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Browsers Fighting to Keep up with the Web
An anonymous reader writes "With the continued evolution of the internet and more tools being developed or migrated online browsers are fighting to keep up. Wired has a quick look at the current status of the browser war and what different browsers are doing to try to stay ahead. From the article: 'Already, IE has seen its U.S. market share on Windows computers drop to 90 percent from 97 percent two years ago, according to tracking by WebSideStory. Firefox's share has steadily increased to 9 percent, with Opera's negligible despite its innovations. WebSideStory analyst Geoff Johnston said Firefox must continue to improve just to maintain its share. Because IE automatically ships with Windows, he said, users satisfied with IE7 may not find enough reasons to download and install Firefox when they buy a new computer.'"
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Let me tell you, IE 7 is just as fucked as IE5/6.
IE 7 requires the htc file to implement the HTC hover menu. IE 7 still has the bug with apply text-align to block elements. IE 7 still has weird overlap issues.
IE 7 is basically IE 6 with a tab bar and some more annoying anti-phishing code. The website layout I designed recently works like this: one path is for Mozilla/FireFox/Camino/Safari/Konqueror/Opera (tested and working), and the other is IE 5/6/7. One uniform path works consistently in everything except IE, and the smarter Gecko-based browsers even get a little CSS3 magic thrown in.
IE 7 doesn't implement all of CSS 1, a standard that's pushing 10 years old.
(This was me testing IE 7 inside VMWare on Windows Server 2003)
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Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
New versions of Firefox 1.x will run on windows 9x.
New versions of Firefox 2.x will run on windows 9x. (2007?)
Not until firefox 3.x will support for windows 9x be dropped. (2008?)
Microsoft's last browser that supported windows 9x was released 5 years ago, while firefox is still planning on supporting it in new releases for at least another year.
Hi,
w ns/example/ .htc
w ns/
.htc files often create a security warning in IE.
Been a browser of slashdot for years. Just joined to help you out.
Check out : http://www.htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdo
for an example of a cross browser clean list menu with no
details of how it work can be found:
http://www.htmldog.com/articles/suckerfish/dropdo
I modified the code and made a version for my employer that worked on all IE5's including mac, IE6, Firefox, Opera. Its very nice menu. It uses javascript to allow hover in IE.
hope this helped.
-Ryan
You write a parody, and yet some MS products do act in this manner.
Case in point: MSN Messenger. Have a friend send you an mp3.
It asks you "Do you want to accept this file?", to which you click yes.
It then downloads the file and offers you a nice and simple, clickable link to open the file. You click on it. A window pops up.
Something along the lines of "This file could be dangerous. Windows has prevented your computer from opening it".
It doesn't mention it, but it also deletes the damned file you just downloaded. Pretty sad, eh?
twitter.com/gravitronic
From the article: 'Already, IE has seen its U.S. market share on Windows computers drop to 90 percent from 97 percent two years ago, according to tracking by WebSideStory. Firefox's share has steadily increased to 9 percent, with Opera's negligible despite its innovations.
The statistics in the article specifically reference Windows.
You are still innocent until proven guilty. What's changed is what they do to innocent people. - notnAP, #26891325
Having been on the fringes of the Mozilla project for years, the purpose of the Mozilla project is to promote an open web. Mitchell Baker (project leader) has repeatedly said that the goal is not dominant marketshare, but rather preventing MS or any other vendor from locking down the web. A secondary goal is to advance the state of the web and promoting innovation (SVG, MathML, XForms, WHATWG, etc). The other goals and actions extend from these two goals.
He said 'representatives', as in House of Representatives.
They do have an incumbent election rate of 98+%
http://www.commoncause.org/site/pp.asp?c=dkLNK1MQI think maybe you need to improve your understanding of exactly what a monopoly is, and what anti-trust legislation is intended to do. There isn't a double-standard going on for two reasons:
- Almost _all_ *nix distributions provide a choice in both the desktop and the web browser. The only possible exception is Apple, but the second reason applies to them.
- None of the *nix distributors have a monopoly share of the market, and none of them are using a monopoly in one area to extend their control to another. Microsoft was charged with and convicted of exactly that. As a direct result, they are forced to, for a period of time, play by different rules.
Maybe you don't like anti-trust legislation, but bear in mind that the United States is not, by any stretch of the imagination, the only country that has monopoly-busting laws on the books.GreyPoopon
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Why is it I can write insightful comments but can't come up with a clever signature?
So, my household could be counted as 100 percent IE.
No, these stats are not based on computers sold and firefox downloads made, but what the user-agent string is. So unless you changed your firefox/opera (btw the default is IE) to show up as IE, you will not be counted as IE.
The only inaccuracy is the dynamism of this: I have more than one machine, more than one OS, each having a different browser. On my Mac for example, I switched from Safari to Firefox to Camino back to Safari to Opera back to Firefox.
As long as the websites I visit are functional from all broswers I use, I really don't give a crap who has what percent of the market.
Once in Staples just for a laugh I asked the guy there which scanners supported linux. With a scowl on his face he said "I don't support Mac and I don't support Linux".
I told a taxi driver once that I don't use any Microsoft products and he said "I have to use it, I need MSN to stay in contact with my friends".
Most people I've talked to have no interest in learning Linux and I don't think that it has anything to do with the relative merits of Windows or Linux. It has more to do with saturation. It's not like you can go to your local computer store and check out Majesty Gold or whatever for Linux (at least not around where I live). Microsoft is in the schools, it's in the stores and it's on TV.
Think about it... most people who go to the store and buy a computer are going to get Windows on their computer. They might download firefox. One people in Staples actually said "I use Microsoft everything to make sure it's all compatible". With this kind of mindset I don't think much is going to change. The masses will continue to use Windows and the techies will continue to use Linux or BSD.
I'd even go as far to say the lock-in is getting worse. In the 80's I could go to a local computer store and buy a Tandy, Amiga or a Macintosh. Sure, it's all proprietary but at least people had choices.
Getting back to browsers for a moment, I think firefox is great (adblock is very nice) and I do see people using it. There's a good firefox community who help each other and it is catching on. To take the online census in Canada I did have to use IE on a Windows computer. Some script they used did not work, but the government did say they were working on making their online service more compatible. I did write them an email to complain about it. It's things like that which pull people back into using IE.
I'm not going to argue the point about IE, I avoid using it 99.9% of the time. In fact I did my income tax for the first time using a web-based service via firefox. The only time I used IE this year was for the census.
he simply will not be voted out of office short of killing someone. ;-)
For those who don't know, in his younger days Ted Kennedy did kill someone. In a drunken stupor, he drove off a pier with a young lady in the car. He got out, and instead of going to the police or trying to get help, left her to die in the car. If his ass were black he'd be doing life. If he didn't have a rich family, he'd have done at least twenty years. Instead, coming from a priviledged background, he gets to be a Senator.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
Seeing a 7%+ decrease in IE usage from WebSideStory is huge IMO. WebSideStory tracks a lot of average Joe-User type sites. If I read about a 7%+ decrease in IE usage from mostly tech-oriented sites, it wouldn't be that big of a surprise. However seeing that big of a drop from WebSideStory is pretty cool IMO. I wonder why Google and Yahoo! do not post their browser stats? Heck, what about slashdot? Why would slashdot not post browsers stats? Did slashdot make a deal with the devil to not show stats for ad dollars?
If Tyranny and Oppression come to this land,
it will be in the guise of fighting a foreign enemy. -James Madison
Mod parent up "+1 Good Satire".
Oh, wait...
There is a monopoly, but it does not arise from unfair manipulation
Several courts of law, chambers of commerce, anti-trust offices and other experts, both in the US and in Europe, beg to differ. MS was not convicted for being a monopoly, it was convicted for unfair manipulation (i.e. levering their monopoly into other markets).
The people are not opressed, users are free to use what they like
Tell that to the 80% or so who bought "a computer" - which, of course, came with windos. I've met people who believed that Linux must be a windos program, because they couldn't contemplate the concept of an "Operating System". Windos is what runs on computers, isn't it? Every computer runs windos, doesn't it?
Check with the real world, then come back and you'll laugh at your sentence as hard as I did.
nor does Microsoft brainwash them.
Aside from convincing people that windos is computing, using every trick in the book to contain them to their own small world (MSN comes to mind, a huge failure in the market that would certainly be dead if IE wouldn't force you there every chance it gets), aside from the fact that before (win)dos, a computer crash was a serious problem that required attention and an immediate bug fix, aside from the fact that MS stalemated HCI for years by forcing some arbitrary and obnoxious interface on everyone, and aside from their constant attempts to embed their own products as "the product" (IE is still called "Internet" on the default desktop, isn't it? Outlook was called "Mail". Word has become a synonym for word processing through aggressive marketing, etc.)
No, absolutely no brainwashing going on. Why would a marketing driven company ever want to do something like manipulating its customers?
Fighting Microsoft gains nothing. They have nothing we want to take.
They have about $50 billion, much of it gained illegally as monopoly rent. If you don't want your share, I'll gladly take it.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org