This post is part three of three. Part 1 (Be a Realist) and Part 2 (Be a Strategist) are already published and available.

It’s 2013, and it is time for people to get over their hate for Internet Explorer. Yes, IE has had its issues in the past. I know it, you know it, even Microsoft knows it. At the end of the day, developers that whine and complain and about supporting IE are trying to be trendy and fit-in rather than be a professional. Supporting IE isn’t nearly as painful as the complainers make it out to be and that it actually makes the most sense for any web project.

In this post, I ask the IE complainers to put their big boy/girl pants on by being a leader when it comes to being a web professional.

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Be a Leader

Being that you are reading this post, people that you deal with consider you an industry expert. At this point, if you are still telling business decision makers that they do not need to consider Internet Explorer you are only digging yourself a deeper hole as there are arguments beyond “my users don’t use Internet Explorer” and never will. Remember that we already discussed the IE is used by Windows 8 and Office 2013 users, even if they don’t know it.

That aside, if you are asked about supporting an old version of IE the professional thing to do isn’t to ignore IE, rather recommend a better version IE to be rolled out to the organization.

A professional is able to make recommendations about where improvements can be made and why they are beneficial to the client. Saying “IE Sucks” isn’t a professional answer, nor is it the truth. Old versions of IE suck, but your business professional likely doesn’t know or care about the difference, rather they want to know why an upgrade will benefit them.

It’s early in the life of Windows 8 and the reinvention it has brought to the platform with Windows Apps, Apps for Office, and everything else coming down the pipeline, but that doesn’t mean you can’t get your clients and yourself ready for the change.

Being a professional isn’t about complaining about what you dislike and trying to be trendy. It’s about leading people who ask you, as a professional, what they should do. Proclaiming that IE sucks that it should be ignored is only setting everyone else in your industry back, as someone like me who can be a professional and provide real solutions will need to clean up the mess you made.