Explorer Destroyer

By | 2006/08/01

I was recently referred to a site that I instantly knew I had to share with everyone else. It’s name: Explorer Destroyer. It’s mission: Kill Bill’s Browser.

I’d encourage everyone to implement this on their sites. Hey Gabe, use this on the Utah Open Source Planet instead of just causing that weird error message. Make a few bucks while you lock out the infidels.
From Explorer Destroyer:

Three settings: Gentle, Semi-serious, and Dead-serious

When you install the script on your site, you can decide how muchforce you want to use to convince your users to switch away from thedark side:

Level 1: Gentle Encouragement Rating: $$
Visitors using IE see a message encouraging them to download Firefox(with a download link) running across the top of the page.
Level 1 Demo >> (the demo will pretend you are using IE)

Level 2: Semi-serious Rating: $$$$
Visitors using IE get a friendly splash page encouraging them todownload Firefox. There's a download link, and a link to continue on toyour site.
Level 2 Demo >> (the demo will pretend you are using IE)
Update: Xavier sent us this modified version of level 2 that will only show the splash page occasionally. Download it here and see a live demo here.

Level 3: Dead serious
Level 3 will not allow people using IE past a splash page. This levelis very useful for sites that are not IE6 compatible. And there's neverbeen a more important moment to switch people to Firefox. Can youhandle it? (At least try it for a day to see how good it feels.)Unfortunately, level 3 is a little too intense for the Adsensepolicies, so for this level you'll have to use a regular, non-Adsenselink to download Firefox.
Level 3 Demo >> (the demo will pretend you are using IE)

Download Explorer Destroyer

3 thoughts on “Explorer Destroyer

  1. Archeious

    This is a good way to kill whatever project you are working on. Lets face it most people are using IE. IE is not that bad. I used FireFox from the very begining. Now I am using IE 7 beta 3. In fact I found your blog because of its nice RSS feature. Sorry it just bugs me when people think linux, OS X, FireFox, etc are flawless and anything Microsoft does is bad.

  2. Jadd

    Exactly, Archeious.
    What if I decided to block all firefox users and make them visit http://www.firefoxmyths.com (99% of what’s on there is true, you should go see it) ?
    Plus, it gives firefox a bad name: “people are only promoting firefox because they’re paid to” and “firefox wouldn’t be so popular if it wasn’t Google’s pet project”.

  3. Shardsofmetal

    I hate to tell you guys this, but this won’t kill whatever project you are working on. One example is Liway hosting (http://forums.liway.com). Also, Explorer Destroyer is useful in many ways. It’s great to warn users that a website looks much better in Firefox or any non-IE browser, due to the fact that IE has minimal CSS support. While you might say that that’s a problem caused by a lazy web developer that won’t fix the problems for IE, I would say that no web developer should have to compensate for Microsoft’s laziness in not implementing support for a web standard, as recommended by the W3C. I also think that the minimal CSS support in IE is what causes a lot of sites to use tables to skin the site, instead of using XHTML for the content, and CSS for the formatting.

    Another use of Explorer Destroyer is to convince users to switch by telling them about specifics where Firefox is better than IE (and there are a ton of them, believe me!). The reason isn’t to force a browser on people so you can get paid money, it’s to recommend Firefox, but also point out that 99.99999999999% of non-IE browsers are far superior to IE. I really don’t see how someone can stand behind and defend a browser that lags in implementing support for standards, will slow the implementation of new technology, and more security bugs and any other popular browser. Furthermore, you’d have to perform quite a strenuous search to find a web developer that uses CSS to skin a site, and prefers IE over Firefox, or that even doesn’t have IE.

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