Lynne Kiesling
As a follow up to my snotty remark about Windows Media Player and IE in my prior post, I found Grant McCracken singing the same tune when trying to access the Sony “Connect” music web site with Firefox.
I find this a lot with music players at AccuRadio, RadioIO, and other places. Xfm Manchester uses an integrated music player, so I can’t stream it through my music server, but at least I can play it in Firefox.
The one that really chaps my shorts is Blue Note Records, the label to which most of my favorite jazz artists are signed. When I try to log on to their radio station, here’s the error message I get:
Unknown O/S Installed. You need Windows 95 or greater
You need Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0 or greater Upgrade here
My response to that? Bite me. I’m not listening to your artists as much as I would if you had a cross-platform radio station. Your loss, more so than mine.
It is amazing how IE-centric corporate thinking can be. At a time in my life when I thought better personal organization was the key to happiness, or at least improved productivity, I was all set to buy Franklin-Covey’s planning software that integrated with MS Outlook.
I downloaded and began installing the trial software, and dreamed of becoming highly effective. My dream was interrupted by the installer, explaining that the software needed IE to be my default browser.
Stopped me cold. I pondered for a minute, then cancelled the install.
I emailed the company to see if they were going to be upgrading the software to be more accessible, and as I recall the response was along the lines of “currently the program needs IE to be your default” and thank you for your comments.
While I haven’t completely given up the dream of a more effective me, I’m not willing to make IE my default browser to do it.