From USA Today, 4/29/14:

The U.S. Department of Homeland security is advising Americans not to use the Internet Explorer Web browser until a fix is found for a serious security flaw that came to light over the weekend.

The bug was announced on Saturday by FireEye Research Labs, an Internet security software company based in Milpitas, Calif.

It is recommended that users and administrators "consider employing an alternative Web browser until an official update is available."

The security flaw allows malicious hackers to get around security protections in the Windows operating system. They then can be infected when visiting a compromised website. (full article here)

This latest development with the Internet Explorer (IE) browser from Microsoft offers a chance to mention why you should be using a different browser for your internet usage. There are far more superior browsers available, and they are all free. IE comes as the default browser with any PC so naturally many just use it and know nothing else. In fact, over 55% of PC web traffic still comes from IE which is hard to believe given alternatives. On our Playbooks for Golf website, only 20% of traffic in the last year has come from IE, so it is good to see that at least part the turf world may be ahead of the curve on making the switch. Peter tells me that 28% of TurfNet.com traffic still utilizes IE... second (perhaps surprisingly) to Safari at 31%  but ahead of Chrome at 22% and Firefox at 9%

As part of building websites for turf professionals and maintaining an application server for our Coverage System, I have had the opportunity to intimately deal with IE and all other browsers on a daily basis.

There are many reasons why IE isn't very good from a technical perspective, including the fact that it interprets code differently than other modern browsers, creating havoc for web developers to get websites to display properly across all platforms. But for our purposes here, all you need to know is that your online experience can be better with one of the alternatives. Websites will load better and typically faster, and there is usually a much less significant risk for hacking.

...all you need to know is that your online experience can be better with one of the alternatives."

If you are forced to continue use of IE due to outdated software use or download restrictions at work, make sure to update it to the latest version. The older versions are vulnerable to a multitude of security issues, not to mention they don?t render newer HTML 5 websites well at all.

So, make the switch today to Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You will be glad you did and can gain new features and uses of your internet experience. Simply search online to find out about which one will work best for you. I use Chrome on PC, and Safari on Mac. Both are excellent options.

Lastly, a great comment found online regarding IE: "The only use of Internet Explorer should be to download another browser."