Browsing with a relic? Why successful affiliates have up-to-date browsers.

By Affilorama Group
Browsing with a relic? Why successful affiliates have up-to-date browsers.

 

Right now, there is a clear and present threat to the future of the web – and it’s not some malicious virus cooked up by evil hackers, or even those annoying spammers who are still trying to convince you that there’s a Nigerian Prince who desperately wants to give you squillions of dollars. No, this threat is far more insidious – and there’s a good chance that 1 in 10 of you reading this post are looking at that threat right now! I’m talking about Internet Explorer 6.

Now that you hear it, you might not think that a piece of software that came packaged with your computer could be such a big problem. And let's not forget, IE6 was once the King of all browsers. Go back just 6 or 7 years – Netscape has just been Netscaped, and Microsoft is shipping IE6 bundled with its new operating system, XP. This strategy help Microsoft peak at 95% of the browser market share.

But the King is dead… long live the King!

You see, the problem with 15-25% of the web (and about 10% of Affilorama visitors) still using a browser which, for intents and purposes is an antique, is that the entire web development community is shackled to the past. There are a huge number of modern web standards that IE6 simply doesn’t support, particularly in terms of website design elements, meaning web designers have to write separate code specifically for IE6. (Security is another big issue; IE6 leaves you incredibly vulnerable to viruses and attack)

And it looks like the developers have had just about enough. Many of the most popular websites, including Digg, Facebook, and pretty soon Youtube have cut back or all together eliminated support for IE6, forcing users to update.
This may seem harsh. We know people don’t like change and if they’re comfortable with the browser they’re using, why should they change? Because it’s slowing down progress!

You see, there are a number of incredible new developments in web technology that have come out in the past few years. But these new technologies can’t really flourish while this old relic is still around.

One example is HTML 5. HTML is the language of the web – it’s what web pages are written in. HTML 5 is the next iteration – and some of the new developments are going to be incredible. Things that use to be hard like embedding audio and video will now be able to be embedded with a simple or tag. Webpages will also allow your browser to save stuff to your hard drive. Imagine being able to open up your laptop on a plane and look at your Gmail or Google Docs, even if you’re not online?

Pretty cool, huh?

But don’t expect developers to be using all these capabilities to their fullest so long as they have to still be supporting IE6!

Why affiliates should care

The title of this post was “why successful affiliates have up to date browsers”. The reason why being up to date is important for affiliates is that we always need to be up to speed with recent developments. Do you want to take advantage of the marketing opportunities of the next Facebook or Twitter? Of course you do! Then you need a new browser to do it! And remember – it costs you nothing to upgrade!

What should you do?

Upgrade – and do it today!

There are multiple options for browser these days. Some people would feel more comfortable with the traditional Internet Explorer interface, in which case upgrading to the latest version of IE (currently 8) would be a good idea. You can check out IE8 here.
But there are a few other browsers that should warrant your consideration.

Firefox My personal favorite, Firefox is an open source browser from the Mozilla foundation. Probably my favorite thing about Firefox is how customizable it is, both in the look of it (you can change the entire look by adding themes) and functionality using add-ons. Add-ons or plugins as they are often called are small programs that allow Firefox to do extra things – for instance I have a few SEO plugins that give me extra information about the webpage I’m looking at (great for linkbuilding!). While I am a big fan of Firefox, it does have a problem with memory usage, especially if you use a lot of plugins. You might want to try another option if you have an older or slower machine.

OperaWhile I haven’t had a great deal of experience with Opera myself, I have many friends who swear by it. Comparable in speed to Firefox, it is a really great browser for research and would probably be a great fit for a student. For example, it indexes the text every page you visit and you can search for a page you’ve visited by entering any text from the page into the address bar. It also has really impressive bookmarking functions.

Chrome Google’s own browser, Chrome is renowned for its clean and slick design. While it might not have some of the fancy features and add ons of the other browsers, in my experience it is lightening fast when it comes to loading times – especially when it comes to complete JavaScript-laden webpages, or if you insist on running about 35 simultaneous tabs like I do!

While we know many of our users are beginners on the web, and the thought of upgrading their browser is a little intimidating, not to mention learning how to use the new browser – it is important as an affiliate that you learn how to adapt to the new technologies as they appear. I guarantee once you’ve upgraded and you start discovering some of the amazing features of your new browser – you’ll never want to go back!

Disclaimer: Internet Explorer and the IE logo are registered trademarks of Microsoft Inc.
16 Comments
Billy Lockwood 14 years ago
those people using IE6 you know who your are! really need to upgrade! if you know whats good for you lol

good post so many people still use it and its a nightmare.
Paul Webster 14 years ago
Great post Chris,
its definitely a very important issue that a lot of people don't address as they just don't realize. The internet is a much richer place without the shackles of IE6, not to mention the security aspect of it! Most up to speed developers i know of gave up on the old girl a long time ago, so about time everyone else did too!
carl 14 years ago
I don't even pay attention to the IE6 people any more. They are less than a small percentage of traffic to my sites.
robynm 14 years ago
Interesting post,

I have IE 7 and after reading about IE8 via your post, there appear to be a few issues to upgrading to 8 for me and so I will be interested to hear of other peoples upgrade experience.

thanks for the post, enjoyed the info
Aletta Is Too Cool 14 years ago
From a web designer's perspective, it pays to have a few different browsers at your disposal to keep track of how your website looks to the people in your market. They're not all on the same page quite yet. On this little laptop I have Firefox, IE7 and Chrome going, and this is just for travel ;) At the very least you should be checking Firefox and IE7 (or 8, but I'd prefer 7 since 8 is probably sitting closer to Firefox these days.) Design using Firefox. Then check that it's not completely mucked up in IE.

It's very easy to get all browser-snobby, but if a large proportion of your visitors are using a particular browser then you need to make sure your site is usable. Although IE6 is an exception. We're tired of IE6.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp is a useful site for keeping tabs on the rough proportions. (Just be aware that these stats come from their own visitors, which is probably going to be more heavily skewed towards web professionals, meaning that the usage of "relic" browsers in reality is probably higher than is reported there.) You can also check your own stats using whatever analytics package you're using on your site.

Don't use this as an excuse for hanging onto IE6 though. Do the world a favour and upgrade!
Marcus Noel 14 years ago
Great Post!

I've noticed lately that Firefox blanks out on pages with heavy Javascript content. I wind up resorting more and more to Chrome in these cases. But, I also wind up missing the Firefox plugins. Yet, it's good to have access to numerous alternatives. Internet Explorer seems to be slowest in getting started, but I often run across sites that will only work with IE ... either by design or whatever.

Thanks for the post,

M. Noel
joey Davies 14 years ago
I personally really like chrome, also Safari for windows is probably the fastest browser you can get, very sweet.
Chris Goddard 14 years ago
I've found that same problem with Firefox - blanking out on certain pages. I also find that it often doesn't close properly - though I think it's because I'm a little plugin crazy! I'm still a pretty loyal Firefox user - though I definitely see the value in Chrome - it's just so quick!

Haven't used Safari for windows - maybe it's part of me not wanting to give in to the "macs are the best" crowd. Though maybe I should check it out!

Still... I really like my plugins!!!
kendyl coleman 14 years ago
I had quite a few problems with Opera. Not opening certain pages. Firefox has never let me down.
Why would people still use IE6? Is it just the not knowing? It should be an automatic update.
Sergio Valentino 14 years ago
I use mac OS X and default browser is Safari. It's the fastest browser on the planet and the only browser that passes Acid 3 Test http://acid3.acidtests.org/ I highly recommend it.
Peter Bowen 14 years ago
The installed base of IE is overwhelming and will always be the obvious choice of most people, and Chrome Crashes too often, FireFox seems to be the most stable and since I switched it provides the best overall experience - but something tells me that we live in an IE world?
Franka Mendoza 14 years ago
Chrome is my favourite! It's fast and saves every page I visit so I can find something I did weeks ago.

I've found that Firefox has become slow since I added some plugins. My favourite add-on is the Web Of Trust as it rates every site I visit.

I downloaded Opera but it never worked on my laptop.

I use Chrome mostly, but open Firefox when I want to check the reputation of a particular site.

I ONLY use Explorer to download because programmes don't save properly with my other browsers.
Joseph Ting 14 years ago
Firefox is my favorite and it's the best web browser. However, my 3 years old pc sometimes hang for a while after a long time surfing.

I use Chrome when I just need some short surfing like Google something that I want to know etc.

Still sticking with Firefox because of its customizable level. There are a lot of extensions and themes I can choose from. That makes Firefox very flexible and save a lot of time with correct extensions installed.
Douglas Case 14 years ago
When did they come out with IE6? ;-)
Graham Billinge 14 years ago
Hi all
I gave in to the hype and upgraded to IE8 from IE7 running XP.
It was an absolute nightmare, my computer kept crashing, scripts went haywire, and I couldn't really do anything. I went to Google- searched forums and found out how I could dump IE8 and go back to IE7. But then I had problems with Windows Media Player, my computer has not been the same since.
I now use Firefox!
regards
Graham in UK
P.S. I looked at the bug comments regarding Vista - no thanks!!
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