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By Brian Proffitt What bothers me about the whole browser war thing is that Internet Explorer is so unneccesary and inefficient as a Web tool, it is clear that the only reason it is so popular as an application is because it is embedded in Windows. I dislike IE with a passion, and it actually little to do with the fact that it runs on Windows or is made by Microsoft. There are some Windows applications I do prefer and use over their open source counterparts, I make no bones about it. But since 95 percent of my job uses a browser as a tool, I am especially keen on this class of application, and I will tell you this as a professional-level user of the Internet: IE is truly awful. It's slow, it renders pure HTML pages oddly, and it doesn't have tabbed browsing. Tabbed browsing has been around, what, three years now? Opera has it, Konqueror has it, Mozilla has it... everyone has it but the most-used browser on the planet. Doesn't that strike anyone as really odd? As really insane? I know, I know... I am about three or four years too late on voicing this opinion, since the browser-war hype/nonsense has faded to dull embers. But I have noted this before, during my tenure at BrowserWatch, so I don't feel too behind the times. And, the issue is still being punted about in the media, even today. What's set me off is the resurgence lately of the "The Browser War is over and IE won, but ______ is still going strong" articles, where you insert the name of a not-as-popular-browser as IE in the blank. To me, even in the best-intentioned of articles and positive of reviews, this reeks of a condescending attitude. "Let's pat the little browser developers on the head and give them a piece of candy" is what they read like sometimes. This is a pretty ridiculous attitude to take, because it's overconfidence on the part of the media, which feels satisfied that they called the outcome of the war quite neatly. It's also a bit of reflected overconfidence from Microsoft, since they clearly don't feel a need to improve on their product, other than send out the frequent security patch. I have installed Mozilla in every system in my office and house and have made it the default browser for all of said systems. This was not such a big deal, nor was it a big disconnect for the rest of my family. They didn't really even notice, though my six year old did ask me what the red dinosaur was all about a week or so after I made the shift on the machine she uses. This is not rocket science--really. Out of all the pages I surf to during the week, there are two sites I regularly visit that absolutely have to have IE to see. Two out of perhaps 150-175 sites I swing through for business or personal use. And they are not IE-only because IE is superior, remember, it's because the creators of these sites have gotten it in their heads to make them just IE compatible. If any application should be pushed into the public eye as an example of just how good an open source program can be, it should be the browser. I know a lot of people tout OpenOffice as the next big thing (and I can agree), but there are some technical and mental hurdles people are going to have to cross when considering that big of a shift from one office suite to another. This is not to say that these hurdles shouldn't be crossed, but I think the community may be taking only the hard road when they could be making some easier connections between the public and open source. Marketing the browser would be a lot simpler to do, since such applications are smaller and self-contained, are just as compatible as anything IE can do (if not more), and (better still) are free. I think there should be a little grass-roots campaign right here and now that gets open-source browsers out there to the unknowing masses. You can invest $.50 for two CDRWs and give colleagues and friends the binaries for your favorite browser. Give 'em Mozilla. Give 'em Konqueror. Give them any browser you think is superior to what they're using now. Encourage them to install it and play with it. See what they think. If they like it, tell them to pass their disk on to someone else they think might like to try it. If they don't like it, find out why. If it's for non-aesthetic reasons, send a message back to the browser's development team so they can at least make a note of it. That way, even if you don't get a 100 percent conversion rate (and you won't), you can at least contribute something positive to your browser of choice. Now is the perfect time for such a push. After all, we're not going to see an IE 7 any time soon, so the technically superior features of non-IE browsers will be even more desired. If more people can see that open source isn't comprised of mystical voodoo applications, then the anti-open source rhetoric from Redmond will be that much weaker. Related Stories:
 
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