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IE Market Share Drops Below 70%
Mike writes "Microsoft's market share in the browser dropped below 70% for the first time in eight years, while Mozilla broke the 20% barrier for the first time in its history. It's too early to tell for sure, but if Net Applications' numbers are correct, then Microsoft's Internet Explorer will end 2008 with a historic market share loss in a software segment Microsoft believes is key to its business."
So....heard that Microsoft might be laying off 15% of its workforce?
Well.....this might compound that.
Let me be the first (?) to say "Yay"!!
IE has been dominating and destroying the Web for far too long. The lower market share will indicate increased platform diversity and consumer choice.
This data is a month old. It was discussed on slashdot before (but I don't remember if it got its own article). Why not wait a day or so and post year-end statistics?
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Admittedly, I only use Opera while doing browser compatibility testing for my client-side web apps, but I've always been pretty impressed by it. It's fast and compliant. I think it's a bit of a shame that it is holding such a low share.
In a band? Use WheresTheGig for free.
It's been renamed several times, somewhat refactored, had a few parts replaced and a lot more added, but that code base was once the most popular browser on the planet.
--Markus
Do you even lift?
These aren't the 'roids you're looking for.
It dosent matter what browser replaces it, but version 6 still has enough market share to be annoying.
IE 6 is obsolete. If you know anyone with IE6, upgrade them so the web 2.0 can really mean 2.0 and not 2.0 "beta".
This is really not a surprise. IE is an inferior product. It always has been. The market share it has received is solely attributable to the bundling with the Microsoft operating systems.
When people become savvy enough to realize there is a choice and be able to find and implement that choice.... they do. I have been trying to get all the offices, clients, etc. that I have worked with to switch to Firefox since.. well forever. It's more secure.
Now, I realize that there might be some MS fanboys out there to argue that point, but you have a lot of work to do. IE is horrible at security. It is almost as if they just don't care. I am willing to admit that IE is a bigger target, but that does not excuse Microsoft's behavior with it.
The greatest setback that Firefox, and others have is that Microsoft does not play nice with the world community. Until recently there have been a huge number of websites that will only work with IE. That is slowly changing now too. No longer are consumers and business customers chained to IE because Firefox cannot work with their website that they need.
The only direction IE ever could go was down. If Microsoft wants to change that then they need to do some serious work and start cooperating with the rest of world. Build a better product is the simplest way to put it.
In the end it will Microsoft's hubris that pushes IE into the minority.
Isn't that sort of thing what msft usually does? Msft just has to create a de-facto standard, that will not be supported in any foss product.
I think just about everyone in tech, outside of Microsoft, saw this coming. Instead of adopting inclusive standards, MS opted for exclusive, proprietary technology and then implemented it poorly. ActiveX, VBScript, .NET...all require Windows and IE to work right. They tried to tie their OS to the development environment, the server environment and did everything they could to try and force the client as well.
IE was a stagnant, monolithic bug farm that lacked imagination and, perhaps most desperately, innovation. How many Firefox add-ons would be hard to live without? NoScript, FlashBlock, FireFTP there are dozens of applets that let you customize your browsing experience to your preference.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
I continue to use IE on a daily basis. Although I was forced to upgrade to 7 at work, I still continue to use 6 on my home Windows PC's. I still need to put it on my Mac and Linux boxes, but I'm lazy.
If that is true, then we should expect Microsoft come out big and hard and do something that will damage Google in the process. after All, it's google which has been pushing firefox so hard, and now pushing crome.
How about NOT pointing out that more than two thirds of users on this planet are still browsing the net with IE -
I imaging that just about 2/3rds of people fall into those categories. Those that are scared of their computer probably think that Firefox is a virus because it wasn't pre-installed at the factory, these people also are the type to still have the Dell wallpaper still as their desktop background because changing it might somehow break their computer. These are the older people or people who don't really understand that the worst they can do to their $1000 is delete all their data.
Those that use their computers very little usually think of their computers only as tools to write e-mails, check blogs, and get on iTunes. They don't care about their browsers, they don't care about most anything on their computer. They might know how to play FreeCell but thats about it. This is a lot of students and working people.
And it is self-explanatory about those who have other people manage their computers, they just lack the access to change the browser or are afraid of getting yelled at by their computer-illiterate CEO because they installed Firefox even though it would be better than the IE6 currently installed on the company's desktop.
So really, 1/3rd of computer users know how to actually *use* a computer and have root access on their boxes. Or they just use Mac/Linux and wouldn't use IE.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Get over yourself already.
Used to be web *was* IE and people were reduced to fool web pages with bogus client ID to get working IE web code instead of terrible buggy netscape 4.x code or just simple "get IE" -banner.
2/3rd is still a lot but it was 90% a little while ago and it could be perfectly justified to develop a new site IE only.
With these figures, in 2009 new sites designed have even stronger reason to cater for the "other" demographic.
Too bad there's no credible alternative to vista or vista 2nd release in sight for your average gaming-oriented PC. I wouldn't use linux for general desktop stuff either, too much pain if there's no ideological reason to go there. And the other notable requires joining a cult with the membership fee charged in overpriced hardware.
Somehow I must question those surveys. While quite a number of people I know use Windows, almost no-one I know actually uses IE as their default browser. Unfortunately severely insecure features of IE, like ActiveX, are needed to upgrade Windows. I'm sure Mozilla is capable of making its own 'ActiveX', but I guess they'd be sued as we are talking essentially American businesses. As we all know, it is rather difficult to remove IE from Windows. Clearly, the best option is the trend: Abandon Windows!
Any hacker can make their Firefox (or Opera) look like IE or any other browser. For instance, I don't use "Flash", but while I use FreeBSD, the scripts say its "Flash-10" on "IE-7" on Windows. Perhaps I should have some pride and tell the truth? I'm using Firefox, but I'm not sure that Firefox is what I have set in my proxy. Let me explain. Ikea, in Holland, gives you a 5% discount if you order with IE. Of course I'm not going to fire up Windows to order from Ikea! So, I simply "lie" and take 5% off.
If IE has up to 70% market share, its simply because Windows doesn't allow you to choose your browser like any other system does. If they did, they could just as well throw in the towel on IE. The percentage that use Windows is suspect too. Maybe some have it on hand just for an application or two? I know for a fact that many Windows desktops are running in Linux. (Doesn't an Xterm look great on a Windows desktop? ;)
Finally: (Taco) How many more people say they use Firefox on Slashdot than your logs indicate? I think you see what I mean.
BillSF
I've never understood all the broohaha over browsers.
If everyone abandons IE and switches to another browser. Microsoft's loss of revenue is exactly zero. If everyone switches to IE, Microsoft's increase in revenue is exactly zero.
Too bad there's no credible alternative to vista or vista 2nd release in sight for your average gaming-oriented PC.
It really depends on what gaming you want to do. Anything that doesn't require Direct X 10 or strange drivers that for some reason are Vista only (which is like 99.9% of all games/hardware) Just use XP. For anything that does you should have 3+ GB of RAM and a high end dual or quad core CPU and a fast graphics card so Vista won't be horribly slow (no it won't be as fast as XP, Linux or even OS X, but it will be usable).
I wouldn't use linux for general desktop stuff either, too much pain if there's no ideological reason to go there.
I went all Linux back in 2006, apart from gaming just about everything else works perfectly. I used Firefox to browse, OOo to write documents, and so there was no change in software. Today just about everything with Ubuntu can be done quicker than on Windows to set up a comparable system, it takes me less time to get a fully functioning Ubuntu box with DVD/MP3/a few programs/nVidia drivers compared to just installing Windows XP and getting all of the hardware to work.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Many of the IE6 users can't adapt to the new use interface. They just ditch IE7 for Firefox. At least that's what I did.
Just look it this way, we are not losing an IE, we are earning a Silverlight.
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Safari on Windows just... fails compared to Firefox. No extensions, the strange Aqua GUI which no doubt increases the amount of memory and libraries to load that is un-themeable, and just about 0 customization makes Safari hard to recommend. Granted, its better than IE, but compared to Firefox just about everything minus the WebKit rendering engine (which, isn't much faster or slower then Gecko) can be done on Firefox and much, much, more.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It's called a "trend." Snapshot statistics are not important. Trends are very important. This has been going on since 2002. If you lose 5% browser-share share every year consistently, eventually you go away. It happened to Netscape, and now we know it can happen to IE.
Safari does not, if you notice the marketshare for various versions of safari 96%+ of safari users are using Mac versions.
Firefox has been just about the most successful open source project in history, it has broken beyond the geek domain to the general public. It addressed a need for a reasonably secure easy to use web browser. It runs mostly the same on mac or windows or linux so so people can let their friends use it and they comfortable and familiar with it.
People who would never touch linux see firefox and they will say "Hey can I use your internet" they dont know its linux and they dont care.
Some of the followin extension even got a few hardcore MS fans i know to admit it may be time for a change
1) Scrapbook
2) Noscript
3) Flashblock
Mac's market share went up more last month alone, than there are people using Linux as a desktop OS altogether (no time frame).
Just like Opera, which has been stuck at ~0.7% since pretty much forever.
When you can't somehow manage to give away your main and only product, and most people would seemingly rather pay a lot of money for the alternative (like Macs), you know you have a serious problem.
Something must suck with your product, when people would rather pay a lot for the alternative than use yours for free.
Microsoft will not take this lying down. When Java started eating into VB, Microsoft plunged tens of billions into dot-net, and for the most part stopped the bleeding.
A focused MS can produce like nothing else. Prepare to see gobs of features added to IE. It will be comparable to making Emacs look like Notepad when the dust settles.
IE has stayed mostly the same for most of the decade. This is probably about to change. They'll probably add music and video managers, spell-checkers, text-box history savers, better widgets such as editable data grids, email/Outlook integration, history searching, Google-like hard-drive searching, kitchen sink, etc.
Table-ized A.I.
More and more people are buying iPhones (and other handhelds) and using them to surf the web.
Not to replace their normal browsing, just to browse the web more.
This report is very slim on details (it doesn't even say where the metrics came from), but I'm going on a hunch here that it's not so much Firefox is gaining in popularity, but that overall usage of the web is increasing and moreso with devices that IE is not on.
Some simplified math: If 8 people use IE and 2 use Firefox, IE has an 80% share. Now add 2 more people to the party, both on iPhone/Safari, and IE's market share drops to 66%.
I honestly don't think Firefox is making a dent in IE for the desktop, when you compare it to the beating it's taking elsewhere. It's clear that Microsoft, if it wants to retain dominance in the browser market, needs to do something with the handheld sector and quickly. PocketIE is great for sites that are mobile-ready, but for everything else it lacks and is driving people away.
-David
I'll agree about the UI... the text rendering doesn't even match, which makes it stand out. If you really want webkit on windows... there's chrome, which works just as well as safari really.
Since Internet Explorer is the primary target at this point most people using IE are changing the user-agent to read
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.9.1.2) Gecko/2008122803 Firefox/3.1.0a
and this skews the statistics.
This is really not a surprise. IE is an inferior product. It always has been. The market share it has received is solely attributable to the bundling with the Microsoft operating systems
This is not true at all. IE 1, 2 & 3 were not as good as Netscape Navigator and they suffered, but IE 4 was hands down better than other browsers. It mainstreamed a fully programmable DOM, where Netscape Navigator had what, document.write, and a bunch of junk about layers.
And, while we lament the death of Netscape, you do have to remember that while free IE may have killed Netscape on the client side, I'd be willing to bet that Apache utterly crushed Netscape on the server side. Does anyone remember Netscape web servers? Ah, that's a big negative. I remember even in the late 1990s our Sun admin was looking to replace Netscape web server with Apache... him and others like him really finished that company off.
The only direction IE ever could go was down. If Microsoft wants to change that then they need to do some serious work and start cooperating with the rest of world. Build a better product is the simplest way to put it.
This is very true. But you have to understand that the counterpoint to Microsoft's strategy is to get people to think about rich clients again and they are actually being rather successful with VSTO and Excel integration. I see lots of contract work with Excel front ends, instead of web front ends, these days. It's a crappy technology, but businesses pay for it.
This is my sig.
Netscape tried this... see where they landed.
Please get a clue. Stop drinking the Microsoft Koolaid and learn the history. You can start with Mosaic.
You are being MICROattacked, from various angles, in a SOFT manner.
Everyone trashes Active X as a security problem while Mozilla plugins get a pass and this is rather silly. The essence of both is that you download a DLL and it runs arbitary code in the process space of the browser (and then hence, often the user). Active X is just a different way of talking to the DLL, nothing more.
If you can run flash plugins, java plugins, and other plugins, inside of a browser, they can and will have the same security problems that plague Active X. It's random binary code that a user gets off of the internet.
SERIOUSLY, ANYONE BITCHING ABOUT ACTIVE X SHOULD JUST READ THIS GODDAMNED LINK.
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/plugins/
IT'S THE SAME FRICKING TECHNOLOGY... UNIDENTIFIED BINARY CODE RUNNING IN THE SAME ADDRESS SPACE AS THE BROWSER.
DUH.
This is my sig.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C3C54E7HWLI
I really wanted to like Safari Windows, but it s simply too budgy. Flash is wonky, and it is usually identified as a Mac browser by sites. If it didn't crash and missrender pages it would be nice. I have no clue why the OS X version would be soooo much better off the same codebase.
Thanks for letting me not have to say that.
Too bad there's no credible alternative to vista or vista 2nd release in sight for your average gaming-oriented PC.
Windows Server 2008. Free for 240 days before you have to reinstall / buy a license.
I can't believe IE still has 70% market share, I bet 68% of those still put up with ads and pop-ups (young-uns probably didn't experience the internet before those were rampant).
From some quick research it looks like around half of that uses IE 7 which I assume is less prone to pop-ups at least. Having used Firefox since the first beta I can't believe that it's STILL a fringe browser even today (1 in 5).
I suppose there's vast hordes of people with basic computer skills out there who consider IE 6 or 7 to do a sufficient job to look up the weather or run a Google search.
I don't mean to be mean but that makes no sense.
By de-facto standard you mean ubiquity.
Lets look at the history of ubiquity in the IT world. From the MS perspective.
MS office. ( expensive, copied, Google Apps, Open Office )
Windows. ( expensive, copied, OSX, Linux, Both UNIX varients )
IE. ( buggy, secutiry nightmare, Loosing ground fast to alternatives. )
ActiveX ( Attempt at ubiquity, buggy, security nightmare. Not copied )
A de-facto, ubiquitous standard has to maintain certain properties in order to stay in that postition.
1. Cost little to nothing
2. Be reliable
3. Be safe
4. Stay ahead of the competition in form and function
All of these points are in direct odds with MS style of doing business. Cash flow from any and all sources.
1. MS is learning that charging huge sums of cash for something is not working.
2. Reliability has always been a teer two priority for MS. Cash is first. Case in point IE, Vista.
3. Because of the market dominance it has always been the target of attack simply because of the huge install base thus high return on attack. And again for too long MS put money first then security and it's been regretting that ever since.
4. Why invest money in something to make it better when we have the market share. Case in point IE 4-5. But effectively stopping development they left the barn doors open.
It's all about the money. This has been the MS mantra for decades. Unfortunately they have completely missed so many opportunities for new cash flow streams. As they sat on the piles of money in their offices. Web search and advertising is the prime example.
Have they had any successes lately. Arguably the Xbox was a decent one. But that was a copy of competitors, so not their idea. Zune, copy again and a bad one. Who puts in a Jan 2009 bug? How the hell does something that dumb find it's way into the code base. IE 8, well this is a Firefox rip off. I don't think this will live long. IE 9 will be out shortly after. In the same way that Windows 7 is out shortly after Vista.
So MS is miles behind in the new de-facto, ubiquity race. It's not that FOSS is copying it's now leading in the standards front. Even Apple is using FOSS, (webkit).
I wouldn't use linux for general desktop stuff either, too much pain if there's no ideological reason to go there.
You must not have used linux in the last 5 years or so as linux is no longer a "pain" to configure and manage now that there are distro's like Ubuntu.
I don't think linux was ever a pain though to be honest. Even 12 year ago when I was using slackware I didn't think it was a pain. The biggest problem about linux back then was obtaining an install disc, or doing what i used to do and downloading all 40 or so floppy disk images on dialup. Now that was a pain, but the install itself was not.
Even back then, I think windows was more of a pain (and still is) to run compared to linux.
Windows isn't that great of an operating system for "general desktop stuff" though. Linux is far better for that. Sure, windows installs quite easily but keeping the system running smoothly is the biggest pain with all the malware, registry errors, system slow-downs because of all the junk thats been installed, having to reinstall the OS because the system has become unusable, and all the other problems associated with using windows.
since Windows 7 is getting rave reviews, once it comes out, IE marketshare will go back up, I'm guessing. *shrug*
You don't win a marathon by suddenly just finding yourself at the finish, your arms raised high. It takes one step after the other. Resisting this reality just makes you feel bad for no reason.
In more detail, what there is to celebrate is not the static reality that IE is now at some specific market share, and it will stay there forever. What is celebrated is that IE's market share is down, and this gives hope that people are moving away from IE not just now, but also in future, so that IE will be less of a contender over time. This seemed rather a hopeless prospect a few years ago, and now it does not. Hence the celebration.
excuse me, how many people use msn for searches ? what else can be key to microsoft with ie ? aaah hotmail ? they bought hotmail, and there is no relevance in between explorer and hotmail anyway.
they are not selling ie with cash or they are not making ie hijack pages to generate hits to msn, so ?
Read radical news here
I've got a coworker that is an IE fanatic. He keeps pointing out that IE uses less memory than FF, he's right. He also tallies up whenever I complain of a crash vs when he complains of one... and he's winning (as in fewer crashes).
I love being anti-m$, but you can't just dismiss their product as second-rate because you want it to be.
If firefox supported as little as IE, it would likely use much less memory. Is it not more appropriate to measure a browser by how well it supports the web standards that browsers are built to read? MS can't even be bothered to implement all of the standard html tags. IE 8 will finally support the frickin' <q> tag from HTML 4. That's a hard one too... replace the <q> tags with quote characters. It's rocket science really. No wonder it has taken MS more than a decade to support it. Next, run IE through a CSS support test page. Maybe give Acid3 a shot with it. Things aren't looking so pretty for IE, are they? Now try opening an XHTML page with it. Oh, sorry... IE is unable to read xhtml. It just downloads it to disk. It also doesn't support SVG, or MathML, or ruby. Firefox on the other hand, does.
Of course IE isn't second rate. It's not even good enough to qualify as third rate. I'm sure that's the primary reason MS is bleeding browser share at an accelerating rate.
Lets look at the history of ubiquity in the IT world. From the MS perspective.
IE. ( buggy, secutiry nightmare, Loosing ground fast to alternatives. )
ActiveX ( Attempt at ubiquity, buggy, security nightmare. Not copied )
A de-facto, ubiquitous standard has to maintain certain properties in order to stay in that postition.
1. Cost little to nothing
2. Be reliable
3. Be safe
4. Stay ahead of the competition in form and function
Haven't you just contradicted yourself? On the one hand, you have to acknowledge msie's ubiquity, on the other hand - according to your own post - you seem to claim that msie does not meet the standards you listed to be ubiquitous.
For example you claim that msie is a "buggy, secutiry nightmare" then you claim that standards for ubiquity that include: safe, reliable, and "ahead of the competition in form and function." So how has been msie been so ubiquitous for the last decade?
It's called a "trend." Snapshot statistics are not important. Trends are very important.
Not to mention momentum. Most products go a long way on momentum, so once you see an actual downward trend your product usually fell behind some time ago. Plus there's a lot of psychology, once you start thinking "everybody else" is migrating away you start a feedback loop that could fuel itself. Over the last year the stock index here dropped 60% because everyone changed the outlook on the future as each became more depressed by others being depressed. With something freely downloadable and easily replacable like a browser you should not underestimate how quickly the tides can turn.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
Too bad there's no credible alternative to vista or vista 2nd release in sight for your average gaming-oriented PC. I wouldn't use linux for general desktop stuff either, too much pain if there's no ideological reason to go there.
Too bad you're misinformed. A good Linux desktop distribution can be up and running painlessly in half an hour, and nearly everything just works. I host LAN parties on a regular basis, with my own computers, every one of which runs a Linux-based operating system. The variety of titles is staggering - http://icculus.org/lgfaq/gamelist.php lists just a few. Granted, this is not as impressive as the list for Windows, but it qualifies as a "credible alternative".
I've just posted December and 2008 total stats for all of the browsers along with a bit of analysis. IE lost another point and a half of share in December and will finish the year down almost 8 points from where it started the year. That's not just bad, that's awful, horrible, really really bad. It's especially bad considering that 2008 was a record year for new PC sales, with ~300,000,000 new PCs shipping with IE7 as the default browser!! They shipped 300 million copies of IE as the default and still lost 8 points of share during the year. More at my blog (it really is worth reading if you're interested in this topic. i promise.) Browser Market Share for December and 2008 - A
if you're calling MS Office overpriced, buggy, and full of security flaws, you must've glossed over the fact that OpenOffice is a POS.
for the last year. But it was in a ford prototype that runs XP, and then Vista. Sadly, it kept getting BSOD before hitting Idaho. Heard that on the last attempt, they made it to Illinois last night, but then the car locked up in high speed, doing nothing but wasting energy. Who knows, they may actually make it to congress before they have had a chance to give away our great great grand children's money (reagan gave away mine while W has given away my children's, grandkids and great grandkids).
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
That's the funny thing about statistics. If you torture the numbers sufficiently, they will eventually confess. Let's begin with methodology. Please go to the hitlink.com homepage and scroll down to the section titled "About Our Market Share Statistics." As you read, ask yourself the question, "What indicates this methodology is unscientific?" I found several indicators, and I bet you will too.
Secondly, what makes hitslink.com the authoritative source for OS statistics? There is a decent wikipedia article that cites statistics from five other websites similar to hitslink.com. Their numbers range from 0.47% to 3.80% for Linux and 3.66% to 8.87% for Mac. That there is such a wide range of estimates of operating system usage (factor of almost eight for Linux, factor of more than two for Mac) should be a clue about how all of these numbers should be viewed.
Having said that, let us assume there is truth in the hitslink.com numbers you cite and take them at face value. Linux began the year at 0.65% and ended at 0.85%, which is a 30.77% increase. Mac began the year at 7.46% and ended at 9.63%, indicating a 29.09% increase.
Your statement is not quite true. Month to month increase for Mac was 8.04% for November and 8.47% for December. For Linux the increase was 16.9% and 2.41% respectively.
Let us not become the evil that we deplore.
All markets are doing poorly. Why do people think that these companies are all going to vanish without a trace? Its only noticeable because its the big dog. The little companies are the ones that are vanishing without a trace.
I expect similar announcements from Intel, Cisco, Adobe, just to name a few. It is no shock that Microsoft has to put jobs on the chopping block.
It really depends on what gaming you want to do. Anything that doesn't require Direct X 10 or strange drivers that for some reason are Vista only (which is like 99.9% of all games/hardware) Just use XP.
Which is actually what I'm doing. But face it, XP is being phased out whether we like it or not. 3 years down the line the vista installation base has a lion's share of gaming rigs on plain windows tax inertia alone. At work, I recently upgraded W2k to XP for the sole reason of latest PCB design tools puking on W2k as it's not supported or tested against it anymore. Vista's creeping there too as well, unless you're big enough shop to have dedicated IT staff etc.
I went all Linux back in 2006, apart from gaming just about everything else works perfectly. I used Firefox to browse, OOo to write documents, and so there was no change in software. Today just about everything with Ubuntu can be done quicker than on Windows to set up a comparable system, it takes me less time to get a fully functioning Ubuntu box with DVD/MP3/a few programs/nVidia drivers compared to just installing Windows XP and getting all of the hardware to work.
Mm. No.
I wasted a week'n'half of my vacation last summer trying to set up a HTPC running on mythbuntu. Even after I scaled down the requirements to just getting something to "play" I was not getting anywhere fast. Linux audio is a big steaming turd and even really elementary stuff like getting SPDIF enabled is an adventure where you have to get comfy with mod parameters and the like.
Not to mention there are no system wide codecs all applications know how to use and so on and so forth.
That whole party line of "so easy anyone can do it" degenerates pretty fast into .conf hell if you want to do something "exotic" like use the digital output or multi-channel audio.
Ooo is just terrible compared to Office as well. I use excel a lot for various engineering things and just making simple solve-with-parameters table or a 2d chart to study component values is much more difficult than it needs to be.
Yeah, maybe 3.x release did something about that, but 2.x calc at least was really bad. I don't feel obliged to learn to use user-hostile software for ideological reasons, I just want to get my day-to-day work done.
To sum up my HTPC project, once I gave up on the whole geek-credibility linux idea, I had fully functional media-box running on top of XP within a few hours including reinstall from scratch. With ffdshow and media player classic everything just works and dvbviewer is remarkably straightforward to set up compared to mythtv or vdr.
My only mistake was wasting more than couple of nights on the linux-project. That's the engineering mindset that difficulties are made to be surpassed. But sometimes the tool is just wrong. I also tried plain ubuntu and debian to see if they make any difference but the whole "multimedia" thing doesn't seem to be there.
Are you sure *MARKET*share means what you think it does? Microsoft only "sells" IE as packaged with XP, Vista and Windows Mobile. Few customers license the Trident layout engine. It's no wonder IE has shit for marketshare.
The Mozilla foundation does pretty well for themselves. Not a huge moneymaker but they're afloat and doing ok.
Opera is also doing great licensing their browser and its components all over the place.
Internet Explorer simply isn't a moneymaker for Microsoft. Microsoft probably spends more money maintaining IE than they do selling/licensing it.
At the end of the day, both IE Active X controls and Mozilla plugins have the same fundamental problem. They are native code DLLs, and so, cannot be verified so easily by the browser when downloaded and so a user could always install a plug in, when running as administrator, that could call DeleteFile or any other Windows API.
The most interesting promise in plugins is Google Chrome, which allows for verifiable native code and thus sandboxing of plugins. However, as you already pointed out, this only really matters because, you can't set ACLs to functions under Windows, only to users.
The ideal mechanism for DLLs, that is internet safe, would be to be able to say that a caller could specify the permissions of the DLL when it was running. So, if I were writing a FireFox or an IE, or some sort of internet loadable thing, I could say, yeah sure, go ahead and let me load up this DLL, and I'll just tag it so that it can only call a certain set of Windows OS functions, and for that matter, only a set of Windows OS functions with a particular set of handles. Like, the DLL's functions could only call GDI functions with the DC I supplied. I would also like to say that the DLL could only access certain pages of memory. For that matter, I would like to be able to do that to my own application, so that, a buffer overrun or some other malicious code couldn't do anything... other than hose me myself, and even then, my own internal states and document would be protected.
I would bet that you could hack some of this into Windows, basically by modifying the way GetProcAddress and LoadLibrary worked. To LoadLibrary you could add a permissions mask that would, for that HINSTANCE, modify how that library's GetProcAddress worked. So, if loaded up a library, I could set it up so that when it called GetProcAddress, to say, find out where DeleteFile was, it would instead redirect itself to my sandbox chumpy saying that this was a no-no.
This would improve matters, but it would not be perfect. Ultimately, I think, the whole mechanism of a function call would need to have an associated "allowed" set of function calls be associated with it. IF there was maybe some chumpy in the kernel that would say, "just block all these syscalls", but even then, that would only address the file system type of stuff, which is good, but you also want to use that mechanism to cover everything else. It may well turn out that everything has to be a file in order to make this sort of safe and securable sandboxing actually work.
I guess my question to Linux people would be, doesn't Red Hat have something like this in its enhanced security? Like, you can at least tag applications with permissions but could it work with function calls?
This is my sig.
Microsoft is about control.
Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?
Yes. Lotus Domino / Notes.
And no, I'm not joking. Lotus has come a *long way* with their new version 8.x stuff.
It works very well, is reliable, and even looks very good with an all-new user interface. IBM has been remarkably active in Lotus development the past few years and has made Lotus into a highly capable enterprise messaging and groupware system for the 21st century.
Yes, there have been many years of Lotus nightmare stories, and Lotus still does have a fairly steep learning curve, and its architecture is vastly different from Exchange.
It's as different from MS Exchange as Linux is different from Windows.
Seriously, I like floss, but you are pretty dense if you think it will reduce the need for end user support, rather than simply change it.
Oh no, he's got the idea just fine. Support is bound to decrease after the users turn up dead, hung from the ceiling with floss.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
I can't see that happening. No matter how much improvement they make to IE, they can't bring back the trust they lost due to security problems.
Maybe they should add some new feature, make some random changes to the UI, release it under a different name, and pretend it's a new product.
Mod parent up.
It's similar to pointing out that less than 1/3 of car owners have modified their car or know how to fully utilize it. Most of us don't care - its just a tool to get from A to B. Those that do are probably car geeks as much as we are computer geeks.
IE is comparable to the automatic transmission - its what you get by default these days, and its easier to stick with it so that you don't have to learn something new.
Most human behaviour can be explained in terms of identity.
I wouldn't use linux for general desktop stuff either, too much pain if there's no ideological reason to go there.
what the hell are you saying?, can you explain this pain?
I have to question how these survey companies get their results. Most of the people I know who use Firefox, also have IE on standby for fussy MS-centric sites (or updates). I use both because I have to test my work on IE, and because I'm tied to Outlook Webmail for certain things. Do I count as a Firefox user, an IE user or both ? Do they factor total pageviews, or do they narrow it down to "sessions" (IPs per time window) ?
If I consider just my own usage, I would count as both a Firefox and an IE user, but by pageviews it's probably 1000:1 for Firefox, as I only use IE when absolutely necessary. If I were to self-identify, I'd say I'm a Firefox user since I wouldn't touch IE at all were it not for my job.
The reality of things is these articles always quote a number from nowhere. They don't ever explain their methodology, nor their sources. The fact is, you can't really get an accurate tally because browsers don't offer you enough information to identify unique users, and more importantly your results are skewed by the nature of whichever sites' logs you're mining. Any result is, at best, a rough guess based on some convenient subset of the data.
Is it true that IE is losing out to other browsers ? Hell yes, I'm an eyewitness. Do we have tangible numbers to quantify that battle ? No, and we never will.
-Billco, Fnarg.com
If anything, the stats are more skewed by the more-technically-inclined FF users changing their UA so that crappy websites don't break just because they fail to see the magic "IE / Windows" keywords.
They can't grow. That makes their stock a poor investment for the long term.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
-The main reason people USE IE is because it comes with windows
-There was recently a really bad windows release
-There is a windows release coming up that is an awesome-sandwich
Dont except IE to stick where it is for long folks. IE8 comes with windows 7, and it packs a serious punch. Its really NOT a bad browser!
Is it actually worth using as a gaming machine?
When the grandparent post said, "... most people using IE are changing the user-agent to read ... Mozilla/Firefox ...", he was JOKING.
Or is it "Hear Hear!"?
Russia
I hear is switching their education system to linux. Much cheaper than American Windows. Wait 15 years and we'll be scrambling to catch up.
The companies I've seen that use SQL Server typically do so because they feel it's the only thing their staff understands. Basically, they're "Microsoft shops" where given a choice between an MS and non-MS product, they will choose the Microsoft one by default. In some cases this is because the IT staff truly isn't competent to operate anything that's not covered in a MCSE exam study guide, while in others it's a management decision. (Sometimes I think it's a direct reflection of management's dislike of the IT staff, and a desire to not be reliant on any specialized skills of theirs that can't be replaced in 24 hours with a Monster.com ad.)
In the particular case of SQL Server, I think people feel that it's easier to install and manage than DB2 or Oracle, and has lots of GUI management utilities so you don't have to open up that big, scary command line to do anything. (Granted, both DB2 and Oracle have GUI tools, but I'm talking about perception, not reality.)
Plus, it's sort of a "nobody ever got fired for buying..." situation. If you spec PostgreSQL and there's a security flaw, your ass may be on the line for recommending a "hippy-dippy open source product" (actual PHB quote). But if you push SQL Server and down the line there's a problem, you can always mumble something about white papers and pass the buck in the direction of Microsoft.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
They may not be able to grow, but they can surely wring a lot of licensing revenue out of their users before the game is up.
That translates into dividends, making their stock a fairly good investment, if you are actually looking for an investment, and not an asset on which to speculate on. ("Investment" refers to buying something for, or in the hopes of, the income stream it generates; "speculation" is buying something in anticipation of a change in its market price so you can sell and make a profit. Although a lot of so-called "investment" today is actually speculation, they are very different activities.)
Microsoft shares might or might not be a good speculative target, but they might be a fairly safe investment if you want income. In all but the most ridiculous scenarios, and much as it pains me to admit it, a whole lot of the world is going to be paying the "Microsoft tax" for a good while to come.
At some point in the future, if the decline and fall of the Redmond Empire becomes more clear, I'd expect their stock to start trading more like a bond that's near maturity. When it becomes clear that the income stream is drying up, its price will start to trend downwards, slowly approaching zero when it's felt there's nothing more to be wrung. (Assuming they don't manage to reinvent themselves as a services company, like IBM, or a finance and holding company, like GE.)
Whether or not their stock is a good investment at any particular time is a complex decision that should take into account the current price it's trading at, plus their expected dividends in the future, compared to the returns gained by investing the same amount in other vehicles.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
And the other notable requires joining a cult
If the shoe fits...
with the membership fee charged in overpriced hardware.
Huh? I don't follow. Are you trying to say Linux requires beefier hardware than Microsoft?
Hey I'm a FOSS fanboi and all, but my first offer to people who ask me to "fix vista" for them is XP. Quite a few ask about linux though. I actually try to talk them out of it if I don't think they're computery enough, but it usually works out. Of course these are all nerd college students, they're just not all computer nerds.
93rd rule of Slashdot: No matter how obvious my sarcasm is, my comment will be taken seriously by someone.
I will be the second person to affirm that your assessment is incorrect.
The files are identical, but packaging is different. Some files are simply not included, while other features are disabled in Registry.
TabletPC and MCE are both based on XP Pro. The stated reason for disabling domain functionality in MCE, which by the way is still there and legal to use if you know how to enable it and I've done that for my clients, was to support Extenders.
Install a pure (the version systembuilders buy from distributors) OEM build of XP Home and a the same pure OEM build of XP Pro, and then compare. There will be no difference in stability.
Leonid S. Knyshov
Find me on Quora
Far comment.
I didn't explain myself all to clearly. What you're pointing out is the time line in my statements.
Definitely IE was at one point the de-facto standard. What I stated was "in order to stay in that position". IE has not met that list in order to stay in it's position over time. The statement was not about being ubiquitous it was to stay ubiquitous.
So my statement was not a contradiction it wasn't overtly clear.
Ubiquity simply means that so product is used so widely and by so much of the consumer population that it is the de-facto standard. Again I was just pointing out that to stay in this position you must maintain that list of properties. Or you will be dethroned or discarded all together. IE has had an almost 10 year run. A darn good feat, but it's reign is just about up.
The cult reference is about APPLE not linux kit.
How the hell is the parent moderated 30% Overrated and 40% Flamebait ? I know /. loves to bash MS, but come on people, who gives such an obviously decent and intelligent guy metric fucktons of negatives just for that?
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
Safari on OS X is written in Cocoa, which is a native framework. To get Safari working on Windows, Apple ported some of Cocoa. The ported version of Cocoa is significantly less stable and efficient.
Can you give examples of good Exchange replacements?
Yes, for that see DVL. Seriously, though you have to define what activities you need to do before you can ask for a replacement. MS Exchange is marketed in many niches and fails (on the surface) in most. The most spectacular is its failure as a mail server replacement, if you look at it as such. If you look at the wonderful cover of plausible deniability it gives executives by randomly losing and delaying mail, then that is a success.
Anyway, try looking these. Keep in mind that, unlike with M$ products, you can combine pieces of several packages.
If you are simply looking to improve reliability of e-mail they a plain Mail Transfer Agent (MTA) will do. Before it became too embarrassing for M$, it used to be recommended practice to put one of these in front of MS Exchange to improve reliability and security. Also look up ClamAV, Spamassassin and how to do greylisting.
However, before you can think about "replacing" MS Exchange, you will have to get rid of the staff that selected and deployed it in the first place. They ignored all the licensing shortcomings, the bad reviews, high price and ongoing technical failure to instead push ideology over technology. People making decisions based on ideology are not going to accept any technical or economic arguments...
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I'm just waiting for Microsoft to go to Washington for a bailout.
Party Leader Gates already showed up in DC holding his hat out. However, banning Windows -- even without punitive action -- would be a major economic boost to the US. Letting it fail and die the free-market death it has earned would allow private debtors to take care of the punitive part, saving federal money for other things.
The damage M$ products cause, in just malware alone, in just the US alone, has been double digit billions per year -- not counting spam from Windows botnets. There is also the lost productivity due to severe usability, stability, reliability and interoperability problems.
Also, Obama is in the Whitehouse next term by several factors, not the least of which is the removal of Diebold (now Premier Election Solutions) Windows/Access/VBA botnets from enough key districts. Hope he has the sense to see Gates' movement for what it is and find a way to deal with him as the sovereign threat he is.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
In most of central & eastern Europe it's quite common, for example in my country it has 8% (FF has 42% and IE 48% - yup, below 50, so this /. article isn't exactly ave inspiring to me).
It's best performing in Ukraine, where it has 30% (IE 47%, FF 21% - yup, lower than Opera; but both grow at about the same rate, leading to the best possible, IMHO, situation with browsers - roughly equal split - IF THERE WERE ONLY THREE OF THEM... :/ (though Ukraine has also relatively high percentage of Webkit/KHTML - 2%)). Russia is supposedly even better for Opera, though I don't have numbers. Generally Opera seems to be popular in countries where people don't change their computers too often (so they can see clearly how fast & lean it is) and also rely almost exlusivelly on some technical relative, not salesman/etc....
BTW @this last (2%) number - I could just as easily ask "what's the deal with Safari? Nobody uses it after all...", from what I see in large part of Europe popularity of Opera & Safari is reversed in comparison to US...
One that hath name thou can not otter
People want MSSQL & Exchange because it is the same brand they have on user's desks.
It is a death spiral, once both technologies are entrenched there is no easy way out: the company lock in is complete and you have become dependant on Microsoft to access your own data.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have worked or know people that have worked for most of the big banks and insurance companies in the world.
UNIX+Oracle. That is the name of the game.
Anybody suggesting otherwise is considered unprofessional, because MSSQL does not scale (as doesn't do Exchange), I personally witnessed an Exchange based solution written off as security problems where exposed one by one by a security experts.
Lets put it this way: you don't want to know what is going on in your registry.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Until they do.
A bad technical solution does not become a good one just because your problem is smaller.
It is a false economy to bank in lock in. The day your MS database no longer is enough you will literally hit the wall with your head hopping you can find an easy way to migrate to a proper DB.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
If this abomination does grow we, the technorati, deserve all the pain and tears that such adoption will bring.
Sharepoint is collaboration the AOL way. Clunky, closed and unintuitive.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Dude, wrong tool for the job if ease of setup was your primary criteria which it turned out to be. People don't claim exotic things like an HTPC with SPDIF sound is going to be a piece of cake like you seem to think they have.
Well my anonymous coward pal, it *is* a piece of cake with XP. Adding insult to injury the sound chip is just a bog-standard AC97 on-board audio, most common chip in the world. "Known good audio cards" for linux is like one of those world shortest books.
Then there's the whole debacle of setting up specific resolutions for display, kind of handy for HTPC use..
Just goes to show if you need anything beyond pre-set Iceweasel/TB/OpenOffice, you're knee deep in gore.
Remember when the Eternal September started on the Internet. Now imagine the same thing starting in the Open Source community. I'd rather the masses stick with Windows or osX.
Go green: turn off your refrigerator.
At least Secunia states that it has less volnurabilities, both fixed and unfixed, than FF to which you switch people... (though probably in some time Google Chrome will be the best choice for switching normal people; just has to mature a bit/prove its security record)
One that hath name thou can not otter
I monitor http traffic and server logs and majority of the attacks coming from bot attacks have IE 7.0 as the user agent. They are also relentless in the volume of requests to random sites looking for some PHP proxy exploit. On a side note, why can't many of these PHP applications put their admin modules in a zip file and not into the public site by default (not an attack on PHP, rather on bad developers who use it without understanding what they are doing), I see 100s of attacks on some proxy.php every single day (and yes with IE7 user agent most of the time).
Unthemable? strange Aqua GUI?
Ah, so that must be why iTunes and the QuickTime movie player never caught on.
Whatever happened to those?
I am anarch of all I survey.
It is now official. Netcraft has confirmed: Internet Explorer is dying.
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered Internet Explorer community when IDC confirmed that Internet Explorer market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all browsers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that Internet Explorer has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. Internet Explorer is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be the Amazing Kreskin to predict Internet Explorer's future. The hand writing is on the wall: Internet Explorer faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for Internet Explorer because Internet Explorer is dying. Things are looking very bad for Internet Explorer. As many of us are already aware, Internet Explorer continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
Internet Explorer 8 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time Internet Explorer 8 developers Darth Vader and Patrick Bateman only serves to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: Internet Explorer 8 is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Internet Explorer 8 leader Steve Ballmer states that there are 7000 users of Internet Explorer. How many users of Internet Explorer 6 are there? Let's see. The number of Internet Explorer 8 versus Internet Explorer 6 posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 Internet Explorer 8 users. Internet Explorer 5 posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of Internet Explorer 8 posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of Internet Explorer 5. A recent article put Internet Explorer 7 at about 80 percent of the Internet Explorer * market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 Internet Explorer 7 users. This is consistent with the number of Internet Explorer 7 Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of LOL, abysmal sales and so on, Internet Explorer 7 went out of business and was taken over by Apple who sell another troubled browser. Now Apple is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that Internet Explorer has steadily declined in market share. Internet Explorer is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If Internet Explorer is to survive at all it will be among browser dilettante dabblers. Internet Explorer continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, Internet Explorer is dead.
That crippling bombshell sent Internet Explorer fans into a tailspin of mourning and denial. However, bad news poured in like a river of water.
Yep. You can mark this as the point the time-line where the axiom "no one ever got fired for buying ----" no longer holds true.
I have no clue but I've seen some strange moderations lately myself. It looks to me like the meta-moderators are slacking, myself included.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
The problem with being King the Hill is that someone is always trying to take you down. Maybe if MS adhered to w3 standards a little closer, they could slow the bleeding. But no entity can hold that large of a stake indefinitely.
flatheadenterprises
Just a note on Apple hardware... unless your a Gamer and need to upgrade your video card every year, Apple hardware lasts a long time - since they continually make the OS faster. I use Apple hardware and only get new hardware every 3-5 years. I never get the feeling that my hardware is too slow or can't compete as it runs everything I need it to run at the same speed it did when I bought it (which is always pretty darn fast).
Again, if you're a PC gamer YMMV.
A fool throws a stone into a well and a thousand sages can not remove it.
The hardware is still overpriced no matter what.
Mind you, if you could put OSX on a no-name intel box, I'd probably had had it running for years. It's like linux done right.
The Brazilian Government is nearly MS only. Also the news that come here (may be wrong) imply that governments over the world are huge customers of Microsoft. Your case seems to be an exception.
Rethinking email
That is besides the point I was trying to make.
Pointing out (and cheering about) that "our team" has won scoring huge and unbelievable 21 while "their team" lost scoring ONLY 69.77, in the same game, makes one wonder not only what is there to be happy about but also if the person doing the cheering is capable of rational thinking at all.
Kinda like that old Soviet news report joke...
"We are pleased to report the results of the recently held 100 meter race between leaders of the Soviet Union and United States of America.
Soviet Union has achieved another great victory, with Premier Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev winning the silver.
President of United States, John F. Kennedy was not so lucky, arriving at the goal only seconds before the last runner."
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens
You're going to have to try harder than that. You can do better with electrical utilities and other companies that are unlikely to pay $44B for Yahoo.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
For over a decade geeks keep touting the inferiority of MS products while business is as usual at Redmond. So who's got it right and wrong? I like how geeks keep saying this is better and that's better than MS but yet Windows is still on 89% of all desktops.
You have to understand though, that some problems are pretty static in their size. Things normally don't blow up out of proportion all of a sudden. Many of our applications as a matter of fact are tracking a more or less fixed set of attributes about of fixed number of objects (parcels of land within the county for example - we're a county government).
All of our hardware is bought with more than enough growth room, and because of government budgeting practices we generally give every single app, no matter how small, it's own SQL server. Most of them could grow in complexity, size, or user base by several orders of magnitude without issue.
To throw in the classic Slashdot car analogy, when you have a family of size 3 and don't expect any more kids, it's not really short sighted to buy a compact car rather than a bus. It's sufficient for your current needs, is more cost effective, and is likely to remain sufficient for the foreseeable future.
And really, for the all MS hating the goes on here, SQL Server is definitely a "proper DB". I'll not compare it to Oracle because I know it can't quite keep up there, but that's just saying it's not #1. I'd trust SQL Server with sensitive data FAR more than I'd trust MySQL or the like though.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
But if IE is free, than it's market share is 0.
To have a market share you have to actually charge for the software.
This is why Linux has very very low market share compared to Microsoft.
That said, I was shocked to find out my brother, who manages high-speed cable service for Cox, actually uses IE as his browser, the only one in my very large family to do so.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Hey, I like the Dell wallpaper. Don't knock it.
Table-ized A.I.
Im currently embarking on my first steps towards a CS degree, and as one of my projects I had to produce a website. I got the prototype working in FF3 extremely quickly, then spent the next several of days working on IE bugs... (The college im at runs IE6 and I am being assessed in it too :( )
The sooner IE is discontinued and never spoke of again the better for all concerned.
True, but those marketing people would label all that shit as new features.
You're right.at work we use Sage CRM and it just doesn't work properly with Firefox.
Only boring people are ever bored.
That means the potential for lots more profits for Microsoft et al.
Maybe et. al. Not Microsoft, unless they're willing to give their software for free or accept piracy.
In India Microsoft has to choose control with no profit, or nothing. I think they'll choose control with no profit and hope for a less open day.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Not that it matters much as a lot of the people that don't have computers probably don't because their priorities are different
It would be fair to say that Western people don't understand the issues prevalent in Africa.
You have here a chance to teach them. Please do.
Help stamp out iliturcy.