Boycott Internet Explorer!

This website used to block Internet Explorer. It was appropriate for 2009. Probably not so anymore. This article is obsolete now. (Opera has become a Chrome clone. Firefox has abandoned Gecko, lost its originality and tries to be every bit a Chrome clone.) The IE boycott idea was picked up by many websites but it all started here. Even the advice of changing to a better browser was propounded by this website.

My website does not support IE. I have decided to boycott IE, as IE does not comply with Web standards. If you are using IE, please accept my sincere apologies. You can browse this website using a non-IE browser, several of which are listed below.

Supported Browsers In Windows

Install one of these fine browsers and you will be able to browse this website in its full glory.

Opera	Firefox	Safari

If you are browsing from your workplace or if you use a Windows user account with limited privileges, then you may not be able to install any new programs. If this is the case with you, then download a "portable version" of Opera or some other browser. Portable version of a program does not require the program to be installed. You can simply double-click the downloaded application file to launch the program.

Reason for Boycotting Internet Explorer

As mentioned earlier, Internet Explorer does not follow web standards. It is late to adopt new standards. Many users run an old version (IE6) of the browser. This is because these users have turned off Windows Update, a feature that tends to hog bandwidth and runs a much-hated piracy check. (This check has on several occasions falsely identified genuine installations of Windows as bootleg copies.)

Newer versions of IE (IE7 and IE8) are also non-compliant. Even among these versions, there is considerable difference in how web pages look. And, it seems that future versions of IE will also be non-compliant.

I am not suggesting that Microsoft is not capable of producing a good browser. They deliberately chose not to do so. In the early days of browser wars, competition was fierce and Microsoft tried to ensure that IE was better than its competitor, Netscape. After Microsoft conclusively won that war, it has failed to do a good job in updating the browser or making it compliant.

In an ideal (capitalist) world, bad ideas are given a quick natural death. A weak product such as IE would would have been buried long ago. Unfortunately, it rides on the success of a better product called Windows. IE is bundled with Windows and is set as the default Internet browser in that OS. Windows is the most popular computer operating system and this ensures that most people use IE to browse websites. Many people do not even know that there are far better browsers, all of which are available free of cost.

For example, Opera integrates a Web browser, download manager, e-mail client, newsgroup reader, bittorrent client, chat client, and RSS feed reader. It introduced many features, such as tabbed browsing and mouse gestures, that have been copied by other browsers. Yet Opera has a small market share, thanks to the ubiquitous and anti-competitive presence of IE in Windows.

Internet Explorer Is A Genuine Disadvantage

Because IE is the dominant browser on the Internet, corporates force web designers to support IE, despites the poor performance of the browser. This requirement makes the job of web designers very difficult. Web designers are forced to spend time on fixing IE issues. If IE was not there, then Web designers could go ahead and realise the full potential that other browsers provide. Today, most Web designers have either dumbed down their web pages for IE or have created two versions of their web pages - one for IE and another for standards-compliant browsers. As a result, web designers find their productivity going down and their creativity hampered. I feel this is a criminal waste!

It was not supposed to be this way when the World Wide Web was originally conceived. A web page's HTML code specified how a page was required to be displayed and that was all. All browsers were required to display the page in the same way. IE refuses to go by that requirement. So, why should anyone put up with this behaviour? I certainly don't have to. I am not a corporate. With what freedom I have with my small website, I have decided not to support IE.

This has also made my task of testing the web design a single-browser job (Opera's). I may lose traffic but my time is well spent if I am not trying to make the site work in IE. No need for any “CSS hacks,” “Javascript fixes” and all the other time-wasting hair-splitting workarounds invented by what has now become a small cottage industry made up of IE-idiocy fixers.

As someone not directly connected with these problems, you may wonder why this solution is imposed you. No, it is not like that. You need to realise that using a non-IE browser can only be beneficial for you, as you get a state-of-the-art browsing experience.

Are You A Webmaster?

If you have a blog or website, I strongly urge you to boycott IE. Feel free to copy the text content from this web page to your own "IE Not Supported" page. No attribution is necessary. (Please do not do any remote loading.)

Alternatively, you can provide a simple text link to this page's address:
http://www.vsubhash.com/boycott-internet-explorer.html.

www.vsubhash.com is the first site on the Internet to completely block all versions of IE, not just IE6. You can do it too! It takes a bold decision but it will be a wise decision. Your productivity will improve and you can give your creativity a free run. Do not be hampered by IE anymore.

I get more traffic from non-IE browsers. Do you?