By day, I’m a web developer / web designer. I do a whole lot of HTML‘ing, CSS‘ing, PHP‘ing, JavaScript‘ing, and C#.NET‘ing. Daily, I deal with the ideas of “standards,” and “cross-browser compliance.” What does that mean? Well, as you may or may not be aware, there are a number of different web-browsers that you can use to browse around the Internet. Back in the day, when the web first became graphical (aside: I am proud to say I was using the internet before it was graphical. :^D), the only options you had for browsing the web were Mosaic (by NCSA), Netscape (by Netscape Communications), and Lynx, the UNIX text-based browser that had been around since the world wide web was created by Berners-Lee.

Today, there are a myriad of browsers, and browser technology is integrated into many other products as a complementary tool. (Windows Media Player, iTunes, WinAmp — all three of them music players/managers, but they also have integrated web browsers). The mainstream browsers include: Firefox, Internet Explorer, Safari, Opera, and several others. Interestingly enough, Firefox is derived from the Netscape Mozilla engine, and Internet Explorer is derived from NCSA’s Mosaic browser (Microsoft bought it out from NCSA back in the 90s in order to compete with Netscape). So the age-old browser war from the mid-90s is back again, only the statistics are reversed, with IE in a leading role.

However! Firefox has been increasing in popularity every year: According to w3schools.com, which has five years worth of some great historical data, Firefox usage has been steadily increasing since it was created. Internet Explorer, which at one point held an 84.9% market share (combined totals of IE5 & IE6, back in 2003) has been declining down to it’s current 58% hold. Granted, that’s still a majority, but that’s a net loss of nearly 30% in 4 years! Which also happens to be the approximate amount of people using Firefox, according to the same page (33.1% between Firefox and Mozilla browsers). Aside: hitslink.net has a differing opinion on usage statistics.

But WHY should I use Firefox?

The biggest reason to switch is one of Web Standards compliance: if the web browsers were a bunch of school boys, then Internet Explorer would be riding the proverbial “short bus.” Firefox isn’t the top dog, unfortunately, but of the two most popular browsers (IE & FF) it is far more compliant. IE has stated publicly (in their blog) that standards compliance is very important to them, and I will admit that IE7 is *less* hacky than previous versions, but still has a long way to go. Check out this link to see what I mean. (The smiley face is created entirely using HTML and CSS elements, no imagery. A browser’s level of compliance will affect how correctly is it displayed. As you can see, IE7 fails miserably. Firefox isn’t as perfectly displaying as Opera, but it’s still way better than IE7).

A second reason, and this is purely selfish, is that by YOU using Firefox (or another standards-compliant browser), you are indirectly making life a little bit easier for the web-developers that provider your content. When I design pages, I design them to be cross-browser compliant: that is, I design them so that they render (as close to) identically (as possible) in all browsers. Of course, compliance with standards is the number one priority; But if we were to ignore the IE users, it would look bad for us. There are many “hacks” (tricks and fixes) that we use in order to get things to display correctly in both browsers. Unfortunately for all of us, Microsoft doesn’t seem to think that being standards compliant is important enough to make it a priority (by their actions, not by their words).

Lastly is a reason that’s a bit of a fluffy-cloud variety. The idealology behind Firefox is congruent with that of Google, wordpress, PGP, flickr, and many other online tools. Information should be free. Yes, yes, I’m aware that none of the major browsers costs money to download or use, but I’m speaking from a more idealogical perspective. Firefox users are helping to champion standards compliance because if all browsers are compliant with a set of universal standards, then you have the freedom to use any browser you choose. Microsoft’s idealogy has always been “make something proprietary so that people are forced to stay with using us.” (Kind of like when an employee comes up with a method of doing something that’s so convoluted only he knows how to do it, in order to keep his job indefinitely. It’s not in the best interest of the company, and they aren’t keeping him solely because he’s a quality employee) When you use Internet Explorer (ANY version) you are helping to perpetuate their dogma because it gets recorded in the statistics of EVERY SITE YOU VISIT.

So what can *I* do?

For starters, get a standards-compliant browser. There are a number to choose from. Browse Happy has a great index of the four top standards-compliant browsers. Choose the one that you like the most.

Secondly, if you’re a web developer: STOP CATERING TO IE. If you’re a young, rebellious, radical teenager or twenty-something, you could just design for compliance and say “hell with IE.” If you work for a firm or institution, then use “IE Conditionals” with a separate hacks file. (See below) In the “iehacks.css” file, just overwrite any styles that are displaying incorrectly in IE.

<!-- Stick this inside the <head></head> following your normal CSS link statements -->
<!--[if lte IE 6]>
<style type="text/css">
@import "/path/to/your/iehacks.css";
</style>
<![endif]-->

Third, and this is for EVERYONE, make Windows (if you use Microsoft Windows, any version) open Firefox for all web page requests. There’s some great instructions here, but here’s the digest version for Windows XP:

  1. Open “My Computer” and click on “Tools->Folder Options”
  2. Select the “File Types” tab
  3. Locate the line that says “(NONE)” for “extension”, and “URL:HyperText Transfer Protocol” for “File Types” (should be about 10 or 20 items down)
  4. Select that item and click on the “Advanced” button at the bottom
  5. Click on the “Edit…” button
  6. Select “Browse…” and locate your Firefox.exe file. (mine is in: “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe”). Immediately after it, add the argument “-url” (without quotes). It should look like this:
    “C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\firefox.exe” -url %1
  7. Uncheck the “Use DDE” checkbox
  8. Click OK, then click OK again
  9. Repeat the above steps for the “URL: HyperText Transfer Protocol with Privacy” item
  10. Click “OK” when done with those

Now, whenever a program wants to open a webpage (such as when you click on a link from an email in Outlook or Outlook Express), it’ll open in Firefox (or whatever browser you chose)!

Lastly — tell other people. Most people either don’t know, or don’t have a preference/loyalty. Google includes Firefox in its GooglePack, a free download of a bunch of software packages created by people with similar idealogies (the “information should be free’ one).

Do it! Now!

Popularity: unranked [?]