Stop Using Internet Explorer!

If you’re reading this with Internet Explorer, you should be ashamed of yourself. But shame is such an ugly word. Psychology has made it a taboo word as well, and since I’m ostensibly in the psychology profession, I should abstain from such ugliness. You should be chagrined, embarrassed, bashful, shy — all of the above — about using Internet Explorer. It’s a lousy browser. It will rot your mind. Here’s why:

An environment of monopoly is not good for innovation. According to the counter, as of May 2004, 95 per cent of web users employ Internet Explorer (IE) as their primary browser. The others — Mozilla, Firefox, Safari (for the Mac, and based on KDE’s Konqueror), Netscape, and Opera — are blips on the screen: the number two browser, Mozilla, has only two per cent of the market. Still, that’s more than three million users.

Of the browsers listed above, the only ones I don’t have much experience with are Netscape and Safari. But the others are outstanding. Unlike IE, which is riddled with peculiarities and bugs related to its method of rendering pages, Firefox (made by Mozilla), Opera and Konqueror render consistently and cleanly. These browsers are much more compliant with current web standards, and they offer features that IE can’t touch:

Firefox is fast, sleek, and modular. And free! If you like customizing your browsing experience, Firefox offers hundreds of skins and extensions — all manner of gear to get your experience just right. It also has tabbed browsing, integrated search, popup blocking, and various other goodies. Thunderbird, a companion email client, is also available.

Firefox makes IE seem stodgy, slow, and buggy. So does Opera. But where the Firefox design team has separated browsing from emailing, Opera has brought them together impressively. In Opera, mail is integral to the application, as are RSS newsfeeds and newsgroups. It’s great to be able to browse RSS newsfeeds by way of a panel that loads each news story in a main browser page (Firefox has an extension that will do the same thing).

The free version of Opera has a smallish banner for ads at the top. The paid version, which is about thirty bucks, removes the banner. Either way, the Opera experience is excellent.

Konqueror is part of the K Desktop Environment (KDE) for Linux, and it’s much more than a browser. It’s a file manager, an MP3 player and organizer, a file transfer agent, and a graphical secure shell (for ironclad file transfers across the web and across networks). Konqueror is amazingly diverse and capable. And, like the entire KDE suite, it’s free and Open Source. But you have to switch to Linux to get it.

Which I do recommend. Check out Xandros if you’re sick of the Windows blue screen and viruses and buggy, expensive software. These days, almost anyone can switch to Linux with minimum fuss.

But if you can’t make the leap, all is not lost. Both Firefox and Opera are available in Windows versions. Once you begin using either of these, you will realize, as with many Microsoft products, that the age of innovation for the Redmond crowd is long gone. Other, better solutions are available; and we should use them. After all, innovation and creativity are partners in the long climb toward excellence. And excellence comes most readily when you have something (or someone) to compete against. Even if you’re competing against yourself.

Microsoft is no longer competing. They don’t have to. But this doesn’t mean we should accept shoddy standards and poor products. Vote with your feet, and with your wallet.