This post was compiled by Gerrit van Huyssteen – a web applications and game developer who spends his free time partying, coding, and advocating for decent web browsers (not necessarily in that order). 

Have you ever navigated through a website and found yourself clicking on buttons, or filling in forms that do not respond? Layouts and images arranged in a slapdash way, or uninspired navigation, are all symptoms of old browser syndrome.

Let’s play the blame game!
The first blame goes to the web developers of the website. Not only are they too lazy to implement cross-browser fixes to their own projects, they lack the knowledge of what works and what breaks on certain browsers. Developers should spend more time on reading up on how to overcome these problems.

Now let us blame the public…
Okay not really. Maybe just a little bit. If you’re reading this you are a moderately tech-savvy individual, and you must have read about things like Firefox, Safari (not the sightseeing in the wilderness bit, despite this being a South African blog), and Chrome. Still, if you’re reading this on Internet Explorer (IE) – that Big Blue “e” everyone equates with the interwebs, you believe that any page you navigate to will look and behave the same as everyone else’s.

The truth

Using the standard browser your computer came with limits you to in terms of what the web has to offer, particularly when it comes to animations, 3D object generation, lighting, and gaming capabilities. You will never see the real power of the internet if you are still using IE.

The stats

According to StatCounter the worldwide browser usage shows that Chrome is the favourite browser out there. Chrome has a built-in updating mechanism that keeps your browser up to date with the most recent browser technology, and gives you the best web experience possible.

South Africa on the other hand has yet to discover the full power of the web, and users generally stick to IE as their default browser. Web developers are really limited to the kind of features they can implement on their projects, because the majority of the browser market in South Africa cannot experience the full capabilities of these features. Clients have been cautious about paying for extra features when they can’t even review it on their own computer. It’s a loop we can’t escape and it is stifling technology in this country.

Upgrade Now

Do yourself and the people around you the biggest favour anyone can ask for. Be amazing – upgrade your browser. If you visit your friends or family and you see them working on an old outdated browser, help them to upgrade too. Life will never be the same again!

Related articles

• Google Chrome Dominates the Browser World as IE Trails Behind (news.softpedia.com)
• Google Chrome Targeting Internet Explorer’s Business Users (slashdot.org)
• Browser wars revisited (royal.pingdom.com)
• Web browser war: The early 2013 report (zdnet.com)
• New Perk browser lets you rack up reward points for surfing (pcworld.com)