The German government warned web users to find an different browser to Internet Explorer to protect security last week. This is something that should have been issued over 10 years ago when these types of things first start to escalate. But it isn’t till now and some recent attacks, that Germany thinks it’s a serious problem. Read all about the current security hole at BBC News.
The main problems that IE has had compared to other browsers over the years, is that it is a part of the Microsoft operating system. By having a higher integration with the underlying OS it has the potential to access much more critical processes for a computer system. The plus side of this is that it loads fast (because it’s already loaded with your computer) and it can do things on your system that other browsers can’t. The down side is, if a hacker finds a way to comprimise a users computer through it, they can do much more damage. Alternative browsers to IE don’t have the same privileges, they must run in the OS as citizen applications where every move the application makes is governed by the OS which protects other applications and your computer from serious harm.
If you are still using IE you don’t know what your missing:
Firefox - This has been a favorite for alternative web browsers since 2003. It has thousands of plugins so you can customize it to do anything you want. It can be a bit slow at times when you have a bunch of plugins installed and 20 tabs open but it’s still a great browser. Pretty much everyone at Sol uses Firefox as their numero uno web browser.
Chrome - This is Google’s take on a web browser. It is incredibly fast. You should try it just to see how fast it is, it’s kind of amazing. It has a very simple interface, just what you need, like most of Googles apps. It has neat architecture, It actually runs each tab as it’s own program so if one tab fails the others stay alive. Before recently Chrome was still trying to get up to speed on trying to display all web pages but I think they are pretty much there.
Opera - Opera has been an underdog alternative browser since practically the beginning of mainstream internet usage. I think it’s a beautiful browser and works quite nicely. I use it for occationally for blog browsing because things look so nice in it and it’s easy to use. This is the browser I would recommend to my mother.
Safari - Apples new version works on PC as well now. It’s pretty neat, I use it all the time on my Ipod Touch.
Here at Sol Design we have to use IE 6, 7, 8, & 9 everyday and will continue too because we know so many people in the world do. Though we hate it, it risks the security on our development machines and it takes the fun out of web development (keeping up with web standards has been another huge fault for IE). It wasn’t always like this, IE was my love in 1996 when it was the first to handle CSS and did a better job with Javscript than Netscape. If the world bands together to leave IE maybe it will inspire Microsoft will start over from scratch and build a new web browser that we all can appreciate again.
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