Welcome to borfast.com

This is (probably) not the page you were trying to reach.

There is nothing wrong with the page you tried to reach (meaning this is not one of those '404 Not Found' error pages).
The problem is that you seem to be using Microsoft Internet Explorer as your web browser and this is a huge mistake (in my humble opinion, which, by the way, is shared by much much much more people than you would ever imagine).

So... I brought you to this page for two reasons:

1. To warn you that Internet Explorer may not work well on my site
2. To explain you why you should stop using Internet Explorer right away

If you don't want to read any further, you are free to continue browsing my web site (cookies required if you are using IE - you'll be redirected to this page every 10 minutes) but I ask that at least you take a look at other browser possibilities. I advise you to read the rest, though, as you'll be doing a favor not just to yourself but to the whole internet as well.

Either way, please keep in mind that I do not test if Internet Explorer works with my web site, so if it looks ugly or simply doesn't work, you know why...

 

OK, glad you're still here :)
So why am I telling you to drop IE? Well, to put it in a simple way:

• IE violates your privacy
• IE is not secure
• IE barrages you with ads
• IE is harmful to webmasters
• IE does not follow the HTTP protocol
• IE does not support web standards
• IE lacks useful features that have become standard on every other major browser

The list could go on but this should give you an idea to start from. And what does all this mean to you? Lets see...

 

Internet Explorer violates your privacy

Internet Explorer keeps an archive of all of the web sites you have visited. This archive is completely invisible and cannot be deleted by any normal means. If you thought you could get rid of it by clearing your history or deleting your cache, you are wrong. It is kept in a folder which is segregated from the main filesystem, but it is there!

To discover Internet Explorer's secret little cache, open up a "DOS command prompt" (go to Start -> "Run..." and type in "command"). A black box (terminal) will come up on your screen. Type in the box: attrib index.dat /s (if you don't get any results, type in cd \ and then the attrib command). You will get a long list of encrypted files inside hidden folders; for example, if you're running Windows XP, you might see C:\DOCUME~1\YourName\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\ and so on. (The rest of this walkthrough also applies to XP users.) This is a hidden folder inside your Internet Explorer History that tracks the URLs you've visited. Now, cut and paste that (change YourName to the actual user name that came up) to your Internet Explorer location bar, and try to open up that directory. Isn't that interesting? It doesn't seem to exist! Go up a directory to C:\DOCUME~1\YourName\Local Settings\History\ and you'll see your IE History without that directory in it. Now here's the clincher: go to C:\DOCUME~1\YourName\Local Settings\History\History.IE5\index.dat -- you will be asked whether you want to open a file in this "nonexistent" directory with Notepad! Opening it won't do much, by the way, as it is encrypted and very large.

Even if you didn't follow that walkthrough, it is urgent for you to know that Internet Explorer is keeping a backup of all of the web sites you've visited, even if you've tried to get rid of them by clearing the cache, clearing the History, purchasing cleaning software, etc. I will not tell you how to delete this cache, because it's too complicated and out of the scope of this essay. More information is located at Microsoft's Really Hidden Files.

 

Internet Explorer is not secure

Internet Explorer is prone to many vulnerabilities which are much more frightening, allowing hackers to launch files on your system or transfer your files to their hard drive. It is proof enough that Windows XP comes with an "auto-update" program so that its users can download and fix vulnerabilities as Microsoft gets around to them. Note also that Internet Explorer goes through entire "service pack"s in order to close large numbers of security holes.

This shouldn't make you feel more secure by thinking Microsoft keeps an eye out for problems. This should make you scared, because it means that the people who wrote Internet Explorer did not have security as their main concern, or didn't notice obvious security holes while they were programming them. To get a list of Internet Explorer's currently unpatched security holes, visit PivX Solutions. Remember that when you browse the Web with IE, someone might use one of these major vulnerabilities to compromise your system at any time.

 

Internet Explorer barrages you with ads

Ah, yes, pop-up advertisements. The scourge of the Internet. I suppose even the people who put them on their web sites hate them; they exist for the sole purpose of gaining your attention.

But guess what? If you didn't run Internet Explorer, you wouldn't be seeing any pop-up ads at all.

Internet Explorer excluded, all modern Internet browsers have high-tech pop-up blockers which prevent web sites from shoving advertising in your face. They allow you to open useful popup windows while specifically excluding unwanted ads. And why doesn't Microsoft do this? Well, they don't say, but I would suppose that they simply don't care. They own the Web browser market, so almost everyone uses Internet Explorer whether they like it or not. In fact, people sometimes purchase pop-up blockers for use with Internet Explorer, so that they won't have to part with their badly written, insecure, bug-filled HTML renderer.

 

Internet Explorer is harmful to webmasters

Internet Explorer is bad for people using it. But it's also bad for people who make Web pages -- imagine having to program for this monster!

For those of you who have never built a webpage before, you may not know what this means but imagine you wanted to build a house and you hire a construction company for that end. You would hand them the blueprints and tell them exactly how you wanted it built but then they'd build it their way and not the way indicated by the blueprints or by you. That's sort of what Internet Explorer does.

The next two points tell about this kind of problems with Internet Explorer.

 

Internet Explorer does not follow the HTTP protocol

HTTP is the protocol for the World Wide Web. It defines some requirements that all Web browsers must meet; if browsers developed their own protocol instead, communication between computers would break down and the Internet would collapse into anarchy.

Internet Explorer does not follow the HTTP protocol.

When a server sends a file to you through HTTP, it identifies the file as a Web page, text file, picture file, movie, or other type of file. HTTP uses the Content-Type header to do this. The protocol for HTTP/1.1 states:

If and only if the media type is not given by a Content-Type field, the recipient MAY attempt to guess the media type via inspection of its content and/or the name extension(s) of the URI used to identify the resource.

Internet Explorer does not follow these rules; it guesses the media type of every file it receives. Even if I send it a file with "Content-Type: image/jpeg", if Internet Explorer thinks it's a text file, it will open it like a text file!

If in the future Internet Explorer starts identifying its Content-Types incorrectly, this will cause a huge dilemma with webmasters. Imagine you send a package to someone with fragile content inside and a sticker on the outside stating exactly the package contents but since the package doesn't look to carry anything fragile, the mailman handles it without care...

 

Internet Explorer does not support web standards

The World Wide Web Consortium standards allow web desginers to make pages that are easy to update and change because of the nature of the HTML not having to format infomation but instead having a linked Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) with the formating infomation. This approach has many benefits for the end users by allowing different stylesheets for when the page is displayed on a computer screen, when it is printed, or when it is viewed on a handheld device.

Internet Explorer was one of the first browsers to add partial support for CSS but they have not added any new support for CSS since 2001. While most browsers' CSS support was comparable in 2001, the other web browsers (such as Mozilla and Opera) have been fixing bugs and adding increased support. With fewer bugs, designers will be able to code faster and better. Increased support of CSS will allow designers to create more stunning and dynamic layouts. But with Internet Explorer's current buggy incomplete support and no updates on their support for CSS, for web pages authors this is a big thorn in their side.

 

Internet Explorer lacks usefull features that have become standard on every other major browser

While these features are not essential for browsing the World Wide Web, they sure are usefull!

For example, Internet Explorer does not correctly support transparent PNG images. By the way, you can sign an online petition for Microsoft to inlude propper PNG transparency support in their next IE version.

Another really usefull feature thar most browsers have but still lacks in IE is the ability to stop unrequested pop-up windows. Both Mozilla and Opera have it. Yes, you do have to turn it on yourself but it's just a matter of checking a check box in the options panel...

A final example: tabbed browsing! Imagine being able to open up multiple web sites in just one browser window. Much like the tabs in the "Options" Dialog window from Internet Explorer. Imagine having to open a separate window for setting the options available in each of those tabs -- I consider browsing the web without tabs just as bad as that!

 

This page was inspired by the page made by Ashitaka.