Browser Rant
byInternet Explorer 6 is bad. It is not good. No, not at all. If you use Windows, please upgrade to the more secure ‘won’t melt your machine down’ Internet Explorer 7 (if you must use IE). Not only is it more secure, it actually displays pages the way they’re supposed to be seen. How do I know this? Well whenever I make changes to my company’s website I have to do some QA since 61% of our customers use IE6. I was just checking my stats for Miss604.com and noticed 21% of my visitors also use IE6 so I decided to use the best tool around to see what those visitors are viewing.
John sent me a link to the Net Renderer some time ago and it’s been an invaluable asset to my website coding and css tinkering ever since. What is allows you to do is view your website as it is seen by various versions of Internet Explorer browsers, from 5.5 up to 7 and ‘mixed’.
Unfortunately, my sidebar disappears under the main content column when viewed in IE6 so to those readers using that browser, I’m sorry, but also… please please upgrade your browser. Not just for the sake of viewing my site but you’re opening yourself up to a lot of vulnerabilities on the interweb by using an outdated browser i.e. bugs, viruses and unpretty colours. It’s so bad in fact that it’s been ranked one of the “25 Worst Tech Products of All Time” by PC World. “If bugs in IE were nickels, Microsoft would be rich as all heck.” [ComputerGripes]
What would I recommend then? Easy, Firefox. There are a few more options as well if you want to get fancy, such as Opera, Safari (for Apple users) and Flock. All in all, Firefox works well for me and all the add-ons and toolbars just make life a whole lot easier. Once you make the switch you’ll also see how ridiculously good looking sites on the weebernet will be. In the meantime, I’ll try my best to make this site work well with all browsers, especially for 21% of my valued readers. I’m just looking out for ya, that’s all.
6 Comments — Comments Are Closed
Hi Rebecca,
I’m back from Sin City (aka Montreal) and I think I posted a comment on a few September events (including a shameless plug to my birthday :D). I wanted to say that I am one of your loyal readers who reads your blog on Firefox 😀
And I also create my blog on Firefox. My brother got me hooked up on it. I wonder if at some point you could send me an image of how my website looks on Safari. I don’t do Mac and I have always been curious.
I removed Opera from my home computer because it really pulled a lot of resources and it was SLOW, but as far as browsers go, I really liked Opera. But I am now a loyal Firefox-er.
Good to hear that you and Jen did well in the Surrey Amazing Hunt. I am always looking forward to hearing good stories 🙂
IE7 sucks, big time. I’ve switched to Firefox and have been a happy, happy user ever since. In fact, I have gotten people at work to switch at work, because IE7 is so brutal to use…even though most of our systems are built around it.
For those that are curious and want it, Safari 3 has been available for a few months now on the PC albeit a public beta version. http://www.apple.com/safari/
I hate IE….what a horrible horrible browser. I switched to Firefox few years ago and never looked back.
Yeah I’m sorry I do not quite share the same hate as you guys towards IE7…I mean Firefox is nice and the movement around it is very exciting but IE7 ain’t that bad methinks and is still by far the de facto standard across the web…although it’s true I must say Microsoft could have done a much better job interface-wise; specially with the menu bar.
Check out Michael Heilemann’s opinion about IE7. He’s the main guy behind the current default WordPress theme and continuing development on the K2 theme.