Comments on: Use IE Flaw to Promote Firefox

By: John

John — Sat, 15 Jul 2006 17:02:33 +0000

I can’t see the banner from any of IE, Firefox or Mozilla?
Maybe IE is fixed by July 06??

By: sw’as » Ideas for the redesign

sw’as » Ideas for the redesign — Mon, 14 Nov 2005 06:19:48 +0000

[...] If you’re using IE you will be getting this ugly block above the posts telling you you should switch to Firefox (my preferred) or Opera. The really neat thing is that this box is displayed simply through IE’s own flaws. Check out how. [...]

By: Andy Allan

Andy Allan — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Unless I’m being dumb (which wouldn’t be the first time) this doesn’t work, as I’m using Firefox and I see the ad :)

By: Jim Rutherford

Jim Rutherford — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

There are two ads in the sidebar. The ad I am referring to is a large banner across the top of the page.

By: felix

felix — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

you should do a big flashing pop-up ad – Firefox users will never see it. ‘WARNING!! you must upgrade your browser!!’ – maybe with a monkey that you have to spank for cash prizes :)

By: Andy Allan

Andy Allan — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

It’s the large banner across the top I’m referring too :)

By: Scott Barnes

Scott Barnes — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

heh, I think you can only whip that dog so much before it will bite you back.

In that, yeah exploit the IE to gain FireFox (great idea actually) but the moment some propella head discovers a flaw in FireFox code or exploit, that little campaign will come back ten-fold and bite everyone on the hand.

I love FireFox, and i’m confident in its security, but its like teasing an confined animal, your protected but once it gets free…its your ass.

By: David Whiterpd

David Whiterpd — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Nice technique! Turn IE’s flaws on itself. Beautiful!

BTW, your current (IE-only) banner ad has mis-spelt “currently”.

cheers

David

By: Em Jay

Em Jay — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

It would be good to include a line advising that the banner doesn’t display under Firefox, in the banner itself, so that IE users have some idea why it’d be good to switch.

By: Priyadi

Priyadi — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

unfortunately this method won’t work if CSS is not loaded for some reason (deliberately disabled or overrided, connection error or under small screen rendering). in my opinion, browser sniffing (for string ‘MSIE’) works better.

By: The Wolf

The Wolf — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

You could just use IE against itself another way, without any CSS hacks:

Good eh?

By: Adam Bramwell

Adam Bramwell — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Nice implementation Jim

By: nick

nick — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

awesome idea. i made my own banner and did the same thing.

only real change I made otherwise, is to send the person straight to the download page on mozilla.org.
since the majority target audience (for my sites) is friends and family, I know they’re not technical enough to get to the download page otherwise. so I’m routing them straight there, should the choose to enrich their lives some…
:)
thanks for the tip!

By: Mike

Mike — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Great idea Jim. I use Opera, and I don’t see the ad ;-). But I guess your target group is IE users, so it’s fine.

#ffx {
display: none; !important
display: inherit;
}

Both methods are just as easy and simple, and most importantly: work.

By: JoeM

JoeM — Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 +0000

Just downloaded and tried firefox. Went to some sites that I know are spyware sites. Norton flaged viruses, spyware tried to install in background(Microsft Ant-Spyware) stoped that.

Going Back to IE until Firefox FIXES their security problems.

Yes Going back to Internet Explorer 6 SP2.