Do you use Internet Explorer 6? Please stop.
First, are you using Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser? You’ll see a logo on your browser that looks something like one of these if you are.
IE7 logo
IE6 logo
If you see the logo on the right, you are using at least IE7, which is okay — I would still encourage you to switch to Firefox, but I’m going to pick my battles here. Specifically, a battle against IE6. If you see the left-hand logo on your browser, you are using an old version of IE — version 6 or below.
Now, there are lots of great reasons to stop using this browser, amongst them poor security, lack of advanced features like spellcheck, or even a general antipathy towards Microsoft or sympathy towards the open-source software movement. But I’m going to make a personal appeal here, and ask you to do it for me.
Please pretty please
IE 6 is a very old piece of software; it has many bugs and it does not comply with the set of standards that have been established to determine the way browsers display websites. This not only makes it difficult for me to make a website appear consistent across browsers (for example, in Safari, Firefox, and IE6), it hampers use of some advanced and useful methods of styling a website. Because of this, it can really be a thorn in the side of web designers everywhere. So please, pretty please, stop using IE6.
There’s something in it for you too!
Besides all the nice features that come with upgrading your browser (to Firefox, Safari, or even IE7), there is a solid financial advantage for you, as a web designer’s client, as well. The sooner the percentage of people using IE6 drops down to around 5%, let’s say, the sooner I can stop supporting it (ie testing my clients’ websites in it). The sooner I can stop supporting it, the sooner I can stop charging clients for testing in IE6 and creating special code to make it work!
It’s painless to switch
All you have to do is download a new browser from the web (and for Windows users I really do recommend Firefox or Opera), install it on your computer, and start browsing. At some point, it will ask you “Do you want to make Firefox [or Opera] your default browser?” and when you check “Yes,” you can be done with IE forever!