Have a Better Surfing Experience. Update your Web Browser!

Story by: Colophon Editor
January 5, 2016

For many people, surfing the web means using the same browser over and over. This makes sense. As you become comfortable with a particular technology, you tend to return to it. The familiarity and predictability are helpful to a good experience.

Unfortunately, if you are not upgrading your browser software, your web surfing experience can be degraded over time. Some content may not display correctly, some sites won't work at all, and security can be compromised.

As web technologies and operating systems evolve, so do web browsers. Improvements to the design and additional features that unlock web content are added. If you are running old browser software you may find that you have trouble with many new websites and related technologies.

A reminder of this is that on January 12, 2016, Microsoft will end support for early versions of Internet Explorer. Learn more here.

As web developers, we work to build websites and web applications that will work across a vast array of browsers on both desktop and mobile devices. However, there is no doubt that some browsers to a better job than others.

Currently, our favorite browser is Google Chrome for both PC and MAC. You can learn more about Chrome and download it here. Chrome dominates the world wide web. See statistics for browser use.

It is also important to "clear your cache" every so often. Our development team does this on a daily basis to be sure we are seeing the most up-to-date pages on all websites that we build or visit.

Browsers store the history of your pages and the content on those pages in a "cache" folder. While this speeds up browsing it can also cause some problems by displaying old files. For information on clearing your cache, please see this site: http://www.refreshyourcache.com/en/home/

While it can be a little painful getting started with new software, it's worth a try. The short learning curve will pay dividends in an improved experience on the web. Update your browser and clear out your cache for a better browsing experience.

Also see our related article: Web Browsers Make a Difference