Internet Explorer: Stuck in 1999

There are a number of major problems with Microsoft Internet Explorer that make it just plain bad. As such, Altering Time is designed with better, standard, free web browsers in mind. This page is a non-technical explanation of why that blue "e" is not your friend.

Security

Internet Explorer's dominance and Microsoft's laziness has resulted in a huge number of security flaws. Even users who apply all the security updates have a very high risk, and both public and private security organizations (including the US government) do not recommend using Explorer for this reason.

Even worse, Internet Explorer is actually part of Windows, which means that flaws in Explorer can destroy the entire system. Explorer also supports an insecure technology called ActiveX, which is constantly exploited by hackers and viruses.

Web Standards

There has been a set of official web standards for years. All modern browsers except Internet Explorer work well with these, and they allow web designers to make faster, better looking, easier to use websites. Internet Explorer's support for web design elements has so many bugs and missing features that it is very time consuming (and sometimes impossible) to get effects or features to work in Explorer that are easy to do in other browsers.

This is the main reason that Altering Time doesn't work as well on Internet Explorer. Rather than spending countless hours working around Explorer's bugs and dumbing the site down for Explorer's sake, the site is developed using standard web code.

Features

As a bonus, other web browsers almost always have better features than Explorer. These include tabbed browsing, popup blocking, search and find bars, and many other interface benefits. They also have Explorer bookmark importing for easy transition.

Switch

Before this notice went up, 30% of Altering Time visitors were already using better browsers. Here are some that you can download for free.

• Firefox (Recommended)
• Netscape 6+
• Safari (Mac)
• Camino (Mac)
• Mozilla Suite
• Opera 7+ (Ad supported)

Note: There are some browsers that are simple repackagings of Internet Explorer, such as AOL Browser, MSN Explorer, and Avant Browser. These still have the same security and standards problems as Internet Explorer itself does.