Please, browse responsibly: Drop Internet Explorer!

This isn't me, but I certainly made this face today...

This is a service announcement from your local webmaster. I have been fighting browser wars today, and must take a moment to make an earnest plea.

Do you use Internet Explorer? Many people still do. Web statistics show that more than 40% of people on the internet use some version of IE. The primary reason is that Internet Explorer comes pre-installed on your Windows PC. This is how the sneaky bandit named Bill Gates tricks unsuspecting people into using poorly made, truly frustrating software.

This is my plea:
Stop using Internet Explorer and, please, download anything else! 

Nowadays, there are a plethora of better options.

Mozilla Firefox has been around for a while now, and just released Firefox 4 this past week. It's great. I love it. It's my primary browser. It offers thousands of add-ons to make your browser into a superhero of the internet.
Download it here.

Google Chrome is also a good one. It's faster than Firefox, and insanely faster than Internet Explorer... Chrome is solid and blissfully simple. The latest version, Chrome 10, is great, fast, and fun.
Download it here.

Safari is another solid choice. It's an Apple product. It's not as fast as Chrome, but like Firefox, Safari has thousands of add-ons to make your browser do whatever you want. It's reliable, clean, and speedy.
Download it here.

Opera is less well-known, but it is built on a similar engine to Chrome. It offers all the speed and user-friendliness of Chrome.
Download it here.

You might be asking by now, "Why all this fuss?" Well, it's very simple:

Modern browsers follow web standards, but Internet Explorer does not.

 The internet is very young. It's only been around since the mid-80's. In the past 20 years or so, the internet has matured very quickly. We use web standards now in the construction of websites. These standards are very important because if every browser follows the standards, then the internet stays a happy, properly structured, safe, and pretty place to play.

The reason why I'm cyber-bullying Internet Explorer is because it refuses to follow web standards (HTML5/CSS3). Try as they might, Microsoft just can't put a decent version together. Even the latest version, Internet Explorer 9, fails miserably. Sure, it picks up on a few things that earlier versions didn't, but it is still a horrible browser, and a bad waste of your harddrive space (and sanity).

The only way that Microsoft will change its evil ways is if upstanding citizens, such as yourself, choose to throw off the IE chains that bind you, and embrace a much better way to view the web. (And you'll be making my job easier.)

Please, browse responsibly.