Is you browser current?

Most of us would use our web browser at least several times a week, but is your browser the most current version and giving you the best experience possible on the Internet?

As web designers and developers there are a bunch of rules, guidelines and standards that we need to follow in order to produce websites that work in all Internet browsers, however there is one browser that is still hanging around that causes us all sorts of grief and add hours to the development of your website. This browser is Internet Exploer version 6 (IE6).

IE6 is now several years old, and when Microsoft released it they decided that they wanted to set the standards for Internet site design so did not design their browser to follow the standards set by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C). The result of this is that as designers and developers that do follow the W3C standards the websites we produce do not quite look or work as expected in IE6. We need to spend hours on a project "tweaking" your website to ensure that it does work in IE6 as there is still a reasonable percentage of IE6 users out there.

So what can you do to make our life easier and save many hours (and as a result reduce the cost of your site development)? UPGRADE! Its that simple.

According to Internet usage statistics in November 2007 33.2% of Internet users have IE6. In November 2008 this dropped to 20.0%. While thats a great reduction is the use of IE6 it still isn't enough for us to forget about IE6 when developing your site. Personally I think this needs to be below 10% before that can happen.

As a comparison FireFox is becoming a more popular browser. Not only does it follow the standards, and as a result make our life easier and your Internet experience better, it runs faster and is more secure. In November 2007 33.6% of Internet users had FireFox, and this rose to 44.2% in November 2008.

Upgrading is easy and painless. You can download updated browsers from the following links.

Firefox (PC & Mac)

Safari (PC & Mac)

Internet Explorer 7 (PC)

Opera (PC & Mac)

Happy upgrading! and remember, by upgrading you're making the Internet a much better place.