Stop Using Internet Explorer!

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, in order 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. Latest versions of MSIE 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 a different Windows computer. 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.
6. Internet Explorer does not have a public, accessible bug tracker, similar to Mozilla’s Bugzilla or what other similar browsers have. This makes bugs harder to report, reproduce, check and track and undermines the users and web developers.

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
• Scott Berkun - “Why I Switched to Firefox” - a former lead Internet Explorer developer announces that he has switched to using the Firefox browser because MSIE is no longer adequate.
• Kill Bill’s Browser - a Sarcastic piece (but one with a huge grain of truth).
• Gérard Talbot’s Bugs in MSIE 6 for Windows and Bugs in MSIE 7 for Windows - two comprehensive lists that highlight its sad state.
• Knowing when to Run - Cutting Loose from the Little Blue E - MSIE had 7 days in 2004, when it didn’t have an unpatched security bug.
• Highly Critical Hole Found in Internet Explorer - a serious security vulnerability with many exploits in the wild, that went unpatched by Microsoft for a long time.
• Just what Microsoft been Doing for IE 7? - a Slashdot.org feature discussing lack of compliance of the new version of Internet Explorer with the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) standard.
• “IE6 was Unsafe 284 Days in 2006” - a Slashdot post on a Washington Post feature about the fact that Internet Explorer had a major known vulnerability during 284 days in 2006.
• “Internet Explorer 7: Still a security problem, keep using Firefox” - a David A. Wheeler blog entry about the security problems still present in MSIE 7.
• open-dot-dot-dot: “Will Microsoft Ever Learn This Trick Doesn’t Work?” - about Microsoft’s MSIE 7 vulnerability report.
• “Firefox Security Head Says Microsoft Obscures OS Holes” (from Slashdot) - how many security bugs did MSIE really have?
• Users and Web Developers Vent Over IE7 - a Slashdot coverage of a ComputerWorld feature about how unhappy developers and users are from MSIE 7.
• “Gates Expresses Surprise Over IE8 Secrecy” - a feature about the lack of transperency in the developement of MSIE 8.
• Microsoft to Force IE7 Update on on February 12th
• Microsoft Confirms IE8 Has 3 Render Modes - it won’t have standards compliance mode unless developers opt-in by adding explicit markup for that in their web pages.
• IE8 May Not Pass the Acid2 Test After All - more about this problem.
• “IE is Wasting My Time” - a blog post by Ido Kanner (in Hebrew) about problems he has encountered in getting his code to work on Explorer, after he got it to work in all other browsers.
• “Web Site Design Crap” - a blog post by Oded Arbel, about MSIE’s dumb behaviour with regard to CSS.
• “Time Breakdown of Modern Web Design” - an insightful pie-chart.
• “Trash all IE Hacks” - a web page calling web developers not to work hard to adapt their browser to old versions of MSIE.
• The Broken Window Fallacy of Computing - my blog post explaining why the misbehaviour of Internet Explorer is a net loss to web-developers and all other parties involved.
• Grant McLean - “IE8 to Take us Beyond DOCTYPEs” - a blog post about the new meta tag that IE8 proposes to make it more standards-compliant.
• SEO 2.0 - “Top 7 Ways To Crash Internet Explorer” - several ways to crash it using one line of code.
• “The National Day for a Safe Internet Explorer” (in Hebrew) - a blog post by Tomer Cohen with a screenshot of MSIE overloaded with unwaranted toolbars.
• Martian Headsets (from Joel on Software) - explains the dilemma of making future versions of Internet Explorer more standards-compliant by default.
• Save the Developers - a campaign to convince users to switch away from IE 6.
  
  • Coverage in linmagazine.co.il
• “IE 6 - the Browser that Wouldn’t Die” - about terminating the support of sites for Internet Explorer 6. (linmagazine - in Hebrew).
• opendotdotdot - ActiveX: the Law in Korea? - about the costs of mandating the use of ActiveX.
• “IE 8 Consumes More RAM Than Windows XP”
• “Chrome vs. IE 8” (on Slashdot) - more on IE 8’s memory consumption.
• “Microsoft Says IE8 Phoning Home Is Pretty Innocuous” (on Slashdot) (15-September-2008)
• The “Not tested in IE” Initiative (06-October-2008)
• Microsft Security Advisory (961051) - “Vulnerability in Internet Explorer Could Allow Remote Code Execution” (12-December-2008)
  
  • Coverage in the blog of Hetz Ben-Hamo (in Hebrew) (13-December-2008).
• “BBC News - Serious Security Flaw found in IE” (16-December-2008)
  
  • Coverage in opendotdotdot - “Abandon Hope, all Ye (IE) Users” (16-December-2008).
  • Coverage in Slashdot - “Experts Say To Switch Browsers In Light of IE Vulnerability”
• “Microsoft Rushes Internet Explorer Patch” - (18-December-2008)
• “Interview with an Adware Author”
  (12-January-2009)
  • Coverage in “Schneier on Security”
  • coverage in opendotdotdot - “Why Adware Authors Love IE and Windows”
• That Norwegian Guy: “Norwegian IE6 Spring Cleaning” (19-February-2009)
  
  • Coverage on ifacethoughts - “The Best Way to Get Rid of IE6” (19-February-2009)
• ifacethoughts - “Warn Yourself If You Are Using IE6, And Upgrade” (21-February-2009)
• Hetz Ben-Hamo: “The Microsoft Spins Return” - in Hebrew. (12-March-2009)
• Ilan Shavit: “Should We Believe Microsoft?” - in Hebrew. (13-March-2009)
• Slashdot: “Site Compatibility and IE8” (14-March-2009)
• ifacethoughts: “Being Compatible With IE8’s Compatibility View” (15-March-2009)
• Tomer Cohen: “Downloading Internet Explorer 8 is Complicated and Redundant” (in Hebrew) (20-March-2009)
• ajaxian: “IE8 won’t start up” (in Hebrew) (21-March-2009)
• Things n’ Stuff “More Internet Explorer Bugs” (27-April-2009)
• Slashdot: “IE8 Update Forces IE As Default Browser” (1-May-2009)
• “IE7 Compatibility Image Wants to Install IE8” - on Ori Peleg’s Blog (17-May-2009)
• Slashdot: “Internet Explorer 6 Will Not Die” (2-June-2009)
• Slashdot.org: “Microsoft Launches New ‘Get the Facts’ Campaign [about MSIE 8]” (19-June-2009)
  
  • Coverage in Whatsup.org.il (in Hebrew) (19-June-2009)
  • Coverage in OSNews.com (18-June-2009)
• open dot dot dot: “The World Wins South Korea for Firefox” (26-June-2009)
• “Decrease in the percentage of Internet Explorer Users” - in Hebrew, on Ynet. (07-July-2009)
  
  • Coverage in Whatsup.org.il - in Hebrew. (07-July-2009).
• TechCrunch: “YouTube Will Be Next To Kiss IE6 Support Goodbye” (14-July-2009)
  
  • Coverage in OSNews.com (14-July-2009)
• “IE6 Must Die for the Web to Move On” - by Ben Parr on Mashable.com (16-July-2009)
• OSNews.com: “Microsoft Wants to Ditch IE6 - But They Can’t” (13-August-2009)
• “Korea Cottons on to the Microsoft Monoculture” - on open-dot-dot-dot. (1-October-2009)
• “Major IE 8 Flaw Makes Safe Sites Unsafe” - on Slashdot.org. (24-November-2009)
• “France Tells Its Citizens To Abandon IE, Others Disagree” - on Slashdot.org. (18-January-2010)
• “Microsoft Says Upgrade to IE8, Even Though It’s Vulnerable” - on Slashdot.org. (18-January-2010)
• “Microsoft to Ship Emergency IE Patch” - on Slashdot.org. (19-January-2010)
• “IE Flaw Gives Hackers Access To User Files” - on Slashdot.org. (4-February-2010)
• Slashdot.org: “Microsoft Says, Don’t Press the F1 Key In XP”, due to an Internet Explorer bug that causes a vulnerability. (10-March-2010)
• Slashdot.org: “IE 6 & 7 Unpatched Exploit Goes Wild” (11-March-2010)
• Slashdot.org: “Internet Explorer 9 Will Not Support Windows XP” (20-March-2010)
• “5 Most Bizarre jQuery Plugins To Convince Your Visitors To Stop Using IE6” - on the Software Cocktail site. (19-April-2010)
• Slashdot.org: “The Man At Microsoft Charged With Destroying IE6” (27-May-2010)
• The Marker: “Chrome and Firefox have a Market share of more than 25% in Israel” (27-June-2010) (in Hebrew)
• Information Week: “IBM Makes Firefox Default Browser” (2-July-2010)
• Slashdot: “IBM Makes Firefox its Corporate Browser” (2-July-2010)
• The H Open: “South Korea: Super fast, and finally free” - about the Internet in South Korea.
• Slashdot: “UK Government Rejects Calls to Upgrade From IE6” (10-July-2010)
• Slashdot: “Nasty Data-Stealing Bug Haunts Internet Explorer 8” - a cross-browser bug was quickly fixed in other browsers, but is still present in Internet Explorer 8. (04-September-2010)
• Oded Arbel: “More Internet Explorer Funny Behaviors” (6-October-2010)
• OSNews.com: “IE9 Is the IE6 of CSS3” (22-October-2010)
• Slashdot.org: “IE Flaw Exploit In Hacker Kit ‘Raises the Stakes’” - an IE exploit goes unpatched. (8-November-2010)
• Slashdot.org: “NEW IE Zero Day” - right before Christmas. (23-December-2010)

Alternative Browsers

• Mozilla Firefox - a cross-platform browser, from the Mozilla home, intended to be lightweight , user-friendly, standards-compliant, secure, extensible and customisable.
• SeaMonkey - formerly known as the Mozilla suite, SeaMonkey is an integrated Internet application suite that includes a browser, and an email application.
• Safari - a browser by Apple (with all the warnings regarding Apple based on the open-source WebKit engine that was derived from the now under-maintained KHTML engine by the KDE project. Safari itself is not open-source and only runs on Mac OS X and Windows.
• Opera - a very configurable and fast cross-platform browser. (Not open-source and binary only, though).
• Google Chromium/Chrome - an open-source browser from Google based on WebKit and many other open-source projects (which some developers complained about Google forking frequently). Has an unusual and non-standard UI, which some people love and some people hate. Also may report a lot of information about one’s browsing habits to Google by default.

Jokes

• IE6ify Bookmarklet - Break the Web - emulates IE6 on more standard-compliant browsers.
• “Kindred spirits” (on the Noise to Signal cartoon).
• “RIP NFG IE6” (on the Noise to Signal cartoon).
• CSS - any normal browser vs. Internet Explorer 6.
• The Bizarre Cathedral - issue 99.
• DO NOT SPELL GOOGLE WRONG - video on YouTube.

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