Jamie Huskisson : Too cool for IE shuts down because people took it too seriously

Too cool for IE shuts down because people took it too seriously

Posted on February 27th, 2006 in funnies, internet explorer

Last summer, while creating a personal blog, I snapped. Internet Explorer is holding us back. Its ill-support of CSS2 has brought a halt to the advancement of website design. So I jumped on the anti-Internet Explorer bandwagon with my own joke campaign, Too Cool for Internet Explorer. It was a joke, plain and simple. A lot of people didn’t quite get the humor in it. Others thought it was the greatest thing since Spread Firefox and wanted a full-blown site. Honestly, I’m sick of getting emails from uber-excited nerds and hate mail from IE advocates. The content is now coming down.

- “Good bye, Too cool” - Paul Armstrong (Creator of Too cool for IE)

There are 4 responses to this post so far

Cooper wrote:

Wow, dude, that’s weird. I went to that exact same site this morning because I saw the link on the guys name, and then on his site I clicked on the “Too Cool for IE” link and saw that it had shut down.

# February 28th, 2006 at 1:20am
VI5 wrote:

I’m quite shocked to find it had been shut down, may have to set one up of my own as a joke, give all IE users 50 pop ups etc.

Also I find it ironic how potionfactory has a bug in opera on the main page, I’m guessing he’s waiting on a too cool for opera button.

# March 4th, 2006 at 1:02pm
Andy Kim wrote:

Hello Jamie,

I’m your “bad coder”. I found this post to be funny, so I thought I might chime in to my defense here a bit, rather than let you call me names in my absence. Plus, your readers might find this entertaining.

First off, this is a site that sells Mac software.

Okay, I’ll let that sink in.

What that means, according to our logs, is that less than 15% of people visiting our site use Windows. Out of those Windows users, only about 60% use IE.

So less than 10% of people coming to our site use IE, and I could care less about those people. Why? Because my business sees zero money from them.

Second, there’s a half-truth to every joke, especially in this one. Web designers everywhere are frustrated with IE’s lack of standards compliance that require ugly hacks and unnecessary labor. In my case it doesn’t hurt my business to have an IE incompatible site, so I did my part to let people know that IE is not good for the web. You would be surprised how many people don’t know this.

Finally, maybe it would take you 30 minutes to do an IE compatible site, because that’s the sort of thing you do for a living, but I make web pages once in a blue moon. I have tons of other things that require my attention, which include: writing some real code for our software, handling support, doing business development, marketing, strategizing, writing documentation, and much more.

So, no, I’m not a bad coder. I just happen to prioritize my time. In fact, we just got a perfect 5 out 5 review from the biggest Mac magazine, Macworld. And, sorry, but my website is doing fine for my business. If anything, it probably helps because Mac users visiting our site with IE from work will get chuckle. If you think websites like ours breaking on IE is bad, you have no idea what Mac users have endured for years due to IE propagating bad standards.

BTW, thank you for your compliment on the design. It’s not the prettiest site out there (not by a long shot), but I still take pride in it because I made almost everything you see on that site. Like I said, I don’t do it often, but I do enjoy it.

Basically, when you can just say “fuck IE”, you would too unless you are Bill Gates.

- Andy Kim
Co-founder
Potion Factory

# March 4th, 2006 at 1:46pm
Jay wrote:

Maybe we should have a ‘bad coder unless proven otherwise’ section…

Andy - I think you’ve proven yourself not to be a bad coder… since the website doesn’t apply to Windows user’s at all its just not your job to make us Windows folk happy.

I’ve retracted the comment :)

# March 4th, 2006 at 3:36pm

Too cool for IE shuts down because people took it too seriously

There are 4 responses to this post so far

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