Nextwave Media - Creative Internet Solutions

Microsoft is literally pleading with people to stop using Internet Explorer 6. In its own tweeted words “It’s not often that we encourage you to stop using one of our products, but for #IE6 we’ll make an exception”, apparently it thinks it’s time for Internet Explorer 6 to die and we agree. So why not try www.firefox.com, www.google.com/chrome, www.opera.com or even www.apple.com/safari. Is that being cruel? There is of course www.microsoft.com/windows/internet-explorer.

It seems IE6 is hard to quit, so much so Microsoft is clearly investing some heavy resources in trying to get people to simply stop using the Windows-bundled web browser. Check out www.ie6countdown.com for a cool worldwide breakdown of how its campaign is going. The problem is that until corporations shake off Windows XP it’ll still be a heavy default browser.

Certainly nice to see a bit of recognition from  Microsfot for the countless extra hours us web developers had to put in to  make sure websites functioned on their old browser.

Earlier this week Google announced that they are launching a new browser called Chrome.The browser will be available in 100 countries and is billed by Google as being a competitor to both Microsoft Internet Explorer and Firefox. The browser will be cross platform working with Windows, Mac and Linux and is the first software release for Linux that Google has released. The developers at Google who have been working on this new browser started with a blank page - looking at what the guys at Google would ideally like a browser to do, having spent so many hours on the internet.

The Chrome browser is aimed at both making the internet easier for user and also to drive innovation on the internet. Designed to be clean and easy to use it’s focussed more on the experience of browsing the web. Their tabbed browsing will run each tab as an isolated instance meaning that if a website crashes the browser won’t shut down as with IE and Firefox, just that one tab. As a result of their user focus Google are aiming to make their browsing experience much faster and user-friendly.

The system works by recording user submitted websites against pre-defined categories. Each user specifies the categories of their interest and relevant sites are served to these users along with the ability to rate the site. This process means that the users of the system share their recommendations and qualitatively review them before they get to you.

This new way of finding and sharing interesting sites is fast and extremely entertaining.Oringinally, the system worked on Firefox only and was, for a while, one of the best reasons to use the Firefox browser. It is now also available for IE7, allowing more people to participate.

Check it out at www.stumbleupon.com

Have you ever lost all of your browser favourites?

Or for those who arn’t already nodding, have you ever had trouble finding that site you bookmarked in that giant list on the favourites menu?

Sure, if you know what your looking for or the words you used to search for previously, then a quick google can get you back to where you were before. But what about those times where you found a gem site and can’t remember how you found it.

The answer is of course to favourite that site for later and tag (categorize by tag words) it.

Soon enough you have a huge list of favourites that you can’t sort through, and then if you’re like many other people, you forget to back up your favourites, only to loose them during the dreaded bi-annual windows re-format and re-install dance.

Say goodbye to all of those problems.