If you’re using LockerPulse in Internet Explorer 7 or 8, you’ve probably noticed the following “upsell” to Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox on the sidebar:

Why? Quite simply, because those browsers are ahead of Internet Explorer in a lot of ways. They are faster and more feature filled, which in turn allows us to build a better web application.

An example is the reader page. In Firefox, you’ll see that the story jumps off the page on top of a partially transparent background (click to enlarge):

Whereas, on Internet Explorer we had to modify the experience quite a bit to make it functional:

The good news is that the IE team is catching up to the rest of the web browsing world and with the release of IE9 we should see some drastic improvements.

What about IE6? We’ve had a few people comment on this. We do not support Internet Explorer versions 6 or lower. If you arrive on the site you’ll see the following message:

That pretty much says it all. IE6 is dwindling in market share, presents even more design/functionality problems than IE7/IE8, and has been responsible from some serious security leaks. Many other sites like YouTube also do not support IE6. In the coming months you’ll begin to see less and less support as developers turn their focus towards building cutting edge web applications for the masses and away from supporting a dying technology. Like much of the developer community, we feel that IE6 was great in it’s hey in the early 2000′s, but we’re ready to see it retired.