Confessions of a Web Developer

Microsoft released Internet Explorer 8 yesterday, for Windows XP and Vista. So if you have friends, family or co-workers who are still running IE6, now's the perfect time to talk about switching or at least upgrading. (Assuming, of course, that they're not locked in by corporate policy or another piece of software.)

• IE6 is now two versions behind the current release.
• IE6 is almost 8 years old (it was released in 2001).
• IE6 is lacking in many capabilities that modern web browsers have, in web technology, in security, and in features you can use.

You can read a review of IE8 at Wired, a write-up from the IE team, or a summary of technical changes at WaSP.

Of course, Internet Explorer is far from the only option out there. There's Opera, Firefox, Chrome and a host of other alternative browsers that are worth checking out.

If you run into a system that's still running Windows 2000 or some other old version of Windows that can't run IE7 or IE8, Opera is a natural choice. It'll run on Windows 2000, and it'll even run on Windows Me and Windows 98 (though I wouldn't wish Windows Me on anyone!)

(Adapted from post at K-Squared Ramblings)