This is why, whenever I replace someone's IE with firefox, I change the icon to the blue 'e' and install an IE lookalike theme. 90% of the time, they never notice anything's changed.

There is no reason why installing firefox should kill RDP, but something you did in the process of "removing traces of IE" may have.

in this instance, removing traces consisted of just deleting the links wherever i found them. I wasnt gonna fully remove it cause i knew there'd still be times when they needed it.

Yeah, unfortunately my office's site that we manage is completely IE dependant and doesn't work on Firefox. I have dreams of making it work in FF but unfortunately I'm working against several years of other web designers and a large mountain of code which would have to be changed.

One of the good sides of modern design process, when styling is made in CSS files and the template is XHTML, the content doesn't change a bit when the interface is changed to new one or updated.

But to some corporate jerks, that is just a waste of money. I bet many of them fought tooth to nail when the time came to replace 1800's typewriters with a computer.

what does security have to do with the markup? which presumably is whats causing the incompatabilities to begin with.

But back in the good old days, everything, and I mean, literally EVERYTHING, from content to layout to styling, were written on same files (meaning, that someone might have written the layout and styling straight in to the PHP code he had written for the site, thusly, making it almost impossible for the client to modify the outlook of his site), so it might become expensive to work out new kind of security routines.

BUT, it is nonetheless beneficial to separate the content, from the layout and styling, even from a security standpoint.

AND, with todays technology, it can be done, more efficiently, fast and cost effectively. Well, cost effectiveness has improved since the .com bubble bursted, but anyway, today, you might only need one or two guys to build you a system, fast and I might even say that with added features and security with RoR for example, or atleast the added security that comes along with updated versions of PHP, ASP or whatever you are using.

So, I would say that the cases where a complete rehaul of the system 5+ years old isn't beneficial. And I should know, since I'm working on a complete rehaul of a site 5+ years old :D

Well, obviously.

But any larger corporaton/company/chain, and the website is their most important employee, information channel and marketting machine, all rolled in to one.

I didnt *think* they needed to use FF, i *knew* they did, because a) tabs kick the motherfucking ass, and b) FF is much less likely to be affected by spyware than IE, not to mention having an inbuilt popup blocker etc.

I fail to see why anyone with two browser windows open with one site in each would rather do that than have one browser windows open with 2 sites in. Especially when one is a subsite of the other or the information is somehow linked. And even moreso when they have 10 windows open in such a fashion cluttering up their already full taskbar.
b) - exactly my point. firefox's popup blocker helps avoid such things happening because people dont click the thing which is going to magically make their internet 10x as fast. Users are idiots. That is a fact.

I could use IE quite happily without getting spyware, these people clearly cannot. I'm not saying FF will stop them ever getting spyware, but it will help reduce the risk.

If i wanted to switch them to firefox i'd switch them to firefox. Whether i chose to explain the advantages are irrelevant (though i did anyway) as these people dont know what spyware is or why it's a bad thing.

The issue here is not that the users didnt like the new browser, it's that the new browser 'isnt compatible' with the majority of sites they use. And somehow i dont see me ringing up a major insurance company and saying 'hi mate, i'm moving the kids in our office over to firefox and it turns out your site isnt compatible, would you mind updating it for me?'

Heh. I convinced mine to use tabs and literally about 5 minutes later he fucking loved them.

If for anything at all, I would use FF for the AdBlock extension (best thing since sliced bread, and you know, sliced bread kicks some major ass).


(.....and tabs)

I've love it if Word had tabs.

Well, I can't use OpenOffice at work because they'd kill me and the other thing is that I can't even code "Hello World" so writing a mod for something is beyond me.

I really should learn.

I work for the NHS so it'd be a major hissy fit. They, for good reasons, have a big thing on security so any software they haven't tested is a no go. They're very strict on it.

I see Microsoft making more crucial mistakes than Sun.

JAVA, that's all I gotta say...

There seems to be only 2 areas where IE is still king (albeit a tiny king). Windows Updates, and Banking. While I can't say for certain which is the most secure browser for banking (I'll have a stab and say it's not IE anymore) , I know that FF rules the web at rendering things correctly 99.9% of the time. As for windows update... bah, that's a no brainer.

Well, the Automatic update app/bits or whatever it is works fine for updating windows without IE, I think. However, I'll have a guess that half of it implies that IE is installed on the system to begin with so that might just nullify my point all together. But yeah, I agree that it would be nice if windows shipped with the option to not have IE at all and allow them to just have a simple updater to execute when you need to update without blasted IE.

I know that FF rules the web at rendering things correctly 99.9% of the time. As for windows update... bah, that's a no brainer.

Safari and Konqueror (most recent versions) are pretty good too, if not equal to FF1.5.