Last month a partnership was announced between Firefox and eBay, this month eBay are promoting the Firefox browser on their home page. Not only that but they have set up a page extolling some advantages of using Firefox. Whilst I’m not sure that the quaint cross stitch style graphic is really in keeping with leading edge technology, this is a new proposition. Previously I don’t recall eBay promoting any one browser in favour of another.
In November 2006 eBay announced the site would no longer support old versions or rare browsers so that new technology could be taken advantage of. At the time the browsers supported in future were announced as Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Safari. It’ll be interesting to see if eBay take other steps to promote Firefox as the browser of choice, especially as the eBay toolbar is only currently supported under Internet Explorer.
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They’re only promoting Firefox if you’re already using Firefox. If you’re using IE6, the message on the Home Sweet Home banner says “set eBay as your IE6 homepage”.
Do a search on ebay.co.uk using FireFox with javascript disabled (via NoScript or preferences) and the results page is too wide. Apparently some techie decided last week to change the default css settings so now, if you don’t have javascript ON then the page is impossible to view. With javascript ON a substitute css file is loaded which does work as previously. Other eBay sites are not affected.
Many users browse with javascript disabled for security reasons and the NoScript extension allows you to choose which sites are safe.
Oh interesting, with IE the link is a direct set homepage link. With Firefox it’s a link to an info page with instructions on how to set your homepage and why you should use Firefox….