The War against IE6 in Norway gains A LOT of ground!
I wrote some few words about
the Norwegian campaign against IE6 yesterday, I wanted to write a lot more, but unfortunately I didn't have the time...
Since I wrote that blog virtually
every single large website in Norway has jumped on board. This includes websites like
VG.no,
Dagbladet.no,
Finn.no (the ones who started the Campaign),
Teknisk Ukeblad.no and many, many more websites. Most of the local newspapers in Norway (more then 200) to name a few.
This entire thing started because of that Anders Brenna wrote a blog which roughly translates into
Help us save the internet. But I think the developers at
Finn.no deserves a lot of credit for being the first ones to
pick up the sword here.
We have basically reached
*Tipping-Point* for the battle against IE6! :))))))
For me this is a very emotional moment since I started warning against IE (in general though) when this website live about 7 months ago. See the banner below...
And also when we released
Stacked we made a conscious deciscion to warn about IE usage too...
And I have for a very long time actively participated in discussions both locally in Norway and in the international medias to
warn against IE and to have webmasters install "warning banners" when visited by IE.
So to see almost the *ENTIRE NORWAY* jumping onto the train and starting to warn users about not using IE is for obvious reasons a very emotional moment for me ...
Now a lot of "trolls" are jumping out and they're arguing *against* this rhethoric by saying stuff like;
"I dislike it when some stupid webmaster is trying to dictate my browser choice" - and so on...
I don't believe that's anything but a straw argument, I am 100% sure of that the *real* motivation for creating arguments like that is something totally different. Either because the guy saying that is "too invested in ActiveX" or something else which he thinks there will be less demand of when IE dies, or because he works for Microsoft, is married to someone who works for Microsoft or is in any other ways "invested" in Microsoft somehow. But I will for the sake of the argument pretend I believe that argument to be a valid argument and what the user is actually feeling. So let me get this straight one time for all...
Quote me;
"It's not about 'us' (web developers) wanting to 'dictate' your browser choice, you can choose *ANY* browser you wish which is not based on IE. This includes FireFox, Safari, Opera, Google Chrome and heck I'll even throw in Konqueror and Lynx for you if you insist! This is about *YOU* (a 'web user') making it possible for *ME* (a 'web developer') to create the RICHEST POSSIBLE INTERNET EXPERIENCE FOR YOU!" Period...!
The IE team has consistantly chosen to *not* implement the Open Standards given to us by the
w3c. Some examples are that even in IE8 there is absolutely NO plans to support the Canvas HTML element, the Video HTML element or any of the other truly great innovations from HTML5. While most of the HTML5 standard is already implemented in ALL other major browsers, or will be during the next couple of months...
So HTML and "the web" has SO many innovations which we ("web developers") could take advantage of to make *your experience* (you == "web user") way better but that we *CANNOT* use as long as IE has any kind of relevant market share...
And this is true for *ANY* versions of IE...!
Not only that but when we ("web developers") creates websites and web applications for you we must spend twice the amount of development time just to get the damn thing *running at all* in IE since IE is so consistant in breaking the Open Standards given to us by w3c...
So to condense the entire debate down to what this is about, this is about *YOU* getting *MORE* for *LESS*...!
This is *NOT* about "us wanting to dictate your browsers choice" or "us thinking you're stupid for choosing IE as your main browser" or anything like that...
...this is about letting the world evolve at the highest possible speed giving more to you!
.t