Facebook not so in bed with Microsoft after all..

April 16th, 2008 by Cormac Moylan · 7 Comments

So a few months ago Microsoft invest a few dollars in Facebook.

It’s a bit of an irony then that Facebook don’t have Internet Explorer listed as a ‘cool’ browser.

The browser wars have never been tighter and I’m sure MS would prefer if one of their partners didn’t exclude them from a list which features their main rivals.

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7 responses so far ↓

1 Keith Foster // Apr 16, 2008 at 5:23 pm

That’s surprising…

Is this with IE 6/7? Is it the entire site, or just a application?
2 Cormac Moylan // Apr 16, 2008 at 5:27 pm

I have no idea how this page popped up on me. I spotted Facebook open in one of my tabs and I saw the above screen.

The strange thing is that I was using Firefox on Mac when viewing the page.

What do you get when you visit this page - http://www.facebook.com/common/browser.php - I presume they are doing some user agent detection here. When I visited the page with Safari, I received the same incompatible browser message.
3 Keith Foster // Apr 16, 2008 at 5:32 pm

This is probably the page they redirect you to in the the even that you’re not using one of the browsers that they fully support.

Still interesting that their recommended browsers has a huge IE omission.
4 Keith Foster // Apr 16, 2008 at 5:34 pm

I got this message when I logged in with IE6:

”
You’re using Internet Explorer 6 to browse Facebook right now. Facebook will work better for you if you upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 or switch to another browser.
“
5 Cormac Moylan // Apr 16, 2008 at 5:46 pm

Their graceful degradation support isn’t too flattering for MS! Upgrade to IE7 or switch to a totally different browser!
6 Enrico Foschi // Apr 18, 2008 at 7:56 pm

No-comment.

I would say that, as well as IE are still the most used browsers, their choice is of course by purpose. But I’d like to understand the reasons (cool? alternative?)
7 Gary Daly // Apr 25, 2008 at 12:53 pm

Me giggles.

It is bizarre in that they don’t support, 1, the most widely used browser and 2, the browser of one of their partners.

Perhaps, updatingthis is on someone’s “To Do” list and they just haven’t got round to it yet. Hey it happens the best of us!

Cormac Moylan

Hi, my name is Cormac and this is my blog. On the web circa July 2006.