Stop Forcing Me To Use IE
I gave up using Internet Explorer some time ago. My decision to do so was based on several factors. First, it is the browser most targetted by malicious software developers. The best virus protection I can think of is to avoid using the browser that most virus software targets. Another reason has to do with aesthetics. When it comes to displaying web pages, IE is the worst of the worst. There are standards for web design and Internet Explorer does not properly follow them. Because of this, professional web designers must take special care when designing a web page, taking some steps that would not be neccesary if IE were standards compliant, in order to make their sites viewable on as many browsers as possible. Web designers who don’t know of the problem can easily make pages that don’t display properly in IE when they follow the standards. Yet another reason is that Microsoft announced some time ago that there would not be a new release of Internet Explorer until the next version of Windows is released. There have been security updates, but no new features an no attempts to fix the problem with standards compliance.
Instead of IE, I use Firefox, which is a fantastic alternative. It is derived from Mozilla, which was derived from Netscape. Another alternative preferred by some people is Opera, which I used to use before FireFox. Interestingly enough, some of the features of Firefox and Opera can be found in the beta version of IE 7. Looks like they are doing something right. The main reason I prefer Firefox is that it is much less likely than IE to pull a virus on my system, but it also is 100% compliant with the latest web design standards. Even web sites that aren’t designed to the latest standards, but to the quirkiness of IE, will often display properly. Sites that can’t be viewed at all are those which use Microsoft-specific features, such as ActiveX.
It is unfortunate that the majority of web surfers either don’t care about or just aren’t aware of IEs problems or the superiority of the alternatives. Some web sites take this as an excuse to target IE exclusively. My wife and her brother sometimes surf on my computer. Nearly all major Korean web sites, either by choice or something else, use features that only IE understands. I hate it because that puts my computer at risk (I need to buy them both computers of their own).
My bank, Korea Exchange Bank, has a great online banking service. I also use their online service to check my credit card history and view my card statements. Some time before I started using KEB, they had a severe problem: several online banking accounts were hacked. The cause was a malicious program that had been installed on users’ computers. The program could read all key presses typed when the user ran Internet Explorer. It specifically looked for keypresses made at the KEB online banking login page. This allowed the developers of the program to detect login IDs and passwords. KEBs solution was to make use of several different Korean ActiveX controls which provide different security features. So to use the KEB site, I am forced to use IE. While on their site, there are 3 or 4 ActiveX controls running at any given time.
Today, a good spyware program I use (XoftSpy) found a trojan in my Internet Explorer cache. Since I don’t currently have any antivirus software installed, I decided to get something quick. I’ve heard great things about Mcafee‘s VirusScan these days, and it’s available for direct purchase and digital download, so I decided to get it. I was happily browsing their site in Firefox, but the order page required me to use IE. I was a little taken aback by this. An antivirus site should know better. I opened IE anyway, navigated to the order page, and the site required me to install two ActiveX components – a Mcafee downloader and a Mcafee installer. What crap! I bought the software anyway because of all the good things I’ve heard, but I was really close to closing the Window.
As long as IE is the dominant browser, this situation isn’t going to change. It’s bundled with Windows, the dominant OS, so the vast majority of web site visitors have IE installed even if they are browsing with a different browser. Java Applets are a great alternative to ActiveX, but unfortunately not all web surfers are savvy enough to understand what Java is or how to get the latest version. It’s really frustrating – safer, cross-browser, cross-platform solutions exist, yet many businesses settle on ActiveX and IE because it is available the majority of site visitors have it and don’t know any better. They are afraid that forcing their potential customers to install alternative technology will scare them away and lose sales. So instead, they force you to use unsafe, buggy, proprietary technology and download ActiveX controls (which likely scares some people away, anyhow, considering the big yellow warning box IE displays before downloading).
Help stop this nonsense and stop using IE. Use something like Firefox or Opera instead. Both provide a much better experience overall, but are also much safer (for now, at least).