Spread Firefox using IE only Comments

Tuesday, Feb. 1 2005 | Author: derek

A lot of sites have a “Get Firefox” banner on their site these days, but Dan Ostermeyer has a way to target IE users specifically by using IE’s own technology against itself. Apparently there is some sort of proprietary comment code built-in to IE, and since only IE recognizes it, you can put your promotion wording in there and only IE users will see it. Of course there are dozens of other ways to do this like CSS, server side code, javascript, etc. But this isn’t a bad method either. One major problem is that it doesn’t allow your site to validate, so if you are really into seeing that little “Congratulations” message when you validate your site, you may want to use one of the other methods.

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6 Responses for "Spread Firefox using IE only Comments"

Nicky the Jazz Cat

February 1st, 2005 at 5:07 pm
1

I don’t see the point of this. Just put the damn banner. Everybody will see it and it will hurt nobody (Except maybe MicroSoft, but that’s not bad.)

It’s also nice to see the banner while using Firefox. It makes you think you are doing the right thing.
Derek

February 1st, 2005 at 5:48 pm
2

It’s a big ugly red banner on this guy’s site. Not something you’d want to show to user’s that have already done what you’re asking them to do. No point in preaching to the choir, so to speak. If you use Firefox you already know you’re doing the right thing. :)
Alex Kadis

February 1st, 2005 at 9:28 pm
3

There is a valid way to use conditional comments:
http://www.quirksmode.org/css/condcom.html

Enjoy.
Jakob S

February 2nd, 2005 at 4:06 am
4

An IE conditional comment appears like a regular comment to non-IE browsers, so it should have no implications on your validation.

I’ve been using them to show a GetFirefox banner since before the getfirefox campaign site, and have had no problems validating at least.
Jim

May 25th, 2005 at 6:09 pm
5

man, i was using firefox on my 386 tandy back in the 80’s as a front end for my dosshell that makes me at least 64 times cooler then you.
ºãÔŽ

October 21st, 2005 at 8:28 am
6

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