PandaPassport.com – China Blog

I was just reading Ryan’s post over at DaobyDesign about how he guides his readers to upgrade to at least internet explorer 6:

My parameters were simple. If the person visiting the site had any browser other than Internet Explorer – they could come in. And to show I’m not a complete brute, I decided that those visiting with IE7, and IE6 could also come and play. Otherwise you get redirected to a page that informs the visitor that they might want to reconsider their choice of Web surfing app.

Personally, I’m not a big fan of any version of internet explorer, so I went a step further. Now if anyone lands on any of my single post pages, they see this alert just above the post headline:

Internet Explorer is BAD! Get Firefox with Google Toolbar, because unlike IE, Firefox loads the top of a webpage first so you can experience faster web-browsing.

The link is usually a firefox referral text link, though because this one was within the post, it might not always show, so I just linked to mozilla. Yes, I’m encouraging users to download, and I’ll get a small referral commission if they download it. But as this is a product I personally use and believe in, it’s one have have no hesitations recommending to readers. Readers who are using firefox already will not see this alert. Only IE users.

Here’s the code for how I made it, in case you’d like to use it one your site as well:

['HTTP_USER_AGENT'], 'MSIE') !== false)) return true; else return false; } ?> { ?> Internet Explorer is BAD! [INSERT FIREFOX TEXT LINK REFERRAL SCRIPT HERE] because unlike IE, Firefox loads the top of a webpage first so you can experience faster web-browsing.

For webmasters here in China, you might also recommend the Firefox Flickr addon, to help your readers get around the Flick block.