Are you using Internet Explorer 6 to look at this site? Apparently about 22% of you are. (If you are not sure, click on ‘help’ in the menu, then ‘About Internet Explorer’, Does it say ‘version 6.xxxx’. There you go).

If you are using Explorer 6, please stop. There is a much better, more secure and richer internet experience waiting for you.

Explorer 6 is over 9 years old. It lacks support for things that have since improved the internet, like fast javascript, CSS styling (you don’t have to know what it is, but it is a good thing that Explorer 6 can’t properly deal with) and decent page and text rendering. It has been hideously insecure, and remains the main target route for a lot of people looking to install spyware or remote logging and control software on your PC.

Even Microsoft want to see an end of it, despite having to support it till 2014. Microsoft’s own product manager for Internet Explorer said in 2009:

Friends do not let friends use IE6. If you are in my social set and I have been to your house for dinner, you are not using IE6.

How to be free of IE 6? It is probably very easy. If your IT department controls installations on your PC, beg, blackmail or implore them to upgrade to Explorer 8, or at least 7. There is no good reason for them not to do so and a lot of reasons why they should.

If you can install programs on your PC at work, or at home, then you can upgrade to Explorer 8. Or you could take a not-so-wild leap into using modern, efficient browsers like Mozilla Firefox, Google Chrome or Apple’s Safari. Try a few and see which you prefer. All of them are hugely preferable to Explorer 6, which really needs to be consigned to history.

On behalf of those of us who put together and maintain websites, I plead on on bended knee – just stop using Explorer 6. It is for your own good, honest. You’ll feel better for it. So will I.