Microsoft proves it hates Firefox, we're all upset

Filed under: Design, Internet, Utilities, Windows, Web services, Microsoft, Browser Tips

Microsoft proves it hates Firefox, we're all upset

by Ryan Carter Jul 27th 2006

Microsoft's new home page preview proves they don't like Firefox, since only IE users can view the page. It seems to be all over the news for no apparent reason. I thought this was common knowledge. Microsoft has pretty much never liked Firefox. Anyway, how about a solution for users and Microsoft to this epic problem of gigantic proportions. The Deli Llama once said "Everything can be fixed with a download." He's right, so either pick up the IEtab plugin for Firefox, or download the new IE7 Beta 3 from Microsoft if you really must view the new preview page right now. It'll do you good. Then you can fall asleep tonight listening to the tape you made yourself, "Microsoft has no power over me, Microsoft has no power over me, I am a strong, confident Firefox user!"

Tags: firefox, microsoft, preview, website

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

rasbill said 11:02AM on 7-27-2006

am i the only one this page is working for in firefox, im confused

Erzengel said 11:08AM on 7-27-2006

I dont get it... i went in, and i can see evrythng perfectly clear. im using Firefox 1.5.0.4
Im not saying they dont hate Firefox, of course they do...but i can see the page as far as i know.

DJ said 11:13AM on 7-27-2006

You may think it works in FF, but check your address bar. does it have preview.microsoft.com in it? It most likely redirected you to microsoft.com.

craig said 11:46AM on 7-27-2006

or you can use the User Agent Switcher Extension and see the page in FF using Internet Explorer 6 setting... looks okay to me but I didn't test everything

Fullman said 12:47PM on 7-27-2006

What kind of post is this? Geez, I might as well read Slashdot or the New York Times. Are you serious? Nice bit of FUD you wrote there...

First off, of course it works just fine in IE. So did Live when it first came out, as did all their betas. Then all of a sudden, once their code was refined enough, they started working on Firefox compatibility. You'll notice Live Mail and Live Local work just fine in both browsers.

It's a friggin preview, probably just an alpha. Give it a rest already. We know you're not going to switch back.

Richard Brunton said 1:33PM on 7-27-2006

Opera loads it without a hitch.

Ryan Carter said 1:35PM on 7-27-2006

Nice.

SCC said 2:31PM on 7-27-2006

I was able to view the preview home page in Firefox by using the UserAgentSwitcher extension set to IE6. No IE needed.

John Alexander said 3:31PM on 7-27-2006

Won't render in FireFox? Isn't complaining about that somewhat hypocritical given initiatives like browsehappy?? Please.

Dave M. said 4:14PM on 7-27-2006

If, for some outrageous reason, Microsoft didn't change the new pages to support other browsers, how is this bad? To me, it just proves that MS doesn't want any more business.

I mean look, if an OS X user wondered over to MS's pages to take a look at the new Vista that will be out sometime this century and they were met with weird pages and were not able to see the site. I would assume that the OS X user would simply move along and MS would potentially lose a sale.

The bottom line is that MS will make the pages work with FF, Opera, etc... They have to. Starting with IE only support only makes sense. Wouldn't you start with the hardest platform first, just to get it out of the way? Then you could relax while working with the easier task of making the site work with the rest of the browsers. :)

Ryan Carter said 4:19PM on 7-27-2006

I am hearing a lot of news all over the web about this being an issue, and this is exactly my point, who cares? So they don't support Firefox, yet...what is the big deal? That's all I'm saying.

Diane said 9:33AM on 7-28-2006

No, Opera 9 doesn't load it, you get the same re-direct that you get using FF.

Quite frankly, I don't really care about this. I will NOT EVER go back to using IE no matter what they do to it or how many new revision numbers they create.. not happening. I value my pc and security too much. I will continue to use FF and Opera for everything and only use IE when I'm forced to -- like at work or if there's some other IE-centric site that I absolutely have to get to .. and that doesn't happen often. It's rare that there isn't content elsewhere that isn't maintained by a webmaster who doesn't care about cross-browser compatability.

Fullman said 9:37AM on 7-28-2006

Here, I'll put it this way. You know the news is all about sensationalism, but the sarcasm in your post was very hard to pick up -- it actually sounded like you were siding with the press.

Either way, it's a preview. It looks great in IE and we can all see that.

I'm willing to assume that they're only focusing on IE and receiving feedback from IE users at this time. Once they feel they're ready, they'll most likely open it up to Firefox users, a browser that proves to require a little more handholding when designing to get things to look right. Then they'll start to handle Firefox compatibility.

But you're point that "It's pretty much proven that Microsoft hates Firefox" and this is why they're just forwarding Firefox users to the regular site is quite a stretch.

Firefox works just as well as IE in Live Mail and Live Local -- customized right-click context menus and all. In fact, Live Local was the first mapping service out of the group to offer scroll wheel in both IE AND Firefox for zooming when Google Maps or Yahoo Maps didn't.

Boy, MS must reeeeeally hate Firefox when they strive to get these large beta applications of theirs to work the same way with Firefox.

I'll find it seriously hard to believe that once this is all done that Firefox users will still see the old Microsoft homepage when the new one is finally posted.

lonewolf2222 said 9:47AM on 7-28-2006

Safari, in debug mode and user agent set to IE 6 displays it fine.
Maybe I'm missing something here, I don't see anything special in the
new homepage.

It's not like the difference btw old and new Yahoo homepage for instance

Steven Leach said 11:24AM on 7-28-2006

Does not work in Opera 9.x either, so it's not just FireFox, it's something that requires Internet Explorer

MASA said 11:37AM on 7-28-2006

They don't hate firefox...they are scared of it.

nospam said 12:30AM on 7-29-2006

ie redirect.js [it's in the metadata for the site]
==============
function BrowserRedirect()
{if(!g_IERedirectUrl||g_IERedirectUrl=="")
{g_IERedirectUrl="http://www.microsoft.com/info/preview/default.mspx"}
if(IE6IE7SupportCheck()){window.location.href=g_IERedirectUrl;}}
function RootBrowserRedirect()
{if(!g_RootRedirectUrl||g_RootRedirectUrl=="")
{g_RootRedirectUrl="http://preview.microsoft.com/en/us/default.aspx";}
window.location.href=g_RootRedirectUrl;}
function IE6IE7SupportCheck()
{var ie6,ie7;var nu='';var objBrwsr=navigator;var nua=objBrwsr.userAgent;var op=(nua.indexOf('Opera')!=-1);var ie=((nua.indexOf('MSIE')!=-1)&&!op);var str_pos=nua.indexOf('MSIE');var nu=nua.substr((str_pos+5),3);ie6=(ie&&(nu.substring(0,1)==6));ie7=(ie&&(nu.substring(0,1)==7));return(!ie6&&!ie7);}

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