As an avid Firefox supporter I’m very pleased to see that as of May 2009 Firefox has taken the lead as most used browser.  At 47.7% Firefox is being used by almost half of all computer users.  I raise my glass in cheers!

I am equally pleased to see that users of Internet Explorer 6 has finally dropped below the 15% mark.  I stopped support for this defunct and completely insecure browser at the end of last year.  I look forward to it’s complete fade out.

Every so often I will get a comment from a client or a technical inquiry from someone who states that their site is not displaying properly.  Something may not be centered appropriately or “sitting way off to the right”.  My first question to any inquiry of this type is “What browser are you using?”  I don’t get these inquiries very often thankfully, but when I do it’s almost always a reply of “Internet Explorer 6″.

I instantly advise these people that if they must use Internet Explorer at all that they upgrade to version 7 immediately.  Here are the reasons why.

As of January 10, 2009, Secunia reports 142 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6, 22 of which are unpatched, some of which are rated moderately critical in severity.

As a result of its many problems, some security experts, including Bruce Schneier, recommend that users stop using Internet Explorer for normal browsing, and switch to a different browser instead. Several notable technology columnists have suggested the same, including the Wall Street Journal’s Walt Mossberg,  and eWeek’s Steven Vaughan-Nichols.  On July 6, 2004, US-CERT released an exploit report in which the last of seven workarounds was to use a different browser, especially when visiting untrusted sites.

In 2006, citing its lack of security, PC World named Internet Explorer 6 number 8 on their list of the “25 worst tech products of all time”.

In addition to the security issues, Internet Explorer 6 only has partial support for CSS Level 1.  It’s 2009…we’re already using CSS Level 3.  THIS is why most compliant and modern websites and blogs do not display properly in IE6.  It’s also why if you are to stubborn to stop using it that you have to pay people like me more to create alternate style sheets to “force” it work for you.

Seriously, if the security aspect alone isn’t enough to make you switch…

More browser talk coming another day.  I have lots of great things to say about Firefox 3.