Now that you've had your fill of turkey and mashed potatoes and maybe done a little Black Friday shopping, why not do a nerdy kindness for your elders and update their browsers?
Alexis Madrigal, a senior editor at The Atlantic, proposed the idea in a Tuesday column, arguing that there's no excuse for using a browser that was available a decade ago. "Do it for the web developers. Do it for the designers. Do it for your parents," he writes.
It might seem like a strange request. Who cares about browser version? Well, if you care about Web security and the ability to access everything that's on the Web, you should. Google and Facebook, for example, have been phasing out support for Internet Explorer 6. Earlier this year, Microsoft even developed a Web site dedicated solely to charting the demise of IE6. "It's time to say goodbye," reads a message on the site, which encourages users to upgrade to the latest version, IE9.
As of October, IE8 was the most popular browser globally with 29 percent of the market, followed by Chrome 14 at 13.65 percent, and Firefox 7 at 10.18 percent, according to data from Net Applications. IE6 came in at number five with 7.5 percent.
Madrigal urges users to be sneaky. If caught, say "you're checking for viruses or installing new drivers or that you're 'freeing up space on their hard drive,' which parents always seem to worry about," he writes. He also warned against switching browsers completely. "Keep it simple."
Internet Explorer, the most popular browser, is still on a relatively slow upgrade schedule, but inspired by Google's quick-release approach, Mozilla is now releasing new versions of Firefox every few months, making it all the more likely that some parents are way behind in their browser update schedule.
For more, see PCMag's full reviews of Firefox 8, Chrome 15, and Internet Explorer 9.