Top 5 Reasons Not To Use Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer has for a long time been known for its constant flaws and lack of support. In some cases Microsoft released patches to close security holes 200 days after initial reports.

Nevertheless Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser with 78% of the market share. Why? Because it comes as standard with Windows and most users don’t know or can’t be bothered to find a better option.

Why Not To Use Internet Explorer?

Security – It’s commonly used as THE gateway for most malicious software. IE makes it relatively easy to install spyware and adware through ActiveX and Active Scripting; consequently hackers focus their attention on Internet Explorer. Security improvements in Windows XP SP2 claimed to have closed these holes, but newer attacks against IE allow the installation of malware on SP2.

Stability – Internet Explorer crashes very easily. Due to its many deficiencies it doesn’t take much for IE to crumple. In effect it can be done with on line of code (61 bytes):

<script>for(x in document.write){document.write(x);}</script>

It’s rather worrying considering that this script could be embedded into any webpage.

Web standards – This is almost certainly the main reason why IE is hated in the web development community. Since the late 1990’s Microsoft is oddly focused on the addition of non-standard features, there are so many web standard features that do not work on IE but works on all other browsers. This not only increases development costs and time but also stops web developers from being creative.

To name a few incompatibilities: IE doesn’t support native XHTML; misinterprets the W3C “Box Model”; and lacks support for PNG alpha channel.

Community and extensions – Unlike other browsers you can’t add extra features. Any other major browser has tons of extensions available covering anything that you can think of.

Better options – At present mozilla is the best browser in the market. It’s free, it follows all the standards correctly. It has loads of extensions which can turn your browser into an all-in-one application. If you still using Internet Explorer, try something new today! Alternatively there are other browsers worth looking at like Opera and Flock.

Tino
SEO Programmer