Internet Explorer Destroyer

Published on April 26th, 2006

Subversive, guerrilla marketing at its finest.

Switch your users to Firefox and make money

You already want people to switch to Firefox. Now’s the time to get serious about it. Google is paying $1 for each new Firefox user you refer.

This is pretty amazing. Now you can advance your ideals, save people from popups and spyware hell, and make some serious money. Millions of people have heard about Firefox and are ready to switch–all they need is a friendly push.

That’s where these scripts come in. They’re specially formulated to give just the right push, maximizing souls-saved and dollars-for-you.

Level 3: Dead serious Rating: $$$$$$
You’ve never considered blocking IE users from viewing your site, even though you hate IE with a passion that burns hotter than Hades. Now you have a practical excuse to do what you’ve always dreamed of. IE users will see a friendly message stating that they need to download and install Firefox to view your site.

I also like this other, related site. Funny stuff!

Found by Gary Marks

39 users responded in " Internet Explorer Destroyer "

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# 1 Gary Marks said, on April 26th, 2006 at 8:18 am

On the list of Destroyer features, my favorite would have to be “Infuriates Microsoft.” If I were a spinmeister (which of course I’m not), I might go in the other direction and say, “Helps prove to the U.S. Justice Department that competition is still alive!” Naturally, Microsoft would find that an appealing feature.

I’m a longtime Firefox user whose primary use for IE is downloading Windows updates.

# 2 SN said, on April 26th, 2006 at 8:58 am

“since firefox is not more secure than IE”

God Paul, where in the frick do you come up with this BS?! Even your ass couldn’t contain a piece of BS that big!

Here’s a good real world example, after years of cleaning viruses and spyware off of my father-in-law’s computer every month I finally got wise and switched him over to Firefox. It’s been about six months and he has not got one virus or spyware infestation on his computer.

You’ll probably say that the lack of marketshare makes it a smaller target. Well guess what, a smaller target IS more secure than a larger one. Duh! Would you rather be a huge target on a shooting range or a small one?!

I don’t care why it’s more secure, all I care about is that it is more secure.

# 3 Milo said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:00 am

Paul doesn’t only get paid by the Republicans it seems.

# 4 SN said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:10 am

“Paul doesn’t only get paid by the Republicans it seems.”

The worst part is that Paul and I agree on something, immigration. It’s driving me crazy. Paul’s support of any issue should be irrefutable proof that the other side is right.

# 5 John Wofford said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:22 am

Although Firefox is a better all around browser (I use it), Explorer tends to render my web pages with a bit more accuracy than Firefox. I test on Explorer, Firefox and Opera; since AOL suborned Netscape I won’t even install it on my machines.

# 6 Gregory said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:27 am

Firefox is more secure than IE yes, Paul was probably refering to that even though it doesn’t have the huge gaping security holes IE does – it does have it’s own problems.

However those are usually minor (and fixed quickly) or major but really hard to exploit. Either way they are fixed VERY quickly, something that can’t be said about IE.

Also, as to the “more powerful” IE based browser Paul linked to – what he means is more features. Something that Firefox takes care of with extensions. They wisely moved bloat like that out of the core code.

…of course Opera is a great browser too

# 7 Gregory said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:32 am

John – thats probably because the sites were designed in and for IE. Not because IE has a better engine. So all IE’s bugs and quirks in rendering were compensated for in it, but not other browsers.

Basically… bad web design.

# 8 SN said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:41 am

“i’m a unix system administrator. i’ve worked professionally in that capacity since 1994. before that, i was a unix user, going back to 1986. i’m an expert Solaris administrator. I’m an experience linux and freebsd administrator. i manage a colo cage filled from asses to teakettles with unix servers and not a single ‘winblows’ server to be found therein.”

Gee, all that experience and you’re still wrong! Would be sad if it wasn’t so gosh-darn funny!

# 9 david said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:46 am

The one little detail that brought my browsing back to IE from Firefox is the F11-Full Screen option. In Firefox the title bar cannot be hidden. In IE the title bar can be hidden, and along with the task bar being hidden I am happy to view a page, and only a page; to be immersed in it like i am part of it without obstructions or protrusions from borders. The framing of my LCD is all I want.

# 10 SN said, on April 26th, 2006 at 10:13 am

“re 11, it’s like arguing with a parrot. an ex parrot.”

Oh come on Paul, I only flame out of love!

P.S. And my parrot is very much alive… know whatahmean, know whatahmean, nudge nudge, know whatahmean, say no more?

# 11 Chris said, on April 26th, 2006 at 10:21 am

“You’ve never considered blocking IE users from viewing your site, even though you hate IE with a passion that burns hotter than Hades.”

Ohhh! Sounds like 1998 all over again. Except, instead of Netscape it’s Firefox.

Maybe I’m being idealistic, by write to the standards and let the browser writers handle the rest. Oh, and complain the them LOUDLY when they don’t.

# 12 Brady J. Frey said, on April 26th, 2006 at 10:57 am

I’ll let the security arguement slide… in regards to post 6, John, it’s because your sites are not supporting standards in many areas.

While non developers and designers will argue it to the end, we’ve come a long way in design, and structured code to simplify and improve design techniques — IE has fallen behind in it’s development significantly — IE 7 has caught up in it’s standards support, but will still be behind Firefox, Opera 9, and Safari in terms of features for design and development.

http://www.htmldog.com has some excellent tutorials on teaching standard coding for html and css that can improve your techniques — steer clear of frontpage and I would take learning dreamweaver to be as troublesome as learning to handcode — this is more the concern for the developers, security is the market pitch for the rest of the windows world.

Wait, I will get into the security arguement — if you’ve ever coded ActiveX, and understand how much disaster you can create, you’ll already see that alternative browsers are safer. If you’re going to argue that, it better be good with examples.

# 13 ben said, on April 26th, 2006 at 11:12 am

Just from a web designer’s perspective, IE is frustrating as it renders standards code a mess on the screen occasionally. They (MS) have patched it well for security purposes, but they have never fixed it’s inherenet inablity to display certain CSS styles properly.

# 14 Robert Nichols said, on April 26th, 2006 at 11:46 am

david,

F11 works for me in Firefox. It’s IE I can’t get to do it. Perhaps there’s a setting in each somewhere?

# 15 ken said, on April 26th, 2006 at 12:50 pm

Funny thing is that my work had me delete firefox because it is not an approved program. So I’m back to IE by day and Firefox by night.

# 16 malren said, on April 26th, 2006 at 1:29 pm

Paul, the fact that Firefox is not hooked directly to the operating system, by definition, means that it *is* more secure. And not even you with your all-knowingness can know what exploits are still to come in IE…6 *or* 7. By keeping it hooked in at the system level, MS has guaranteed that IE is a bigger security risk. No amount of arguing on your part can change that fact.

# 17 SN said, on April 26th, 2006 at 3:55 pm

Malren, don’t bother arguing with Paul on which browser is more secure. He’s a “unix system administrator,” which somehow makes him more qualified to know about these things than the rest of the world.

# 18 Milo said, on April 26th, 2006 at 4:14 pm

Oh for the days when Paul was “done with DU”.

# 19 Me said, on April 26th, 2006 at 4:57 pm

More hot air. They’re all browsers. Who cares? As long as Dvorak Uncensored and porn renders correctly, the rest is immaterial.

# 20 ECA said, on April 26th, 2006 at 5:32 pm

OK, OK OK…

1. IE has been made to use CUSTOMIZED funtions, that ONLY IE will use/show.. It WASNT designed with the ORIGINAL standards of Java, Flash, or anything ELSE…It looks great on sites DESIGNED with IE in mind AND useing IE based programs from MS..
It was ALSO designed to let THINGS IN, so that MS could market…the ABILITY to MARKET/SPAM/POPUP to IE…
2. FIREFOX at LEAST gives you the options you WANT, and nothing MORE.. YOU ADD the bells and whistles you WISH. But it was ALSO designed around the SPECS, of JAVA, Flash, and the STANDARDS that are on the internet, and created BY, the owners OF THOSE formats…

# 21 SN said, on April 26th, 2006 at 5:56 pm

“sn, don’t bother actually engaging in any debate at all,”

Paul, you know quite well that’s impossible to debate with you. No matter how ludicrous your beliefs are or how much evidence to the contrary people bring forward, you’ll always continue with those ludicrous beliefs.

With that being said, it is fun to f#ck with you now and then. I get a smile when I picture you pounding away at the keys in frustration when your little world view is disrupted.

# 22 Milo said, on April 26th, 2006 at 7:27 pm

“it’s much easier to just attack the person making the argument, than to go to all that annoying bother of producing a cogent argument in reply.”

Hey you’re right! Paul is a poopy head!

Because if there’s one thing you do Paul it’s “make the argument”.

# 23 Thomas said, on April 26th, 2006 at 7:35 pm

I have both Firefox and Maxthon. Maxthon blows Firefox 1.x away in most respects. They are equally fast, but there are some sites, for whatever reason that simply don’t render for shit on Firefox….like Netfix. Netflix on Firefox is seriously fugly. RSS feeds on Maxthon are miles ahead of Firefox 1.x. Favorites on Maxthon are substantially better. Sorry, but I utterly detest the way that Firefox/Netscape handle favorites/bookmarks. By not hooking into IE favorites it makes it a chore to use Firefox and IE/Maxthon interchangably and don’t even get me started on using Firefox favorites with a PDA device. There are some thing I like about Firefox. I like that Firefox is not hooked into the OS in that I can browse the web while I do any install. Some installs for whatever reason what all IE instances closed. Some sites load slightly quicker on Firefox (altho many times I run into images that do not render). It does look like Firefox 2.x will fix *some* of its deficienies including Firefox 1.x’s piss poor RSS feeder but I’ll wait a little longer before I compare it against Maxthon.

# 24 Milo said, on April 26th, 2006 at 9:05 pm

“Some sites load slightly quicker on Firefox”

Get Fasterfox and slightly will become quantumly.

# 25 Uncle Dave said, on April 27th, 2006 at 4:52 am

Thomas: What problems are you having with Netflix using Firefox? It renders fine for me.

There are certain sites that render oddly when using other than “standard” fonts like Times Roman or Arial. For example. I was using Verdana for a while until I ran into problems when doing a search using Yahoo. Text flowed over into the search box so that you couldn’t enter anything. Going back to Arial cleared that up. Also, some sites use IE specific stuff (like Wells Fargo Bank) so you can’t use anything else which seems to be the only reason I run into problems.

# 26 JoJo Dancer said, on April 27th, 2006 at 5:15 am

“oh – and here’s a bulletin: it’s fucking browser, not a way of life. sheesh.”

You sound very much like an IE developer. Contributing nothing over the last 3 years while claiming to be the best.

If you care so little about browsers, than why defend the integrity of any? Sorry to you if you have not ventured outdoors and lived recently. But for many, many people of the world, browsers ARE a way of life. It is the gateway to a pubilc, private, personal community. Not much different than a television. It just so happens that television, has no competitive coding architecture to deal with. It is standard for most parts. Thus only continues to strive for better picture & design. We don’t worry whether our television is safe.

Now as browser users, we should expect the same. Standard browsers that all can use and all can comply with. If IE was up to standards, than we wouldn’t be having this debate. We shouldn’t have this debate. The fact that you even have to defend IE is just sad.

People like you that beleive it is only a browser, need to get up off your asses, step outside of your trailer park and do something. It is no wonder why this country is slow to do anything other than drop bombs on a defenseless country and steal their goods.

I don’t even know what good you are to yourself, other than hearing yourself speak.

# 27 Thomas said, on April 27th, 2006 at 8:54 am

RE: #33

A good percentage of the time on Netflix, Firefox does not render all the images. If you select a movie, the flash/popup takes forever to show and almost never renders the images. Hovering over the rating of a movie isn’t as interactive as with IE and making your rating choice doesn’t immediately show what you chose as in IE.

Granted, fugly may have been a bit strong, but I find this type of quirky behavior to be common with Firefox and I’ve used it since it was beta. Blaming the sites makes no difference to me the user.

RE: #34
Although I realize you were not responding to me, you have to differentiate between defending a product and the claim of a superior product. Personally I am saying that IE combined with Maxthon is a superior product to Firefox. There are some things that Firefox could do that would make it better (like fixing their honked favorites storage) and then I’d switch back to Firefox. As a developer, having browsers that fully support the standards would be nice and it is a worthwhile effort to have companies like Microsoft enforce them. However, as a user I could give a shit. I want something that renders all of the sites I care about correctly and if I take reasonable security measures, protects my system. In this last regard, I think that both Firefox and IE do a sufficient job.

# 28 Uncle Dave said, on April 27th, 2006 at 9:07 am

Thomas, something else must be wrong with your system. I’m not having those problems with Netflix. Everything renders perfectly with Firefox.

# 29 Gregory said, on April 27th, 2006 at 9:50 am

Paul – I agree FireFox isn’t perfect, no browser is, but IE is regularly proven to have large exploits – almost every week I get a security update for it.

Firefox does have exploits – but they tend to be minor ones, and because of the way it is designed they usually require the user to do something so mind-numbingly stupid that it really wouldn’t matter too much. Plus… they get fixed pretty darn quickly.

Moving on from the security standpoint though, which I agree has milage for a debate (although that isn’t what has been happening here), IE is an outdated browser in comparison to all the others.

I’m not just talking feature set – I’m talking about the way it handles webpages. It’s lax or plain awful for HTML, XML, CSS, and JavaScript. You may be a sysadmin, but trust me in my professional capacity when I say – IE is a godawful browser from that stand point.

I’m not sure what you mean by RoboForms, it sounds like you mean password autocomplete, which Opera has. Not sure how you failed to find that.

Anyhow – yes the “more secure” part of Firefox depends on what people mean as “more secure” – I would say it is because it has less major flaws and better designed core code (many of the things IE is and was vunerable to it’s impossible for FF to have as issues). It does however have a lot of minor security issues. There isn’t a browser out there that doesn’t, however they ARE minor.

btw – the reason SN, and others, like fucking with you is that you come across (intended or not) as extraordinaryly arrogant sometimes, and then get very agressive about stuff. It’s like baiting a big dog that is chained to a wall…. anyhow. Just saying.

# 30 Ascii King said, on April 27th, 2006 at 11:24 am

I just read this entire list from start to finish and I have to say that except for Paul, very few people actually made any real arguments. I don’t think SN made ANY. Mostly, you guys just attacked Pauls character or assigned him a character and attacked that. Calling someone stupid is not an argument in itself but rather something to be added on to the end of an argument, stupid.

I’m a Firefox fanboy and I like it way better than IE. I like that it is a browser attempting to garner market share by being secure. I hate that MS encourages the destruction of web standards by building browsers that read tags that aren’t part of that standard. I recommend Firefox to all of my clients, but I always have to put in the caveat that if a website doesn’t open properly, like a banking site then they will have to open it with IE. It bugs me to have to say this though, knowing that a banking site is where you would want a secure browser.

It’s easy for MS to make a product that appears better or even temporarily is better, but by supporting it you will lose in the long run. Eventually MS will own all of the internet tags and we will have to pay a fee to use them if we don’t encourage browsers like Firefox.

If IE runs better now, it’s thanks to Firefox.

# 31 SN said, on April 27th, 2006 at 11:30 am

“I don’t think SN made ANY.”

Hey, I resemble that remark. Er… I’m offended by that remark. Or something.

Seriously, who has the time or the desire to make “real arguments” when you’re dealing with Paul?! Did you even bother to read #28?!

“or assigned him a character and attacked that.”

God, you’re on a roll. That was friggin’ hilarious!

# 32 Milo said, on April 27th, 2006 at 1:36 pm

I still say Paul’s a big poopy head!

And Ascii King I bet you a million dollars I’m more mature than you! Plus my arguments are way better than anyone here.

# 33 SN said, on April 27th, 2006 at 2:14 pm

“#34 deserves a round of applause. winner of the Unclear on the Concept While Making an Ass of Yourself with Personal Attacks Wholley unrelated to What’s Being Talked About Award!”

Damn, I thought for sure I was a shoe-in for that award! I’ll be sure to try harder next time!

# 34 Me said, on April 27th, 2006 at 4:17 pm

Yup, #34 really didn’t get it. if a pornographic jpeg can display, your browser just fulfilled 99% of the purpose of a browser. The other 1% is the ability to display Dvorak Uncensored. Any other functions in a browser simply generate unnecessary CPU cycles and therefore contribute to Global Warming.

# 35 Thomas said, on April 27th, 2006 at 4:54 pm

Uncle Dave,

I thought the problem might be Fasterfox but after trying the default settings, Netflix still bogs when I add a film to my queue. The flash/popup shows up, takes three or four deathly slow passes and then never renders the film art.

I’ve had this same problem with sites not fully rendering their images with Firefox in the past on different machines. Sometimes a full refresh (Ctrl F5) will do the trick but I shouldn’t have to be honest.

It’s a pretty close race in terms of functionality between Firefox and Maxthon. If Firefox would improve their RSS feeder (which it looks like in 2.0 they did), give me the choice to use IE favorites and fix the rendering problems I’d probably switch back. (Actually, one other feature that I could live without but have grown accustomed to in Maxthon is the ability to double-click a tab to close it.)

Oh, and btw, I too have had problems in the past with numerous (say a couple dozen) tabs open in Firefox sucking up all my CPU time but I thought they had fixed that problem.

# 36 JoJo Dancer said, on April 27th, 2006 at 8:02 pm

Oh, sorry to let you in on the DL Paul, but my post was not meant for you to respond. I hope you can understand. I didn’t realize you were so eager to see yourself on here again.

But again, you make it clear that you have nothing else on your mind but yourself. Thinking that you were expected to reply… ha! Geez, I wouldn’t be surprised if you created your own award of some kind already.

Just so you know, arrogance has nothing to do with confidence. Try not to get the two mixed up. I mean, I know your shoes are big and all, but lets try to find a size that actually fits you my friend.

# 37 JoJo Dancer said, on April 27th, 2006 at 8:27 pm

To #43, from your post, I can only assume that you did not finish your highschool education. Now I am going out on a limb here, but I …. wait.
Yeah that’s it man.

# 38 Milo said, on April 28th, 2006 at 11:34 am

Paul is a poopy head, poopy head, poopy head.

Paul is a poopy head, yeah!

# 39 Milo said, on April 28th, 2006 at 12:18 pm

Paul is a poopy head!

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