Microsoft recently announced on their blog that they will continue to support their now 8-year-old  browser IE6 until 2014.

For readers unfamiliar with the reasons why this might be news-worthy,  it is mainly because we web designers have wasted half our lives trying to get our client’s websites to display correctly in this antiquated browser and we are finally putting our collective foot down with a firm hand! Enough is enough.

Now, in fairness to Microsoft, they make it screamingly simple to upgrade to the latest version of their browser, and what more can they do? IE6 was part of Windows XP and there are users who, for reasons of their own, are happy to stick with what they already have and Microsoft feel duty-bound to support them. There are also people who, believe it or not, still connect using dial-up so upgrading online could take an awful lot of time.

Therefore, it is up to us, the web community to explain to you, the  IE6 user, that your web browsing experience would be much better, cooler and prettier if you were using a modern browser.

If you don’t know what browser version you’re on,  ask yourself if all the websites you visit look like crap,  click the ‘Help’ link to the top left of your screen, select ‘About Internet Explorer’ and you will see which version you are using. If it is version 6 then consider an upgrade.

Upgrade now and see those websites as you’ve never seen them before! There are loads to choose from and they are ALL FREE.

• Internet Explorer

• Firefox

• Chrome

• Apple Safari

• Flock

..to name but a few.