Stop Using Internet Explorer!

Last Updated: 30-April-2005

You should stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer for surfing the web. This is because:

1. It is insecure. Many exploits were discovered in it so far, and more are constantly discovered.
2. It lags behind other browsers in standards-compliance and so prevents web designers from using some very nice tricks in their pages. Some of this is caused by the many bugs it has.
3. It does not have many of the usability features that more modern browsers like Mozilla, Opera, or Konqueror have. Use a different browser for a while and you wouldn't want to switch back.
4. You'll need to upgrade the OS, to update it, as Microsoft announced that it won't be updated separately anymore.

I hereby testify that my pages will remain fully clean and standards compliant, but not necessarily viewable correctly with Explorer. This is in fact, different than writing web-sites that function perfectly in MSIE, but not in other browsers. All of this is because:

1. MSIE 5.5 and above are specific to a certain operating system and architecture. Mozilla and similar browsers are truly cross-platform. - as such MSIE may not be available on the development platform of the web designer. I design all my sites on Linux and have tested them on MSIE by using the Windows 98' laptop. Now, I'm not going to bother.
2. MSIE is not open source. Mozilla is - I cannot fix the bugs there even if I wanted to. If bugs exist in an open source project I can either fix them myself, hire someone else to do it, or blame myself for not doing either. With MSIE, I have every right to blame Microsoft for their incompetence. And I can have them eat their own arrogance.
3. Users can always switch to Mozilla or whatever - I can always tell them to do so. On the other hand, I cannot switch to Internet Explorer if I'd like to use Linux (which I do).
4. MSIE is not standards compliant while other browsers are - in fact, a prominent Microsoft engineer said standards-compliance is not a high priority for the MSIE team. Since I design according to web standards, I don't want the new Netscape Navigator 4 to be in my way.
5. MSIE is not going to be maintained independently - the only prospect of getting a browser upgrade for MSIE is to buy a new OS. Buy a new OS just to get a new version of the browser? That's the joke of the month. Other browsers come with periodic upgrades with many improvements - all for free.

So expect to see more and more non-MSIE-compatible embellishments on my sites, or otherwise pages that were not tested there. Please use a different browser to browse my sites, trust me - you'll like it. Theoretically, these pages should have looked OK, but if they don't - blame Microsoft not me.

Links

Other Anti-MSIE Resources

• ongoing: The Door is Ajar - an article predicting MSIE's death.
• Joel on Software's Diary Entry - an entry where Joel Spolsky explains why he switched to Mozilla Firefox, and what he thinks lies ahead.
• Browser Wars II - the Saga Continues - a quite-literary analysis of the current situation in the browser arena.
• Microsoft Advises to Type in URLs rather than to Click - a Slashdot thread about some insane suggestions from Microsoft for MSIE users to avoid the present security bugs in the product.
• Rick Moen's Opinion on MSIE - A relatively old, but still quite pertinent opinion on MSIE's inadequacy.
• Mozilla Feeds on Rival's Woes - a Wired article reporting an increase in Mozilla downloads after the US-Cert (Computer Emergency Readiness Team) published a warning regarding Internet Explorer's vulnerability to attacks.
• Browse Happy - an advocacy site for alternative browsers other than Microsoft Internet Explorer.
• How Microsoft Lost the API War - a very thought-provoking and insightful article by Joel Spolsky, that among else explains why Microsoft has no interest to further improve Internet Explorer.
• Spread Firefox - a campaign aimed at letting people know of the Firefox browser, a high-quality, user-friendly, cross-platform and open-source browser.
• News.com: Internet Explorer - headed for extinction?
• LAMP Lecture: Designing for Comptability - a portion of my lecture that explains why web-designers should design for web compatbility.
• StopIE - A site calling to "Help stop Internet Explorer, the world's most popular and worst Internet browser."
• IE 7.0 Technical Changes Leave Web Developers, Users in the Lurch
• Internet Explorer is Dangerous

Alternative Browsers

• Mozilla - a full-featured, standards-compliant, cross-platform, extensible, open-source browser. (plus an attractive platform for developing applications)
• Mozilla Firefox - a cross-platform Mozilla-based browser intended to be more lightweight and user-friendly than Mozilla core.
• Konqueror - an open-source web-browser for the UNIXes' KDE environment. Very convenient and integrated well into KDE.
• Safari - a browser based on Konqueror's KHTML engine for Mac OS X.
• Opera - a very configurable and fast cross-platform browser.