4.18.2006

If was a cute baby I would still punch it

Do you remember the popular kid in elementary school with the rich and hip parents? They would always have colorful birthday parties that you wish you were invited to and on Halloween they gave out the most expensive candy. Eventually that kid would grow into drugs and his parents will file for a divorce because dad was caught trying to seduce the babysitter. Nobody wants to hang out with that kid anymore and his crutch for popularity breaks in half like his household. That kid is Internet Explorer, the browser most of you are using.

I don't blame you because it's the most popular and widely available browser installed on practically all over-the-counter computers. But like the kid, its time is up. Almost the entire web development community hates IE because of how it makes our websites look like a roadside diaper. You couldn't imagine the amount of hair lost just hours before launching a client's website and seeing bugs through IE. There are 3 choices that have to be made when this occurs, which is almost every time.

First, I could ignore IE and its bugs all together, which isn't smart being that 55% - 65% of the internet population uses it. Second, I can buy time by choking myself until I collapse and give my client a guilt trip for blowing up my cell phone, after calling them from the hospital. Lastly, I can strip out all of the good things on the site until it works in IE. Note: if any of you have noticed weird things happening on this site, that's just me going shit crazy trying to move things around so that it looks 'proper' in IE.

The IE kid finally went to jail for statutory rape and selling meth. Now a new kid comes onto the bleachers, well, not necessarily new but definitely unnoticed. Nobody ever paid attention to him but now he has girls wearing really hip, happening, Hot Topic shirts that read, "G33KS AR3 S3XY". This kid is Firefox and he's the biggest dork with the best idea.

Please fucking download Firefox.

Nerd Talk

• If you don't like the cheesy fox as your mascot, then at least get Netscape or Opera.
• Think of a negative word, put "IE" or "Internet Explorer" in front it, Google the whole word, and watch the vast complaints.
• Here's the mind-blowing statistics on the amount of IE users.
• IE's search engine is MSN, cute. Firefox's search engine is Google. Somebody is doing something right.
• Here are some heroes that dedicated a lot of time on showing you how to "trick" IE into rendering your CSS properly.
• All IE references in this article is directed at IE Version 6 and lower.
• Read about IE 7's promises to fix its bugs, comply with standards, etc.