Update

I apologize for not updating the site or this blog in a while. I've been studying JavaScript as well as doing some JavaScript freelance work. Which leads in to something I'd like to comment on.

59% of the visitors to the VPB-118 site that are using Internet Explorer are using either version 7 or version 6(!) of this browser. Out of all visitors, 56% are using Internet Explorer, so that means that one third of the visitors to the site are using outdated versions of what many people consider to be the worst web browser available. Internet Explorer 8 (the improved, current version) is considered by many to be the slowest and most problem-plagued (as in virus/bot attacks) browser there is.

I don't really want to fall into a Microsoft-bashing mode, because they do have some great policies, for example free development programs available for download. The Windows operating system has become far more stable and reliable than I imagined possible in the early days of Windows 3.1, when several crashes a day were not considered unusual. However, Microsoft does have a bad history when it comes to their browser. With version 8 they have mostly redeemed themselves in terms of standards compliance, but in the past they have flaunted the concerns of web designers and programmers by retaining their own versions of event handling and document object model. With the web design and programming that I do, I still have to compensate for many of these wrong policies, as do many others.

Long story short, I would recommend that everyone use the fastest, most standards-compliant browsers available for a better experience. Check this out: speed comparisons. I hate to have to put it this way, but if you want your pages to load fast and be rendered the way they were intended, use anything but Internet Explorer. If you use something like Opera and it won't work with certain sites, install Firefox, which has wonderful compatibility in my experience. Did you know that Apple's Safari browser is available for the Windows platform also? It is, and it's a good browser.

I mostly use Opera because it has a lot of features like "notes" and "mouse gestures" that allow me to get around really fast in the app and get a lot done. Opera sometimes doesn't get recognized as a standard browser, so there are some sites that refuse it entry, which I think is kind of nasty. I also use Chrome, which I like a lot. It is by far the best app for printing web pages from; the accuracy is fantastic; also it is very fast - especially on sites that Google (the parent) owns, such as YouTube, Blogger (where we are now), and Google Analytics. Firefox is, as I stated, very solid and reliable. Safari is very slick and performs well.

Opera
Firefox
Chrome
Safari