Did you know that Internet Explorer (IE) is officially dead? This may come as news to many people in companies that have yet to upgrade to Windows 10 – and there are still many around.
In their aptly titled article “The perils of using Internet Explorer as your default browser”, Microsoft state:
“Internet Explorer is a compatibility solution. We're not supporting new web standards for it and, while many sites work fine, developers by and large just aren't testing for Internet Explorer these days. They're testing on modern browsers. So, if we continued our previous approach, you would end up in a scenario where, by optimizing for the things you have, you end up not being able to use new apps as they come out. As new apps are coming out with greater frequency, what we want to help you do is avoid having to miss out on a progressively larger portion of the web!”
So in short, if you have old software that needs an old browser then IE is just fine. But don't use it for modern websites an apps!
Microsoft Edge has replaced IE
Microsoft introduced its replacement browser, Edge, in 2015, and yet IE is still more widely used to access the web. IE is no longer supported by Microsoft, and as a result has lost a lot of ground against the many alternative browsers on offer.
The big challenge is that Microsoft Edge doesn't support legacy technologies, and so users still need IE to view older web content. Meanwhile, other browsers manage to deliver a much better overall experience.
Default to a modern browser
TechRadar have compiled a list of browsers - comparing speed, functionality and security. It concluded that for Mac and Windows 10 the best browser today is Firefox. New enhancements mean that it's fast, light on your system and has strong privacy tools. Google Chrome took second place, with Opera in third. Opera makes up just 1% of the browser market.
Edge and IE took up fourth and fifth positions respectively, with the acknowledgement that IE 11 is a significant improvement on its predecessors.
Check your default browser today
As you can imagine, there are many browser options. It's important to make sure you're browsing safely, so accSYS has created browse-better.com to give you easy access to the latest versions of Chrome, Firefox, Edge and Safari to ensure that your device is up to date and well protected.
Note that IE is not included – if you haven't already, stop using it today!