Please upgrade your browser

About Your Current Browser

(If you don't want to read the rant, here's the meat: or Download Internet Explorer 7.)

You're on this page because you saw the "upgrade your browser" link on the right side of one of the pages on this site.

And you're probably wondering why I would want you to do that.

You're using version 6, or earlier, of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. (If you're using a browser that isn't IE6 and you see this link, please let me know.) MSIE6 was, at one time, the most-used web browser in the world, on billions of desktops.

However, MSIE6 was upgraded a while back - 2006, actually - to MSIE7, and you have not followed along. Maybe you haven't had time; maybe you don't know how. Whatever the reason, the bottom line is this:

You are not seeing the internet the way it really is.

Here is a picture of what you see on the front page of my personal site:

It's ugly. It's black. The masthead graphic is fringed and difficult to see. The page description and browser warning push the graphic down a few hundred pixels - if you're running on a low-resolution onitor, you may not even SEE the masthead graphic without scrolling.

Now here is what the rest of the world is seeing. This is in Mozilla Firefox, which you can get by clicking this link:

The content frame glows. The masthead graphic is artistic, easy to read, and not halfway down the page. It glows, too. You can actually see *through* the area where the text is, a little bit, so that background, while subtle, is visible the entire time. In short, you get to see the site the way I intended it to be.

Personally, I prefer Mozilla Firefox. I've used it as my primary browser for many years, and unlike IT, it's always been standards-compliant, it's always rendered alpha-blended graphics properly. It's had tabbed browsing forever, it's a more secure browser, it's easier to use, and I just plain like it better. IE7 has also fixed many of the problems that IE6 had, including the ability to properly show alpha-blended graphics (that's "see-through" for you non-geek types; the glows and semi-transparent background in the screenshot above are alpha blends), as well as lifting some great ideas from Mozilla like tabbed browsing.

I've programmed around the worst issues. That's why you're seeing a site with square corners and generally pretty boring layout. For my clients, obviously, I'm putting much more effort into making their "legacy" sites attractive, but there's still only so much that can be done because IE6 simply wasn't a very good browser. The primary issue, as you can see here at LowGenius.Com, is that alpha transparencies don't work well. Consequently, while everyone else is seeing a really neat background graphic on this page, you're seeing just a plain color.

I am encouraging you to upgrade your browser. As I said above, I strongly recommend Mozilla, especially given that it's actually much more like IE6 than IE7 is, in terms of "look and feel." This goes double if you are one of my clients - you owe it to yourself to fully understand what you are getting for your investment in LowGenius Enterprises, and this means the ability to see your site both as modernized users see it, and as legacy users see it. The ideal configuration here is to run Mozilla side-by-side with IE6.

I anticipate that IE6 will finally fade out completely sometime around mid-2009. Currently, my largest client site is still seeing about 40% of its traffic from IE6 browsers. Until that drops below 10%, I will continue designing 'dual-purpose' sites that detect the user's browser type and version, and send them the 'scaled-down' version of the site if they're on an older browser. I may continue using this technique to offer easier integration of low-bandwidth content for users who are still stuck on dialup connections, but we'll have to see where the world sits a year or so down the road before I make a decision on that.

Installing and using Mozilla is ridiculously easy. It just takes a few minutes to download - longer, but not forever, on a dialup - and installation is a breeze. Plus it's REALLY simple to import your existing IE favorites (called 'bookmarks' in Mozilla), if you decide you want to use Mozilla as your primary browser.

Please, upgrade now. It's in your best interest. Thank you.