The Germans have slated it, the French have slated it, and now Microsoft themselves have slated it - So I think it really is time that you ditched Internet Explorer and got something better!
What's all this about then?
In a recent blog post, Microsoft are recomending that users not only upgrade their browser to the latest version, but should also seriously consider upgrading their entire operating system to something newer than Windows XP.
"We recommend users of IE6 on Windows XP upgrade to a new version of Internet Explorer and/or enable DEP. Users of other platforms are at reduced risk. We also recommend users of Windows XP upgrade to newer versions of Windows."
Although I am a long time Mac user, I always run a system or virtual machine with a windows installation for testing. After downloading the Windows 7 beta, and taking it for a test drive - it is by far the best version of Windows available today so I would also recommend upgrading if you can.
This recommendation direct from Microsoft could be the last push on not only getting end users to upgrade their browsers more often, but also for large IT departments to reconsider how often they update browsers within their organisations. At one time, "The Browser" would have had the same importance level as something like "MS Paint" - not much. However, with the rapidly increasing availability of very high quality web based applications and resources like Google Apps, Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia and Wolfram Alpha, it is what I would consider to be a key desktop application (Not just because I am a web developer).
Organisations will also have to give much more consideration to what their "Acceptable Internet Use Policy" might include. Should access to the likes of Facebook and Twitter be limited? Our thoughts are No - it has become an invaluable resource for us to connect with new clients (as well as sharing funny pictures of cats with our friends), and our business has benefited from it.
So what does this mean for the web industry?
For a long time now, web developers have been trying to drop support for IE6 (and to a lesser extent, IE7 and IE8) and it's lack of compatibility for web standards. We dropped support sometime last year, but our clients could request specific Internet Explorer support at extra cost - not many of them did though. This enables us to not only to keep costs down, but also increases the accessibility of your site as it requires less "hacks" to get it looking correct.
Moving forwards, if users get into the habit of upgrading their browsers every few months, this will reduce the time it takes for new standards like HTML5 to be developed and implemented and further increase the capability and accessibility of future web applications. Personally, I am looking forward to developing our new Its About Video product using the new HTML5 element, which will let you view the video content using your computers own media player (Windows Media, VLC or Quicktime) and not a Flash based player - a lot of which can suffer with performance on higher resolution videos. (Shortly after the original posting of this article on our blog, both YouTube and Vimeo have both added trail support for the new HTML5 video element!)
By Paul Court
It's About Websites Ltd
www.itsaboutwebsites.com
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