I am doing some maintenance to this site right now. (Apologies for any ‘disruptions’ to the ‘service’ – you may see odd pictures or un-aligned borders etc… I don’t have a setup for testing offline.)

Browser Usage on This Site

I just had a proper look at the statistics for this site and found that the split between internet browsers is as follows for this site:
Stats for Vikingprincess.net
Why, oh why do 33% of visitors have to use that nasty, evil browser Internet Explorer 6?

(If you are asking yourself at this point “What are these ‘browsers’ she is talking about? - Well, they are software that can do the same thing as Internet Explorer, but better. They are completely free.)

I want to be a good hostess and cater for all my visitors but it takes so much extra time to code for that browser! Some of the IE6 problems I’ve got, I simply haven’t been able to figure out a way of solving.

For example, IE6 cannot properly display .png images with a transparent background (such as the stone image in the upper left corner). If left alone, IE 6 would display that picture with a solid grey background!

In order for the picture to display properly, I have to parse and transform every single .png image on the site using a fix that I found online. However, before I can even get on to that, I have to put in an ugly hack to single out IE6 from other browsers so that the other browsers don’t waste their time using the hack (it slows down page-loading somewhat)

IE6 Bugs on This Site

If you look at the border of the wooden panel, that is supposed to have a shadow effect against the ‘linen table cloth’ beneath. I can’t find a way of fixing the .png-transparency problem with background images, so the image displays as an ugly grey band in IE6.

Also, in IE6, if you scroll down to the bottom of the page, you’ll find that the page doesn’t finish neatly at the bottom of the wooden border the way it does in all other browsers. It goes on for a bit, displaying the ugly grey shadow border and giving the whole trick of the ‘shadow’ effect away. It looks ugly and I have tried (unsuccessfully) to fix it.

I have tried to fix the window re-sizing problem in IE6 but I don’t quite understand how DOM scripting works, so it’s not exactly perfect. If you make the screen narrower in any other browser, the content narrows automatically with the window. In IE6 this doesn’t happen though, and I have to use javascript to try to cater for people who uaw IE6 and have a low screen resolution (i.e. needs a narrow window).

The bugs I mentioned above are those that I couldn’t fix, or that took ages to fix. There are about 30 bugs that I did work out how to fix, but it took considerable time and effort.

How to Upgrade - Stop using IE6!

If you are still using Internet Explorer 6, please be aware that this browser is completely sub-standard and full of bugs! You should upgrade or change to a different browser. More on this further down.

If you want to see some examples of nice and honest techies who hate IE 6, just click on this link to a Google search for the phrase “I hate Internet Explorer 6”.

Here is an acronym between IE6 and Firefox; Imagine that everybody for some reason was wearing a t-shirt from Asda/Wal-Mart that was ugly, ill-fitting impractical and full of holes (that’s IE6..!) But some clever people had figured out that there were great T-shirts available elsewhere at the same price (free, in this case).These T-shirts had no holes, were stylish and had lots of fashionable and useful details and accessories. (That’s Firefox). Get it?

The reason IE 6 has been the leading browser has nothing to do with quality of the product, or consumer choice. It is to do with one thing only; Microsoft bundles it with the Windows operative system and has done it’s darndest to make it tricky to use any other browser. People who are not technically interested will not make the effort to find out whether there is a better alternative. There is nothing complicated about switching browsers.
Browser usage on the Internet, from W3
If you don’t feel brave enough to switch to Firefox, Seamonkey, Netscape or Opera, then at least upgrade to Internet Explorer 7!

Although IE7 still isn’t on par with Firefox in terms of quality and functionality it is a big step up from IE6. It uses tabbed browsing which will significantly improves the browsing experience. Quite a few of the bugs (but not all) from version 6 are fixed.

If you have an hour or so to spare, you really should upgrade to Firefox and look at customizing it to your taste. I promise you it’s worth it. It is 50 times nicer to browse the internet in Firefox compared with Internet Explorer 6. It is much more efficient as well. There is an extension to facilitate everything you ever dreamed of doing online, and much more.

Examples of Add-ons for Firefox

Check out my screenshot below which shows that you can organize your bookmarks really conveniently. (My bookmark collection has grown huge since I started it about 2001 – I always backed it up regularly… )

The Web Search Pro toolbar lets you highlight any word on a web page and execute an immediate search for it in any of over a thousand search engines. Saves enormous amounts of time, and unlike most other toolbars it does not spy on your internet usage, or store anything that you do. Thanks ‘Captain Caveman!’

There is no comparison; Firefox is completely superior in every way…

Temporary Inbox (partly visible on my screenshot) lets you use a temporary, instantly generated mailbox that can be used when you want to register for a site and need to submit a valid email address.

The temporary inbox is up and running for a few hours and can be accessed with a single click on a toolbar button. Delivery there is always faster than delivery to my desktop email account, so no waiting for the email to arrive. Also there is no pesky registration or login required for Temporary Inbox.

After a few hours up, the temporary account gets ‘killed’ and any emails sent there do not get delivered. This means that you never have to see any of the promotions, updates or spam email that would otherwise pester you following most registrations. Next time you need to register, you simply click the button and get a new temporary account. Click the logo to get Firefox!

Firefox can be run using less memory than Internet Explorer, so a poor system spec is not a good reason to stick with Internet Explorer either. In addition, Firefox is open-source software.

Nobody gains financially from your usage of it. It is free and will always remain so. Thousands of volounteers all over the world are working on improving it, or develop free extensions that will make your web browsing nicer.

Why support the Microsoft’s undeserved and unfair monopoly in the browser market when there is a much better alternative available that takes five minutes to install as a basic setup? If for some strange reason you do not want Firefox, then please consider one of the other alternatives; Seamokey, Opera, Netscape or Internet Explorer 7..

If you are a Mac user you already know about Safari. I have never used it, (and have not been able to test the site in Safari so apologies for any bugs… ) however I hear it is a great browser.

Go on, what are you waiting for? You know me as an honest person and I am telling you; Ditch Internet Explorer 6 NOW!

No hard feelings if you can’t/won’t do it though - after all, I’ll hardly change the world with one blog post. Millions will still be using it at the end of the year, no doubt. However I wanted to do my part in spreading the good news about alternatives to the useless Internet Explorer 6…

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