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You might not know it, but...

programmers all over the world absolutely hate Internet Explorer.

Why? Because it causes just no end of grief, for programmers and for the users the programmers ultimately work for.

It's deathly slow. It's very cranky. Of all the browsers most people use (see list below) it is the most difficult for a programmer to make his web pages and internet applications work with. You have no idea how much code a programmer ends up adding to a web page just to make it "behave" correctly under IE. Even this page has special code added to it to make things display correctly in IE.

The irony, too, with IE is that every single new version is worse than the one before. They constantly fail to live up the hype and claims. Every time Microsoft says "now fully compatible," programmers cringe, because we know what that means, by now. Something about the little boy who cried wolf happening here. A web page ends up with special code for IE version 7, version 8, version 9, version 10 and even (soon now) version 11. (We're already finding out about certain things 11 still won't do.

Until IE10, there was at least an easy way for the programmer to detect when his web page was being viewed in Internet Explorer, but now Microsoft has taken that away. There is actually now no 100% perfect method for the programmer to know when IE is being used -- and so have the page provide the "fixes" specially required by IE, only 99% certain. So, effectively, Microsoft has made it impossible for web designers to make their pages perfect under IE. Woof... We really wish Bill was still running Microsoft. It's all gone to heck since he left.

Don't take our word for it! Take a look here:

Want to hear a REALLY weird item? Web browser standards now include support for playing sounds. Well, the computer industry being what it is, there are several "standard" formats for sounds. One of them, the .wav format, was invented by Microsoft. All browsers except Internet Explorer support playing .wav sound files, which leaves us with no single sound format that all browsers will play. This means that to play sounds on a web page the web page designer has to include at least two different versions of each sound file, an .mp3 and a .wav, for instance. If Microsoft can't even support its own standards, what chance of its ever supporting industry standards?

So what's all this come down to? We strongly recommend that you use a different browser. Any of these are great. (They are listed by current popularity, as of the time of this writing.) They all have their strengths and weaknesses. Our own preference is shown (it's the fastest of them all, and starts up the quickest, as well). None of them are perfect, and your own preferences may vary.

Google Chrome ← (Our recommendation)
FireFox
Apple Safari
Opera
Maxthon
There are many others, as well

Please! Stop using Microsoft Internet Explorer. It is a waste of your own time, because of how slowly it runs, and a waste of valuable programmer hours all over the world. Latest estimates show that its market share is down to less than 13% anyway. (Check that here.) Raise your voice! Boycott IE as a criminal waste of programming resources, and, of course, you own time.

By the way: in spite of all this, Computer Maestros is (sigh) still dedicated to making sure its products work with Internet Explorer (as much as possible, that is: it is still the slowest browser on the market, and that matters). We will continue to test against the many versions of IE, but will also post advisories where we really think IE just isn't appropriate. (In fact, that might be why you are reading this web page right now.)

Thanks for your time and tolerance of our soap-box moment.

last update: 19 Jul 2013