Brussels should BACK OFF!!!

The effect is limiting the standard rate of web standard progress to that of the IE team. If most users weren’t on IE driven systems, this wouldn’t be an issue, but they are. By presenting a choice, humans are statistically likely to even out that gap, which will result in a more balance and complete framework for web design in the future.

I’m an administrator at a small business, and the users honestly don’t care which browser they use. They simply want it to work. Their only gripe is when sites are designed specifically for IE, and thus don’t work properly in Mozilla.

All the web based infections/problems I have dealt with on the job have come from from IE users, and the employees themselves can attest to this correlation. If not I would not have been able to get them to accept the necessity of dual usage.

Recently, I finally had an IE coworker log into a site for their job which would not work properly in IE8 without forcing compatibility mode, but which worked just fine in Mozilla. It was fun to see them finally realize that IE is not the definition of a normal web browser.

As the browser usage levels even out, I think we’ll see a lot more of this. IE will have to change to become a standards interoperable system, instead of one that requires a very specific type of design concurrent to progress. Currently, I don’t think Microsoft recognizes an incentive to do that, only a need to change IEs appearance and lock down its security so that they look like a next generation browser to the uninformed user.

Beyond the need for progress, I think the plug-in system of Mozilla defines what a web browser should be. A flexible and adaptable system for using the web.

Many users are amazed when I show them Ad-Block Plus, Colorzilla, and Personas. They don’t realize that they can easily understand and change their web experience because nobody tells them.

Users rely on the information they get when they start using their computer to figure out what they can do, so I believe wholeheartedly that the simple mandate will improve the quality of the web and computer usage for all.

And then there’s the huge number of security issues in Internet Explorer etc., but I’m sure we all know that drill by now, so I won’t start complaining about those. Currently IE is hindering web development, and that should be brought to a halt. I don’t care whether that happens by phasing out IE and switching to other browsers, or by making IE standards-compliant, but it really should be fixed up somehow.