A while back, I posted an article dealing with internet security and protecting your identity:

http://www.delawarewebdesigner.com/rants-raves/protecting-your-computer.htm

http://www.delawarewebdesigner.com/blurbs/the-information-you-should-never-share-online.htm

Recently I have been advising clients on certain basic steps they can take to ensure they do not become a victim of identity theft. It has happened to me before, and it is a complete pain in the ass to reverse everything. Fortunately I caught on fast on the day it was happening (while my bank account was being drained, when 5 figures goes to 2 you know something’s up.) and was able to reverse and resolve the situation in 2 days, recover my money and my good name. I did however have to obtain all new bank account, credit card numbers, checks and the like. Others haven’t been so lucky.
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A highly important decision among computer owners these days is a choice of internet browser. While most people don’t think of this, due to Windows being packaged with Internet Explorer, its useful to know the options available to you. Most people have no intentions of using something else, because they just assume Internet Explorer is ‘just fine’ and has no issues whatsoever. This is not true. Microsoft knowingly facilitates this in order to maintain market share, so I’m here today to tell you a little bit about browsers you may not know about.

There are 4 major internet browsers a user has an option to pick from (in terms of reliability, speed, security, support, and rendering):

1. Mozilla Firefox
2. Apple’s Safari
3. Internet Explorer
4. Opera

There are of course others, like WebKit, Konquerer and the like, but for the typical home user, these are the only ones you want to look at.

Personally, I use Mozilla Firefox 2 (version 3, beta 5 at home) for work and play. Despite its memory usage, I consider it the best, most secure browser around. Version 3 will be released in June for public use (right now beta is available for developers and testers), and it has huge improvements in its memory use, loading speed, security, and page rendering. It also has literally thousands of add-ons and themes to customize Firefox, some of which I could not live without. Mozilla offers their browser for free as well as an email client called Thunderbird which supports POP3 and IMAP (in case you want to replace Outlook Express, too.. go for it.).

Closely behind that, I have used Opera. It doesn’t have the add on support as much as Firefox does, so I don’t tend to use it too often. It is also extremely strict on security, phishing, and spyware filtering, just like Firefox but perhaps even more so. It’s fetching and caching methods offer lightening speed browsing on broadband or higher connections, and is nearly ACID2 compliant (most websites will render correctly in Opera). Beyond that, its pretty safe to say that if you put Opera on your PC, there is less risk that a family member could find trouble on the internet (as opposed to using Internet Explorer) and is extremely reliable for transacting business online.

I have used Apple’s Safari for Windows, and despite what articles are saying, its pretty poor. Just the fact alone that it doesn’t have any malware/spyware/phishing filters and the browser doesn’t allow third-party themes or add-ons, I wouldn’t use this browser until this is addressed (’Beta’ be damned, this is important). Safari also doesn’t support extended validation (EV) certificates either; EV certificates provide better site identification than the regular certificates that encrypted sites use. This caused the CEO of Paypal to tell all of its customers to not use Safari when doing transactions and conducting business, which is a pretty big black eye for Apple in my book when an internet giant like Paypal is telling people to not use your product.

PC World goes more into depth on this subject, and while PC World tends to be a little elementary in its write-ups and articles, I think this one is pretty informative for the average joe.

Updated Web Browsers: Which One Works Best?

While my profession will require me to use Internet Explorer, I can’t express my distaste for it enough. Beyond simple surfing, thats about all its good for. Even with version 8 looming at the end of the year, its nothing more than what Firefox was 4 years ago, or Opera 6 years ago. It just simply does not cut it. It still has major CSS rendering issues, javascript incompatibilities, pseudo PNG support and other screw your day up type problems. While I consider myself an IE6/7 web developer expert at this point, we shouldn’t be at the mercy of Microsoft to jump through hoops for their half assed browser, even though we’ve been doing it for years with Windows. Too late now I suppose.

Note: Delaware Web Design Inclind Inc fully supports cross browser compatibility on both frontend and backend applications. This article is to inform you that using Internet Explorer is basically like leaving the doors to your home wide open in a bad part of town. Try Mozilla Firefox or Opera, you’ll be glad you did

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Now that’s a laugh…here at Inclind, I rely heavily on others to get the job done. When I was approached by president Shaun Tyndall about becoming one of Inclind’s client associates, I had to wonder why in the world he thought that I would be a good candidate. Wasn’t Inclind a web development company? Did he think that I knew anything about web design? Then it hit me. “No” was the answer to the previous questions; Shaun had other motives.

It really has nothing to do with me; you see, it’s all about you! Clients are the number one priority here at Inclind, and Shaun intends to keep it that way. By bringing me on board, Inclind strives to continue to be on top in Delaware web design and empower our clients to rise to the top as well!

From the words of Walt Disney, “Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” That’s the Inclind way.

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