That’s my pet peeve. IE.

It has been too long. Microsoft’s strategy of “creative inertia” regarding IE seems to be proving himself. Even people as technologically literate as B. Hung should know better (nothing against him, though). I find this unbearable; while I have no control over what people use, IE or otherwise, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is a bad choice.

Why not?

1. Standards. IE is infamous in terms of upholding open, industry-wide standards. Microsoft, working as hard as they might be, are not doing a great enough job to implement these standards. Web-developers have had a hard time, because they have to write two versions of every page; an IE-compatible one and a standards-compliant one. This time could be well spent to improve and streamline their pages; in the meantime, this means that the websites that you use would not improve.
2. Security. It’s appalling. IE’s famed security concerns. There is so much to say that I should just summarize them in these links: Link 1, Link 2. IE’s shady history should tell you all you need to know to make you change.
3. Don’t support Microsoft’s actions. What Microsoft has done with Netscape is unforgivable. What they did with implementing ActiveX is even more so unforgivable. Don’t support their actions by using IE. Please.

Reasons why people use it:

1. Inertia. They didn’t bother to change. This applies to the 72% of online users who still stubbornly use this browser.

Your options:

(Just before you list browsers like Maxthon here, might I just say that browsers using the Trident layout engine should not be listed here. The trident engine is basically IE’s layout engine, so they basically share similar standards compatibility)

1. Mozilla Firefox — Free, open source browser. Uses a mostly-standards compliant engine (Gecko). Available for OS X, XP/Vista, and most Linux distributions.
2. Google Chrome — Free, open source browser. Uses one of the best engines out there (Webkit). Windows XP / Vista only.
3. Safari — Free, closed source browser. Uses the same layout engine as Chrome. Default bundled browser on Mac OS X, available for Windows XP / Vista.
4. Opera — Free, closed source browser. Uses a different engine (Presto) that is more compliant than Gecko but less so than Webkit. Available for OS X, XP/Vista, and several Linux distributions.
5. Flock (Just a Firefox ripoff.) — Firefox with another skin and plugin.
6. Camino — Lightweight Gecko- based browser

So. Please. Not IE.

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