Google to start promoting Firefox

Great! However, I just checked Google's homepage in IE, and saw nothing.

It was splattered on there all day yesterday.

Our main newspaper has a big article today in tech section about how long microsoft will remain a favorite as IE7 is being released.

Google ads has been offering Firefox refferals for a while now, if you have the ad and someone clicks it and downloads and installs FF, you get $2 USD

Quote: Our main newspaper has a big article today in tech section about how long microsoft will remain a favorite as IE7 is being released.

Agreed, there are too many people who're too lazy to move, or they don't realise there is anything else available. They'll accept an "Automatic Update" which will bring IE7, and as that has tabbed browsing - the major hook of Firefox IMO - there will be no compelling reason to change.

Especially since idiots continue to make sites that only work in IE.

Can't see those ads today (yes I did try using IE!), doubt they'll make any difference though. We're actually the only people who could have stopped IE, but I think we might have missed that opportunity already.

Interesting peice of news though!

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Damn talking about IE makes me really grumpy!

Maybe we could start a campaign "best viewed with anything but IE"

With Microsoft jumping on the sykpe bandwagon it's going to be tough to convert folks

As youve known every where I go for seminars or installations I install FF, then sometimes I do a trick naming the icon of FF on the desktop with Internet Explorer... After about 7 months now ive seen a growth of 80% FF users in my area, starting from one small change to the other... lets try and help with the cause...

Some people have already started, best viewed with FF campaign. Their sites block IE users.
I have Three browsers on my machine, and one of them is FF. But my preference is still IE. If I run into just a few more of those blocked sites, I have a script that will block, and reroute FF to B.F.E. And I will use it!. So we can have a big internet feud.

#PS. I will also pass it out, to anyone who wants it.

Quote: Their sites block IE users.

That's probably the dumbest thing I have ever heard!! Why would you block out ~90% of internet users? Crazy.

I really don't know, but I have run into at least a dozen such sites. It would cost me about 25% to block FF, but if this block IE gets any bigger I will.

The way I see it, I dont care if you run "clem Kiddilehopper browser" that's everybodys right. But there are some, that don't seem to think so.

In fact I have always used Googles search engine ----- until today. This war of the internet is beginning to make me a little sick, so I have stopped using Google. I can get along just fine without it.

I just wish we had true, 100%, no BS stats. It's all guess work as FF and O and agent switches (Opera as IE by default) so maybe Opera is reall number one, maybe FF is really number one, no one knows. It's all guess work as there are no true stats.

Anyone that says this browser has x amount and y has x amount has been living in a tree house to long.

The only true stat we have is the IE user agent is the most popular.

Opera no longer identifies as IE by default... pretty sure, will have to check my v 9 install. That user agent switching doesn't work most of the time anyway. (to get around scripts that are trying to block Opera).

I agree that blocking IE completely doesn't make much sense but on a personal site or blog I wouldn't hestiate to use CSS elements or SVG or something that IE doesn't support. That's the way you might be able to promote more widespread adoption.

This is just the stats from one site, but there are three meters there. One for the site proper. FF = 12%, IE = 52%, rest is a combimation o, ns, safari.

One for the message board. FF = 19%, IE = 52%, rest combination of o, ns, safari.

Webring the newest, and smallest. FF =12.5%, IE = 25%, ns, and safari = the other 62.5%.

The biggest difference between FF, an IE when it comes to my site building, lies in their use of codes.

IE is, and always was a HTML based browser, and doesn't 100% support CSS.

However FireFox is in reverse, it does not support all HTML tags well.

An example starting a page of text, IE needs to see a paragraph to space it down from the border of the page. However FF already sees one, and now will see two paragraphs.
This becomes a problem when using HTML tags. The cure I use is   now FF does not see   but IE does, so IE now sees two Paragraphs to match FF. On spacing from images & tables it makes no diffrence, FF and IE see the same.

Sometimes in other places this same bug pops up, and this is my chief complaint, one or other of these browsers needs to support the elements of the other. I don't see the problem with this, and why one or the other does not respond to this. The only reason I see is "assified-ness" on both sides.

My judgment is both are 100% guilty as charged.

Why should viewers, and site builders, whether they want to use html & tables, or css and margins be subjected to this dump=wad. This used to be a world, where decisions were made by the majority. But has now become one where little small groups of the I have more than you have, are controlling things; this = B. S.

Megan wrote: I wouldn't hestiate to use CSS elements or SVG or something that IE doesn't support.

Exactly what I propose. Don't block IE, just make sites so standards compliant that IE is too rubbish to view them! Serve XHTML with a MIME type of application/xhtml+xml (many people now agree that serving XHTML as anything else is dangerous), explore what can be done with SVG and CSS. I'm not saying this should be done on business sites, just personal blogs and such, as Megan said. Maybe it could have a site like spreadfirefox.com but instead of infectious marketing we get people blaming IE for broken sites. Blaming IE in the same way so many who try Firefox/Opera blame them when they come across broken sites. I think the liberation, and freedom to do whatever (instead of hacking for IE) will be infectious enough for others to try it.

It's not anti-Microsoft, it's pro-standards! It's also playing MS at their own game, they've been deliberately making things difficult for people to change software for years. They also tried explicitly blocking Firefox and Opera from MSDN - until they got threatened with legal action that is!

*** EDIT ***
Oh, and according to the stats 60% of people that visit http://www.linuxcounter.org/ use IE, that just can't be right can it? It's a geeky site, for the geekiest of the Linux geeks!