This page is part of an archive. The current site resides at http://jrfom.com/.

Saturday, 22 May 2004, 14:27:13 EDT

After reading an article on the past, present, and future of a standards based web, and reading through some of the comments associated with it, I decided to add something to this site. If you are using Internet Explorer you should see a small graphic at the bottom of the left-hand menu that says "Get Firefox." I could have put it there a long time ago but I didn't really want to make this site an advertisement. After reading the article I came to the conclusion that the only way to get people to demand more from their web browser is to suggest a better one to them if they are using a sub-par browser. I came to this conclusion because one of the comments said something to the effect of, "the only way to get people to use standards compliant browsers is to get the word out about them." I then started thinking about some of the phone calls I receive at work where I ask the person what web browser they are using and they don't have the first clue what I am talking about. I then have to ask them a series of questions to determine what web browser they are using. For most of the stuff they need to do Internet Explorer is the only one that will work "properly" as that is the browser targeted by the people that wrote the software they have to use; so, if they are using the AOL or MSN browser (or whatever) then I need to get them to use IE if possible. I also need to figure out which version of IE they are using, if they are even using it, from time to time. Enough digressing, the point is is that people will blindly use whatever until they are told to use until something else is recommended to them. If they try out whatever else and find they don't like it as much then they can always just not use it. When I talk to people I recommend they use FireFox, unless I am at work and then I recommend standard Mozilla, just to see if they like it; I just haven't ever done so with my web site.

So, if you are using Internet Explorer you should see the link and you should really check it out. FireFox is an awesome application that has a lot of extra features that IE just does not have. FireFox even has a built-in Google search field. If you are not using IE, but are instead using a more standards compliant browser, you will not see this link. The only browser the link should show up in is IE because I used a little CSS trick I devised, or discovered, that prevents it from showing in standards compliant browsers.