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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.'"
Hey maybe someone should file an anti-trust lawsuit against Microsoft for bundling their browser with their operating sys.... oh wait, nevermind.
where Flock is headed (no pun intended). It looks like a great browser. IE7 can ship with Windows all day long, but savvy users will always download something else.
things will never change. A majority of internet users don't realize how bad IE is. Also they don't even know other browsers even exist. Not much you can do other than sit back and let it happen
... is exactly what drove me away from Microsoft in the first place. Specifically, Windows 95 "C" where the IE installer started and couldn't be cancelled through a normal dialog box (but could be 'End Task'ed), despite the fact that it was a piece of shit. Yes, Netscape was king of the non-standard extension back in those days, but their abuses pale compared to Microsoft's ActiveX in the late nineties through today, and with the massive vulnerability that ActiveX poses Microsoft should face a class-action lawsuit for negligence in their product design resulting in expensive and time-consuming repairs to computers on a regular basis. Furthermore, it was a travesty that despite Microsoft's Anti-trust ruling they weren't forced to remove Internet Explorer from the OS or weren't forced to include third-party web browsers in the same fashion that they were forced to include third-party connection suites like Compuserve, Prodigy, and America Online in addition to their own MSN.
Mozilla should continue to grow, and advanced users should continue to push to make sure that it is implemented, so long as it remains a better tool for the job than the default (Internet Explorer).
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
After duking it out with Mario all those years, and now with the threat of the Web, poor browser may not have that much fight left in him...oh crap
Despite the innovations that IE7 may posses, the fact is that open source software will continue to mold itself to the whims of the web at the time, and it will be very difficult for Microsoft to keep up.
Slashdot Burying Stories About Slashdot Media Owned
Anyone who found enough reasons to download Firefox before (Adblock? Mouse gestures?) is certainly going to find enough reasons after IE7's release. I downloaded the beta several weeks ago; after a few days of casual usage, I was underwhelmed, annoyed at the intrusive and bloated UI, and unsatisfied as to the permanence and functionality of the new security features. If all you want is tabbed browsing, I suppose IE7 might work, but that's far from being Firefox's only worthwhile feature.
Obviously, I'll be getting IE7 along with everyone else -- it's a security update, after all -- but that doesn't mean the blue 'E' will ever get clicked. And if my father and sister value their free tech support, they won't be clicking it, either.
got standards? --- http://www.w3.org/
If IE was standards compliant and secure, people wouldn't care. Features are nice, but features can be implemented by the king of the hill once the kinks are ironed out by the underdogs.
As a web designer / developer I'd be happy enough if people who stuck with IE would at least get a good representation of standards compliant rendering of CSS, HTML, and JavaScript. That's the *first* step that is *required* of Internet Explorer.
"Politicians find new names for institutions which under old names have become odious to the people."
Our website was built by a "website design bureau". We told them it had to be standard, so it would work on Mozilla as well.
What they produced was an absolute mess. CSS boxes were built to IE handling, and rendered incorrectly on Mozilla, which they consistently referred to as "Mozarella". They believed all problems seen on Mozilla were Mozilla bugs, and they added browser detection and workarounds.
Of course it still failed on Opera and Konqueror.
They used an awful piece of Javascript to make dropdown menus.
When they were done, maintenance was handed over to me and I gradually changed all their work to make a standards-conformant site that still rendered the same way. It was a lot of work, starting from the dire state it was in.
But finally, it renders OK and the menus work on most browsers without using javascript.
Exceptions:
- CSS menu only works in IE by including csshover.htc (conditional inclusion using !--[if IE]...). maybe IE7 will support:hover on list items?
- IE4 and below don't quite cut it, fallback to javascript code using serverside UA string detect. these are dying anyway, probably I will remove this support when IE7 appears.
- bug 234788 in GECKO means the menu disappears when mouse moves over scrollable text area. this bug has been fixed in GECKO but Mozilla and Firefox keep releasing new versions based on the broken GECKO for over a year.... We want Firefox 1.1 and Mozilla 1.8!!!
What I learnt: use a website design bureau only to make a site design. Don't allow them anywhere near HTML coding. They just use successive approximation towards the "browsers they test with", and try to impress managers with "browser utilisation percentages" instead of standards compliance.
Given the fact that remotely exploitable holes are found with Internet Explorer almost on a daily basis, would having your machine constantly backdoored by BackWeb, BonziBuddy, Gator, Hotbar, Ezula, Weather Cast, GAIN, Claria, etc. be enough to switch?
*Firefox Download Utility
If you think imaginary property and real property are the same, when does your house become public domain?
The problem is that there's no real, new, revolutionary development in browsers. They're all following each other's leads and copying each other's successes, not looking beyong the narrow confines of their little war for market share.
With applications migrating from static desktop to web driven versions and web sites creating useful functionality, the web browser has to evolve. Even the word "browser" is really not fitting anymore, since they do so much more than serve up static content. They are becoming control interfaces, transaction screens, and data transfer mechanisms; the browser is going to have to become "heftier" (do not read as larger) to deal not just with interacting with these new applications, but to provide a new layer of security.
GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
I recently converted some physics books to html, and I would have loved to be able to use svg for line art and mathml for the equations. Firefox supports them, but IE doesn't. Sure, I could have made two versions, or done content negotiation, or something complicated like that, but it would have significantly increased the level of complexity of the project. I just wasn't willing to go to that much effort for for an incremental improvement that would only benefit 10% of my audience. MS is clearly in a situation where they have an effective monopoly, and absolutely no motivation to support any new standard, much less to carry out their own innovation. Heck, they don't even support transparent pngs yet.
There are lots of other ways that MS has had a negative effect on the internet as well, including their behavior about java, and Windows' lousy default security settings, without which botnets wouldn't have happened.
I don't normally feel any compulsion to bash MS. If other people want to use Windows and Office, that's their business. But what they've done to the internet and open standards really hurts everyone else. If it hadn't have been for them, we'd probably have already moved beyond java applets and ajax, to a web 3.0 that would really deliver what web 2.0 is currently struggling to accomplish.
Find free books.
Where is XForms support? Yes I know about the Mozilla plug in and all of the other external support, but until it is built into the browser I can't even think about using it in my web sites. The current HTML forms support is crude at best, yet it is crucial for any kind of application. The XForms spec has been around since 2003 and still no browser supports it. Don't wait on MS; they won't support it since it makes the browser a more capable platform for delivering apps and that competes with their OS/application strategy. Opera is supporting Web Forms 2.0, but that is not the W3C standard. I wish the browser community, Firefox, would stop messing around and provide a real step forward in browser capability, XForms support.
I administer roughly 100 websites, ranging from downright soccer-mom commercial, to those oriented to the more tech savvy, and everything in between.
Last month I saw 37% of our users arrive via Firefox or other Mozilla project.
We also go up to .8% from Windows CE (mobile) web browsers.
I don't know how much stock I put in these various metrics. They always grossly underestimate non-IE browser from my experiences.
I guess it all depends on what site you measure. AOL.com probably gets 99% IE, while Slashdot probably gets 50% IE.
Unless you can measure the whole web, which is impossible, cherrypicking sites is always going to produce unreliable numbers.
I imagine that they poll mostly "mainstream" websites, but the fact is that such sites really account for an overwhleming minority of internet traffic.
If more manufacturers took a leaf from Dell and installed Firefox on all new computers, then over time firefox's user base can only go up. It's getting buy-in from pc manufacturers thats more important than trying to beat IE with features (and therefore bloat)
you ''know'' something is rotten.
When the big news is that, in some country, some leader only got 90% of the vote instead of the 97% expected, it may be significant, but you know that country is no democracy.
When the big news is that IE's market share has dropped from 97% to 90%, it may be significant, but you know that the product did not get its market share on the basis of open competition on a level playing field.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
not purely because it's a MS product. See, IE is what's called a value add product (insert joke here). At the end of the day, IE is meant to enhance a flagship product--Windows. So, Microsoft can get comfortable and decide to re-assign their IE staff to something more productive. That's how there's a security issue. Because there is no new innovation, the code stagnates, and is vulnerable to those who actively seek exploits.
Then you have Firefox. Does Firefox compete for code time with other Mozilla products. Yes, a few, but Firefox has quickly become a flagship product. There are people within and without the organization that maintain the code. This creates inherent security because there are positive contributors constantly refining and securing the code.
It's that simple. Will I ever download IE 7? I'll eventually have it in a few years when I buy a computer that has Vista on it, but I won't download it because of IE 6's lack of MS support. With Firefox I simply feel secure that SOMEONE will continue to develop it and make it more secure. Ironically, I can't say the same for a corporate developed piece of software.
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I am all for stopping that whole Microsoft Monopoly thing, but if they didn't include IE with windows... then how would one get the replacement browser, and don't say FTP because where am I going to get my FTP client without a browser to go d/l it in the first place?
This is serious...
--Valthan
There are some changes in IE7 that should be noted:
A search box in the corner!(OMG, revolutionary!)
Tabs(This is like 720 degrees revolutionary!)
But... wait... the tabs will be quick tabs with little thumbnails of the web pages(This is amazing, someone should integrate this into an OS)
And finally,
(Note, the following satirical conversation assumes that Vista will actually ship at some point.)
IE7 *Now entering protected mode*
IE7 You are attempting to contact host 'www.google.com' are you sure you wish to continue? The internet is a scary place. Non-microsoft web pages can harm your computer.
USER Yes.
IE7 Honestly, wouldn't you rather look at MSN pages instead of risk compromising your computer? Are you definitely sure that you wish to continue?
USER Yes.
IE7 Is that your final answer?
USER Yes.
IE7 Just to check, it's not opposite day is it?
USER It isn't opposite day.
IE7 But, if it is opposite day, and you say it isn't then it really is. Are you sure it's not opposite day?
USER Fine, it is opposite day.
**Segmentation Fault. Paradox buffer overflow**
At this point, the user restarts IE.
IE7 *Now entering protected mode*
USER MSN Search: google
IE7 No search results found
USER Disable content filter
IE7 1,224,671,930,542 results found.
USER Go to first result: www.google.com
IE7 WARNING! WARNING! The host attempted to send data of the unknown descriptor "HTML." This data most likely contains severe security exploits. In response, your internet connection has been severed.
User opens Firefox.
Now that I'm done IE bashing for the hell of it. The protected mode sounds like it could be a nice sandboxy type thing that could potentially make IE a lot more secure. Of course, it will probably break favorite flashy webpages or block downloads of "OMG you have to see this video.exe" sent to you by sexylola@zombiefarm.net, so users will disable it.
Personally, I will stick with Firefox, or maybe this Opera thingy everyone talks about. Is it like a Firefox extenstion or something? *ducks*
If this signature is witty enough, maybe somebody will like me.
"users satisfied with IE7 may not find enough reasons to download and install Firefox when they buy a new computer."
I think a lot of Firefox users will still want to get Firefox because for a long time they've been clicking the Red Fox instead of the Blue E to get on the Internet. My friends, I know, will notice this at least, and most likely, when wondering how to transfer all their old bookmarks to their new computer, will look into downloading Firefox because that's what their old bookmarks are in.
I think that interest in Firefox is not going to decrease with the release of Vista with IE7. A lot of FF users are people who would never switch, and the rest are probably too used to it to go back to IE. MS will have to make IE7 a lot like Firefox if they want to keep casual users from noticing the difference.
This message will self-destruct in 5, 4, 3...
I love FireFox and I will always use it unless something faster, quicker, safer, and more intelligently design appears.
But what are they trying to achieve? 100% market dominance? Do they need that? Can they sustain themselves just by providing a solid browser to the core 10% of the market that cares? If they are going out of business because they don't have 90% of the market, well then they have work to do. I would think they are just a tool for a niche market of serious computer users, and not the drooling masses.
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
there was the internet. Then came the Web. The Web made a simple cross-platform access to networkes information possible. The URL was a designation of permanent Resource locations. New features where used only if neccessary.....
and where are we now? Every website has dynamic pages; half of them require a session ID even for dowloading a manual. Three quarters of them require Javascript to read use otherwise static links. Only one fifth of the website seems to afford programmers who can in this complicated world deliver the experience of the early web (=it works), the rest has a vast mixture of flash, javascript and other Stuff - most of the time requireing the newest version of some obscure plugin to be installed.
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)
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
We regularly re-elect approximately 99% of incumbent representatives in the US. What does that say about us?
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.
The current software situation cannot be likened to a dictatorship. There is a monopoly, but it does not arise from unfair manipulation. The people are not opressed, users are free to use what they like. Many of them do choose something different. The truth that we find scarier than an malovent monopoly, is that most users just DON'T CARE. They're not born indoctrinated, nor does Microsoft brainwash them. They do it to themselves. No-other business can dream of such brand loyalty, even if the majority of users will exclaim daily at the product and even ridicule it. They've never even tried a competing product and will fervently deny their existence.
Fighting Microsoft gains nothing. They have nothing we want to take. Users themselves have the keys to their chains. We need to teach them.
As the number of browsers increases, my development time remains static. The lower boundary is defined by Internet Explorer and other browsers don't raise it significantly.
In my experience, the people who complain about the number of different browsers are the people who design for Internet Explorer first and fix things for browsers that attempt to follow the W3C specifications. The people who design for compliant browsers first and then fix things for Internet Explorer don't tend to worry about the number of different browsers, because they all tend to work pretty much alike, apart from Internet Explorer.
Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
Is there any way to stop these browsers from fighting?
Please sign petition to restore sanity to our banking system!!!
http://financialpetition.org/
For all practical purposes, the war was over in 2001. For the next 3 years, IE6 was the undisputed ruler of the web. And look what it got us:
For 4 years, Internet Explorer went without a significant upgrade to its capabilities. It couldn't even finish support for the specs that had been defined years earlier, never mind adding new stuff.
With 97% of web surfers using IE6 on Windows, the target was obvious for malware writers: viruses, spyware, and worms burst onto the scene and have gotten so bad that even Microsoft says the best way to get rid of them is to wipe your system and reinstall it from scratch.
I'd much rather deal with slight differences in standards support (like trying to manage the differences between Firefox, Opera, and Safari today) than deal with huge chunks of missing features and major bugs the way we have to when developing something for IE6 and F/O/S.
Having more than one browser out there with viable market share puts pressure on the leaders to keep improving their products. Having more than one major target will make it harder for malware writers to hit the entire web at once, and will slow down the spread of malware.
So yes, we're better off with the competition than without it.
Ummm, that we're rational people who learn from our mistakes?
This guy's the limit!
IE got to that level of market share for two reasons:
1) It was bundled with Windows, starting from (iirc) Windows 95 SR2 (or whatever it was called)
2) Netscape 4 was shit
On point 2), before you write me off as a troll, understand this - I have never used IE as my browser, and never will. I only use it when I absolutely have to. However, IE4 wiped the floor with Netscape 4 in terms of speed and stability. It didn't stop me using Netscape, but even at the time I admitted it was shit, but "at least it's not IE".
It's official. Most of you are morons.
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
Surely IE is down to 90% because it's been, like, 4 years since the last Microsoft desktop OS release: that's when everyone gets reset back to IE. Users have to actively install something else at that point for IE penetration to fall significantly below Windows penetration. When Vista is finally released and everyone gets IE7 with tabbed browsing, that will probably be enough to push IE back over 95%.
Given that the global market share for Apple's systems is ~2% (maybe 2 - 3% today?), I don't think it's unreasonable to conclude that a very small percentage of users out there are using Safari. Why?
I have a Mac Mini at home. One of the first things I did when I brought it home was to install Firefox & Opera on it, and make FF my default browser. I use Firefox on Windows at work, and simply like having a consistent application functionality to use across computers -- plus I have a set of FF extensions that I use constantly. I'm sure I'm not the ONLY person who has a Mac and who also doesn't use Safari.
While it may not be the "less than 1%" figure you're incensed about, it *is* a pretty small number, compared to IE & Firefox. If I had to estimate, I'd guess somewhere around 2-3% of the general population, at maximum, are Safari users.
Just ask yourself, "do we really want one company defining standards for the entire web?" Especially a company with a documented history of abusive business practices, of using monopoly power to quash competition? Or would we prefer a non-profit organization composed of industry leaders from various backgrounds and occupations developing standards in a transparent, egalitarian fashion?
It depends on how you measure that, really.
Let's say you were to look at my house - you'd find most machines have IE.
What it wouldn't tell you is none of us use IE. The first thing my son did with his new Mac mini, for example, was download Firefox, Adblock, and NoScript and train the latter two in how to permit his fave gaming and flash sites to work properly.
My WinXP laptop, has IE. But, other than downloading patches to the extremely buggy Microsoft OS, I don't use it unless I'm forced to. I normally use Firefox or Opera.
So, my household could be counted as 100 percent IE. But, like most MSFT statistics, that would be an inaccurate measure. In fact, it should be counted as 100 percent Other Than IE.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
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=dkLNK1MQThrow me in with the young "doesn't have much knowledge of history" group... Here I've been thinking the four you mentioned were presidents, not representatives.
Dear Pat The Great,
/.
/. community,
Your Pro Microsoft posts are giving us, the other Pat's, a bad name on
Please discontinue.
Rogue Pat
-=-=-=
Dear
We the other Pat's still think that IE7 has a terrible interface and broken rendering.
Rogue Pat
wiped the floor with Netscape 4 in terms of speed and stability. It didn't stop me using Netscape, but even at the time I admitted it was shit, but "at least it's not IE".
But this is exactly the opposite mentality of today. You were using a worse product because of personal beliefs, users do it because it's what they're used to.
IMHO this is hypocrisy. If one product is better, why not use it?? I use Linux, OSX and Windows, each have their good things and bad ones, but saying I'll use one only regardless of what everyone else is doing doesn't make much sense.
We blame users for using MS products although they're inferior, but when they're better we still refuse to use them because of ideologies...
Anyone not obliged to use Windows or IE that still chooses them clearly isn't aware of the issues or alternatives.
This is a common mistake made by both me and an awful lot of technologically-savvy people. That statement is completely false. There are plenty of people who are aware, but simply don't care. There are even more people who aren't aware, but if they were, they still wouldn't care.
The things that seem like monumentally important issues to enthusiasts often are all but completely irrelevant to non-enthusiasts.
This is hardly limited to computers, of course. For example, I could talk your ear off about the obvious advantages of JHP vs. FMJ in 9mm, but you probably don't care.
Reality has a conservative bias: it conserves mass, energy, momentum...
It's true. "Good enough" is just that for most people, especially when there is real or perceived learning curve penalty associated with switching. For example, the vast majority of geeks on Slashdot probably know that Dvorak is better than QWERTY for English typists in almost all respects -- less repetitive motion injury, the ability to type faster, etc. But despite the fact that everyone knows this, many people don't bother switching to Dvorak. Why?
For most people, it just doesn't seem worth it. I made the switch and think it was worth it -- but I have a very hard time convincing most geeks to actually do it. They just nod their heads and say, "yeah, I've heard Dvorak is better" and talk about how they wouldn't mind switching, and then never do.
The probable reason they don't is because during the switch period there is a substantial loss in productivity. Now in actuality, if you limit yourself to just Dvorak it doesn't take very long to learn to type at a reasonable 40wpm -- I learned it in less than a week with a typing tutor. From there, your speed accelerates rapidly. But the change, however fast, is frustrating, and it proves to be too big an obstacle to overcome for most people.
What many geeks don't realize is that despite our insistance that Firefox, OpenOffice, and whatever other MS-replacement we push have similar interfaces to the programs they aim to replace, for many non-technically savvy users even small superficial changes represent a big challenge to overcome. Consider how many people on Slashdot post about their inability to get their parents or friends to switch without resorting to the (extremely popular) IE skin for Firefox.
Unfortunately, just like Dvorak vs. QWERTY, for the vast majority of people it is not arguments about technical merit that convince, but rather arguments about lost productivity, security, and compatibility. In the case of the first, the incumbent always wins -- there is no productivity loss associated with staying with IE in the minds of most people. Security is the main place Firefox constantly thrashes IE and it should come as no surprise that the press (especially the non-technical press) focus most on this when discussing Firefox. For compatibility, again, IE wins, by virtue of being the dominant browser.
It is therefore important from an evangelism perspective that Firefox actually be more secure than IE and remain so, that it be easy enough to use that people who actually try it are not put off (I think this has been achieved rather well), and that it strive to be compatible with as many sites as possible (this also has been done remarkably well in the west at least, largely due to standards-adherence evangelism -- good work guys. In Asia it's a no go.)
Realistically I think that Firefox really, really needs to push security from a marketing standpoint -- and importantly it has to actually be more secure. This is the avenue by which it can conquer. Most people will not begin using Firefox on their own, and if you install it on their computer and tell them to try it they'll still click on the little blue e. But if it is far more secure (which is currently the case), more and more corporate networks will mandate it for security reasons, and what people use at work they'll use at home, too.
Not to mention that security has classically been a Microsoft weak point, which with their slow release cycle will probably remain a weak point.
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