Time to say goodbye

The end is nigh! After 12 years, support for Windows XP will officially end on April 8, 2014.

If you're still using Windows XP, what does this mean for you?

In a nutshell you need to either upgrade the operating system or maybe even move to a modern PC or Mac. There are many risks involved with the do nothing approach, e.g. viruses, spyware and other malicious software, lack of other software support etc. So doing nothing shouldn't be an option.

What does this have to do with web design?

Although Chrome, Firefox and other modern browsers run perfectly well on Windows XP, the latest version of Internet Explorer that does is IE8. IE8 has a lot of flaws and bugs that need to be worked around which adds to the time and cost in building and testing websites.

Because of the popularity of IE8, carrying out this debugging and testing has been a necessary evil. However, given that Microsoft themselves will no longer support the browser or the operating system then I have decided that personally I will no longer be testing against this browser.

I know there will be those who say that it depends on your target audience, etc, but I don't believe that continuing to support an outdated, insecure browser is the responsible thing for web designers to be doing.

Time to say goodbye.