Will Internet Explorer 7 Have Any Impact?

John Seyton asks: "A recent posting regarding Internet Explorer 7 has me pondering what impact this next release will have on the web market. Firefox has fought hard to make a small dent in Internet Explorer's armor, to the point that we can browse most of the web with no loss of functionality, yet if Internet Explorer 7 recaptures a sizable chunk of that market share, web authors might once again create offensive 'please upgrade to Internet Explorer' web pages. Based upon the known features, what does the Slashdot community think the impact of Internet Explorer 7 will be on the web in general? Will we be forced to live a two-browser life once again?"

Comments

My $0.02

[mattpointblank]

"what does the Slashdot community think the impact of Internet Explorer 7 will be on the web in general? Will we be forced to live a two-browser life once again?"

I think we never left the 'two-browser life' stage. As a developer, I obviously have both browsers installed and regularly use both to test designs, despite favouring Firefox for personal browsing. I think the competition is healthy, better to have people divided amongst 5 or 6 'core' browsers (IE, Opera, Firefox, Safari, Lynx maybe and Konqueror) is better than having everyone locked into one single program. It does make continuity and consistency an issue for web developers, but I'd still rather it was that way than have everyone using the same badly-written software.

Regarding the topic at hand, I think the release of IE7 won't change too much. Probably everyone running XP now, unaware of the alternate options, will just get the XP "upgrade now!" bubble and download the newer version without really being aware of the differences. From my attempts to educate my spyware-ridden family regarding OSS, it seems that often, computer laymen aren't aware that there are other browsers, and just see IE as the abritrary, sole browser in existence. The biggest thing is educating them to their options then allowing them to freely choose. IE7 won't convert many Firefox users back, it'll just upgrade the IE6 and Vista-buying public who never really know the difference to start with.

7.0 won't, 7.5 might

[Bogtha]

Let's face it, 7.0 is a hurried release to get the Internet Explorer brand going again. It doesn't even close the gap between it and last year's browsers, let alone this year's. Yes, it has a couple of interesting features, but nothing that really stands out. Furthermore, everybody still using Windows 2000 won't be able to use it.

However Microsoft have indicated that they aren't going to let Internet Explorer rot for another four years after this release - there's likely to be a 7.5 and 8.0 in quick succession. These versions are likely to have an impact.

They are likely to get the rendering engine into the kind of shape where they can make proper changes to it (think display: table, XHTML and the DOM event model) without massive regressions. If they do implement XHTML, they won't be limited by their requirement to keep bug-for-bug compatibility with earlier quirks because they can implement a new strict mode for application/xhtml+xml. They won't be fooling around with tabs for the interface, they'll be doing something new. Everybody using Windows 2000 will skip Internet Explorer 7.0 and get 7.5 or 8.0 when they upgrade.

Apart from the year 2010 or so, when web developers will be able to use things like 1998's CSS 2 selectors and expect it to work for the majority of their visitors, 7.0 will have virtually no impact compared with the subsequent versions.

Re:7.0 won't, 7.5 might

[Kelson]

I think you've hit it. IE7 is already far superior to IE6 in terms of what CSS it can handle (and how correctly it can handle it), but still far behind other browsers. If they manage to cath up with 7.5 or 8, even to where Firefox and Opera are today, then we'll have four classes of modern browsers, with the lowest common denominator finally at a level we would have liked to be able to use three years ago.

But there will still be a lot of IE6 users a year, two years, three years after IE7 is released. And that will continue to hold back web development until IE6 goes the way of Netscape 4.

As for marketshare, I suspect IE7 will get some of the people who were on the fence about switching. I don't think it'll stop or reverse the trend -- in other words, I expect few people will switch back, except under the circumstance that they get a new computer and don't want to bother migrating their settings.