Make Firefox appear to be IE
Here's a handy add-on to work you right around these artificial barriers. Go to addons.mozilla.org and search for user agent switcher, or you can find it at CNET's Download.com. Add the plug-in to Firefox and restart your browser.
When you come upon a naggy site that doesn't like your browser, go to tools, select User agent switcher, and select the browser you need to pretend to be.
Reload the page and the prejudice ends. You can use it on many sites to log-in to your classes or pay your bill. It will even fool Mozilla.org into insulting you for using IE. That's how good it is.
Do be aware, sometimes the reason they warn you to use a certain browser is because their crappy site BREAKS in every other browser, so the user agent won't help you in those situations. But for a lot of sites, you'll be able to use them just as if you had Internet Explorer running in Windows.
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If all sites are written to open standards and all browsers well developed, then it doesn't even matter. Then browsers can compete on rendering speed and features. <3 I long for such a world ever so.
All sites should be written according to web standards.
Proprietary, non-standard extensions and "Internet Explorer required" messages are so 90s.
All browsers should properly implement those standards.
Internet Explorer has not and most likely won't have a proper implementation of web standards in the near future. Microsoft has clearly shown they are unable and/or unwilling to improve this mess. Until they do, their "product" is to be avoided.
That's about the sanest thing to do.
Microsoft still does not like something else than IE (and the future users of retail versions of Windows 7 E or Office will not get the support they have the right to claim to Microsoft).
Note that Windows Update / Microsoft Update are (normally) not affected (at least on Vista and Windows 7) because the site instructs the browser to use the dedicated application built into the OS instead of the browser: with this dedicated app, the IE control is directly embedded, without depending on the installed browser. But this won't work from XP (that has no dedicated client application like in Vista or Win7), or if you are trying to use the windows update website instead of the dedicated app (in Vista or Win7), if you are currently using something else than IE: these alternate browsers will not launch the dedicated application.
However,
for optional downloads, (including some temporary security fixes or patches that some users will need for specific cases, or some patches for Microsoft games or drivers for Microsoft hardware, or for the bloody DRM drivers used in Windows Media, or for some "Genuine" licence checks that it still persists in wanting being performed within the browser by an ActiveX control insetad of using a key generated by an external tool running out of the browser),
IE is still the only browser supported by Microsoft (that persists in wanting a completely unneeded ActiveX component to get FULL access with all administrator privileges to your system).
It's high time that Microsoft provides full support for competitive browsers that are standard compliants and that can perfectly support the website GUI (notably because Win7E will be finally released without IE on next October 22), and stops considering that our systems is theirs just to get the paid support).
Microsoft really made no effort for Chrome and lies when its site indicates that IE is not installed, and wants us to upgrade or install it after each page.
The exception are sites that use ActiveX controls - which are unsafe anyway and shouldn't be used.
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by SX10 IS
October 19, 2009 12:48 PM PDT
- Doesn't work!
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