And why doesn’t it make sense to still support the evil browser

As a web developer, I have been disappointed, disheartened, frustrated, and mostly infuriated by IE6. If you don’t know what is IE6, most probably you are using it right now. Now, I don’t want to get into the technical details of IE6 and why it sucks. I’ll just logically prove to you why supporting IE6 won’t help your business. Without any doubt we can assume that the only people who use IE6 are:
1) People who are just plain stupid (aka fools): These people don’t know what a browser is, and just click on the start button of their XP boxes and click on “Internet”.
2) Grandmas (aka grandmas): I wouldn’t say they are stupid, but they are likely to use IE6 for the same reason as above.
3) People who surf the net from cyber cafes(aka ‘poor people, hungry people’ or pphp ): They don’t have any other options in many cases. Too poor to own a computer, and too naive to demand a better browser. Some references to pphps can be found here and here.
4) People whose companies have blocked installation of other browsers and applications (aka handcuffed): Tch tch… sometimes these good old normal people (even internet savvy, you may say) might not be able to use another browser because of their companies. Enterprise apps are many a times built for IE6.
5) People who develop and test their sites on IE6(aka developers): Poor people like us, who have a job to protect their site on IE6, and still make it work on other browsers.

After we have established the users for IE6, we can analyse the web to see why it’s used. And why making your site work in IE6 is not helping you in any way. Let’s consider the broad categories of websites/web applications one is likely to encounter:

1) E-commerce – Suppose you’re running your e-commerce site, do you think anyone using a paleolithic browser like IE6 is going to run his/her card through your payment gateway? E-commerce doesn’t work for fools – they would select mastercard instead of visa. It doesn’t work for grandmas – they won’t know what a credit card is. Of course it doesn’t work for pphp- Remember, they are poor people, hungry people. Handcuffed people won’t be allowed to visit an e-commerce site anyway, and developers are too busy making that site.

2) Building a Brand: Rolexes and Ferraris don’t sell on the web, but still have well maintained websites. The reason is that they want to build or enhance their brand through a slick website and substantial web presence. Branding doesn’t work for fools – that’s their definition. Might work for grandmas, but they would forget the brand name during lunch time. I’m assuming no branding is necessary for pphp, as they’re not in any target group – they never are. Handcuffed people won’t be allowed to visit a branding site anyway, and developers are too busy making that site.

3) Content: People also use internet to read some free content online. If you have any serious content that’s not about fools or grandmas, then your site is not going to be used by them anyway. Pphp may come to your site, but being too time conscious, before they click on an ad which helps you earn profit,  they’ll either pack up and leave or use their remaining minutes watching desibaba. Handcuffed people won’t be allowed to visit a content site anyway, and developers are too busy making that site.

4) Networking: Who wants fools to be a part of their social or business network? You got it – other fools. If your site analytics shows that IE6 users make 40% of your total users, you know that your networking site is going to die – soon. Grandmas and pphp- ditto. And of course Handcuffed people won’t be allowed to visit a networking site anyway, and developers are too busy making that site.

5) Mail, apps and other useful sites: You can hold IE6 users to ransom and refuse supporting it. If your product is good enough(e.g. youtube, google apps, 37signals), people will upgrade their browsers and come to your site anyway.

Moral of the story: Let it dIE

I’ve always been a big fan of Firefox, at least for the adblock plus extension which doesn’t let me see insane banner ads all day long. If not for speed, I’d have never moved to Chrome at all. It turns out, I was losing out on a lot of fun all the while just by not looking at these orkut ads!  There have been instances of orkut ads going wrong for me, but this one is a HUGE fail. Visualize this:

Orkut wtf

So orkut tried to “Find a match in my community and profession“. These are three epic stupidities in just one sentence! The girl they choose to titillate me with is Ms. Shah, a Gujarati (while I’m a marwadi), who is an MBA (while I’m an Engineer). And of course I’m MARRIED! The probability of me being interested in marrying Ms. Shah would be lesser than me surviving two thunder strikes and dying off a coconut falling on my head. So much for the targeted ads.

Oh, by the way: Facebook isn’t doing too good in terms of targeting either. The post on pluggd.in which talks about Indian matrimonial websites stooping too low also notices this.

After writing a previous blog post on naming asklaila.com, I was thinking more and more about how do companies name their products. And does this name have anything to do with the success of the product? If the answer is ‘yes’, I fail to understand how in the world has Hero Honda succeeded in becoming the numero uno in motorbikes five years in a row!

According to me, Hero Honda has come up with the stupidest names ever for bikes. Now, what kind of a loser names his bike Achiever? No seriously! Why would anyone in the world want to buy a bike which is named Achiever? Ditto for Glamour, unless you are a yellow-pants-orange-shirts wearing Govinda yourself. With Hunk, they reached a new low, which I didn’t even think was possible. Well, maybe they thought of building an hunky Indian version of the Harley Davidson, but named it so that everyone understands what the name stands for.
Ambition, in my guess would be for the 50 year old virgin who still thinks he could marry a princess, but manages only to buy an Ambition in the end. And don’t even get me started on Splendor(and the thousand versions of it: Splendor plus, super Splendor, Splendor NXG)!

Glamour might be for Hunks who have the Ambition of being Achievers of Priyanka Chopra. Speaking of bollywood and HH’s naming of bikes, I think there is a definite correlation. In my opinion, Hero Honda names most of its bikes keeping one bollywood star in mind. If Glamour=Priyanka Chopra, Hunk=Hrithik Roshan, Joy=Joy Mukherjee, Ambition=Imran Hashmi, no points for guessing what’s Karizma for. I can actually read through the mind of the person responsible for Karizma. “Hmm.. I need to name this bike in English… I think Charisma is a good word, which although I don’t understand, would look nice. Moreover it sounds like Karishma Kapoor (big grin). But people would think it’s a lengthy version of “chashma”, so let me make it more like Karishma.” Hence the name Karizma.

With Passion, they forgot that they are selling a bike and not viagra on wheels. And I can only assume that Passion Plus would be an ideal name for a stronger medication.

Maybe I was a little harsh on Hero Honda, because other companies like Bajaj, TVS, even Yamaha sometimes name their bikes idiotically. Like Dawn or Boxer etc, but come on. You have to give it to Hero Honda for the maximum number of ridiculous names.

When Hero met Honda, a cycle company met a motorbikes company, and you can only be sure that cyclists are nothing more than stupid people, hence the awesome bike names. I could go on and an, and take a dig at pleasure, sleek, street, and the endless other ludicrous names, but I should just stop and let you know that such names not only grind my gears, but make my blood boil.

p.s.: I ride an Avenger, and if you think the name is awful, you are wrong.

I always find pretty amazing how the indian press empowers women, statistically. Allow me to explain that in a little detail: Today’s headline in the TOI read: Girls outshine boys in CBSE 12th result here, and here. Ditto with Hindustan times
What a sexist way to announced that the CBSE 12th class results have been announced!
This also makes me wonder who are TOI and HT (and all other newspapers) really trying to impress? The girls who passed CBSE class 12th exams? The girls in 11th grade who want to insult their male counterparts by claiming percentage victory of their seniors? The village idiot who doesn’t send his daughter to a CBSE school (Forget the fact that he can’t/won’t read english dailies)? Okay lots of questions, which you can answer in the comments.

If you want the same fact statistically analyzed even more, I am willing to oblige. This year, 637,578 students – 264,248 female and 373,330 male – took the Class 12 board exams in the country and abroad. If I ran a daily: the headlines would be:
1) 288957 boys and 243282 girls pass this years CBSE. Boys outshine girls, yet again
2) 19% more boys pass CBSE than girls, buck up females!
3) Mass hysteria in women as CBSE 12th girls fail to pass (as much as boys)

For one more example of selective statistics for empowering women, now bring your attention to something we’re so used to seeing that we hardly notice the prejudice. Do an exercise: Grab today’s newspaper and search for any news which mentions an accident (where > 10 people died). I bet you’ll be able to find the pattern, “52 people died in a bus accident near blahblahland. 19 women, 3 children and 4 senior citizens were identified dead in this horrible accident”. Yeah right, what happened to the men, Sherlock?
The newspaper almost wants to say: “Some men also died, we’re too lazy to count. If you’ve attended kindergarten, do the math yourself. Anyway, they deserved to die. They were not cute little children or helpless women or old dying senior citizens. We won’t evoke any sympathy from the reader if I mention such trivial details.”

And this really grinds my gears.

Having a reputation a reputation helps for sure. And if the reputation is for being a nitpicker, more so! Ujjwal has sent me a couple of gems from his Shirdi’s trip which I’ll share here:

The first one is of a guy selling gay milk. As simple as that! Now I’m no Dubey that I can even try to figure out what was going through this guy’s head when he wrote that.
And forget writing it, he earns his living out of selling the homo milk, have a look:

Now this one is a little less hilarious, but definitely noteworthy. How does an merchant sell a product meant for foreigners (or pseudo foreigners) without knowing their language? At the least he’ll try to use a couple of words, which make the foreigner understand about it’s availability. Here’s what hamara hero writes:

If I were a mineral water bottle, I would do the same. i.e. Hang myself to death(see pic above, again) rather than being avelebal hear.