Browser, Smowser- Who Cares
Most of us don't realize how much an old and out-of-date web browser can negatively impact our online lives, particularly online safety. You wouldn't drive an old car with bald tires, bad brakes, an unreliable engine and ugly old features for years and years. You might drive a car in that condition for a while if you were low on cash. But given a choice, I think we would all prefer to go with safe and new.
It's the same with web browsers. You use the web daily. For the most part it's free. And yes, it makes a difference which one you use. You may be saying..."browser?, you got way ahead of me here. Are you talking about which search engine I use and why? No, you really are talking about browsers...why do I care? What's the difference in web browsers?" So maybe I should remind everyone what a browser is. And no, it's not your search engine.
A web browser is the program that decides how and what you see (pages) on the web. And if you think I've gone too basic, please know that most people, about 80 percent, don't know the difference between a web browser and a search engine. And that's okay. You're still going to care more about what you want in a search engine more than what you want in a browser. However, I just want to give you some insight on why you might want to care a bit about both.
First the market share stats for browsers:
You can see that Google is the clear leader in search engines and that's not going to change anytime soon. So now let's look at the browsers and remember that Google works differently for you depending upon the browser you use.
I'm going to suggest that you upgrade whenever possible to the latest version of whatever browser you use the most. Upgrading Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Microsoft Internet Explorer, Opera, or Google Chrome is important for three reasons: First, old browsers are vulnerable to attacks, because they typically aren't updated with the latest security fixes and features. Second, the web evolves quickly. Many of the latest features on today's websites and web applications won't work with old browsers. Only up-to-date browsers have the speed improvements that let you run web pages and applications quickly, along with support for modern web technologies such as HTML5, CSS3, and fast JavaScript. Lastly, (and unfortunately the one you likely care the least about) old browsers slow down innovation on the web. When we cling to old browsers, web developers are forced to design websites that work with both old and new technologies. With limited time and resources, they end up developing for the lowest common denominator.
Back to the car analogy, imagine if today's highway engineers were required to design high-speed freeways that would still be perfectly safe for cars from the 30s. Not that anyone blames you personally for staying loyal to your aging browser. In some cases, you may be unable to upgrade your browser. If you find that you're blocked from upgrading your browser on your company computer, have a friendly chat with your IT administrator. Maybe you can upgrade an old version of Internet Explorer with the Google Chrome Frame plug-in. It can give you the benefits of some modern web app functionality.
So here's to safe, fast and cool "driving".
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