Goodbye Internet Explorer 6 – We Will NOT Miss You!

Apr, 30 2009

 

Have you ever said goodbye to someone, maybe someone you have known for a long time, yet were secretly glad to see go? Maybe it was that relative who came to visit and then stayed and stayed and stayed, or perhaps it was a coworker who always hogged the break room and finally got transferred to another department.

 

If you are still using Internet Explorer 6 as your web browser, getting rid of it will bring you the same sense of relief. It is time. You do not have to be loyal (*cough* lazy *cough*) anymore. There are better options out there. So let go, jump on over to FireFox, or at least download Internet Explorer 7, and be ready to really experience the internet, without the constant crashes and error messages.

 

But I like my web browser, you are probably telling your computer screen right now. That is, if you have not already had problems viewing this article. How does the font look, by the way? It is a known fact that fonts do not display well on IE6. Why? Because it does not anti-alias the font, which means the fonts are left with a choppy, digital look around the edge.

 

The fact is that IE6 is buggy. Ask any web design professional and they will tell you that designing for IE6 is a pain because it does not conform to new standards for web design and security. Do you want to use transparent PNG images? Well, that's too bad, because they do not show up correctly on IE6. You can tell that by the logo of this website, left transparent on purpose.

 

It also does not fully support CSS version 2, a common tool used to style websites, so web designers have to use a bunch of hacks so the website will display in IE6! A site designed for IE6 ends up looking like Frankenstein, with hacks here and patches there, just so that it will display on the user's computer. Oh, and if you put even the tiniest bit of wrong code in the website, IE6 will completely crash! The problems with IE6 are so bad that PC World rated it the eighth worst tech product of all time in the May 2006 edition, and things haven't gotten better since that publication.

 

But I'm not a web designer, you might be saying. Internet Explorer 6 works great for a browser. Oh really? Did you know that there currently are nearly 150 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6, and of those 22 of them have not yet been patched? This means that running Internet Explorer 6 on your computer is opening the door to identity thieves and hackers to see inside your computer. You are basically saying, "Come right in and have a look around!" The biggest problem with most of the security holes in IE6 is that you do not have to do anything to put your computer at risk. Simply turn on the browser, visit a website, and BAM, you have a virus, spyware, or malware on your computer!

 

Using IE6 is no different than going into battle without a bulletproof vest. If you are still using it, stop. Stop right now. Finish reading this article, download the new browser, and then uninstall IE6. FireFox is a much, much better option, and it is free! If you must have a Microsoft product, install Internet Explorer 7, which conforms better to new standards, but for you own sake, please stop using this buggy, dangerous browser!