Selling Out and Money Grubbing
November 17th, 2005 | by Sean |I’m a sell-out and money grubber.
So, here’s the deal. If you run IE, you can’t see this site (nor this message, for that matter) anymore. Myles has figured out a clever workaround to this, but if you run IE with that workaround, I presume you to be smart enough to use Firefox. If you run IE and come here, you get a nice message prompting you to use Firefox. If you change to Firefox, you earn me a dollar.
Also, if you change to Firefox using the link on the sidebar, you also earn me a dollar. So, umm, earn me some dollars. 
I have also added a Google AdSense bar to the sidebar in a discreet location. I’ve made $0.10 doing this today in about 2 hours, so I’m probably going to leave it there and use the proceeds to buy beer or donate to various charities. In tight situations, I might use it to buy books or food or something. The AdSense bar might not stay though…
So, moral of the story: convert to Firefox and look and click on those ads. Thanks!
Software Developer, Consultant, and Geek.
8 Responses to “Selling Out and Money Grubbing”
By ECH on Nov 17, 2005 | Reply
This is so lame that I have to stop your site from loading so I can use IE. I know that IE sucks but you know sean that about 90 of windows fools use it because they are common people. Look at your parents they cannot use the site because they don’t run firefox. Also I agree with adsense because I thought about it but 1.00 for downloading firefox, I don’t think people will allow you to be a cheap S.O.B. so the moral of the day is stop being a money grubbing cheap SOB and allow both IE & Firefox. (Can’t they get along) (HAHA)
By ECH on Nov 17, 2005 | Reply
There no more problems but I will work on a way to block firefox the same way that IE is blocked. No one should have their way. (MUHAHA)
By pikamagi on Nov 17, 2005 | Reply
Why do I have to allow IE? It makes my life hard as a web developer, and I don’t want to deal with it anymore. This is my way of telling Microsoft to make a standards-compliant browser.
By ECH on Nov 17, 2005 | Reply
First of all I have a news flash, I called u. But in other news a good web developer should allow his/her site to be accessable to anyone no matter what platform they are running it on. Also IE 7 in the Winblows Vista is a standards-compliant browser according to Microcrap. Now I know you hate them but you shouldn’t block them, your site as it is works under both platforms and your WordPress thing actually check IE and netscape to correct for the theme. That is not in your control.
THis is marcus reporting the news.
By pikamagi on Nov 18, 2005 | Reply
Your point is well taken. This theme is, however, customized in a few places – and it will continue to be customized as long as I have it. You’re forgetting the key point here though, it’s not that I can’t support IE, it’s that I don’t want to. It’s enough of a pain in the ass for me at work that I really don’t want to bother on my personal site. More than that, on my personal site, I call the shots. I am telling people using IE that they are using a substandard browser (which they are) and that I don’t want to bother with them. Firefox, is, of course, just a suggestion. Konqueror, Safari, Opera, all good.
By Shane on Nov 20, 2005 | Reply
You say:
“Why do I have to allow IE? It makes my life hard as a web developer, and I don’t want to deal with it anymore. This is my way of telling Microsoft to make a standards-compliant browser.”
I’m not sure I understand this. Making your site, which, as far as I can tell, appears to be a free one from your blog host, meaning you didn’t have to do ANY IE testing, not work in IE seems like more work than, you know, doing nothing and just saying “If it looks like shit, use a better browser”
Then again, I get everything through RSS feeds, so petty attacks on browsers like this don’t affect me anyway.
By pikamagi on Nov 20, 2005 | Reply
Actually, you’re entirely wrong, Shane. Yes, this blog is powered by a template for WordPress (which, is not a “provider” as it is publishing software that I installed at my host provider). The template is customized – not heavily – but it is. It used to be that I rolled my own blog software, but alas, I gave up for the much more robust packages like MovableType (retired) and WordPress.
I have spent a few minutes debugging this site in IE – which usually means I insert some form of non-compliant or bogus code to make IE render properly. That sacrifices two things: 1) standards compliance (which I don’t claim, but I try to accomplish) and 2) my preference for standards-compliant (or near to, lord knows FF isn’t perfect – but it’s a helluva lot closer than IE and they actually try) browser.
Yes, I could support IE on a best-effort basis – that is, let it render however it wants to. However, should a client or prospective employer visit in, God forbid, IE, they could see a defective page. That is not the image I wish to convey to others. It is more effective, in my opinion, to simply detect IE and render a (good-looking) “IE is incompatible, have you tried Firefox?” page.
All of this is not some supreme endorsement of Firefox at the expense of all other browsers. I test for KHTML (Safari) and Gecko (Mozilla). I will also fix for other browsers as appropriate – just not IE.
It is high-time that Microsoft got the message that IE as-is is unacceptable. They must endeavor to make their browser compatible and not use their enormous market influence to propagate bad markup. Quite simply, supporting IE is tantamount to supporting Microsoft’s bullish tactics and irresponsible programming. They have had more than 5 years to fix it and have failed to do so. So the users of the browser must pay.
Maybe if enough developers force users to switch, users will force Microsoft to shape up. Who knows. It’s a pipe dream but it has to start somewhere.
By lyle on Dec 1, 2005 | Reply
Boo. Poor taste. Guess what, a lot of the world doesn’t have a computer, and when they do it’s at a cyber cafe where downloading and installing firefox isn’t an option. Standards are important, agreed… but not at the sacrifice of usability. Currently because of your quest for standards I can’t get to your site from, 90 percent of the computers here. What ought to be unifying the net, and making things more accessible now makes things completely unusable for me. I guess you have to break some eggs to make an omelette though.