Elliott C. Back: In Aere Aedificare

Too Cool For Firefox

Posted in Spread IE, Graphics by Elliott Back on October 18th, 2005.

Too Cool is definitely anti IE: they provide you with photoshop templates and banners that read, “Too cool for IE,” and want you to link it to a page of theirs offering a list of alternative browsers. Well, a few minutes in photoshop will let you produce “Too cool for Firefox” tags for your page, too:

Too Cool For Firefox

Once you’ve downloaded this image, just add the following html after your body tag:

<a id="tooCool" href="http://spreadIE.com" title="Spread Internet Explorer">Too Cool for Firefox</a>

You’ll also need the CSS:

<style type="text/css" media="screen">
a#tooCool {
position: fixed;
right: 0;
bottom: 0;
display: block;
height: 80px;
width: 80px;
background: url(<?php bloginfo(’url’); ?>/wp-content/toocoolforfirefox.png) bottom right no-repeat;
text-indent: -999em;
text-decoration: none;
}
</style>

Every little bit of IE-support helps!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 18th, 2005 at 1:04 pm and is tagged with photoshop templates, background url, body tag, internet explorer, bottom right, style type, text decoration, png, lt, few minutes, little bit, firefox. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback.

35 Responses to 'Too Cool For Firefox'

  1. HART said:

    on October 18th, 2005 at 1:28 pm

    spreadIE.com … Good stuff! (from another I.E. user)

  2. Stef Levolger said:

    on October 18th, 2005 at 1:45 pm

    For alternative browsers this looks cool and is a good way to attract new people to it. For Internet Explorer, a browser designed by one of the worlds biggest software producents this looks rather pathetic :P . As if microsoft can’t do their own advertisement whilst they’re a multibillion company.

    An alternative browser user ;)

  3. xgfriend said:

    on October 18th, 2005 at 2:27 pm

    My Opera would like to say it has absolutely nothing to do with it — but the banner just won’t do it any justice…

  4. Bas Westerbaan said:

    on October 18th, 2005 at 4:07 pm

    There are two reasons why you would like IE

    - You want to be/are/were employed by Microsoft
    - You are delusional
    (A biased firefox user)

  5. Elliott Back said:

    on October 18th, 2005 at 8:07 pm

    No and no! I am just a fan of IE ;)

  6. Random Guy said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 12:57 am

    Ofcourse you’re a fan of IE , you GOTTA be a fan of IE. I mean it’s the only browser that doesn’t offer tabs , it’s malware’s best friend, it doesn’t render pages properly like other browsers, it loves to crash, it has tons of security threats and much much more “interesting” stuff. It’s so unique , you gotta love it.

  7. Dan said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 3:39 am

    Not to mention all of those sweet IE extensions and free updates[/sarcasm]

  8. marty said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 4:36 am

    Elliot Back wrote:
    [quote]No and no! I am just a fan of IE[/quote]

    Also somebody who’s brainwashed by MS and can’t think for himself. Was he who accused spreadinternetexplorer.com of copying his and spreadfirefox.com ideas, and yet this is another example of the author simply ripping off others ideas.

    Reminds me of how the “new” IE7 will have several “Firefox” type features. By the time it’s released it won’t be “new” but “old” and Firefox will once again be steps ahead - READ - open source colaboration and open standards.

    Com’on Elliot show me some original work.

    Also be nice if you left some of the WordPress.org links on your site since you are using their service - only fair.

    Cheers! Marty

  9. Elliott Back said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 7:31 am

    Wow, Marty. There’s a lot there to discuss.

    1) I am not brainwashed by Microsoft, really. I have conducted research and laid out my opinion for IE, which is not that it’s a technically superior product, but that it’s “good enough” for most users, or from the other side, that firefox doesn’t present the average user sufficient incentive to switch.

    2) This “Too cool for firefox” is a parody, not a parallel. It’s a different kind of rip-off.

    3) Wordpress is a software product, not a service. I don’t particularly like the load of links it inserts by default, so they’re not here. It’s perfectly fair under GPL.

  10. Znuff said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 8:00 am

    Internet Explorer doesn’t support “position: fixed” out of the box.

  11. Dan said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 3:51 pm

    ROFL. Your site doesn’t even work in IE.

  12. Random Guy , too? said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 6:01 pm

    Elliot , it appears that you either :
    a) Being sarcastic and\or want to become popular quickly.
    b) A complete idiot who thinks that IE is better even for the average user (and again , NO TABS).
    c) You never actually tried Firefox.
    d) b and c

  13. Elliott Back said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 6:08 pm

    Mr. Random,

    a) Not really. See the spreadIE.com archives for more.
    b) I assure you I’m not a complete idiot ;)
    c) I am typing this in FF right now….
    d) b and c = false

  14. April said:

    on October 19th, 2005 at 11:29 pm

    Wow, I can’t believe how rude people are considering how many kewl plugins you’ve done for Wordpress. You’re ok in my book, and yes, I’m a firefox user.

  15. Aphyr said:

    on October 20th, 2005 at 7:47 am

    1) I am not brainwashed by Microsoft, really. I have conducted research and laid out my opinion for IE, which is not that it’s a technically superior product, but that it’s “good enough” for most users, or from the other side, that firefox doesn’t present the average user sufficient incentive to switch.

    So, you believe Firefox is a technically superior product to IE?

  16. nick said:

    on November 2nd, 2005 at 2:23 pm

    well firefox or not, it looks like you have successfully proved that most people consider “internet explorer” a swear word.

  17. Hal said:

    on November 3rd, 2005 at 1:09 pm

    My bro uses Internet Explorer, I installed Firefox for him once, he didn’t like it but I didn’t bug him about it.

    But I wonder how someone who does web design can advocate IE.

  18. stonemonkey45 said:

    on November 6th, 2005 at 2:10 pm

    …It amazes me how angry people get about other peoples browser choice.Firefox may be superior if you’re a hardcore net geek, but remember a lot of everyday family uses don’t want or even understand things like extensions, they just want to look at a web page and then get on with their lives, for them I.E works perfectly fine. I have a choice of browsers and most of the time am happy to use either I.E or Firefox I really don’t care as long as the page I want appears, Opera how ever I find offers to many features by default and I don’t like the was it renders pages for me it overcomplicates the basic idea, which is looking at the web, firefox is nice in that you can add or remove features. It may just be me, but I.E always seems faster.

  19. inaequitas said:

    on November 17th, 2005 at 10:49 am

    I don’t even know where to begin, really…

    It’s not a matter of MSIE being ‘good enough’ for the average user. We all share the Internet, for what it’s worth. MSIE gives a “sure path” for malware and worms to keep spreading and not much has changed in the last 2 major versions or so. So this issue stops being simply that of the home user in his little private space; it goes on to affect me and others due to all the crapware that propagates on the ‘Net because of user stupidity and Microsoft’s poor code review practices.

    Yes, I do think they have some of the best coders in the world. But it doesn’t do them any good. They’re too greedy.

  20. abhi said:

    on December 1st, 2005 at 10:57 pm

    To All Script Kiddies Useing Non-IE browsers.
    Get Life, Get IE

    btw if u don’t like ie and get avant browser or maxthon, thay uses the same engine and have lots of features.

    btw, tabbed browser was neither invented by firefcks nor by opera, its was invented by NetCaptor, a very good browser.

    take a test yourself, load a 50 MB html file in FF & IE and record the time, i tried and FF crashed, IE working fine. this is becuase IE is made by devs who gets paid for work, rather than kiddies working for free!

  21. abhi said:

    on December 1st, 2005 at 11:08 pm

    lol;
    they even registred a domian www.ie7.com

  22. CJC said:

    on December 5th, 2005 at 2:52 pm

    If FireFox was by microsoft you would be all singing and dancing i bet!!

    I push FireFox to the max on both PC and Mac, and I very rarely have problems - I.E however, does crash far more.

    Developing websites i have found Firefox is much better for consistency over platforms, whereas I.E wasn’t - as they do not support the Mac anymore.

    Firefox is a much better alternative for speed and toys to aid the web experience - people just need to be aware of it. Nuff Said. :P

  23. LittleWings said:

    on December 14th, 2005 at 7:33 am

    [quote=stonemonkey45]Firefox may be superior if you’re a hardcore net geek, but remember a lot of everyday family uses don’t want or even understand things like extensions, they just want to look at a web page and then get on with their lives, for them I.E works perfectly fine.[/quote]
    This is crazy… Everyday families use IE because it’s integrated in Windows ! If it was Firefox, what do you think that should happen ?

  24. Sam Kelter said:

    on December 15th, 2005 at 10:39 pm

    If you’re using Linux, Firefox is great. If you’re using Windows, it isn’t. The rendering engine is different between platforms. It simply doesn’t render any faster — unless you count the fact that it’ll START rendering, but then redraw the page three or four times as it loads stylesheets and in-line styles. As for it being a “secure browser” and a IE being a “lightning rod for spyware,” FF is every bit as Exploitable, if not more — the Windows variety of FF still doesn’t properly sandbox the lowly JavaScript.

    To me, there’s a big difference between Functionality and Hype. Granted, FF has a couple of great features. But all in all, it’s really not compelling enough for most people to switch. And the really nasty part is that once you’ve dropped FF on Windows, it does enough to your registry to make IE suck forever more — destroying mime-types such that you can’t even read the docs at www.apache.org/ any more, inserting insane class definitions into the registry and mucking around with various FileOpen techniques to usurp power. Like its closest relative, Netscape 4x, it doesn’t save any of the changes it makes, so once you uninstall it, Windows is pretty much screwed.

    Like I said … It’s great for Linux. But that group have *never* known how to write Windows software. Something doesn’t work the way they think it should, they ***** and complain about Microsoft instead of trying to come up with a solution.

    And while we’re on Web Design, I find the same thing. With everyone complaining about “IE doesn’t support standards and FF does!” I’ve been finding more and more design flaws with the FF rendering engine. Hell, I just went through an internal FF tutorial that wouldn’t render in FF on Linux — but worked great in both FF and IE for Windows. How’s that for ironic?

    People need to learn to seperate Hype from Fact.

  25. Guppy said:

    on December 29th, 2005 at 5:55 pm

    “…you GOTTA be a fan of IE. I mean it’s the only browser that doesn’t offer tabs , it’s malware’s best friend, it doesn’t render pages properly like other browsers, it loves to crash, it has tons of security threats and much much more “interesting” stuff. It’s so unique , you gotta love it. ”

    The above really does rate as one of the most ridiculous and uninformed passages I have read for some time!

    1. If Firefox (or anything else) was top of the pile, THAT’S what the virus/malware writers woiuld target. Firefox can only dream of being where IE is.

    2. IE 7 WILL have tabs, but contrary to what you clearly believe you DON’T need them to be able to browse the web.

    3. IE doesn’t crash any more than any other application does (whoever it was written by) - at least, if you have a clean and well-maintained system it doesn’t. Blaming others for YOUR weaknesses is childish. And , incidentally, aren’t users of the latest Firefox whingeing about crashes at the moment? They are from what I’ve read on various forums.

    4. A security threat is only a real threat once someone finds it and starts using it. Firefox has had plenty - and it takes them much longer to plug them, so they keep bug reports under wraps rather than broadcasting them. That’s FF policy, is it not?

    5. If you want to view most of the web correctly then you need IE, since IE’s dominance means that’s what people write for. God help us if there are ever several co-dominant browsers - most of the web would be unusable.

    6. For all the smart aleck schoolyard comments, IE is still a million miles out in front of FF. And FF isn’t likely to catch up - except in the wet dreams of certain people ;-)

  26. Guppy said:

    on December 29th, 2005 at 6:04 pm

    “…Reminds me of how the “new” IE7 will have several “Firefox” type features. By the time it’s released it won’t be “new” but “old” and Firefox will once again be steps ahead - READ - open source colaboration and open standards…”

    And the point of this is what?

    If IE7 employs tabbed browing, so what?

    On the one hand, IE gets updated regularly and it works across more websites than FF (or anything else). On the other hand you have childish conspiracy-bas3d (sic) reasons put forward by people with no dress sense and a penchant for skateboarding whingeing on about FF and imagined ‘issues’ all the time :-)

    Guess which group can browse, research, publish, shop online, etc. most effectively ;-)

  27. Guppy said:

    on December 29th, 2005 at 6:30 pm

    Wow. I stand corrected.

    “…Elliot , it appears that you either :
    a) Being sarcastic and\or want to become popular quickly.
    b) A complete idiot who thinks that IE is better even for the average user (and again , NO TABS).
    c) You never actually tried Firefox.
    d) b and c …”

    THIS has to be the most ridiculous thing I’ve seen posted for a long time.

    IE is - sorry IS - better for the average user. That is an absolute fact. It is preinstalled and it works immediately.

    Now, I don’t know what YOUR definition of ‘average’ is, but the ‘average’ users I know cannot easily install apps at the best of times, let alone configure them for Internet access etc., so that comment in ‘b’ is pretty dumb. FF is NOT best for the ‘average’ user. The average anti-Miscrosoft script-kiddie, maybe, but not the average user.

    You can still browse without tabs. Tabs is just something FF users keep going on about - in fact, it is the ONLY thing it seems. FF has nothing else much going for it, after all ;-)

  28. Draicone said:

    on March 18th, 2006 at 4:58 pm

    This just makes no sense whatsoever. Why would you make a banner promoting a inferior browser? I’ll agree it’s better for the average user; open source needs to get it’s act together for usability and really rethink their target market. But the fact of the matter is simple - IE shouldn’t have something like this for the simple fact that it’s misleading.

    P.S. I have IE6SP1, Maxthon, MyIE2, FF1.5, FF1.5.0.1, Opera and Mozilla Suite installed. Don’t tell me i’m biased.

  29. Neg said:

    on May 12th, 2006 at 12:34 am

    Why the hell would anyone want to spread IE?

  30. T said:

    on August 8th, 2006 at 10:00 pm

    This is just completely stupid. I switched to FireFox cause Firefox offers more. I searched for Ad-blockers for IE, none were free, nor published by Microsoft I believe. FireFox has a Adblocker which you can get right from the site.

  31. Sam Kelter said:

    on September 7th, 2006 at 12:06 pm

    God, this thread is stil alive? Ok, then … How do you feel about Firefox finally accepting Microsoft’s help to make a Windows Vista version of their browser? I mean, they never accepted it for XP…

  32. IB said:

    on October 21st, 2006 at 10:34 am

    ohh my god you are so ******* stupid, why would you preffer ie i wanna kill you ******* ********

  33. Albert said:

    on February 18th, 2007 at 8:24 am

    &gt;&gt; God, this thread is stil alive? Ok, then …
    &gt;&gt; How do you feel about Firefox finally accepting Microsoft’s help to make a &gt;&gt; Windows Vista version of their browser? mean, they never accepted it for &gt;&gt; XP…!

    Your point being? Ok they accepted help, it might make the product better. And… so?

    The fact that IE is what is installed when you get your average Windows software install, can hardly be considered a valid argument. What if Firefox or Opera would be what was preinstalled? I didn’t think Firefox was hard to install and setup when I first tried it, and I was 13 or 14 years old at the time. I bet my granfather could have done it. in average, he is a very much smarter person than me. (Even though he has never touched a computer.) Even so, I don’t think he could have avoided the malware and things you get when even browsing a normal website with IE.

    The reason -I- switched to Firefox completely was that it rendered the pages I wanted faster than IE. I dunno if it does the same for you, and quite frankly, I don’t care. If IE is what makes your day go round, so be it. Later on, I learned what the term Open-Source means, and I started liking Firefox even more.

    Oh, and I use Opera from time to time too, might be my patrioticy. (I’m from Norway.) Even so, I think Konqueror &gt; Firefox &gt; Opera &gt; IE &gt; Links. Konqueror is sooooo fast.

  34. Gareth BFG said:

    on November 9th, 2007 at 5:21 am

    Not a fan of IE. Although IE7 is not too bad. Still not as fast (esp. for AJAX) as Firefox.

  35. Nemephis said:

    on January 18th, 2008 at 9:26 pm

    as a webdeveloper I totally disagree with you: Internet Explorer simply is the worst browser there is…
    But hey, maybe IE 8 will be a decent browser!

Your Thoughts Go Here:

Powered by WP Hashcash