For some months now, Mozilla is my primary browser, and now all the links to Internet Explorer have been remove from menus, toolbars, folders... And except for one or two brainfucked sites, I don't launch it more than once a month. This is mainly due to loosy coding, with static checking of the User-Agent (easily spoof I know), and more problematic, non compatible javascript scripts.

Next step toward the compatible way, remove the Flash plugin. My intention was to get rid of some ads, they break the usability (if you use your mouse 4-th button to go back over one of those ads, the click event never reach the browser), and they (currently) can be rejected by a standard install of Mozilla. To my pleasure, to remove this plug-in doesn't affect many sites I regularly visit. But for some of them, they are completely broken without Flash, they don't use the browser paradigm: a stack of visited web pages. Click on a link, you throw the part of the stack that is above your current stack cursor, and push the new page. Click the back button, go deep one level in the stack. Click the forward button, climb one level in the stack. Easy to remember, so natural when you use it... it's a walk with little memories: you can only remember your last trip forward.

One of the site the most broken in this regard is www.sony-europe.com. First, it uses a strictly javascript based navigation, the result? Only 6110 pages referenced in Google. sony.com? 29200. hp.com? 269000. That hurts. Secondly, some crucial things are accessible only through Flash. For instance, for many products that use Memory Stick, you've a link "Memory Stick Universe" that opens a pop-up via javascript, which doesn't remove all the toolbars because I've more that the standard, and that brings you to a magnificient page, scolding you: The Macromedia Flash plugin is not installed (HTML tags are from the very page), and with two broken images to really show you that you're not welcome. I want the "Memory Stick universe", not the "Flash Universe"! On the other hand, some other links bring to pages which don't do any plugin detection, you're only allowed to contemplate the void.

Am I going to reinstall this plugin? In the sites I visit (including sony-europe.com), what I miss is: ugly buttons, ads and marketing presentations. When I see the little square with the lizard button, I'm just relieved that there is something useless that doesn't clutter anymore my visual space.