Help Put Internet Explorer 6 Out Of It’s Misery. Please!
Posted June 26th, 2008
If you know any web designers, the chances are you’ve heard them moaning about Internet Explorer 6. It’s one of our favourite pastimes.
The Solution
Lets be a little backwards here and discuss the solution before the problem
Install Any Other Web Browser
That’s it. All you have to do is install ANY other web browser. They are all free and all much better than Internet Explorer 6 (find out how/why later).
You could try Opera, Apple’s Safari or even upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 from Microsoft. Which you can now do even with a ‘slightly not legal’ copy of Windows XP as Microsoft have kindly make it a priority upgrade, even for pirated copies.
Firefox
Any of those choices would be an improvement. Personally I find Firefox to be the best web browser by far. It’s fast, reliable, secure and has the ability too add loads of useful plugins.
So that’s how simple it is. If everybody took just a couple of minutes of their time to install one of these browsers instead of IE6 the internet would be a much better place.
So What’s Wrong With IE6?
Firstly, to be fair to Microsoft, IE6 is 7 years old. Technology has changed drastically in the last 7 years and the web browser is no different. I don’t have a computer from 7 years ago, or a TV or DVD player, so expecting a 7 year old web browser to cut it in today’s world is crazy.
Bugs, bugs bugs…
That’s not to say IE6 was that great even at the time. There are countless bugs and errors in the final release which have never been fixed by Microsoft. We sometimes spend hours hunting down and fixing bugs in Internet Explorer 6. As a company we could reduce our project costs by at least half a day if we didn’t have to support it. Saving our blood pressure and our clients money!
Web Standards
Web Standards are vitally important to all (good) web designers and websites but IE6 implements them very badly. I don’t expect most average users to be particularly bothered how websites are built but if you knew that just ditching IE6 would improve your own experience as well as ours what have you got to loose?
Please Upgrade
You will benefit too, as well as a whole host of new features like RSS feeds, tabbed bookmaking, faster speed and extra security. Almost every modern website will look a lot better too. IE6 doesn’t support transparency very well which can make sites that use it look messy, I have encountered this problem at my personal blog but decided not to support IE6.
If everybody upgrades from IE6 the internet WILL become a better place. Just think what web designers could be doing with their time instead of tracking down and fixing IE6 bugs?
