Why you should dump IE

Why am I here?

You are here because you either looked at my problems page and are using Internet Explorer, or you clicked on a link that was inserted into my website when my webserver detected that you were using Internet Explorer or a similar browser.

Why should I change my browser?

So you've used Internet Explorer since you started using the internet. It came with your computer, it's easy to use, so why change?

Well the simplist answer is because you are not getting the quality of internet experience you should. Internet Explorer does not support a number of the features of new web standards (some pages won't work) and it lacks a number of user-interface features that will make your whole web experience more fun.

It lacks:

Pop-up blocking - all the web browsers I recommend here implement some form of pop-up blocking, and they all work so well that I had almost forgotten that pop-ups exist until I went home and used Internet Explorer on my mother's PC (note: as of Service Pack 2, the version of IE on Windows XP does have pop-up blocking - if you haven't upgraded to XP SP2, this still stands).

Tabbed browsing - all the web browsers I recommend here implement tabbed browsing. What this means is that instead of opening hundreds of windows, you can open lots of sites in one window which is tabbed (much like a preferences dialog box) and switch between them quickly. This saves desktop space, memory (in the computer) and time (as you don't waste so much looking for a particular site that you opened). In all the browsers, if you don't like it, you can turn it off.

Speed - Some of the browsers listed here are much faster than Internet Explorer (particularly if you are using a Mac).

Security - Internet Explorer has a lot of easily exploitable security flaws.

Support - Microsoft are ceasing future development of Internet Explorer on the Mac in favour of the MSN browser which currently requires you to have a subscription to MSN, and have announced that they will only release security patches (i.e. there will be no future feature upgrades) for versions of Windows older than Windows XP SP2. Anyone still using Windows 2000, Windows ME or 98 (or earlier) who doesn't want to pay large amounts of money and replace their operating system so that they can have an up-to-date web browser needs to consider the alternatives to IE.

Web standards - Internet Explorer's support for new web standards is incredibly poor, meaning that either you will drive web developers insane as they try and fudge their sites to work for you (I spent an entire morning trying to get Internet Explorer 6.0 to render the XHTML/CSS form of the simple layout on the front page (the image next to the text) on an earlier version of this web-site and had to give up and use an old fashioned table instead because of bugs in Internet Explorer) or that new pages may simply not work or look like a Picasso. Another example is that Internet Explorer has problems with transparency in PNG images.

So all in all, it's for you own benefit - the web will be easier to use and things will look prettier. And if something doesn't work with your new browser (banks tend to be a problem) then you'll still be able to fire up Internet Explorer to use it.

What are my alternatives to Internet Explorer?

Well, there are a number of free browsers available and the one you end up using is partly dependant on the type of computer you have and partly on personal preference.

Mozilla

Mozilla is the most standards-compliant browser. It's what I use for debugging this page. It also has a really good built-in mail/news client and a somewhat less good IRC chat program. It is fairly slow however, because of all these features. It is available for Windows, Macs and Linux from mozilla.org.

Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla FireFox is an improved version of the browser part of Mozilla. It's very fast and if you are on Linux or Windows, it's the one to use. It's also available for the Mac but the Mac version is very buggy. It is available from mozilla.org.

Camino

Camino is a stripped down version of the browser part of Mozilla built specially for Mac OS-X only. It is very fast. It's a Cocoa application and therefore does not suffer from many of the UI problems that plague Mozilla/Mozilla Firefox on the Mac. You can get it from mozilla.org. I use this for web-browsing every day on my iBook G3 (as the older, Jaguar version of Safari is not as good as the Panther one).

Safari

Safari is a browser written for Mac OS-X by Apple. Like Camino, it is very fast, and it is what I use for every-day browsing on my iBook G4 with Panther. It's available from Apple's Safari page.

On Macs (particularly on OS-X 10.3.x or "Panther"), Safari and Camino are equally good and the decision between the two is pretty much up to personal preference. On Windows or Linux (or any of the other myriad of platforms that are supported including the *BSDs, BeOS and Solaris), the best web browser is Mozilla FireFox simply for its speed. If you fancy a new mail client as well (Outlook Express suffers from the same faults as Internet Explorer), you might want to get the full blown Mozilla instead.

Where can I find more information?

The Browse Happy project has more information about switching away from IE, including "switcher" stories, and the description of at least one non-free alternative to IE called "Opera" (which is still much cheaper than upgrading to XP).