Firefox Users: IE For Bills, Firefox For Everything Else

Primarily, I use Firefox as my browser of choice, but as everyone knows the use of Internet Explorer is sometimes inevitable. What I [personally] have found is the most unfriendly sites to non-IE browsers (outside of Windows Update) are online bill payment sites. In fact, when I ran Linux exclusively a while back, I had to pay some of my bills at work because they simply would not work in Firefox/Konquerer/anything not IE.

The way I have combated this problem is by simply giving in and using IE, as I really don’t have any other choice. I have my bookmarks in Firefox set so that when I access them, IE View automatically opens the site in IE. Pretty seamless as I haven’t really had any issues since I started doing this several months back.

Hopefully, corporate web developers will start considering other browsers when developing for public use… and they will have to with the popularity of Mac and Linux growing.

Free eBook!

Like what you read?

If so, please join over 28,000 people who receive our exclusive weekly newsletter and computer tips, and get FREE COPIES of 5 eBooks we created, as our gift to you for subscribing. Just enter your name and email below:

Post A Comment Using Facebook

  • John Mihaljevic

    IE Tab certainly is a very useful Firefox add-on. I an curious as to how to set FF bookmarks to automatically open in IE

  • John P. Mackay

    I did download the IE Tab from Mozilla (Firefox) and install them. After the browser restart and I don’t see any IE Tab in top taskbar. I don’t know what I have done with this?? All I did is to install them and the browser ask me to restart then I click ” restart ” after that the browser is on again but no IE Tab.

    Hope that you can help me to get the IE Tab working in Firefox browser?

    Thank you,

    John P. Mackay
    Belleville, ON Canada eh?

    • Jason Faulkner

      My mistake, I use IE View (not IE Tab). I have updated the tip to reflect that.
      IE View simply opens specific URL’s you access in Firefox in IE automatically… in my case the bill sites.

  • http://www.geezergeek.net Floyd Bufkin

    I get around this by using my online banking site, which works fine in Linux and Firefox, to pay all of my bills.

  • Alan David

    I’ve never had that problem with any of my bill payment services – and I even use MSN Money’s BillPay service (with FireFox).

    • cc

      i just drop my bill in mail, never have a problem, find it takes longer to boot up, log in etc then it does to write a check.

  • Vic

    I just use Firefox’s IE Tab whenever I get on a Firefox unfriendly website such as edmunds.com or some websites requiring forms to be filled.

  • Jason Faulkner

    In general, the biggest sites I have problems with are my utilities (water + electric). Their online payment apparently uses some Javascripting which isn’t FF friendly.

    I just tried to pay last week with FF and had no luck. Then used IE with no problem.

    Oh well.

  • capricornus

    It’s the same everywhere, also in Belgium and the Netherlands. FF users should write angry mails to their banks and their webmasters, demanding clean html and javascripts, threatening them to close the account.

  • http://Onlinebank Sugarloafvue

    I use my banking organization’s website to pay very nearly all my bills online. As of the last Firefox upgrade, I could access the site and view balances, make transfers between accounts, etc., but could not access the Bill Payment page.

    The issue for me was corrected by going to Firefox’s Tools / Options / Privacy tabs at the top of the page and marking the checkbox to Accept Third Party Cookies. I already have Firefox set to delete cookies when I exit the browser.

What’s Your Preference?

Daily Alerts

Each day we send out a quick email to thousands of PCMECH readers to notify them of new posts. This email is just a short, plain email with titles and links to our latest posts. You can unsubscribe from this service at any time.

You can subscribe to it by leaving your email address in the following field and confirming your subscription when you get an email asking you to do so.

Enter your email address for
Daily Updates:

Weekly Newsletter

Running for over 6 years, the PCMECH weekly newsletter helps you keep tabs on the world of tech. Each issue includes news bits, an article, an exclusive rant as well as a download of the week. This newsletter is subscribed to by over 28,000 readers (many who also subscribe to the other option) - come join the community!

To subscribe to this weekly newsletter simply add your email address to the following field and then follow the confirmation prompts. You will be able to unsubscribe at any time.

Enter your email address for
Free Weekly Newsletter: