Sometimes I wonder how many people really know how many browsers there actually are out there browsing the web. Most people know Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, and just recently Google Chrome, but there are actually many, many browsers in use on the Internet today. Check this wikipedia page out; it has a great breakdown of today’s web browsers and their differences. I’ll reiterate some stuff listed on that wiki page here: Wikipedia shows Internet Explorer (IE) as the leader of the pack with a 65% share of the total number of web users (as of August 2009). Number two being Firefox with about 25% of today’s world wide web users which is way up from when Firefox first came out. Safari and Chrome share about 5% and the final 5% goes to the other browsers you’ve probably never heard of (click here for a list). When I say 65% of today’s web users use IE that actually means some of those people are using IE version 6, some are using IE version 7, and some are using IE version 8. Same thing for Firefox.
Windows users have to put up with a lot when Microsoft releases a new version of their products, and IE is certainly no exception. Firefox and Safari users seem to consider IE the Devil’s browser. Just watch this video and you’ll see what I’m talking about. They go on and on about how you’ve made the right choice as if your browser preference is determining the fate of the free world. I know it’s just marketing, and I guess it’s a very good piece of marketing, but I still can’t help being a bit creeped out by the video. IE users are a tough bunch of people having to take all the big brother crap from Mac and Linux users. Pretty soon there will be Google OS users to add to the pot.
I myself actually use three browsers. IE for some business stuff, Firefox for some other business stuff, and Chrome for managing my personal email that’s on gmail. I usually use Chrome for doing anything with Google Docs because I’m guessing their stuff would run faster in their browser (and look the best as well) but that is just a guess. Sometimes when I want to be logged into the same system as two different accounts I just log in on IE for one user account and Firefox for the other. My opinion is that every browser has some good points and some bad. IE still has a lot of compliance issues when it comes to the standards that web programming languages are based on. Firefox has a lot of weird little bugs (I need to provide some proof of this but I can’t remember… what I’ll start doing is from now on, everytime I see one of these things, I’ll jot it down and add it either to this post or as a comment). Chrome can do some really crazy formatting problems but this could be due to IE and Firefox being very lax in their W3c standards compliance. W3C is the committee that makes all the decisions about the formatting standards used on the web today. You can read more about them here.
But I digress, my point here is to convince any users out there trying to stick with an older version of some browser albeit IE, Firefox, Cello, Opera, etc. that you really need to upgrade. If you are currently trying to stick with IE7 because you think IE8 isn’t stable enough please upgrade. IE7 has very buggy CSS support. If you think IE6 has what you need so why bother then please note that IE6 does not have PNG support and is very unsecure.
The basic reasons you should upgrade your browser are support for newer web technologies, security, and you not upgrading is costing you money because web designers like me have to charge more for what we do because we have to spend more time writing code for your old antiquated browser when we could do the same thing twice as fast creating code with newer technologies. Newer web technologies like support newer versions of Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) which allow web developers to make websites that can be changed quickly. A website created with CSS will can be redesigned in a matter of hours, not days. Security is obvious; you remember the phishing thing that IE put out? Not available until IE7. Read about the security features of IE8.
So my point is, upgrade your browser as soon as your able to do so, no matter what any IT guy you know says. Get on board as quickly as possible and get involved with the beta testing if you can. You’ll end up with a better appreciation of the web, a more secure browsing experience, and a web developer that’s eager to work for you. Of course, if you upgrade as quickly as possible, when everyone else finally upgrades because they’ll have to anyway, you’ll be a more valuable employee and that will make any trouble you have in the beginning quite worth the effort.
