When to upgrade your internet browser?

The short answer? now, – now’s a great time, but lets dig a bit deeper.

It’s good to have some healthy competition between companies offering similar services or products; it benefits the consumer with  options and forces companies to improve by beating competitors.

Enter, your Internet browser, you know the thing your reading this article in?

Say what now?

Browsers provide a way to look at and interact with all the information on the World Wide Web. [Video by Google].

The Browser Wars

It was brutal and prolonged, but the victor of the First browser war was Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 (IE6) which emerged victorious over Netscape in the late 1990’s, after which they had no real competition and pretty much neglected to update their currently good browser, thinking the Web had peaked.. they – and alot of others, were wrong, and the Web continued to grow and evolve into the behemoth it is today.

Over the years the Internet and in particular Web developers began suffering, implementation of fantastic new technologies, features and the introduction of Web applications, were not easily supported by IE6 – and the average user was none the wiser, they just saw, and still see today a more lacklustre version of Websites than those who use newer browsers.

Unclogging The System

After a few years of this stagnation new browsers began popping up, some of the more successful and best browsers in this age, are Firefox, Opera, Safari and more recently Google Chrome.

These browsers, are faster, handle JavaScript better, have better security, and have greater support for new technologies and features that ensure a pleasant browsing experience.

There have been newer versions of Internet explorer released over the years, 7, 8 and soon 9.

All of which have performed equally disappointingly and won’t pass a stringent standards test that rivals have embraced. Microsoft seems to assume that rules and standards are for other people.

The Evidence

In early 2010, Several Google Gmail accounts were hacked utilising a bug in Internet Explorer 6.

This event was the proverbial straw that broke the camel’s back, triggering both the German and French governments to actually inform the general public to stop using IE6 and move to a newer browser, that is not a decade old.

In 2010 a law was finally passed in Europe that forced Microsoft to display a browser selection choice window to prevent the continued monopolisation of its proprietary browser, this screen (below) lets users finally decide for themselves what browser to use.

Some major players in the industry will soon be completely dropping support for IE6 users, such as YouTube and Facebook, with more to follow.

What browser are you using?

This nifty site will tell you, look under Web Browser, if it says Internet Explorer, anything less than Internet Explorer 9, I recommend an upgrade!

Ok, Im sold – so how do I upgrade my Browser?

It’s quick, and free – but if you’re still paranoid, why not ask that nephew of yours who seems to know all about this “tech” stuff to help you out?

In the meanwhile, read a little about each of these fantastic browsers.

• About Firefox or [download]
• About Google Chrome or [download]
• About Apple’s Safari or [download]
• About Opera or [download]

Now, enjoy the Web the way It’s meant to be viewed.

Related Posts

• Is Internet Explorer a black hole?
• The browser conundrum
• 6 Great Announcements From Google

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