[TwinsX2Dad]

Originally Posted by M1th

Woah, slow down mate. You better do a recheck on your facts before you speak up.

Whoops! I blew it. I didn't use the Mozilla numbers from Mozilla/Firefox leaning sites. I was using the numbers gleaned from a few million unique visits per month, on over 50 sites.

So, I figured I'd better go look. According to the Firefox/Mozilla leaning sites, Firefox is running about 40% of the market, a figure heavily disputed by the largest local computer services company here. The MSIE sites show that MSIE is running at about (surprise) 95%. Looking at the neutral sites, like PC Mag, WebSideStory and others, I see MSIE between 91-92% and Firefox/Mozilla at 3-5%.

Yes, if you're running a standards compliant site, then the site will run just fine on MSIE, but at the expense of some features. If you're running an MSIE optimized site, you'll have more toys, but at the expense of Firefox compatibility. Already the big complaint lodged in FF support forums is sites people cannot view properly. How long do you think it will be before people either abandon FF/Mozilla or FF/Mozilla goes with rendering emulating MSIE?

It is already happening and it has happened before. When Opera first appeared, the main claim to stardom was the fact you could place the entire browser on a 1.44MB floppy, with room to spare. Then came Java support, which bloated it out to over 9MB. Then there were other additions.

Granted, you don't need to get all of the plugins, but most do - at least after they've surfed a bit.

I've been at this Internet thing since before many here were gleams in their daddy's eyes - 26 years and counting - I've seen technologies come and go. It always seems the technologies with the money and marketing behind them are those which triumph, regardless of the actual capabilities of the actual technology - witness Betamax vs. VHS, floppy vs. optical, IDE vs. SCSI.

Yes, people are trying Firefox, but most don't stay with it. The same reasons they don't stay are many of the reasons AOL continues to be the market gorilla - ease of use beats technology just about everytime.

We all want toys - look at the number of hacks created for vB. The original software is very complete and well done, in its original incarnation - and it works well with all browsers, just as do most forum packages. Start hacking and who knows what will happen to the code. We all jump in at the first offering of a mod, hack away, then wonder what went wrong. MSIE handles the miscues much better than any of the alternatives.

For my money, I run the full (paid) version of Opera. This site doesn't render properly on it, but vB.com does. Some of my modified vB sites work somewhat, while others are unbearable. My IPB sites work well on it, as do my Infopop sites. No big deal, since I also have a fully updated version of MSIE to rely upon.

Nearly everyone who has asked me about an alternate browser has tried Opera & Firefox, but has returned to MSIE - all because they don't want the hassles of using something else. You see, while Firefox, Mozilla & Opera need standardized code, MSIE does not.

So, I do have my facts straight. I just make certain they are facts before I run around defending my favorite browser.