As a webmaster, I’d been using Mozilla since version 0.7 and Opera since version 3 to design and test with. I’d build for Mozilla first and then tweak things so they worked in Internet Explorer vesion 5, which at the time most people had. This has been my pattern until the present day: design in the browsers with better CSS support first, then tweak to adjust for IE5+. All during this time I was still using IE6, and earlier, as my main working browser.
I had tuned my systems and a lot of my tools to work with it as the default browser. I was able to escape all of the popups, page highjacking, spyware and trojans because I generally know what I am doing and knew not to trust Microsoft’s default settings in IE. I would always browse with scripting and Active X support turned off. I put IE6 behind Privoxy to block ads, spoof my headers and generally micromanage the hell out of my HTTP stream. This kept me safe for the last four years and longer.
But yesterday, I finally bit the bullet and set Firefox as my default browser. Not because I was worried about IE’s wanton libertine of a security model, I already had that in hand, but because I finally decided to tune my tools and such to work with it. I had been using it so much in my daily work that I figured that I should finally go all the way. I’ve heard that Microsoft is beginning to get worried about loosing browser share and they may reverse their decisions made about Longhorn and IE7. At least they are more open to developer feedback now, so I am hopeful.
But until the Lazy M Ranch gets off its collective rear, I’m staying in a modern browser. I will of course still continue to design my CSS conservatively to support IE5+ for my client’s sites but here, at FI, I think I am finally going to try some, really advanced CSS-fu.