Update Your Parents’ Browser Day

By | November 25, 2011 | 15 Comments

Update Your Parents' Browser Day

The Atlantic’s Alexis Madrigal came up with it as a practical avocation for the day after Thanksgiving, when many people are paying their folks at home a visit.

Madrigal proposes that if you cannot dissuade your parents from keeping Internet Explorer 6 because YouTube will stop working, “wait until they slip into a tryptophan induced coma and then sneak into the den.”

Throwing protection against security vulnerabilities into the upgrade argument would help too, of course. There’s a time and a place for scare tactics, and browser upgrades is one of them, especially if your parents do fancy stuff such as online banking. Sticking around to make sure your parents are successfully adapting to any user interface changes would be great too.

The event has drawn support from Microsoft and Google’s influential search executive, Matt Cutts. They’re preaching to the choir, however, as anybody who reads Windows and IE blogs or follows a prominent Googler on Twitter is likely to already have an up to date browser.


About (Author Profile)


Being passionate about software, Armin joined FavBrowser.com in early 2011 and has been actively writing ever since. Having accepted the challenge, he also enjoys watching anime, indulging in good books, staying fit and healthy, and trying new things.

  • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

    Although not many people will know this ‘special’ day exists it does sound like a good concept. I quite like it.

    Now we’ll let Google advertise it in their browser. :P

  • Mikah

    Parent’s are not he problem its Government departments & big business.
    Even companies like Intel use IE 6 .
    http://communities.intel.com/community/openportit/blog/2010/02/24/remediating-applications-when-migrating-from-microsoft-windows-xp-to-microsoft-windows-7

    • http://twitter.com/bricky149 Shane Bundy

      That article is from 2010, but I see where you’re coming from.

      Even our government in the UK use IE6, stating their “state-of-the-art” security systems are far better than upgrading a single program.The best thing is it’s more expensive to keep those systems protected than it is to use a better browser. :L

  • Anonymous

    Just wondering what generation you guys belong to.

    • Mikah

      The Older one

  • Anonymous

    I’ve gotten my parents to use Opera and grandmother to use IE9. 

    Here’s an alert I created for people using IE7 and older. That demo will give everyone the alert, but here’s the real code if you want to use it: http://jsbin.com/ixuzir/2 (just use the <!–[if lte IE 7]> section in source code)

  • Mikah

    I’ve gotten my Wife ,2 sons & my Granddaughter to use Opera I also tried to wean my Cousin off Chrome but it didn’t stick , guess he wasn’t techie enough , I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve had to change his screen resolution from  800 x 600  to 1280 x 800 the correct resolution for his LCD, he is a whiz kid with his smart phone & does use opera mini lol 

    • Ligmfdgmdflk

      chrome is far better than opera, though i prefer firefox.. at this point

      • http://www.youtube.com/user/max1cp?feature=mhum Maxim

        Only for newbies like you.

        • Ligmfdgmdflk

          mhm

      • Armin

        Being a big Opera and Firefox fan, I have to say that that is somewhat true since Chrome has multiprocess browsing.

    • http://my.opera.com/rafaelluik Rafael

      And what were the cons they find using Opera / Chrome?

      @d24061c8f789aae023f9ef4deca3aa22:disqus What’s somewhat true?… Mikah didn’t cite the reasons.

      • Mikah

        My oldest boy was a Firefox fan & was mocking me for using an outdated browser, if I remember rightly he said why are you still using that old piece of crap.

        I asked why Firefox was better . He ended up installing it on my PC & customized the interface to his preference & installed about 20 extensions & showed me how easy it was to use he took about an hour in total

        I then installed Opera 11 on his laptop as a portable using the options in the installer.
        It was a smaller file under 10 MBs & installed far quicker I customized the interface installing a nice aero skin from the appearance pop-up window (shift F12) moved the address bar to the bottom & dragged some buttons from the Status bar to it added the clock button to the far right of the adress bar.Turned off the Status bar & activated the Panel toggle & unticked the Widgets & Unite Panels & added the Windows Panel. Turned off the Status Panel and exited Appearance.
        Opened opera:config searched Chrome & set both options to 0
        Installed the Slim Scrollbar extension and the Gismeteo weather Speed dial extension.
        Used Opera Link to get my bookmarks, notes, passwords,speedials,content blocker rules & search engines.
        Added mail accounts for Opera, Gmail, from my Internet provider & Yahoo.
        Added The Independent,Guardian , New York Times & BBC sports to the Panels by dragging the tabs.
        Opened Preferences turned of scroll bars & visual hints for the mouse & turned on single key shortcuts.
        Took about 15 minutes so far & another 20 minutes showing him the best point’s.

        It did help that I install a Portable version of Opera’s latest snapshot at least weekly & customize it to use as my main browser.

        He was most impressed by the keyboard shortcuts, Full screen Mode with the access to panels F4 toggle & the address bar very handy with the clock button ALt L A in sequence. The Notes panel & the notes headers acting like bookmarks to the page they were copied from.
        He also liked the Windows panel & the fact I was reading my Yahoo mail inside Opera.
        There were 4 or 5 Firefox extensions that he thought were better than Opera’s but he’s now an Opera user with Firefox for backup.

        He’d used Opera before over the years but never really discovered its features, I guess Firefox is all about extensions so you have to actively go looking for them & are more likely to find them.
        He was the one who converted my younger son from Chrome to Opera.

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