Use.Firefox.Or.Else.

I’m not completely sure of what to make of the Explorer Destroyer movement, apparently a (over?)zealous firefox usergroup’s attempt to get people to switch from IE, making (good?) use as well of Google’s offer of $100.00 for every referral to Firefox.

Basically you slap on some code onto your site’s index page, and a IE visitor will either see a message encouraging them to download Firefox running across the top of the page (Gentle Encouragement option), a splash page before seeing your site, encouraging them to download Firefox and a link to continue on to your site (Semi-serious option), or IE users will see a message stating that they need to download and install Firefox to view your site, no ifs or buts about it (Dead Serious option).

Of course, possible earnings will increase by how extreme the option you choose, with Dead Serious almost guaranteeing 1$ each time, provided of course your visitors are open to the idea.

And that’s the word, really, with which I have issue about: open.

As far as I knew, the whole idea of anti-Microsoft had less to do with the fact that they were spewing out lousy products, in this case Internet Explorer, but more to do with Microsoft not giving it’s users any choice.

Hence, their famous operating systems came “bundled” with a “free” browser that according to them is “integral part of the OS and cannot be removed” (complete horseshit, of course). The fact that it happens to be non-CSS compliant and a terrible security threat was actually secondary. Even if it was the best browser in the world, anti-trust, to my mind at least, remained to be the main issue.

And now comes Explorer Destroyer, with option three saying what seems to be the same thing: View my site using Firefox, or not at all. Hmm.

At the moment, the answer(s) to my perplexion seem to lie in the gray areas. It’s ok if your site doesn’t necessarily offer an important or crucial service (ie personal blogs and whatnot), – and/or – It’s ok if you don’t choose the Dead Serious option, at least you’re still giving folks a choice – or any variations of those.

However, there’s one thing I’m sure of. If I were involved in Firefox as a developer, or even now as a user, I’d prefer people download and enjoy the excellent Firefox browser not because they were being bullied, not because they were being pressured, not because they were being coaxed, but just because they like it.