinct to rebel when pressured.
May 11th, 2006 at 9:58 am
Good points all over the place, and I do agree with Jose and Monster about the natural instinct to rebel when something is forced upon you. Part of the point of the little IE Free experiment was to see how people would react when fed with a dose of what Firefox users, and users of alternative browsers in general, run across often enough: sites that are ‘IE Only’, where if you’re not running IE, it doesn’t let you in, even though the pages often work perfectly well in Firefox, Opera, or whatever other browser you want to use. There’s thousands of those pages out there, so making a page ‘Firefox only’ is a bit of a protest against that practice.
I do find it interesting, though, that (and I’ve seen this on other sites as well) people bristle at being told that a page won’t accept IE… but when they run across a site that’s IE only, they just accept it as part of the way it is. Mind you, I’m not accusing anyone here of being like that, it’s simply a behavior I’ve seen.
In any case, no worries. This site is now, and will continue to be, open to all comers, regardless of browser. However, I do highly reccomend that you try out Firefox. It’s a small (~5MB) download, a painless 3-click install, and it imports all your bookmarks and settings from IE, so you lose nothing, and you gain pretty much the most advanced browser out there. Once you’ve been using it for a while, you can’t really imagine being stuck in IE-land again.
And if you do give it a try, why not download it using the ‘Get Firefox with Google Toolbar’ button there on the left side of the page, atop the other buttons? If you download and install it from that link, I get a dollar. Isn’t that nice?
May 12th, 2006 at 8:20 am
If I’d known you’d get a buck, I would have done all my downloads thru the linkie insteda of direct thru their site, you dumbass.
May 14th, 2006 at 11:34 am
Well, I did it. Downloaded and installed Firefox. Hope you’re happy.
May 14th, 2006 at 12:07 pm
Yarr!
See, I knew that if I nagged and nagged and nagged often enough, eventually you’d break under the pressure. 
Seriously though, hope you like it, and , as a reward, I’ll post up a short list of my favorite Extensions for Firefox here ont he blog in the next day or so, so you can get even more usability out of it.
May 15th, 2006 at 7:45 am
Looking forward to the extensions. All of the extension I originally downloaded are now obsolete after I upgraded a couple a times. Much annoyance. I also can’t get a decent spell checker for OO (although I haven’t checked in months…admittedly), so find em one of those too.