Why you should NOT use Internet Explorer

A good portion of internet users don’t know what a browser is, and of the ones that do typically don’t know the difference between browsers.  A friend may have recommended Firefox, Chrome, or Opera because it’s “better”.  You may be using Internet Explorer because it came on your Windows computer or Safari because you intelligently bought a Mac.

For the typical user, it doesn’t really matter which browsers you use.  Your experience is going to be similar on all platforms.  I would submit, however, that there are plenty of reasons to avoid using Internet Explorer.

This article may come off as one written from the perspective of an Apple fanboy (which I admit – I’m a recovering fanboy) or simply one who hates Microsoft (of which I’m only mildly guilty).

First, I’ll introduce a little browser history.  If you used the internet in the 90′s there’s a good chance you were using Netscape Navigator.  This was the best browser available, and most computer manufacturers were installing Navigator on Windows before distributing.  Microsoft did what some call ‘smart business’ and bundled IE with Windows disallowing manufacturers to include Navigator with the package.  Naturally, Netscape lost market share dramatically and went from about 80% to less than 10% in just a few years.  This move by Microsoft to get rid of the competition was the premise for their antitrust trial where it was considered monopolistic and illegal to bundle IE with Windows.  Unfortunately, the damage was already done.

So what happened to Netscape Navigator?  Netscape was bought by AOL, and Navigator’s successor, Communicator, was the base for the Mozilla Application Suite including Firefox.  AOL stopped development of Navigator in 2007 and continued on with Firefox.

The second reason to stay away from Internet Explorer is because of their rendering engine.  Safari and Chrome both use the Webkit engine, and Firefox uses Gecko.  Each of these engines render web pages similarly and they are both capable of rendering the latest in internet standards including CSS3.  The current version of Internet Explorer is behind in it’s capabilities, and IE 9 which will use Trident 5.0 will finally catch up with where Gecko and Webkit are already.