Author Topic: World's first 'tax' on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (Read 14216 times)

KynloStephen66515 · « **on:** June 14, 2012, 01:07 PM »

The Australian online retailer Kogan.com has introduced the world's first "tax" on Microsoft's Internet Explorer 7 (IE7) browser.

Customers who use IE7 will have to pay an extra surcharge on online purchases made through the firm's site.

Chief executive Ruslan Kogan told the BBC he wanted to recoup the time and costs involved in "rendering the website into a antique browser".

The charge is set to 6.8% - 0.1% for every month since the IE7 launch.

http://www.bbc.co.uk.../technology-18440979

Hahhahahahahahahahahahahahaha

Renegade · « **Reply #1 on:** June 14, 2012, 01:20 PM »

That is just 31 flavours of awesomeness~!

IainB · « **Reply #2 on:** June 14, 2012, 03:55 PM »

I read about this too. We covered the subject/issue (the difficulty in maintaining a website to support IE's peculiarities) in this thread: What purpose does browser-specific blocking serve?, and it was apparently a real issue for some developers, but this overhead/"tax" seems like quite a novel idea.
I think it is incorrect to call it a "tax" though, because only the State can engage in legal extortion - that's a tax.

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #3 on:** June 14, 2012, 04:00 PM »

I don't mind a bit of IE7 bashing ... But when they imply that Safari is a "better browser" ...(Seriously??)... Credibility=0.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #4 on:** June 15, 2012, 09:29 AM »

I don't mind a bit of IE7 bashing ... But when they imply that Safari is a "better browser" ...(Seriously??)... Credibility=0.
-Stoic Joker (June 14, 2012, 04:00 PM)

I've never done web developing, but my notion was that from a web developer's point of view, safari is similar to chrome (i.e. another webkit based browser) and hence respects many more web standards than ie does?

Renegade · « **Reply #5 on:** June 15, 2012, 10:23 AM »

Sigh... The browser warz...

Meh...

Fact is, it all depends on what you want to do.

If you want to do stupidly CPU intensive crazy stuff, then IE is your friend. While people may hate them, BHOs and ActiveX let you do things that JavaScript plugins just don't.

For plain surfing...

Webkit is great, but Chrome spies on you.

Opera is the innovator, but flip-flops around between being uber-awesome and broken.

Etc. etc.

But IE7? Sheesh... It's not much better than 6.

Personally, I loathe programming for IE at all. It's the last thing I look at.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #6 on:** June 15, 2012, 10:28 AM »

If they can get away with it without tanking sales, this is possibly the endgame of the browser wars. We went from "optimized for Internet Explorer (custom nonstandard crap)" to "charging a service fee to use IE" (as a market driven punishment for that custom nonstandard crap). Conceptually I think that's kinda neat.

justice · « **Reply #7 on:** June 15, 2012, 10:37 AM »

Very arrogant, interesting way to say fuck you to potential customers. Nothing wrong with a regular message or graceful degredation?

jgpaiva · « **Reply #8 on:** June 15, 2012, 10:45 AM »

Actually, according to this, the company didn't go forward with the tax.

@Renegade: I think this is not exactly a browser war since here the problem is not from an end-user point of view, but from a web-developer point of view. While I've never done web developing, I'm pretty sure that it would annoy the hell out of me to be fixing idiotic bugs for specific browsers only because they decided not to respect the standards!

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #9 on:** June 15, 2012, 11:38 AM »

I don't mind a bit of IE7 bashing ... But when they imply that Safari is a "better browser" ...(Seriously??)... Credibility=0.
-Stoic Joker (June 14, 2012, 04:00 PM)
I've never done web developing, but my notion was that from a web developer's point of view, safari is similar to chrome (i.e. another webkit based browser) and hence respects many more web standards than ie does?
-jgpaiva (June 15, 2012, 09:29 AM)

Understood, but last time I checked (which granted was a year or so ago) Safari on Windows supported all of the standards/HTML5 stuff ... While Safari on a Mac only supported about 10% of the HTML5 stuff. Which tells me that Apple is/was too chicken shit to dogfood their own product. Add to that their abysmal security history and Safari=pariah as far as I'm concerned.

app103 · « **Reply #10 on:** June 15, 2012, 12:31 PM »

Interesting that they are targeting IE7 users only and offering browser suggestions that do not include upgrading to a newer version of IE. I wonder why that is?

Could it be possible that they are just a bunch of obnoxious browser bigots?

Stoic Joker · « **Reply #11 on:** June 15, 2012, 12:47 PM »

Interesting that they are targeting IE7 users only and offering browser suggestions that do not include upgrading to a newer version of IE. I wonder why that is?
-app103 (June 15, 2012, 12:31 PM)

Excellent point.

jgpaiva · « **Reply #12 on:** June 15, 2012, 01:11 PM »

Safari=pariah as far as I'm concerned.
-Stoic Joker (June 15, 2012, 11:38 AM)

As a mac user (not very much by choice, unfortunately), I agree 100%. I'm not stating that from an end-user point of view, safari is any good (it isn't

). But honestly, every time I think of doing some web development on my own I give up when I realize the amount of time I will lose patching stuff because each browser implements stuff in a slightly different way. So, I really can't defend IE7 on this (or any other browser, to be fair, since not even my up-to-date chrome renders acid2 exactly like the reference image).

Could it be possible that they are just a bunch of obnoxious browser bigots?
-app103 (June 15, 2012, 12:31 PM)

Maybe they spent truckloads of money getting their site to work on crippled browsers with large market shares and were so burned that they hate ie for life?

Carol Haynes · « **Reply #13 on:** June 15, 2012, 02:09 PM »

Out of curiosity - if you have IE7 try opening adobe.com !!

I reinstalled a Vista based computer this morning and went to get Flash and Reaqder to install and adobe.com simply won't open in IE7 (at least an unpatched Vista version).

SeraphimLabs · « **Reply #14 on:** June 15, 2012, 04:21 PM »

Very arrogant, interesting way to say fuck you to potential customers. Nothing wrong with a regular message or graceful degredation?
-justice (June 15, 2012, 10:37 AM)

Or simply quietly dropping support and letting all of the IE7 users wonder why the layout is completely unusable except for an error message recommending a newer browser.

At least that's what usually happens.

Funny thing, I actually have a situation that goes the other way. Some of the web applications I've encountered over the years explicitly require IE7, and are incompatible with anything else.

Go figure.

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #15 on:** June 15, 2012, 04:26 PM »

Or simply quietly dropping support and letting all of the IE7 users wonder why the layout is completely unusable except for an error message recommending a newer browser.

At least that's what usually happens.
-SeraphimLabs (June 15, 2012, 04:21 PM)

That's why this story makes news. If they spin it right, low skilled users can't ignore what a browser is anymore, and they'll start to ask questions that don't get asked if "the layout just looks funny and they get an error". The company is "gambling" that the customer has loyalty to Kogan more than the browser.

Shades · « **Reply #16 on:** June 15, 2012, 05:11 PM »

Actually, this could be the start of a dangerous precedent. Because if Kogan has problems with IE7 then they will have problems (albeit less) with IE8 as well. And that is the highest IE available on XP. So people that cannot upgrade to a more modern OS are effectively blocked. If you cannot afford the upgrade, likely you will not have the money for the extra added tax either.

From what I heard, IE9 is not so bad anymore. I wouldn't know though, as I will not touch IE with a ten foot pole if I can help it!

TaoPhoenix · « **Reply #17 on:** June 15, 2012, 05:34 PM »

Sure Shades, it's complicated, hopefully someone will point that out to them, but I still kinda feel MS deserves a little backlash for a decade of lockin tricks.

SeraphimLabs · « **Reply #18 on:** June 15, 2012, 06:48 PM »

Actually, this could be the start of a dangerous precedent.
-Shades (June 15, 2012, 05:11 PM)

That it is. Tons of sites have browser compatibility problems, as each developer always develops for their favorite browser and anything else appears second-rate or not at all.

This is the first time that a site has actively penalized users of a specific incompatible browser time. Usually the site just displays a warning message recommending a newer or different brand of browser, or appears mangled in an unsupported browser- like my sites, which lose the webkit-based graphics effects in older IE and Firefox versions.

wraith808 · « **Reply #19 on:** June 16, 2012, 06:47 PM »

^ Yup. This is the largest problem with this. And imagine if someone had done this years ago when IE was market leader... if it's not good for one side, IMO it's not good for the other.

Deozaan · « **Reply #20 on:** June 16, 2012, 06:57 PM »

I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing for any side. It may even be good for Microsoft if it convinces people to upgrade to IE9 rather than using an old, insecure version of their browser.

wraith808 · « **Reply #21 on:** June 17, 2012, 11:58 AM »

I don't necessarily see this as a bad thing for any side. It may even be good for Microsoft if it convinces people to upgrade to IE9 rather than using an old, insecure version of their browser.
-Deozaan (June 16, 2012, 06:57 PM)

In *this* case, it's not particularly bad. But it sets a bad (IMHO) precedent.