Confessions of a Web Developer

Apparently there are websites out there that are redirecting Internet Explorer users to the Alternative Browser Alliance. This is, IMHO, both counter-productive and counter to the open spirit of the web.

For all the same reasons that you shouldn't block visitors using Firefox, Safari, Chrome or Opera, or anything else unless there's an actual, genuine technical reason (and unless you're doing serious multimedia that has no fallback option, there is rarely a genuine technical reason), you visitors using Internet Explorer... Because you're not going to change them. You're just going to make them angry. They arrived at your site looking for something. Slapping them in the face and sending them off to another site is not going to get them to change their behavior and come back. It's just going to make them look somewhere else for someone offering the same thing who won't make them jump through hoops. Case Study Last week I received a message through the Alternative Browser Alliance's contact form asking, "What does this have to do with cpanel?" I wanted to reply, "Nothing, why do you ask?"...but the person who asked the question hadn't left an email address, just the name "King Kong." (Tip: If you want an answer to a question, give people a way to contact you!) So I checked the server logs and saw that he(?) had arrived on the Why Alternative Browsers? page and had left no referrer. Great, another dead end. I was ready to write it off as spam, but then I decided to search the logs for cpanel, and found several hits referred by a cpanel tutorial. I visited the page and didn't see any links to my site, but when I looked at the source, I spotted this script:

if(navigator.userAgent.indexOf("MSIE")!= -1)
{
   window.location = "http://www.alternativebrowseralliance.com/why.html";
}

Wow. They just redirected all IE users with no explanation -- not even pointing out that they were being shunted off to another website! Imagine opening the front door of a computer repair shop and walking inside to find a political activist's office instead! Presumably "King Kong" had searched for cpanel, followed a link to this tutorial, and found himself looking at a page about alternative web browsers. No wonder he didn't leave a contact address. He didn't want an answer. He was angry and blowing off steam -- at me, for something that someone else did. And did badly, I might add: Three of the five visits I could actually identify in the logs claimed to be Opera Mini, not Internet Explorer. I don't recall whether Opera Mini can masquerade as another browser (the current Android version doesn't offer the option, but this claimed to be an older Java version), but the desktop version certainly can. Older versions of Opera used to deliberately identify themselves as IE (with a tag adding that, no, actually it's Opera), and would have been caught by this script! The User-Agent isn't a reliable indicator. It was never intended to be. If you must single out Internet Explorer for some reason, use conditional comments. That's what they're designed for. If what you want to do is block IE visitors, though, think about what you're really accomplishing. And please, don't just silently shove the "problem" visitors onto someone else. (Cross-posted at K-Squared Ramblings)

There's a lot of misinformation out there about various browsers. Opera can/can't do this. Firefox can/can't do that. There's only so much you can do to promote one product when you only know rumors or outdated facts about another.

If someone told you that Firefox was better than Opera because it doesn't have ads, you wouldn't take them seriously. You'd know the ads have been gone since last year, and you'd wonder what else they have wrong. Similarly, you won't convince a Firefox user that Opera is better because you can reorder tabs (you can, starting in Firefox 1.5). And you won't convince an IE fan that Opera is better because of tabs and a built-in search box because they'll tell you that IE7 has both.

When you're trying to convince someone that X is better than Y, and they know Y very well, you'd better know Y well enough not to make statements that the other person knows are false. When you do, you'll lose credibility, and the rest of your argument -- the part you do know well -- will suffer for it. (I suspect a lot of software flame wars get started this way!)

So here's my suggestion: If you want to promote Opera, go and download Firefox 1.5 and (if your OS will run it) the IE7 beta. If you're on a Mac, fire up Safari. Mess around with them enough that you're familiar with how they work, what you can do with them, and how they handle your favorite web pages. That way the next time you face an IE fan (to the extent that IE has fans), or a Firefox fan, or a Safari fan, you'll be armed with accurate information.

As for the post title -- I don't think it's necessary for the major browsers to be enemies. I think there's plenty of room for cordial competition rather than a cutthroat struggle. But "Know Your Enemy" is a better attention-getter than "Familiarize yourself with the competition."