Thanks to the good people at Explorer Destroyer, Google’s Adsense referrals, and Microsoft’s conditional comments, I’ve made my page even more annoying for the 44-51% of you who are browsing the page with Internet Explorer. Sorry about that.
The site now displays a large yellow banner at the top with a message encouraging people to switch to Firefox, along with a link to download Firefox preloaded with the Google Toolbar. This is good for two reasons:
- Every person who switches moves the web forward with better support for web standards and each switch allows designers to use newer, better, more accessible designs.
- I get a buck from Google from people who download through my link.
It’s hard to believe, but my motivation is mostly based on number 1.
I do feel a little bad about this. A little. I don’t like nagware, and I don’t like sites that force people to use Internet Explorer. But I feel like there’s a real moral imperative to getting people to switch.
Every person who tells me that their computer is infested with spyware uses Internet Explorer. After they stop (and run a spyware remover) they stop getting spyware. I never got spyware since I switched to Firefox (Phoenix/Firebird/Mozilla): I’ve been paranoid and running Search & Destroy every 3 months on each of my PCs, but all it’s ever turned up are tracker cookies.
And spyware is evil – more and more, it’s being used by organized criminals for the purposes of theft, fraud, blackmail, extortion and computer crime. Switching somebody to Firefox is fighting crime. Really.
Plus I get a dollar. So that’s awesome.
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