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I have seen many people asking 'Why should I switch, when IE does everything i need?'
Its a common question, and with many answers.
1. The security of Internet Explorer is, and always has been, pitiful.
If you do internet shopping on Amazon, you're giving them your credit card details. It may be over SSL, but that doesnt mean its secure. Say you're browsing the internet at the same time. There's a still unpatched vulnerability in IE that allows another site to read the cookies of another. In other words, another site could get your credit card details, passwords, everything. This vulnerability doesnt exist in Opera, or Firefox, or any other browser, for that matter.
2. It still doesnt support internationally recognised standards.
Web developers hated IE5. Web developers hated IE6 more. And IE7, in some ways, is worse. There still seems to be no support for <td height="">, a rather basic and fundamental HTML principle. It doesnt support many parts of XHTML, many parts of CSS, it has only just started supporting PNG-alpha, it doesnt support SVG... I could go on, but i cant be bothered.
What difference does this make to you, the user? It means websites dont look right. It means you get random downloads appearing when there should be an image.
Why would Microsoft make their browser non-standards compliant, you ask. The answer is simple: money. If they make their browser non-standard compliant, it will force web developers to make sites IE-only because in many cases it either works on IE or on everything else. This will make people use IE, and therefore they gain money. Its a strategy, however, that isnt working - many developers nowadays make the valid XHTML, and put a note about how it wont work on IE. Microsoft have said in their IE Blog that they will not bother making IE pass the Acid2 test - the test to see whether a browser does its job properly. Opera passes, Safari passes, Firefox nearly passes, IE fails miserably.
3. Its slow.
IE7 is a lot better than IE6 in this respect, but its still slow. Firefox and Opera are a lot faster than IE. Admittedly, Firefox's startup time isnt the best, although the page loading time is significantly better when browsing normally.
4. It is severely feature-lacking.
Although this was more of a problem in IE6, it still prevails in IE7. Firefox and Opera have significantly more features out-of-the-box than Internet Explorer, Opera especially. Firefox's system of extensions and the vast number of little add-ons and widgets for Opera mean they can be even more feature-rich. Sure, IE has little add-ons... but they are hard to develop, do not have the freedom of firefox extensions or Opera widgets, and at the moment, there are hardly any good ones.
The other problem with these extensions is that they can really open up the browser to attack - badly written extensions can make security holes and such. Opera's UserJS, UserCSS and Widgets dont. Firefox's extensions can, although most will not, as the browser has a firm security foundation. IE's extensions can open up holes in the weak IE security, and these can be exploited by attacks with relative ease.
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Internet Explorer is a bad browser, and always has been a bad browser. People only used it over netscape in the First Browser Wars because MS decided they'd ship it by default with Windows. Think about it this way: the only reason you dont switch from IE is pure laziness. Sure, it may kind of do the job, in a slow, insecure way, but why should you have to put up with that? You dont switch because you cant be bothered.
So what browser should I switch to?
There are many. Some are good, some are bad, some are just extensions to Internet Explorer, meaning they have all the same problems with security, and possibly more. Opera and Firefox are the two favourites.
Firefox - Gaining popularity fast. It supports web standards, its faster than IE, and although doesnt have the same wealth of features out of the box as Opera, there are many extensions available for it. Its security is very good, considerably better than IE; although admittedly, no browser is perfect.
Firefox can be extended through use of the extensions system built into it, and there are many extensions available from Mozilla's site.
Opera - With excellent support for web standards, as well as a huge array of features for novice and pro, it has been proven in many tests to be, as it claims, 'The fastest browser on earth'. Its security track record is better than other any browser, version 9 having only two security vulnerabilities since its release in June this year. In that time, IE has had 7 flaws, and firefox 5.
While not largely known, Opera actually has many extensions available through custom buttons, toolbars, menus, UserJS, UserCSS and widgets. While not all in one nice place like Firefox extensions (except for widgets, they're all in one place), but with a little googling, there are many places to get some fantastic extensions, scripts and all sorts.
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So drop IE today. And never, ever go back.
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