I agree the Opera compo is the same kind of thing though. But – Opera are the underdogs, they need viral marketing. IE is supposedly the market leader – running a compo like this shows that they’re nervous about waning market share. I also thought it incredibly ironic that MS would be creating IE-only websites deliberately for this purpose, something that blighted the Internet in years gone by as an unpleasant result of MS dominance – it’s like they’re trying to recreate past ‘glory days’. I imagine MS sitting on the porch puffing on a pipe: “I remember when people used ActiveX, and only tested their web applications on IE5. Ah, those were the days….”

Or, I’m reading too much into it.

I’m not saying MS is evil, or that the others are paragons (or even that IE8 is worse or better than them) – it just struck me as highly amusing that an attempt at a chest-beating campaign actually just highlights how the browser landscape has changed (for the better, IMO) in recent years, and not in IE’s favour.

What’s wrong with a company offering a prize for using their product? Apple just recently gave away a $10000 gift card (and a macbook pro, time capsule and ipod touch) where a condition was that you use itunes, but I don’t see people whining about it.

Mozilla is right now running a contest where you can win a macbook pro if you develop the best firefox addon. I can’t write a firefox addon without having firefox installed. How is this different from an MS contest which requires IE8?

Opera had a contest in 2007 where you had to photograph your monitor running opera and opera mini side by side. I can’t do that without installing them. How is that different from an MS contest which requires IE8?

Oh yeah, MS is evil and apple/mozilla/opera can do no wrong.

(Just to clarify, I hate IE, think IE only websites should be banned and couldn’t live without Firefox Portable. Some people just get way too worked up over a web browser though)

Anyway… anyone know of a real life buried treasure hunt in australia? I’m in the mood for one.

All that really matters is that if there’s a mixture of browsers on off-the-shelf PCs, there’s a better chance we’ll avoid repeating the stupid IE-only website phenomenon we experienced a while ago. Although other factors like a growing mobile user base (particularly iPhone and other non-Windows smart phones) are making that pretty unlikely anyway. The days of the desktop (and therefore Windows) being the one and only standard people aim for is rapidly disappearing, something that must be worrying for Microsoft, since it’s been the ace in their pack for two decades. The EU didn’t do that, changing customer demands did.

Absolutely.
I think it is insane to insist that MS ships their OS without any browser but by the same token, they(MS) should be prevented from placing any restrictions on OEM vendors in terms of what other software they are allowed to preinstall on their PCs ( within reason of course, after all MS has a right to defend integrity of their flagship product)

@KungFooMasta: the European browser bundling issue *did* make sense, once – specifically at the time people still thought there was a business model in selling browser software. Of course now it’s all irrelevant – MS killed off Netscape a decade ago, and everyone has moved on; it would only have mattered had they done something about it then. Now, the landscape is completely different – the EU is still arguing over a war that ended years ago for some reason. But, maybe it just means PC distributors will put a couple of browser options on a PC as standard, which can’t be a bad thing.

Yeah, well, they haven’t learned anything from the Windows N debacle, have they ?

Firefox is my first choice of browser and, since I’m running Ubuntu, I can’t get IE at all (oh dear, what a pity, never mind). But on the plus side, at least Micro$oft is helping to start getting rid of IE6 that is still plaguing the net.

The UserAgent extension works with the site, now all someone needs to do is create a web page that only works with FFox, how many extensions are there for InfernalExploder?

So avoid IE8, download FFox, and install the UserAgent add-on