[deltatsunami_]

This tutorial has been quoted from http://www.moparisthebest.com/smf/in...p?topic=5674.0

Intro:

Try this quick quiz: Which is the odd one out?

Opera
Firefox
Konqueror
Internet Explorer
Safari
Mozilla
Netscape
The answer? D. Internet Explorer. All the others are Web browsers; Internet Explorer is a conduit for hackers in browser's clothing.

Perhaps a little harsh, that judgement, but increasingly apt. At one time the undisputed leader in the browsing market, Internet Explorer is, today, as insecure as it is outmoded. It still garners the lion's share of users, but it no longer deserves to do so.

If you're still surfing the Internet with this digital equivalent of a rust bucket, consider the following five reasons to abandon ship.

1. It's a security nightmare
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The past two years have seen the uncovering of a steady flow of security holes in Internet Explorer, some of them exceedingly nasty. One reason for the large number of vulnerabilities coming to light is Microsoft's renewed focus on security issues and its increased attempts to staunch the bleeding from Windows, Internet Explorer and other of its programs. The other reason is, quite simply, there are a lot of holes to discover.

We're not talking about trifling problems. Some of the attacks have been so bad that merely visiting an infected site using IE, with no other action on your part, has been enough to lay your system open to outside control.

After a spate of particularly severe issues surfaced in the middle of 2004, sober security organisations such as CERT (www.cert.org) suggested that IE's problems were so fundamental – woven into its fabric, as it were – that the only safe approach was to switch to another browser. CERT suggested that those who must use IE should adjust security settings to the highest level and disable JavaScript within the browser.

There's a problem with that latter option. If you ratchet up IE's security to the top level, it becomes a pain to use. You'll find yourself bombarded with prompts and warnings, and some sites and site functions will simply stop working. It's only worth doing if using IE is unavoidable.

2. It's a target
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Not only is Internet Explorer fundamentally flawed, it's also a huge target.

People love to hate Microsoft, and some of the company's more technically adept detractors vent their disdain by hacking, cracking and generally dismembering Microsoft products. If there are security holes in Mozilla (as you can be sure there are), chances are they will go untapped because most people feel pretty warm and fuzzy about Mozilla.org and its open-source coding project. A similar hole in Internet Explorer is bound to be exploited by one of the anti-Gatesian horde.

Microsoft products are also a target because of their popularity. Why bother writing a worm, Trojan or malicious script for the handful of people, relatively speaking, who use Opera when you can write a similar bit of mischief for IE and inconvenience millions?

With the convergence of threats which we've seen lately – viruses, worms, Trojans, spam, phishing scams, key loggers, and so on – that big red bull's-eye painted on Microsoft products becomes an even bigger vulnerability. The wise surfer would do well to steer clear.

3. It's a dead-end
Quote
Microsoft has declared it will no longer develop Internet Explorer as a standalone product. All updates to it will be within the context of new operating system developments. Thus the next upgrade to IE 6.0 will be the browser supplied with Windows XP Service Pack 2. It's not yet clear whether that browser update will be available to those who don't use XP SP2. If you're an XP user unable to wean yourself from Internet Explorer, regard the upgrade to SP2 as mandatory – it's the only way you'll get a halfway secure browser.

What does this developmental full stop mean for the future of IE as a standalone browser? It means Microsoft will provide bug fixes for the browser, but no new features. In essence, it's the end of the road for free Microsoft browsers. The only way you'll get a new one is to buy a new version of Windows.

This closer linking of browser and operating system is likely to mean IE will lag behind other browsers even further in terms of capabilities, with updates becoming rarer. Given Windows own vulnerabilities, tighter integration provides no comfort on the security front, either.

Presumably, Microsoft is focusing on developing a very different browsing experience in the next version of Windows (codenamed Longhorn), an operating system which is being built from the ground up with security in mind. But we're not likely to see Longhorn on our desktops before late 2006; that's a long, long time to wait for the security we deserve.


Avoid IE wraparounds

Many of Internet Explorer's deficiencies as a browser have been addressed by third-party developers who have created browser 'wraparounds': programs which wrap Internet Explorer's core technology in a better looking, better functioning exterior. Programs such as CrazyBrowser, SlimBrowser and Maxthon (formerly MyIE2).
Sadly, you should avoid these programs, too. They lay you open to the same security risks you'll find in IE. When looking for an alternative browser, stick with standalone programs such as Mozilla and Opera.

4. It's broken
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IE is broken. Talk to any serious Web designer and you'll soon learn that its support for Web standards is badly lacking. Web standards are important because they allow designers to build a single version of a site which can be viewed correctly in any standards-compliant browser. Without standards, designers would have to produce multiple versions of each page in order to accommodate each browser's peccadilloes, or you, the visitor, would have to swap browsers to access different sites.

For a while there – at least while Netscape was still a rival to be reckoned with – Microsoft made an attempt to come to the standards party. It still insisted on going off in tangents, introducing tags and technologies no-one else was interested in, but for the most part each new iteration of IE improved standards support.

Microsoft's abandonment of standalone browser development quite possibly signals its abandonment of standards, too. After all, it has almost wiped out the competition with its aggressive marketing (and some good years of development), so isn't the standard, these days, anything Microsoft says it is? Unless the intervening years see the rise of some decent competition in the browser arena, the Longhorn browser may well be a law unto itself.

In the meantime, despite Microsoft's promise to provide bug fixes for the standalone IE, chances are many of its standards-related flaws, including some long-standing CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) bugs, will go unpatched. Indeed, some design experts have come to believe Microsoft's continuing failure to fix several important bugs is not because the company doesn't want to fix them, but because it can't.

That's not such an unlikely idea; after all, IE is built on core technology which is almost a decade old – for a browser, that's exceedingly long in the tooth. Netscape faced a similar problem with its core technology several years ago and, in a painful and risky move, spun off a project to rebuild the browser engine from the ground up. The end result is Netscape lost its market dominance while it languished waiting for the project to produce a usable replacement, but in the long run it gained a superior browser engine, which is also the engine in Mozilla, Firefox and a number of other next-gen browsers.

The idea that the standalone IE is unfixable gains even more credence given that one of the IE development team has stated "Further improvements to IE will require enhancements to the underlying OS". The implication is that IE cannot be improved without tinkering with Windows itself, and that the problems are inherent in the interaction between the browser and the operating system.

5. It's a has-been
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As soon as Microsoft 'won' the browser wars, it stopped putting any real effort into Internet Explorer. As a result, it's a relic.

Opera is a better browser. So is Netscape (although it has its own problems – notably an overabundance of adware and unnecessary add-ons – which make it worth avoiding). Mozilla is a much better browser. Firefox, too.

In fact, it's hard to think of a worse browser than IE.

If you stick with IE, you'll miss out on a whole pile of new technologies and features that make browsing cool, fun, interesting, efficient and safer. You won't have tabs, a built-in RSS reader, smart find, mouse gestures and all the other goodies you'll find in programs such as Firefox and Opera.

You also won't get the additional security of using a browser which is neither a target for hackers nor a leaky sieve. (On the other hand, don't be lulled into thinking because you use a browser other than IE that you're immune to attack. You'll be safer, yes, but immune? No way. For instance, in July 2004, Secunia issued an advisory about a frame injection vulnerability which affected all the most popular browsers on Windows, the Mac and Linux.)

If you haven't yet tried an Internet Explorer alternative, take Mozilla or Firefox out for a spin. Mozilla is an entire browsing suite, while Firefox is pure, sleek browser. If you require a more secure e-mail client than IE's bundled companion Outlook Express – which, you should know, shares many of IE's vulnerabilities – grab Mozilla.org's Thunderbird.

Each of these programs is free and the learning curve is a pleasantly sedate slope.


It's the tabs, dummy! - IE Now has tabs

Tabs are to a browser as the wheel is to a mouse: Once you've used a mouse with a wheel, it is not merely inconvenient to use a wheel-less mouse; it is crippling. The same thing goes for browser tabs – once you use them, there's no living without them. Everyone – everyone – knows that, including Microsoft. You can be sure there are programmers on the IE team in Redmond itching, begging to put tabs into the browser.
And yet, Microsoft has not and will not put tabs into Internet Explorer. Why is that?

The reason is, Microsoft is no longer interested in the product. It is interested in assuring customers it takes security seriously – hence the security upgrades to IE you'll see in Windows XP Service Pack 2. But Microsoft couldn't give a flying Ferengi about IE keeping up with basic browser technology.

No tabs: It's the red flag which signals Internet Explorer is a dodo.

One reason to stay with Internet Explorer
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There's one reason to stick with Internet Explorer: some add-ons and some crucial sites work only with IE. One of those sites is – unfortunately but not surprisingly – Windows Update. A fair few other pages on the microsoft.com site won't work properly in other browsers, either, and you'll come across warning notices telling you that's the case. As for other sites, you can usually tell when a site is designed purely for IE because menus fail to open or other parts of the site won't work when you browse the site using a non-IE browser.

For all sites like this, you can always switch to IE to access the sites then close IE and return to your chosen browser when you're ready to move on. Keep in mind that you can install as many browsers on your system as you like. The important thing is to set any browser but IE as your default browser.

If you're wedded to a third-party add-on that works only in conjunction with Internet Explorer, send the authors e-mail asking them to support Mozilla or Firefox. This may not yield an immediate response, but if enough people follow suit, it may make it worthwhile for the developers to extend their horizons beyond IE. This is what happened with Onfolio, a superb online research tool. Version 1 worked only with IE, but in response to user pleas (including my own very vocal ones), version 2.0 now integrates directly with Firefox.

Lolz yea i agree...i already ditched IE a long time ago.

[Line]

just but only some site work with IE

[deltatsunami_]

then those sites suck. Mozilla is the most popular browser; the only thing is that it can't support ActiveX. You don't need ActiveX to run a good site.

Yep go mozilla....and IE cant run some things..

[Line]

sites.. like
www.nexon.net
and others

[DDay]

Ic u play maplestory? Anyways.....IE sucks ass, terribel pop-up, it has been ditched ever since.

[Ketts]

I would ditch it but I use Safari and IE because Firefox froze up on me.

[halosniper]

i use internet explorer but ya i do hate all popups

[blackbaldes]

yeah. i hate IE but its the only program i have to use the intrnet so
screwed atm

[Simple]

Originally Posted by blackbaldes

yeah. i hate IE but its the only program i have to use the intrnet so
screwed atm

Please check the dates, thank you.