Microsoft doesn’t support Firefox?

No, dropping IE Mac was a good idea. It started as a really good browser, but like IE 6, it just got neglected all to hell. If you’re not going to do anything with it, just keeping it around is silly.

Here’s a link to an MS PM helping with the Firefox installer for Windows Vista:

http://groups.google.com/group/mozilla.dev.apps.firefox/browse_frm/thread/86594176b67aa28e

I guess MSN does not want my money either. I use IE, but have high DPI display. Most MSN sites use fixed font sized, thus displaying very tiny fonts – barely readable. And expo.live.com is the worst – it uses fixed fonts, still managed to screw up the page layout (they obviously were creative) – so I have to scroll couple of pages to see the main page content. I guess they are obviously not interested in my money.

Treating browser support as a feature is a bad idea, just from a practical point of view. It’s like saying you’ll add on security as a Version 2 feature – it’s much harder to do after the fact.

The easiest way to build cross broswer web applications is to develop standards compliant HTML and use IE specific conditional comments to use modified CSS or Javascript which works around IE bugs. It’s what the IE team is reccommending as well.

Standards compliant code is a measure of code quality, and you can’t bolt quality on. It needs to be part of the process from day one.

I wrote about this a while ago:
http://weblogs.asp.net/jgalloway/archive/2005/11/01/429200.aspx

To clarify my comment (84) – IE7′s is in many ways a lot closer to Firefox than IE6. That’s why the IE team is reccommending that you write standards compliant code now, then modify it with conditional comments so your sites won’t break when IE7 comes out.

It’s a mistake to think you’re covered by writing code that works in IE6, even if you don’t care about “those Firefox zealots”. Within a year (fingers crossed) that IE6 specific site won’t look so good.

It’s very shortsighted to write IE6 code right now – even if you manage to “upgrade” to add IE7 and Firefox support later, you’ll always have patched code. Why not do it right from the start?

I disagree with John. Letting IE for Mac stagnate was a huge mistake for Microsoft. It allowed the entrance of Safari in the market. Even with small market share numbers it has a big mind share. It also force pretty much every Mac User to download Firefox (as the only option in the sites that think Windows is all there is). This is the same that is happening in music. The Windows Media Stores do not make a dent, because they are tied to Windows. Influential and “bleeding edge” Mac users can’t use the, It is true, Microsoft does not want my money. I thought I will be forced to buy Virtual PC at some point, but later developments say I won’t have to buy Microsoft products for my mac again!

Microsoft is perfectly capable of fully supporting Windows Media on OS X as well as Linux. But Windows Media is not about such things.

Windows Media doesn’t care about the best digital media experience as a thing unto itself. Windows Media has one major purpose:

To force you to use Windows if you want to see content. If you think that there is any other justification to Windows Media only being fully supported on Microsoft Platforms, you’re fooling yourself. I guarantee you if QuickTime and iTunes and Real all jumped on to Windows Media tomorrow, you would still never, ever, ever see Windows Media 10 or 11 or whatever support on anything but a Microsoft -created OS.

You will *never* see Microsoft support Windows Media DRM fully on anything but a Microsoft created OS. To do so would grant a legitimacy to non-Microsoft OS’s that neither Gates, nor Ballmer shall ever allow.

It is the reason why every time you see Microsoft offering a Windows interoperability solution, it is either a migration tool, or so crippled that you’d have to be masochistic to use it. Services for Macintosh is the perfect example.

John: I know that’s the reason. What I am saying is that that strategy has failed for Microsoft. It’s the reason they are not competitive. They do not compete!

Robert: Live.com is going to do stuff that Google simply isn’t trying to do yet. More to come this summer. I see… Microsoft is doing great stuff with Ajax with “more to come” coming… Unfortunately, I will never get to see it, since I use Safari and, at most, Firefox. Pity.

ychittaranjan wrote: I tried the site in question on Opera and it worked fine! Now what does Opera ‘have’ that Firefox ‘hasn’t?’.

iiRC, older versions of Opera spoofed the user agent string by default to pretend to be IE 6. In fact I can confirm that by using Opera 8.5 on Linux and going Tools -> Preferences -> Advanced -> Network and changing “Browser identification” to “Identify as MSIE 6.0″ that the form on https://adcenter.msn.com/Signup.aspx loads just fine.

There really is no excuse for whoever designed that page to disallow users of alternate browsers when a simple notice at the top of the page, indicating that it *might* not work 100% correctly with alternate browsers, would suffice.

Mike wrote:

> Microsoft, at his very core, is feared as hell of everybody else. Call it hitech-xenophobia if you like.

quoting http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/xenophobia

xenophobia: pathological fear/hatred of the unknown

Actually, any fear of Microsoft is because of what we *do know* about it… consider Paul Thurrott’s comments on http://www.winsupersite.com/reviews/winvista_5308_05.asp

“the bad, old Microsoft. This is the Microsoft that ran roughshod over competitors in order to gain market share at any cost. The Microsoft that forgot about customers in its blind zeal to harm competitors. The Microsoft, that frankly, all the Linux and Apple fanatics always imagined was out there, plotting and planning their termination. The Microsoft that threatens Windows fans with needless legal threats rather than reaching out and creating constructive relationships with the very people who prop up the company the most.”

Tina wrote: “most Firefox users are people who have chosen to use it, not because it was an already installed program on their computer. For Microsoft to win these people back, they have to offer something more than what Firefox users have already turned down. So let’s just wait and see how IE7 turns out ”

The way I see it, MS knows that IE 6 is in rough shape; new security vulnerabilities are routinely found and patched up, but more importantly to MS, its hemmoraging market share badly.

IE 7 isn’t about getting people to switch back from FF (IMHO IE 7 would have a tough time winning in a fight against FF *1.0*, never mind 1.5 or 2.0…), its about stopping (or at least slowing) the mass exodus from IE. That’s a more realistic goal. If you look at http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement14.asp you can see how bad its gotten for MS in Europe: about 20% of all Europeans are using FF, with some notable examples near or above 30% (Germany, Finland, Slovenia, etc.)

And based on my personal experience, each and every one of those people is now a good candidate for migrating to Linux, since the experience is the same regardless of the OS…

A decade ago, MS said it was “delivering on its commitment to provide full-featured Web browser support on all major operating system platforms” (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for_UNIX) but then they won the browser wars and that was the end of that.

Jon wrote: “here’s an example of how a site’s target audience can make the browser statistics change:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp W3schools is a site targetted at webmasters and the link above is their traffic stats. W3school’s traffic is 63% IE, 25% Firefox.”

One excellent example of a site where Firefox has taken over (no doubt one of the places where “the most passionate people in society” go is BoingBoing (see http://www.boingboing.net/stats/awstats.boingboing.net.browserdetail.html)

For May thusfar, its 46.3% FF vs 28.4% for IE

Previously, I wrote: “There really is no excuse for whoever designed that page to disallow users of alternate browsers when a simple notice at the top of the page, indicating that it *might* not work 100% correctly with alternate browsers, would suffice.”

Er… apparently, it *is* just a notice at the top of the page (but with a lot of white space to trick you into thinking you’re getting an error page) if you scroll down, there’s the form (though clicking on the billing tab doesn’t work… I guess its true that they don’t want my money

Sean DALY wrote: “Firefox happens to be the only cross-platform browser”

You forgot about Opera

As per http://www.opera.com/download/index.dml?custom=yes Opera is supported on Windows, Solaris, QNX, OS/2, MacOS, Linux, FreeBSD and BeOS (and on several chipsets).

Though AFAIK, Firefox is the only *open-source* cross-platform browser

Oh wait! There’s Sea Monkey (formerly the Mozilla Suite) too! http://www.mozilla.org/projects/seamonkey/ though it does share a common ancestor with Firefox.

Regarding the “More about system requirements” link that appears non-functional, you can get to that by going through the FAQ (http://advertising.msn.com/microsoft-adcenter/faqs)

—
Which browsers work with Microsoft adCenter?
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later. Microsoft adCenter is currently incompatible with Firefox, Safari and Internet Explorer 7 (beta) browsers. As Microsoft adCenter becomes compatible with additional browsers, we will update this site.
—
What do I need to run Microsoft adCenter?
Microsoft adCenter is a Web-based program that can be used on any computer. You will need to make sure you have the following:

o A working Internet connection.
o Microsoft Windows 98 or later operating system installed.
o Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 or later Web browser installed.

In addition, be sure to check that your system has the following:

o Macromedia Flash Player 6.0 or later installed to properly view adCenter reports. Download and install the latest version from Macromedia.
o Adobe Acrobat Reader installed. Download and install the latest version from Adobe.
o Screen resolution set to “Normal size (96 DPI),” and display resolution set to 1024 x 768 or higher. Consult your operating system’s help for specific instructions.
o Microsoft adCenter ActiveX control installed. Add Microsoft adCenter to your browser’s list of trusted sites. Consult your Web browser’s help for specific instructions.
o Pop-up windows* allowed when visiting adCenter. Consult your Web browser’s help for specific instructions.

* Additional small windows that ‘pop up’ over the web page you are viewing.
—

Wow, ActiveX *and* Pop-ups! Sounds like a wonderful place to visit ^_-

There is a total disconnect between the statement “As Microsoft adCenter becomes compatible with additional browsers” and requiring a “Microsoft adCenter ActiveX control”.

I’m beginning to think that future claims of support for other browsers was less of an afterthought than a statement like ‘we’re taking pre-orders for Duke Nukem Forever too’ ;P

Yeah…Hey MS, how ’bout you ‘splain “requires Active X” and “We’ll support !IE”, because those statements are mutually exclusive.

I personally think that this just reflects on the sort of testing mentality over in Redmond.

They obviously know that it doesn’t work in FF because they’ve took the trouble to create a special case message for it. So why not do the job properly and write compliant html code that doesn’t require you to be viewing the internet through a browser that has been hashed-up to be able to parse bastardised code?

Any company the size of MS that releases a public facing website into the wild without ensuring its compatibility with all the mainstream browsers (like it or not, FF is mainstream) should be ashamed.

It occurs to me that maybe the reason that they don’t bother is because they managed to convince the DOJ that Internet Explorer being an integral part of Windows was necessary – so for people that are accessing Windows Update they will always have IE installed so there is no need for FF compatibility.

Just for the record, I am not anti-Microsoft, and the above is probably the only antitrust case that I actually believe was justified. I would just like to be able to browse the web using whatever means I see fit.

Limulus – I stand corrected. Many thanks for the heads-up.

Sean DALY

For me it actually takes less time to do a web project if I start with Firefox then add the hacks for IE. I’ve only been bit by this one time when I created a project that used JSON and built a large tree structure in script. It worked fine in Firefox even with a large tree of 4,700 plus entries. When I tried it in IE, it worked fine up to around 1,200 entries, then tanked. In Firefox it took less than two seconds with 4,700 plus entries but almost two minutes in IE! I had to rewrite this one piece (which actually worked out better) because of IE.

The company I work at has IE on every desktop. I still use Firefox to start with because I support employees who sometimes work from home and may or may not want to use IE.

The bottom line for me is that starting with Firefox usually reduces my development time. BTW, I am not an XHTML zealot, I still use HTML 4.01 strict most of the time.

What I find amusing is that, with security restrictions on high (which every IE user should have them on) with file downloads and script prompting, I get script errors and half a page. In your own browser!

So I bumped it down to medium to see what the fuss was about. Wanted to see this amazing complicated AJAX usage. Um. All I saw was the page loading large sections without going to a different page…

Is that it? What exactly are you doing there that couldn’t be done with static or semi-static HTML? In fact why isn’t this just HTML? Why are you trying to use a markup language your own browser doesn’t understand? Why do you have to trigger quirks mode in your browser to get it to work? Have the developers not heard of unintrusive scripting? Seperation of structure from style from behaviour?

There’s nothing on those pages that couldn’t be done in valid HTML. Any version of HTML really.

Lame.