So, as you may or may not have heard, Google’s fallen out with China: more specifically the Chinese government, which may or may not (strangely both sides disagree on this one) have been hacking into Google Mail/GMail accounts of Chinese dissidents.
Well, apparently, the hacking was made possible because of a problem with Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer, the bane of every web developer’s life, is truly a nightmare to work with – in regards to security, reliability and rendering (that is how it interprets the instructions in HTML which define how a web page is meant to look).
And now it’s been banned by the French and German governments.
Well, not banned as such… but when a government advises its citizens not to use a web browser because it’s as safe as a chocolate fireguard and has more holes than the finest emmental, then it’s the next best thing.
Unlike previous security problems with Internet Explorer, this one affects all versions kicking around and across every version of Windows. So those of you running Internet Explorer 8 on Windows 7 – you’re no safer than someone running IE6 on Windows 98.
Joe Wilcox of Beta News put it best: “it’s time to stop using any version of Microsoft’s browser — IE6, IE7, IE8 and forget someday releasing IE9.”
So what are you waiting for?
We’re quite liking Google Chrome at the moment, though many in our number are fond of Firefox and you may even find you’re fond of Apple’s Safari. Whatever web browser you use… it will undoubtedly be a much nicer experience for you than any version of Internet Explorer. And a lot safer too.
