Sorry, but this is as far as you go. I am not being cruel or stuck-up, honestly; so far, viewing this page with Internet Explorer of any version fails completely, the reason being its not supporting the application/xhtml+xml MIME type. This page is here just to make that failure more graceful to you, my visitor. About the only thing an Internet Explorer user would find of value here is my blog, which is written in HTML5; but I cannot guarantee a pleasant browsing, since I won't even begin to try to make anything work in Internet Explorer. Any web designer worth her salt would sympathise with this.
But while I have you here, let's discuss a problem with the world, namely you. Or, rather, your browser. Why are you using Internet Explorer? It is commonly accepted that the reasons why anyone would use Internet Explorer are one of these four:
Let's go through these one by one.
Ignorance. I have quite strong views on this kind of excuse. To be permitted to drive a car, one needs to study and be tested and apply for a licence. This is not a random quirk of the establishment; this is to ensure that people actually know what they are doing before hitting the roads, so that the only things they indeed will hit are roads and not lamp posts, other cars, or pedestrians.
I am not suggesting a similar approach be applied to computers; this would be detrimental to the freedom of speech and partaking of information belonging to the world. However, I posit that one would be doing oneself and others a great kindness if one bothers to learn at least the basics before doing any serious computing.
The dangers on the 'net may be less apparent than the dangers on the road, but that only makes them more treacherous! At best you merely risk unwittingly having your computer converted by a unscrupulous third party into a foothold for disseminating spam, viruses, and illegal material such as child pornography. You know all those spam e-mails you get in your inbox? They probably originated from a computer owned by someone like you, infested by a third party to do the bidding of the highest bidder, as it were. No, really, there are companies who will sell you computing time on thousands of infested computers!
At worst, you risk exposing the contents of your computer to the world, including all your private information, your banking credentials, your electronic identity. . . To navigate safely in the world, you need to be street-wise. You need to know when you are being conned. You need to know, by instinct, the risks of doing certain things and how to mitigate them. The very same thing holds true on the Internet. Ignore this at your peril.
Fear. I can see why this would be a problem. We fear change; some of us more than others. However, where would we be if we were driven only by fear? Would there be footprints on the moon if the feet which made them belonged to two men driven by fear? Would Werner Forßmann have won the 1956 Nobel Prize in Medicine if he had been too afraid to do what he did?
It's not like I'm asking you to travel to the moon and back using 1960s technology. It's not like I'm asking you to create your own catheter and prove it works by inserting it personally into your own heart through your arm. No, I'm just asking you to switch to a superficially similar browser from which you will benefit greatly. In perspective, don't you feel just a bit silly making all this fuss?
Oh, and that feeling about people shunning Internet Explorer is very real.
Laziness. It's easy to be dragged into this one. I would know. And it doesn't make one whit of a difference: it's still not an acceptable excuse. Most of the things I wrote under ignorance applies here too. By this very same rationale, I suppose you just chose a phone operator at random without doing any comparisons? And I suppose you wouldn't have a clue if I asked you which electricity supplier you use, and whether you use static or dynamic pricing? No, of course you would. These are things everyone cares about, more or less. Most people don't know how electricity or the telephone works (I'm just guessing, as I don't really hang out with most people) but still they care about which company gets to supply them with these services, how the services are made, and, of course, how much the services cost. Yet somehow, this meticulous care about one's working environment vanishes at the keyboard. Why is this?
Internet Explorer is bad. It has gotten a lot better in some aspects during the last few years, but it is still really, really bad. Web developers can do one web page using proper and clean code, and it will work in all major browsers and many minor ones. And then they try it in Internet Explorer and everything falls to pieces, and almost as much time is spent hunting those bugs down as it took creating the page in the first place. Don't believe me? This web shop is charging an extra 6.8% off people who are using Internet Explorer to place their orders. That's how much Internet Explorer is costing everyone. Yet you can't really ignore it, due to Internet Explorer's relatively large market share. The only hope we have is if the market share continues to plummet as it has been doing in the last few years. In a relatively straight line, too; extrapolation suggests that Internet Explorer will have almost no users by 2016. If this actually happens, I will be throwing a party.
Submission. Ah. The only of the four which actually is a legitimate excuse. For that very reason some people tend to use it as a bit of a get-out clause when they really are guilty to any of the other three but can't bring themselves to admit it.
Even this excuse is not entirely legitimate, however. There are portable versions of most of the major browsers. These can be installed on portable storage devices and brought with you wherever you go, or simply installed wherever you store your documents. Does your corporation use web applications—written about fifteen years ago and never updated since, as seems to be the industry standard—which only works on Internet Explorer 6? Well, there is no reason why you can't use your portable browser for all other surfing. In fact, you most probably will be doing your IT department a great favour in doing so, as older versions of Internet Explorer are notoriously insecure and will let in a lot of garbage which generally should not be let into a sensitive corporate network.
Conclusion. I think I have dismantled all the usual reasons not to switch to a better browser. Still, I feel some might miss the point, so I'm just going to say this bluntly. Geeks hate you for using Internet Explorer. You are contributing to keeping a horrid relic of the past alive, way past its sell-by date, and are part of the reason behind thousands of hours of frustration for web developers worldwide. You are the tobacco smoker who believes she's got the same right to sit in the bus shelter as everybody else. You are the person who bought centre tickets at the theatre yet arrives last. You are the person who boards the plane last and brings a bag at least twice the legally allowed size of carry-ons, so the overhead compartments need to be emptied and re-packed just to fit your humongous suitcase. You're that person. You don't want to be that person. Don't be that person.
benjamin [at] this bare domain