As a freelance journalist, I mostly work at home, on a computer set up just the way I like it. And I use Firefox, the browser that's eaten into Internet Explorer's market share.
So it's only when I work in an office that I am exposed to the full horror of Internet Explorer. Businesses, particularly newspaper offices, have yet to join the Firefox revolution. Corporate IT installations are like ocean liners: vast, not updated often enough, slow to respond and bloody difficult to turn around. So not only do most companies still use IE, they tend to have old versions, on ancient operating systems.
Firefox is wonderful. It's up there with chocolate and sex on the grand scale of great things about being alive. Tabbed browsing, extensions that mean you need never see another advert, extensions that tell you what the weather is in Paris, extensions that tell you you have Google mail, even extensions that give you the latest football scores. It has more extensions than Chantelle's hair.
So being dumped in front of a computer that insists on using IE is a nasty shock. For starters, only the beta of the very newest version - IE7 - uses tabbed browsing. Command-click on a link in any other version and it opens a new window. One office I regularly work at deploys ancient iMacs running a five-year-old operating system. Open more than two IE windows and it crashes. Bashing the keyboard or mouse won't work - you have to go nuclear and pull out the power lead.
Older versions of IE and older computers don't like Flash, either. Those nodding iMacs can't run the latest versions of Flash but you still get a dialog asking if you want to install it. Try clicking "Yes". As in: "Yes, please crash hard, and eat all my unsaved work."
And the pop-ups! Firefox has a pop-up blocker. Corporate IE doesn't. I discovered recently that one site I have stumbled across is infested with pop-ups and ads that track across your monitor while you frantically try to click them away. One had me howling with rage as its close button didn't, at least not until it had played itself out.
Who is at fault? First, advert designers and those who sell advertising on websites. Flash-heavy design makes for a poor user experience for those with IE.
Second, IT departments who won't get with the Firefox programme. Please, think of your users. They don't want to call you to restart a computer that has collapsed under the weight of a dozen IE windows any more than you want to be there. There is a way forward. Deploy Firefox. Please. Especially if you're one of the offices I frequent.
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