I’ve written several times to suggest using an alternative Web browser as Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is the worst choice. Using either Mozilla Firefox or Google Chrome gives you a better Web experience. Even if you use Internet Explorer as your main browser, you should still have an alternative installed should you run into issues.

It is also a very good idea to clean junk out of your browser. You may have a bunch of unnecessary toolbars, add-ons and other crud that interferes with your browsing experience. Two recent e-mails from users mentioned issues that were likely caused by something installed in their browser.

The first person was trying to visit the CorelDRAW X6 Unleashed page. Each time they clicked on the link, they were redirected to the home page of the site with an error message. This user had Internet Explorer and flat out would not test any other browser. I tried the page myself on multiple computers using Internet Explorer and it worked flawlessly.

When I suggested a different browser again, I got a lot of resistance. I also suggested that something in Internet Explorer was causing interference but the user didn’t want to hear it. It is likely this person has problems on a number of sites and just doesn’t realize it.

Another person was trying to purchase the Color Management and Colors Success Kit. I was told that the checkout page didn’t support Canadian provinces which sounded really odd to me. We have had a number of orders from Canada and other countries and I’d never heard of issues before. I placed a test order myself using a Canadian address and it worked perfectly.

In this case I asked the user for more information about their browser and suggested another browser be tried to see if it solved the problem. I haven’t received a response as of this writing. Once again I suggest something installed in the browser is interfering.

Yes, some sites have mistakes and we make one occasionally on our sites. But we do a lot of testing to make sure things do work well and we test in multiple browsers. What we can’t test is the thousands of extra things that can get installed in a browser. So if you are having issues with one or our sites or any other site, consider that the problem could just be some junk installed in your browser.