The creepy monster called Internet Explorer

It is almost funny that we have reached a stage when we find a new security bug discovered in Internet Explorer as yet another bug. We laugh at it and just make jokes on the crap that Microsoft has thrown on us. Still we keep on using it, forever updating whatever updates MS releases for it or sometimes not even that. The most ridiculous part is that Microsoft still thinks the latest version of IE is good enough for the world considering there are no active plans of an updated release for this generation of operating systems. They don’t even plan to release a completely patched up version that supports at least some of the latest standards of today’s generation of browsers. The best they can come up with a possible popup blocker in the IE version that will come in Windows XP SP2.

And we all take it so lightly. Most of us don’t even care. How many of us do read the news and keep the operating system up-to-date? Think about those uncle and aunties who have been given a 30 minutes tutorial to use the internet on their PCs and god forbid have started shopping online! Who tells them to download the latest patches? Who tells them to shift to alternate browsers? Most people would rarely consider installing zillions of patches after they reinstall the operating system on their PCs, because there are just too many. Going to windows update site and installing all the patches available there have me into little confidence as I have seen brand new installations going berserk. And they take ages on internet connections available to us in India. And Microsoft individual patches are so nastily scattered I don’t know what patch fixes what bug problem. Why cannot they just get their update pages to look sane to normal people? Tell us what they are supposed to in normal English. There is no need to hide what worms are fixed by which patch and which Trojan is killed by which one. All I see is KB articles and most of the pages are simply inaccessible from alternate browsers. I am supposed to use the browser which I am trying to fix to get the fixes! In some extreme cases it is kind of like driving a car with no brakes to a workshop to get the brakes fixed.

In simple words, Microsoft needs to be more responsible as it leads the market in Internet Browsers by accepting the fact that the browser has issues and they need to be resolved. To get an upgrade to a browser I need to upgrade the operating system? How sane is that! People need to be made aware of the alternative browsers. Companies like Citibank India and ICICI Bank should be responsible enough to support alternative browsers. Their claims and suggestions to use the latest version of Internet Explorer to make use of the latest security features show how competent their developers are. If Microsoft cannot learn we should?