Browse Happy

[David]

I've recently noticed the Browse Happy (http://browsehappy.com/) logo on a number of sites. It appears to be a campaign to get people to move from IE to other browsers and it appears to be run by The Web Standards Project (http://webstandards.org/act/campaign/happy/).

Although their sentiments are good, I just can't see it making that much difference. The type of sites that display the logos are those that are frequented by those already in the know. They are usually accompanied by a "Get Firefox" logo too. I suppose that if the movement takes off, things might change.

The basic premise seems to be that browsing with IE is unsafe. Do you think that scare tactics are the way to convert people? I'd have thought that they'd be better telling people about the better features of other browsers.

To be honest, I'm not sure even that will work. I am aware of the great features of Moz and yet I still use IE by default - why? Familiarity.

[James]

What a load of rubbish (in my opinion).

Nowhere do the BrowseHappy people give details of what these terrible security issues are - it's all vague like "IE's got security holes" and "Isn't Mozilla great?" - not enough to persuade people to change.

In the real world I imagine that most IE users have no problems with security at all - I accept there may be vulnerabilities with IE but how many people actually fall foul of it? Very few I reckon. And Mozilla won't stop people clicking on spoof e-mail links (phishing).

I agree that the best thing to do is promote the benefits of other browsers and not rely on IE-bashing. I immediately got the "We hate Microsoft / IE no matter what" feeling about BrowseHappy.

Like you David I still use IE as default for two reasons: familiarity (a poor excuse I know, I tear my hair out trying getting people to use new technology at work!) and because when building a site I want to see what 95% of my audience will see by default not the 5% using other browsers.

I recently downloaded the latest version of Firefox and really like it but I still can't bring myself to use it day in day out.

[David]

I agree James and it has certainly changed my view of the Web Standards Project. I thought they were above that sort of thing - surely their position should be to campaign for standards compliance within IE rather than try to scare people off.

If those personal stories (http://browsehappy.com/people/rimone/) are for real, I'll eat my hat. I think it's very suspicious - all but one of those people switched to Firefox, a product still in beta. Why not Moz?

[francis]

I have to admit that it's not really doing to work. I think they changed the site recently as I remember seeing one page that seemed to be based more towards people that would know about security issues than Joe Public.

James, you're right in that it won't stop phishing but, really, just how stupid do you have to be? Developing sites is different form day-to-day browsing. Developing sites is probably the only time that I use IE, unless I see a site that looks horribly broken in Moz (http://www.efanguide.com/~siobhan/) and I have to check for myself (that one is an absolute cracker) to see whether the effect was intentional. More and more people are developing in Moz/FF/Safari to get the standards version and then applying hacks for IE. Either way, if you're using CSS, you're going to have to use hacks to get cross-browser support and probably better to write to the standard and then 'hack down' as opposed to writing for IE and then hacking for the standard.

I couldn't browse the web now without Moz or FF and be happy. I've got too many little add ons that make surfing so much more pleasant (automatic bugmenot registration bypass widget being the latest (http://bugmenot.mozdev.org/)), and I still get that warm feeling when I see a popup being blocked. It took about a week of 'no, not IE, use Moz' for me to break the habit of clicking the IE logo to browse. There's a FF 1.0 release candidate release due on the next week weeks (keep your eye out on newly redesigned Mozilla.org (http://www.mozilla.org) which has some new bits in (including, apparently, a 'promote FF' thingy under the Help menu).

But, apart from a nice logo, I too think that Browse Happy won't change much, which is a shame.

Right: I've seen Spiderman 2 (fantastic) and Shrek 2 (jawdropping graphics, better-than-pixar humans and puss in boots) today; now it's time to finish the day off with a suitably tasty slurp of red wine and this week's Sopranos on E4.

[francis]

New, as of a week or so ago, spreadfirefox.com (http://www.spreadfirefox.com/) - a site to, well, spread the news that there's a really good browser out there for people to use. It looks like the message is working as IE's percentage share is continuing to fall (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=74&e=3&u=/cmp/20040917/tc_cmp/47212347) (slowly)