IE Users, will the German Government warning about security flaws in IE cause you to switch browsers?

I do not use IE except for applications that are maximized for it.

I used to do a ton of tech support for my family. I started charging 50$ per hour if they used IE. If they didn’t use IE it is free. All of them use Firefox now.

I make a lot lot silly websites, I don’t even test for IE anymore. I don’t care if it doesn’t work on that shithole of a browser.

Here are the stats for one site.

IE already made me switch to Firefox already.

@Marina Good for you!
@johnpowell Wow, what sort of site is that, a Firefox add-on?
@LeopardGecko Way to go.

“How bad does a product have to get before people will dump it for a better solution that is FREE?”

Well, Linux isn’t all that popular despite the flaming turd called “Vista”, so I am assuming that many people would dump their computer entirely before trying anything that isn’t from Macroshaft out of some bizarre, uninformed version of brand loyalty.

@jerv Microsoft has never “innovated” anything. They came into being by making a few cosmetic changes to an existing operating system, QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System), also known as 86-DOS, which they licensed. It’s slowly evolved into a farly decent and very user-friendly OS in the form of Windows 7. It’s bloated as all get out, but far easier to master than Linux.

MS Word is a rip-off of Word Perfect. Excel is a rip-off of VisiCalc and Lotus 1–2-3. IE is a rip-off of Netscape. And so on for every software package they sell.

Microsoft is good at two things. Marketing and FUD. They excel at sewing Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt about the terrible things that might happen to anyone who dares use something not made by Micro$oft. I guess you have to admire success.

Internet Explorer itself caused me to switch browsers.

@ETpro I gotta admit that MS is good at what they do. Many people think that MS is there to put out quality software and forget that the real reason Microsoft exists is to make money.
As for user-friendly, I find 7 to be a bit more hostile than XP in many ways and even many Linux distros I’ve used over the years are less finicky, though I think that that is true of any new software. Still, I want to find whoever thought that setting up 7’s taskbar that way was a good idea and sodomized them with an entire bar-stool. Even one of my technologically-inept friends agrees that my XP box is easier to use.

@Blondesjon Smooth move.
@jerv I haven’t chucked XP yet. I know I will have to. But when the day comes, it may well be a switch to Linux.

@ETpro Same here. I’m thinking either SUSE or Mandriva.

IE’s days are numbered.

@mattbrowne Everybody’s days are numbered; thats what calenders are for!!!

@mattbrowne I hope you are right. IE5’s failure to get the W3C box model right has led to years of hacks and Web sites that looked horrible in IE or were built for IE and looked horrible in all other browsers.

I suppose it’s possible that Microsoft’s engineers just can’t read English very well and inadvertently botched the box model, but my guess is it was intentional. They figured enough people used IE as a brawser and FrontPage as a Web design tool that everyone would think, Oh, use Microsoft products because only they work on the Web. Fortunately Web nerds are smarter than that. But I think it was a play for Micro$oft to own the WWW. How many sites have you seen with “This site best viewed in Internet Explorer” displayed prominently on the home page? It almost did work.

I will admit that IE has improved significantly in version 8, but the turkey still lacks support for PNG alpha channels, meaning that all sorts of semi-transparent effects we could easily build into Web page graphics must either be abandoned because so many people still use IE, or handed off to massive hacks that will make them work in that browser.

Web browsers ought to just work the way the specs say they should work. Numerous companies with FAR less resources than Microsoft have been able to build ones that do. Firefox, Apple Safari, Opera, Mozilla, Flock and China’s Maxthon. I suppose Chrome wouldn’t count because while it’s definitely a neat browser, Google is as big as Microsoft.. Developers shouldn’t have to pour a whole series of hacks into code to make one after another version of IE actually display a page that every other browser including the lean and mean Google Chrome shows just fine without any hacks required.

Well, Chrome and Safari are both Webkit browsers, as is Epiphany (popular amongst the Linux GNOME crowd) but it’s a well-established fact that MS is better at making standards (or at least trying) than adhering to them. Kind of a bitch since once they set a standard, even they don’t adhere to it any longer, forcing people to update/upgrade.

I know some people who go the other way; they design their site for Firefox and tell IE users to suck it :D

@jerv I would definitely go the COmplaint Browsers ONly route iof I were building sites for nerds like Slashdot or such. But I build ecommerce sites, so just like building brick and mortar stors, it is vitally important to spec the front door so everybody can get through it.

@ETpro True, but the sites I go to that do that aren’t trying to sell anything and/or are the types of places where only g33ks would go anyways, so they can get away with it.