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Want an idea for a website? Take mine!


johnnyk

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I had this idea for a website, but right now I doubt I'll make it myself because I don't know if it would be legal or not and I don't feel like hiring a lawyer. I know, right now you probably think it's a website promoting crime or something but it's not. Anyone, go ahead and steal the idea from me and make the website if you feel like you know more about the law than I do, get legal advice, or just don't care. Just don't blame me if you get sued by Microsoft.

I came up with the idea after I realized that of the time I spent designing, about 25% of that time was spent dumbing everything down for Internet Explorer. And even then IE still didn't get it all that near perfect. I realized that IE is just a pain and is holding the internet back.

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So the site would encourage webmasters to block any visitor from Internet Explorer. The website could post code that would block IE via several different languages (php, perl, js, apache, whatever). Any webmaster who's interested would just have to copy/paste the code to their site and that's it.

The code could print the text "This website does not support Internet Explorer.<br />To view this website, you must download <a href="http://www.getfirefox.com">Firefox</a>." or anything like that. If you want to promote another browser, that's fine, as long as it isn't IE.

To benefit the sites that use the code, you could have a list of participating sites. You could use a cron or whatever to check every so often that the site is still blocking IE. If it isn't, it's off the list.

The only problem I see (besides the legality of encouraging people to block Microsoft's product), is getting webmasters to actually do it. I think for it to work, first a few small-medium sites that are willing to lose some traffic need to do it. After some time, people will get used to seeing the "IE is blocked" message, even if they don't actually download a different browser. Once people are used to having some of their lesser useful sites blocked, they won't be as surprised when a bigger site starts blocking IE. Once people start to download Firefox to avoid the block, even bigger sites won't be as afraid of blocking IE. Don't expect Google or anything remotely close to that to block IE just because you say so. Aim for the smaller sites and just see if it takes off. Don't expect that this is going to completely kill IE either. As long as there's Windows there'll be someone using IE. But if more people used an alternative, less time would have to be spent making sites IE-compatible.

The only thing I have to back up by trust that this might work is that I know someone who just uninstalled Firefox only because a couple of game websites (optonline.net/games for one, but there were others I can't remember) blocked Firefox. They had been using Firefox for about a month or two and liked how it was faster and what not, but (even when I showed them how to use IE View), they told me they'd rather deal with IE's problems because it was easier.

I'm letting you take this idea (if you even want to, which you might not) because it doesn't really matter who makes a site based around it. I don't care about making money off the site, I just want the internet to be a better place to design for, and IE (or IE6- at least. You could allow IE7 if you want to, I heard it's pretty decent) is preventing that from being possible. Even if the site is a complete failure and no one blocks IE, what do you have to lose? A few hours and >$100. The benefit outweighs the risk.

Any thoughts would be appreciated.
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If blocking a browser was illegal in any such manner, half the web would be shut down.  There are plenty of sites out there already that I've seen that either block IE or state things like "if you were using something other than IE, this site would work properly".

No offense, but I don't think you'd get a ton of support.  Unfortunately, probably half of the people on this site are using IE to browse this thread.
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[quote author=ober link=topic=110909.msg449043#msg449043 date=1160351997]
If blocking a browser was illegal in any such manner, half the web would be shut down.
[/quote]
I know that's not illegal, but encouraging others to and especially using the Microsoft name might be. And I dont wanna screw with Microsoft.
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"Best viewed with a standards-compliant browser" probably gets you what you think you want. If you happen to get that result from checking UAs, fine.  If you find a browser that's 100% compliant with all W3C standards straight out of the box, be sure to promote it.

This will help - http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2
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[quote author=ober link=topic=110909.msg449235#msg449235 date=1160400369]
HAHA... I love how Opera is the only one that can render that even close to correct.  :)
[/quote]

What's sad is that so many IE-bashers think that IE is the only browser that fails to meet the standards.
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Just like rules, standards are made to be broken. ;)

I've only heard of one browser that claimed to be even close to W3C compliant, but I can't remember what it was for the life of me...

[quote author=ober link=topic=110909.msg449235#msg449235 date=1160400369]
HAHA... I love how Opera is the only one that can render that even close to correct.  :)
[/quote]

Rub it in, rub it in... :P
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[quote author=ober link=topic=110909.msg449285#msg449285 date=1160405621]
It's Opera.  THE most standards compliant browser available.
[/quote]

Hm... well, I'm thinking of another one, but I don't doubt that Opera is the most compliant browser. The one I'm thinking of is some no-name browser that I'd never heard of prior. And that's likely the reason I can't remember it now. ;)
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[quote author=ober link=topic=110909.msg449285#msg449285 date=1160405621]
It's Opera.  THE most standards compliant browser available.

It's all you people that are stuck on that horrid FF that is gumming up the works.
[/quote]
Hmm.. horrid? Maybe an update on your signature then? ;)

I'm using IE right now lol. I'm stuck on an older computer and I'm even using dial-up. I fell like I'm 12 again. The only reason i'm using IE is because (get this) my ISP doesn't support any other browser. If I use FF, it goes WAY slower.
On a regular computer though, I've used a few browsers myself. Even made one once. IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Opera, whats that other one i'm thinking of?.. has a Y in it i think lol. Anyway, I hated all but firefox. While firefox still isn't "the best", it's as close to what I like as I can get.
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Let's just hope Microsoft doesn't get smart and start using the Gecko engine or something else, and then change their UA... then we'd be really screwed.

Although, if IE were using the Gecko engine, then we wouldn't have to worry, would we? Dang. I thought I had a point.
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[quote author=neylitalo link=topic=110909.msg449646#msg449646 date=1160456864]
Let's just hope Microsoft doesn't get smart and start using the Gecko engine or something else, and then change their UA... then we'd be really screwed.

Although, if IE were using the Gecko engine, then we wouldn't have to worry, would we? Dang. I thought I had a point.
[/quote]
they'll find some way of "customising" (breaking) it, so your point still holds ;)

thing is with Internet Explorer - whilst I agree that it's a bit rubbish, it's not my job as a developer to FORCE people not to use it - just to educate. Putting these measures in place to force people to do things a particular way reminds me of the governments, and look how it backfires on them...

Sure, it takes a little time and maybe a bit of hacking around to get IE to cooperate sometimes, but I'd rather not be the 'no traffic website' due to playing part of Developer AND Browser Police.
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[quote author=Jocka link=topic=110909.msg449630#msg449630 date=1160454708]
The only reason i'm using IE is because (get this) my ISP doesn't support any other browser. If I use FF, it goes WAY slower.
[/quote]

Sure it is not because Firefox hogs up a lot of system resources and thereby slows down your computer and not your internet connection?
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[quote author=Daniel0 link=topic=110909.msg449853#msg449853 date=1160490031]
Sure it is not because Firefox hogs up a lot of system resources and thereby slows down your computer and not your internet connection?
[/quote]
Lol no. If I ignore all the add-ons and themes,etc.. Them firefox runs smoothly. As soon as I get one of those addons (on my old computer) firefox ITSELF seems to die. But no, it's not firefox in this case. The only one I've ever had problems with killing my sources was Opera. Everytime I opened that thing, my entire computer seemed to just move in slow motion.
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