IE Market Share Falls To Historic Low

An anonymous reader writes "Predicting that Microsoft will lose market share from month to month isn't especially difficult. Yet it is amazing to see the downfall of what was once a bastion for Microsoft. It appears that Microsoft can't defend IE against Firefox and, as it seems, Google's Chrome. Net Applications now believes that IE has a share of less than 60%, which is about the range that IE had in early 1999, when IE5 was launched. IE is now officially back in the 1990s. Chrome, by the way, is the fastest growing browser, both in absolute numbers and percentages. It is well ahead of Safari and more than tripled its share within 12 months."

Comments

good

[thetoadwarrior]

It's insecure and awful. Bye bye!

Re:good

[zero.kalvin]

I been faithful supporter of Firefox for the last few years. But I do think that Microsoft did some major advancement with IE(after IE6). I do agree that they still have much to do. But saying in an absolute manner that it's insecure, that's something I don't agree with.

Re:good

[thetoadwarrior]

I wanted to be first so I didn't have time for the finer details. ;-)

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

That's childish, but yet again this is slashdot.

Re:good

[boneclinkz]

My biggest problem with IE is the resource utilization. It seems pretty absurd to me. I have 4 tabs open right now, nothing terribly intensive, and it's eating up 168MB.

Re:good

[coniferous]

I agree that IE is the worst of the trio (Imho of course), It's not the unholy creation of satan that it once was. It's still the only browser the responds to the DPI setting in windows. Its security is closer to the other other browsers now, and you can manage it with group policy... I think its about time we reccomended the right tool for the right job, as opposed to just avoiding it outright.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, IE6 needs to be nuked from orbit, but things have improved. On Vista and 7, IE runs in a sandbox; it's arguably more secure than other browsers.

Re:good

[LordThyGod]

My biggest problem is that MS has deliberately broken standards to hold backup online development because it is a threat to their desktop based monopolies. Its not like they don't know what the standards are, or they can't afford to adopt them. Its a deliberate torpedoing of the market to protect their cash cow monopolies. Screw 'em. They can't be trusted to do the right thing. Them saying they will at some point in the future does not cut it. They have a long history of essentially lying through their teeth.

Re:good

[trum4n]

If someone calls me to fix their PC, i will, and i will install firefox. I also put a trigger on IE to save a text file with the number of times it has been opened. If they call me back, it they use IE regularly, i wont fix their PC. its their problem if they WANT it broken.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a complete asshole.

Re:good

[Thanshin]

I see you work in marketing.

"IE. Not the unholy creation of Satan it once was."

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

I hear this claim all the time, but it ignores reality. There is a huge difference between ignoring standards, and deliberately breaking them. At one point in time IE6 had the best standard conformance of any browser. Believe it or not, but it's true. However, IE6 was stagnant for many years and new standards came along (or were improved) and new browsers came along (or were improved).

IE's standard conformance did not get worse in that time, as would be expected to support your claim that MS was deliberately breaking standards. In fact IE's standard support has steadily gotten better, and in fact is the only browser to have full CSS 2.1 compatibility, and the fewest CSS 2.1 bugs. (again, believe it or not, it's true).

From the standpoint of ratified web standards, IE has the best conformance of any browser. It's CSS3 and HTML5 support sucks, but neither of those are ratified standards. I think where it's failing the most right now is in DOM support.

So, having said that, yeah.. lots of other browsers are more modern and have more support for emerging standards, and thus seem "better", but this claim that MS is "breaking standards" is complete BS. If anything, they can be accused of ignoring them, or being slow to adopt them, but they're not breaking them.

Re:good

[coniferous]

I know, That really sold the post didnt it? I should really work for microsoft. I would be a huge improvement over their current marketing group...

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

That's due to the new process based model, where each tab is it's own process. Chrome has the exact same problem, and it's likely that Firefox will be adopting the same model. This allows indidvidual tabs to crash without taking down the browser.

Memory is cheap now. I have 12MB in this computer, and it only cost me $200.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Er.. 12GB.. not MB.

Re:good

[Eskarel]

IE did not deliberately break standards, it didn't even ignore standards. What it did was fail to update for 10 years. Every single browser contemporary with IE 6 was an even worse than it was and in most cases even less standards compliant. People don't seem to remember that IE 6 predates the Mozilla foundation let alone any Mozilla product. It was released in 2001 ffs.

I'm not saying that keeping IE 6 around as long as they did isn't something I may never forgive Microsoft for(the only thing that makes up for it at all is the fact that they're now suffering as much as we all were trying to get rid of it), but they really didn't ignore standards, they ignored IE.

Re:good

[Alphathon]

It IS insecure, and has been shown to be time and time again. Microsoft have certainly made improvements, but that doesn't change the fact that it is insecure. No browser is 100% safe, but IE has a very bad track record.

P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but".

Re:good

[Thanshin]

The visits to the dev team must be stressing though.

"Hey guys, I'm preparing the campaign. How's the new IE coming out?"

"IF THOU BE THE SON OF GOD, COMMAND THAT THESE STONES BE MADE BREAD."

Re:good

[poetmatt]

Let's try this way:

it's significantly less secure than what any of the alternatives can do. Performance is crap, and IE9 appears to fix, well, none of that.

how is that?

I'm glad for competition, as hopefully it will drive microsoft to compete more than the show they attempted with IE9. Competition is good for all.

Re:good

[Vectormatic]

what job can IE possibly be the right tool for? (save off course for very specific IE targetted web apps)

Re:good

[poetmatt]

Actually, beyond the "I won't fix it if they use IE" part, the rest sounds like a good idea, as long as it simply totals up how many times IE has been run (and does the same for firefox).

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

IE did not deliberately break standards, it didn't even ignore standards. What it did was fail to update for 10 years. Every single browser contemporary with IE 6 was an even worse than it was and in most cases even less standards compliant. People don't seem to remember that IE 6 predates the Mozilla foundation let alone any Mozilla product. It was released in 2001 ffs.

I'm not saying that keeping IE 6 around as long as they did isn't something I may never forgive Microsoft for(the only thing that makes up for it at all is the fact that they're now suffering as much as we all were trying to get rid of it), but they really didn't ignore standards, they ignored IE.

Because ActiveX is such a widely-supported standard. Go defend and make excuses for some other abusive monopolist mmmkay?

Re:good

[erik.martino]

Yes but it is good to see that for the first time since IE4-6, Microsoft will release a competitive browser. It is interesting what IE9 is doing with hardware acceleration, and hopefully it will inspire other browsers to improve which is good for everyone. If the browsers end up being almost complete operating systems, like the Chrome OS, they needs to be much faster than today.

Re:good

[Vectormatic]

depends, if he tells the people clearly after installing the trigger, i'd say he is well within his rights, especially if he fixes computers for free.

Lots of people expect us nerds to just fix their computers because we are good at it, and it is supposed to be our hobby, fuck that. If i fix a machine i am doing you a favor, and if i give advice on the use of a computer, they should listen (hey, i'm the computer expert right?), if they chose to ignore my advice and in the process destroy my work, am i an asshole for not doing it again and again?

Re:good

[Eskarel]

ActiveX is a piece of shit, but I guess it made some vague sort of sense in 2001, and it's not used all that much anymore.

Everyone compares IE 6 to modern browsers, but it's not a modern browser it's a dinosaur. I'm a web developer and the fact that they let that dinosaur live has caused me endless pain, but I'm old enough to remember when it wasn't a dinosaur and to remember what the competition was like.

Microsoft's sin is not creating IE 6, it wasn't half bad the better part of a decade ago, their sin is not replacing it back in 2002 or 2003. It's a sin Microsoft is paying for in any number of ways, and it's a sin they deserve to pay for.

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

It is just a matter of time for Microsoft's browser monopoly. However, it would have been better when the public sector had intervened earlier to make a difference. Why didn't the government invest in browser diversity?

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

I don't get this "It's ok to lie about Microsoft because they suck" attitude. Stating the truth isn't "Defending and making excuses", it's being.. you know.. truthful.. and not exagerating to make a company that is already bad look worse for the sake of what? I don't really know why you feel the need to embellish and exagerate, and spew insults at people that don't do the same.

Is it too much to simply be truthful? The truth is bad enough.

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

Think of Open XML... Nuff said.

Re:good

[siride]

Maybe Windows sucks at memory management, but each tab process should be the same and have the same shared libraries and code. All of that should only have one instance in memory. Only the private memory for each page should be different, which would be true for traditional, single-process browsers as well. Sure, there will be some overhead for having separate processes (obviously, the kernel must have additional data structures allocated for each process and the processes themselves will have to use some more memory for communication with each other and such), but that should be negligible.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Browsing the web without having memory leaks that add up to hundreds of MB of memory being used for no reason while sitting idle?

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the UID. 'Nough said.

Re:good

[gbjbaanb]

though I don't see the "1 tab crashes and its fine" thing as good, see, if 1 tabs crashes on me (and the browser is ok), I'll shut it down and start it up again. And as Firefox remembers where I was, all's well and good. I'll probably do that anyway in the future as I'm conditioned to 'switch it off and on again' to resolve errors. That also gives better stability in my view than trying to continue in a potentially dicky state.

So, the 1 process per tab option isn't something I want, and I think its somewhat pointless. I'd rather they spent their efforts on something a bit more useful - like letting me switch to a different tab when on tab freezes for a while (yes, loading pdfs for example). If 1 process per tab helps with that - that's better (but I think could be better implemented)

Oh, and I'd rather they lessened memory usage. as I know RAM is cheap (though, I'd rather spend my money on beer instead of continual memory and motherboard upgrades) but I can only fit so many sticks in my mobo, and upgrading to the high capacity ones isn't as cheap as they say. I'm also pretty old skool when it comes to efficiency. I like my browser to be like my women - thin, not fat and bloated. I like that it starts up quickly instead of filling its memory caches with crap I'm never going to view again. I like that I can run other things on my PC too, and I like that I can use the same browser on a netbook or smartphone.

So no, I don't subscribe to the 'its ok to bloat it up' school of thought. I want it done properly, efficiently and well.

Memory is cheap now. I have 12MB in this computer, and it only cost me $200.

$200. I could get a better media streamer, or a bunch of DVDs to play on it for that, and have cash left over for popcorn n booze. but no, because some lazy, crap developers want to use a memory-hogging framework or poor memory management techniques, I have to drink water and watch paint dry instead :)

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

By the way, I know you were being sarcastic, but ActiveX is actually a standard maintained by the Open Group.. The same people that maintained X Windows for years (not sure if they still do). And ActiveX had all the same problems that Netscape plugins had, although those had to be manually installed (there is nothing in ActiveX that requires automatic installation, that's just something IE did).

The fact is, ActiveX (or something like it) was needed back then. Less so, now.. but many corporate environemnts continue to need additional functionality that's not available in the browser. For the internet, ActiveX is (and should be) largely dead, though plug-ins are still needed for things like Flash, Silverlight, even things like the Chrome Frame and SVG plug-ins would not be possible without such an interface.

It's simply impossible to make a native plug-in interface that's secure. The best you can do is make it so difficult to install that most people won't bother unless it's really really important.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

At some point, you have to realize that you're wasting more resources swimming against the current. Developers are not going to magically start using less resources over time, they will continue to use more. Fighting that will only give you more stress and keep you continually in a bad mood. It's a fight you can't win.

Also, you must not do much with your browsers, because there is no way I could shut down, even with the browser remembering my pages, and not be highly annoyed. Not only do you lose your page state (such as where you are on the page, or maybe a post you're working on in an edit field) but you also have to deal with logging back in to sites that use session cookies for login (unless you're stupid enough to check the "always log me in automatically" button. Then, you have to re-navigate back to where you were because your page is most likely lost due to the re-login.

No, I would not be able to deal with having to shut down my browser (or have the whole thing crash) when one tab crashes... Trust me, use that feature for a while, and you will learn to find it invaluable no matter what you think right now.

Regarding the shared code and such, browsers use a *LOT* of private memory, that was one reason why Firefox used a ton of memory a few years ago because it cached forward and back pages. The shared code is relatively insignificant compared to the memory used for everything else.

Re:good

[rtfa-troll]

At one point in time IE6 had the best standard conformance of any browser.

This point was after they had broken Netscape's back and at the point where they were afraid of anti-trust actions during development. In other words they are standards compliant when it doesn't help anyone else and as long as they are threatened with serious legal consequences. Their recent attacks on ODF and the scandal of OOXML shows that the claim that MS 'breaks standards' is completely reasonable. Ignoring standards is just one tool in many that MS uses to break standards.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Regarding the shared code and such, browsers use a *LOT* of private memory, that was one reason why Firefox used a ton of memory a few years ago because it cached forward and back pages. The shared code is relatively insignificant compared to the memory used for everything else.

Take Firefox, and open 20 pages in seperate windows. Check out the private memory usage statistics.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

I think you don't really understand what "breaks standards" actually means. Submitting and championing your own standard is not "breaking standards".

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Really? What standards does OOXML break? Geez people, seriously? Does blind hatred of Microsoft make you stupid? Does this argument even make ANY sense?

Re:good

[wvmarle]

I think its about time we reccomended the right tool for the right job, as opposed to just avoiding it outright.

I totally agree with that. IE6 for those legacy internal corporate applications that don't work with anything else. The latest Firefox for all other web-related work.

Re:good

[pdusen]

Sorry, all the 2007 jobs were done in 2007.

Re:good

[hairyfeet]

Meh, you should try being a PC repairman for a living! I swear we are treated just like plumbers, we walk into somebody's house and it is like "Hey buddy, glad to see you! BTW, could you look at my PC? It is acting funny"

As for IE, I've even moved my 67 year old dad over to Firefox. IE is too virus prone, they take too long to patch holes, and is still too big a target for hackers IMHO. Firefox with Adblock seems to take care of most of the clueless users (like my dad) along with a decent AV, which I prefer Comodo.

As for the GP whacking IE users with the stick? The key is to give them candy, NOT whack them with the stick. Here is how this old greybeard gets IE users to switch...Give them Adblock along with, and this is the key, give them ForecastFox in the Menubar at the top set to their zipcode. I have found folks loooove having that little 3 day forecast right at the top where they can glance at it before work, and when you tell them it will pop up severe weather alerts if something bad is headed their way it seals the deal. I have yet to have a user go back to IE after giving them ForecastFox with Adblock.

Oh, and if you are switching them from IE? Take note of what their home page is set to and be SURE to make sure Firefox has the same! Folks get really pissy if their favorite homepage isn't on startup. I have found a good 85% have it set to that ugly Yahoo portal, but do NOT change it, no matter how much you think it sucks! They actually like that mess, and like to read the headlines and check their mail before going out onto the bigger web. Just give them FF with ABP and FCF, make sure their home page is the same, and you'll see you don't need that text file, as they'll be quite happy to stay with FF. Always catch more flies with honey than vinegar you know.

Re:good

[WORMSS]

I have 12MB in this computer, and it only cost me $200.

its bad when you remember when 12MB was MORE than $200... [and yes, I did mean MB]

Re:good

[Rob Y.]

ummm. Rather than use existing standards, OOXML creates a whole new set by simply anointing existing Microsoft technologies as new 'standards'. If you don't think using monopoly power to prevent existing standards from taking hold is equivalent to breaking standards, then you deserve a job in the MS PR department. What is the purpose of standards beyond the goal of multiple implementations? That is definitely not Microsoft's goal, though. So unless you think it's appropriate to redefine what a standard is and is for, don't assume criticism == hatred == stupidity.

Re:good

[unapersson]

There were lots of Mozilla releases before IE6 came out, are you sure you're not thinking of IE5? IE6 was substandard right from the start, but it was a big step forward from IE4 which was abysmal.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Oh please, let's not get into "is equivlent" BS. That's just subjective, and isn't in any way accurate.

No. I don't care who you are, or what your opinions. Promoting your own competing standard is *NOT* breaking the other guys standard. Breaking the standard means deliberately implementing it incorrectly, and there is no other way to interpret it.

It's funny, but i'll bet you're one of those people that say "Copyright infringement isn't theft" (which it's not). Call something what it is. If it's bad, it's bad without equating it to something diferent that is also bad.

Re:good

[PK Tech Guy]

Wasn't that the theme of the lost Seinfeld-Gates commercial?

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Yeah, in 1996 I paid $600 for a 4MB stick (though 4 1MB sticks were significantly less)

Re:good

[siride]

Right, I don't disagree about that (in fact, I said as much in my post). But that memory usage should be more or less the same regardless of whether the browser uses one process for the whole browser, or has a single process per page. The OP suggested that it was the one-process-per-page model that introduced the extreme memory usage problems. And that's where I disagree.

Re:good

[gtall]

A company promoting their standard? Errr....and what definition of "standard" would this be?

Re:good

[AvitarX]

Well MS's implementation of OOXML breaks the OOXML standard, not quite sure your question though.

Re:good

[Eponymous Coward]

It can be remotely administered via group policy settings (I don't know if Firefox can do this as well). If you work in a Microsoft environment in a large, distributed corporation, it might be a good choice.

There are lots of corporate desktops where the browser is the new VT100 terminal. No internet exposure and IE6 works well enough.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Bullshit, if you paid 200 for 4MB of ram you really got ripped off back then. Now if you said 1992 or 1993, I would be more inclined to believe you.

Re:good

[gbjbaanb]

but I *like* being in a bad mood :):)

Also, you must not do much with your browsers, because there is no way I could shut down, even with the browser remembering my pages, and not be highly annoyed

Ah, but you forget, even if only 1 tab crashes... you're going to be highly annoyed. shutting down the browser afterwards is not even a noticeable increase in your level of annoyance. Damage done. In fact, shutting the whole thing down is probably going to help - that little hint of "die damn browser, that'll teach you to kill the page I was looking at" is the only bit of satisfaction you're going to get... and you'd forgo even that.

Still, developers are bad and lazy nowadays, its not something to encourage in any shape of form. Best you get used to it too, or you'll be spending another $200 on yet more RAM in a year or two.

Re:good

[Richard_at_work]

You seem to be under the impression that IE9 is currently anything other than a pre-alpha preview, so I think you should reconsider your position on that basis.

Re:good

[poetmatt]

why? IE8 fixes none of the issues that were present with IE6. You still get shit performance and plenty of security issues. So we can either say what they might do, or play on reality. Neither way is exactly pretty for MS.

Re:good

[Maxo-Texas]

"Auto Space like Word 95"

is not a standard.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Kindof. There were some seriously alpha releases of Mozilla, but nothing stable until after IE6 was released. And even those versions had HUGE compatibility issues.

Re:good

[shoehornjob]

It's not the unholy creation of satan that it once was.

That's because they officially stopped supporting IE 6. IE 8 is not that much better but at least they cleaned up their act when it comes to security.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

One in which a document is submitted to a standards body by a company. It happens all the time.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

No, MS's OOXML implementation uses the transitional standard, which is not quite the same thing. Their implementation existed before the standard was created, and mutated into what was accepted.

And I don't believe that MS is claiming that Office supports ISO OOXML. So one cannot break what one is not claiming to support.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Neither is "Do formulas like OpenOffice.org".

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

I said a 4MB stick. Not 4MB.

Re:good

[Richard_at_work]

If you meant IE8 then say that you meant it, don't try and make your argument progressive simply because you already believe IE9 will fail.

Re:good

[poetmatt]

you are certainly creative with what you're saying. I never said IE9 will fail. I'm saying that IE8 and IE9 are not secure solutions. Failure is not something I even care, really. I thought the first time you had an issue with my specifying IE9.

Re:good

[rtfa-troll]

It's true; I have no idea what you mean by break standards, and I'm sure that, following MSs example, you can find a meaning that I didn't think of in advance and then claim I'm wrong. However, I think in this case, we can actually say every reasonable sense of "break standards" MS breaks the standards. E.g. MS's implementation of CSS in IE6 behaved in a way that was not according to the standards for many standards conformant CSS texts (MS's CSS implementation "broke the rules of the standard"). When these faults were reported to MS, despite having claimed conformance to standards, MS failed to fix IE6 (MS "broke it's promises to follow the standard").

Coming onto ODF and OOXML, we can start with the fact that there was one clear standard, ODF, that everybody had agreed on. Instead of joining an open process and ensuring that it's own needs were included, Microsoft "broke away from the standards process". Having done that, first Microsoft "broke the standards organisations " by ensuring that committes which had previously mainly consisted of technical experts were overloaded with Microsoft's commercial cronies. Then Microsoft "broke the standards it was trying to have implemented " by ensuring that the standards were at the same time incomplete ("do this as MS Word 2000"), inconsistent and unimplementable. Next Microsoft "broke the interoperability you would expect the standard to deliver" for ODF when Microsoft implemented ODF. Just recently, Microsoft has completed the circle by delivering an OOXML implementation which "broke the rules of the standard" by not following it. Microsoft has promised to to deliver a standards conforming implementation in 2015. The only question is, will Microsoft "break with it's standard practices" or will it "break it's promise to follow the standard? Did you have another meaning of "break the standard" in mind?

Re:good

[MadnessASAP]

Don't forget bookmarks, god fucking help you if a user loses their bookmarks, they will bring the wrath of god down on you and everyone else around them.

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

Promoting your own competing standard is *NOT* breaking the other guys standard.

There is no such thing as "your standard". If it is a standard it is not yours. Open XML is formally a standard but owned by Microsoft via committee stuffing and not strictly implemented by Microsoft.

Re:good

[Richard_at_work]

In your original post, if you care to read it, you said precisely the following:

Performance is crap, and IE9 appears to fix, well, none of that.

A pointless comment when the only public viewing we have seen of IE9 to date is a pre-alpha preview of just the engine, uncomplete and unfinished as mentioned by the IE developers. Your above comment also implies you think IE9 is already a failure.

I'm glad for competition, as hopefully it will drive microsoft to compete more than the show they attempted with IE9. Competition is good for all.

Here you are commenting on IE9 in the past tense, which is stupid because as noted above its not even into alpha yet. Your comment above again implies that you think IE9 is already a failure.

I'm not being creative about anything, you are treating the little we have seen of IE9 as a finished product and dismissed it twice.

Re:good

[KarmaMB84]

I believe one of the ISO meetings discussed restoring the Transitional spec to compatibility with ECMA in the first amendment with the rationale that the entire point of Transitional is ECMA compatibility. Office 2007 may be conformant with ISO when they make the fix.

Re:good

[KarmaMB84]

ISO specifies elements with these names:

autoSpaceLikeWord95, footnoteLayoutLikeWW8, lineWrapLikeWord6, mwSmallCaps, shapeLayoutLikeWW8, suppressTopSpacingWP, truncateFontHeightsLikeWP6, uiCompat97To2003, useWord2002TableStyleRules, useWord97LineBreakRules, wpJustification and wpSpaceWidth

So "Auto Space like Word 95" is actually in the standard.

Re:good

[Daengbo]

Microsoft isn't leading the target. Their pre-Alpha IE9 is eventually shooting for (really more hoping) to meet the standards of the currently released browsers. By next year, when IE9 really comes out comes out, all those browsers will have moved on and MS will have missed the target yet again. Chrome appears to be getting 20% faster with each release (I have seen 2.0 vs. 3.0 and 4.0 v.s 5.0 benchmarks, but I don't have 3.0 vs. 4.0). IE9 is trying to match Chrome 3.0's speed. Chrome 6.0 will be out by then, and IE9 will still be an order of magnitude behind the front-runner.

Re:good

[Machtyn]

This is exactly what I do. I install Firefox with AdBlock and ForecastFox. I then give a demonstration. "Look here is ForecastFox. No, WeatherBug is as bad as a virus, use ForecastFox."

Then I give a demonstration of AdBlock: "See, here's your favorite page in IE, see all the ads? Here's you favorite page in FF, no ads, no shifted text in articles, etc."

If they have a site that doesn't work with anything but IE, depending on the situation I either tell them to use IE for that site or I put IE Tab or Coral IE Tab in Firefox.

Re:good

[Machtyn]

Better than that, put their bookmarks in the Bookmark Toolbar and show them how easy it is to access them. Find their favorite news site (or whatever) and create a live bookmark for them using the site's RSS feed..

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Nice, however, none of those things are, in fact, breaking the standard. Breaking interoperability does not break the standard if the standard is being conformed to. The fact that the standard was inadequate to ensure interoperability is what was at fault.

it's true that IE6 had numerous bugs in it's CSS implementation, but at IE6's release, they were the most standard conformant browser out there. By your argument, every browser in existence breaks the standard because none of them fully conform, and many have bugs.

IE6's problem was that it was left to stagnate. This is a far cry from deliberately breaking the standards. Every subsequent release of IE has improvde standards conformant, and to my knowledge, IE8 is still the single, and only browser to reach 99% conform to CSS 2.1 (the lastest ratified CSS standard).

Granted, IE's conformance may be slanted because the vast majority of the W3 CSS test suite was submitted by Microsoft, but no 3rd parties have shown any other browser to be more compliant either.

For example:

http://www.webdevout.net/browser-support-summary?IE8=on&FX2=on&FX3=on&OP9=on&uas=CUSTOM

Unfortunately, Chrome is not on the list.

So all your weasel wording aside, you have yet to provide any compelling argument that Microsoft has deliberately broken standards, when facts show that at the time MS released any given version of their browser, they have had significantly improved standards conformance over the previous version, and in some cases (such as the current one) have the best conformance to ratified standards.

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

"Was accepted" is a joke for what they did to ISO/IEC.

That is like a rapist speaking about "consent".

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

"your own" means "You created it". For example, Sun promoting ODF is Sun promoting it's own standard.

Re:good

[Toonol]

Because ActiveX is such a widely-supported standard. Go defend and make excuses for some other abusive monopolist mmmkay?

Christ. Since this is about "sides" for you, you would be best advised to stop posting, because you're making your side look bad.

Re:good

[Daengbo]

OK. They broke standards by modeling the standard after their own product, then failing to follow the standard they proposed while claiming that they were compliant. They did that all with the only thing that could be considered a reference implementation of the standard.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Where exactly did Microsoft complain that they were ISO OOXML compliant?

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

claim, not complain.

Re:good

[Daengbo]

The Mozilla Foundation was created in 1998, while IE6 was released in 2001. There's three and a half years there that you were apparently lost or sleeping. In addition, Gecko 0.9 was concurrent with the release of IE6, and a lot of us used it -- it wasn't pre-alpha. KHTML was also better. The problem at that time was that Microsoft had long won the browser wars, and most of the web was written for IE5 or IE5.5, which were absolute shit with regard to standards. Microsoft was the only one that had a chance of rendering those pages decently. Browsers that attempted to be standards compliant (not IE5-compliant), routinely couldn't visit half the websites in existence at the time.

Maybe you're confusing "standards compliant" with "looked decent with the web," which I'll gladly admit IE6 was the only browser to do at the time.

back up to 1999-2000, and I was using Netscape or Mozilla nightlies. Those sucked, but non-Windows users didn't have a lot of choice.

Re:good

[Daengbo]

I once paid over $1000 for two floppy drives and an upgrade from 4KB to 64KB. This was my Model I.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm looking forward to the day we have an article here stating "Windows market share falls to historic low" :)

Re:good

[Daengbo]

2.3.2

Application and Versions

By using Microsoft® Office Word 2007 SP2, users can open document files that conform to the Office Open XML File Format, as specified in [ISO/IEC-29500:2008]. By using Microsoft® Word 2010, users can both create and open document files that conform to the Office Open XML File Format, as specified in [ISO/IEC-29500:2008] and pursuant to the implementation notes that are cited in section 2.3.4 of this document.

https://docs.google.com/viewer?url=http://download.microsoft.com/download/2/4/8/24862317-78F0-4C4B-B355-C7B2C1D997DB/%5BMS-OFFDI%5D.pdf

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you, you apologist shill piece of shit. The OOXML fiasco deserves to be exposed for what it is. MS intentionally subverted and made a mockery of ISO by using its toadies to stuff the ballot to ram it's "standard" down everyone's throat. OOXML is not a "standard". A standard doesn't say something like "here, do what Excel does". That's not a fucking standard by any reasonable definition. A real standard is self describing. How can it be a standard if it isn't? It's just a reference to something else.

Where do you fucks slither out from? It's people like you that have depressed wages in IT (MS knowledgeable labor is cheaper). It's assholes like you that have us in the position where we are still dependent on MS (IE6) and make this article even pertinent. Why don't you just die, jackass?

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

The part you're missing is the "Pursuant to the implementaiton notes that are cited in 2.3.4 of this document".

That section says:

"Implementation notes for the Microsoft Office 2010 implementation of the Office Open XML File
Format, as specified in [ISO/IEC-29500:2008], are described in [MSFT-DII]. These notes describe
how Office 2010 applications implement the format and they are organized according to the sections
of [ISO/IEC-29500:2008]."

That link goes to this site:

http://www.documentinteropinitiative.org/

And that site covers all the interoperability issues.

Re:good

[prockcore]

Yes, but if you look, it actually spells out *exactly* what that means.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

Memory is cheap now

I'd need to carry an extra battery because 12G of RAM would probably double the power requirements of this laptop. Doesn't sound so cheap anymore.

Re:good

[TimothyDavis]

Actually, this is inaccurate. Satan wasn’t really the creator of IE.

This is how it went down: After walking the Earth, Satan met up with the Creator (of IE). The Creator mentioned his loyal servants whose job it was to maintain IE, and how they praised the name of the Creator.

Satan then pointed out that these folks with jobs only praised the Creator because they were not in misery; and thus Satan bet the Creator (of IE) that if the spoils were taken away, then these folks would cease to sing praise. The Creator accepted the bet, and implemented much pain into IE.

After years of pain, it is hard to remember if or when IE was ever good. However, those with faith believe that at some point IE will be restored to a less torturous product.

In summary, it wasn’t the product of Satan, but Satan did have influence.

Re:good

[Daengbo]

You asked me where they claimed it. I answered. Implementation due to ambiguity isn't breaking the standard. They have been shown to break several times.

They didn't lie, though, I guess, because they only claim to conform for reads in MS Word 2007. Of course, the moment that you make a significant change and save, that file is no longer conformant. The sales weasels aren't going to say that, though. They just say "We do OOXML, an international standard!"

Re:good

[hairyfeet]

Nice to see I'm not the only one that does that! Like I always say, it is better to lure the clueless with candy than threat them with a stick. I would add another way I've added to my "get the fuck away from IE!" arsenal works nearly as well as ForecastFox...Show them how easy it is to add extensions. Just tell them anything they don't like, or anything they want it to do, can be found in a couple of minutes thanks to extensions.

i tripped over this one by accident when my dad was always complaining about screen resolutions thanks to his eyesight. He always had trouble seeing the pictures anyone sent him so I showed him how to use the extensions add-on to get Imagezoom. Well the next thing I know he is raving to all his friends and our relatives about how easy it is, and suddenly when anybody that knows dad comes in not only am I not having to deal with IE, but they all have their own customized FF. One filled hers with social add-ons, another added videodownloadhelper, thanks to the way the extensions add on is built with that handy search button it is really easy for even a noob to find new things.

And for all you geeks/repairguys having to deal with distant friends and/or relatives? let your old pal Hairyfeet turn you on to a little lifesaver called Ninite. This site is worth its weight in gold guys. All the major freeware and add-ons you need (and if there are any that aren't included let them know and they are good about adding it. I wanted Klite and BAM! There it is) and NO TOOLBARS. They are having problems getting Flash going? Ninite. Need Java or Silverlight? Ninite. Need music software, imaging, Open Office, or even AV? Ninite. It is beyond simple too. Just tell them to check any software they want in ANY combination, or give them a list of what you want them to install, have them click the "install now" button at the bottom, and that's it! No tweaking, no 40 questions, no "clicky clicky next next next", no toolbars or worthless crap, just an easy over the web unattended installer that any kid could use. Really great for when you have friends and family too far to service in person.

Re:good

[Rob Y.]

...Breaking the standard means deliberately implementing it incorrectly, and there is no other way to interpret it.

Okay. Come back when Microsoft has correctly implemented the ISO OOXML 'standard'. There is simply no honest way to see Microsoft's manipulation of the standards process as a good faith effort to promote standards.

They submitted OOXML as a rival standard when they feared adoption of ODF. And the standard they submitted is different from the one they've implemented.

They provided an ODF plugin that is deliberately incompatible with other implementations. Yes, I've heard the bull about the incompatibilities being in areas that were poorly defined. But to ignore all existing implementations in favor of something (let's face it) deliberately incompatible is not my idea of implementing a standard.

Microsoft is playing games to stay technically within the demands of their customers while guaranteeing as much as possible that no other software will fully implement the 'standards' that they're promoting. It's pure theater - as are your attempts to defend it.

Oh. And by the way, copyright infringement is theft. The software patent fiasco is another story altogether.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Wow, you should really back off on the caffein dude.

Regardless of what you may believe about the process used to pass OOXML, it has nothing to do with a discussion of web standards, and it's certainly not an example of MS breaking existing standards.

So why change the subject?

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Ironically, the people that complain about "format like word 95" are the same people who think nothing of "do formulas like OpenOffice.org".

You lose a lot of credibility when you bitch and moan up a storm about one thing, then complain when others don't do the very thing you're complaining about in the other.

Yes, Microsoft should have implemented ISO OOXML in Office 2010, but it sounds like they just didn't have the resources to do it in time. That may sound silly, but understand that most app functionality in a app the size of Office is frozen at least a year out from planned finalization.

And, given that there was a bunch of winging after teh ratification of OOXML, they probably felt it wise to delay implementation until they were sure the standard was going to stay.

In any event, it doesn't seem like conforming to a standard is a requirement these days. Is there any current shipping office app that conforms to ODF 1.0? I think most are at least 1.1, and some are 1.2, neither of which are currently ISO standards.

Re:good

[CarpetShark]

I see you work in marketing.

"IE. Not the unholy creation of Satan it once was."

Indeed. Only a marketer could come up with the idea that the CREATOR (rather than the nature) of a product changes over time.

Re:good

[Rob Y.]

Okay.,I'll bite.ODF formulas are documented in the form of an open source reference implementation. Word95 - not so much. That might just be an accident of history, but it sure doesn't argue the case for OOXML as a viable standard. That is;if you want more than one implementation.

And from what I hear;,Office2010 isn't ISO OOXML either.

Re:good

[ffflala]

Two questions:

1. Where does such a "do formulas like OpenOffice.org" element appear?
2. Are "formulas like OpenOffice.org" open to the public? The whole closed-source thing seemed to be the problem with "do stuff like Word 95". You can see how OpenOffice.org does formulas, but you can't see how Word 95 does them.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Odd, and here I thought OpenOffice also had word compatibility, seems that OpenOffice would be just as much an open source reference implementation for word compatiblity.

And from what you hear? You mean the part where i said that was the case?

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

Nope. ODF is managed by OASIS and it is really not driven by SUN or Oracle.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

"Meh, you should try being a PC repairman for a living! I swear we are treated just like plumbers"

Er, that's because PC repairman is pretty much the same level of job as being a plumber.

Don't overestimate your trade, PC repairman is hardly a skilled job nowadays. How many even need to know what an IRQ conflict is? How many even need to know how to manipulate conventional memory and deal with extended and expanded memory? It's a job for which most questions can be answered by Google nowadays, it's certainly not anymore of a skilled job than plumbing is.

I really find it amazing that a "PC repairman" would consider plumbers beneath them.

Re:good

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought this was the Windows 7 slogan.

At least, it's the way I always think of it.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Except of course that Sun submitted ODF originally to OASIS, and a Sun/Oracle employee chairs the group, and there are 5 Sun/Oracle employees on the committee (more than any other company).

Yeah, Sun has nothing to do with ODF... right..

Re:good

[Maxo-Texas]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenFormula

Your point is still valid for now, but a lot of work has been done on the formula standard and it looks like it will be ready soon.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

And the "Do autospacing like Word 95" was legacy, marked as deprecated, and boldly told not to be used in new documents being created.

Re:good

[TedRiot]

Well I have two tabs open in my Firefox at the moment, one of which is this Slashdot page and it's eating up 205MB.

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

I don't think you speak truth.

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

OOXML is just Microsoft. ODF is SUN/Oracle, IBM, Microsoft and many more.

Re:good

[Elektroschock]

Really? Only for document consumers?

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

Only for legacy documents that have been converted to OOXML. The feature is dropped, but there because it corresponds to an element in old .doc formats that are no longer supported.

Re:good

[man_of_mr_e]

I just checked, and things have changed a little. It looks like Rob Weir (and IBM employee) now co-chairs the TC with Michael Brauer, an Oracle employee.

IBM now has 10 members on the committe, and Sun has 7. So IBM now outnumbers Sun, but Sun still has significant influence, being both a co-chair and the second most members.

Interestingly enough, Microsoft now has 4 members on the TC, although one of them is Doug Mahugh.

The point still stands, though. Sun (nee Oracle) submitted the standard to Oasis, they co-chair the comittee. It's "their" standard.

Why is this surprising?

[King InuYasha]

Most people are not complete morons. If they get burned once with IE, they'll tell their friends to use a different browser. And of course, they themselves will use a different browser. As the number of people recommending alternative browsers increases, more people will switch away from IE voluntarily...

Re:Why is this surprising?

[man_of_mr_e]

I'm not so sure about that. I have to wonder if the explosion of iPhone and Android based phones has not contributed significantly to this. Since IE is not available on those devices, one has to wonder, especially considerging that chrome and safari account for more than 5% of the drop in IE's share. (according to the charts, firfox is less than 5%, and opera stayed the same).

What that means to me is that a significant number of people aren't switching on the desktop. The market is just growing, and those people using phone based browsers are probably still using IE on the desktop.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[Vectormatic]

i see your point for safari numbers, but is chrome available on the mobile platform? from what i can find chrome isnt the default for android.

as for still using IE on the desktop, that might very well be, but lots of people might check out safari/opera/whatever after having a positive experience on their phone

Re:Why is this surprising?

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all speculation. Just by the numbers given, you can't tell how the market moved in one way or another. And there's still people (like myself) who use different browsers for different causes. Some things just work better in one browser versus another. Which mixes up the numbers even more. And the latter of what I'm talking about could potentially result in a decrease in percent for one, even though it is used regularly by the same person. There's more. But overall, all I'm saying is that these numbers don't really mean a lot...

Re:Why is this surprising?

[man_of_mr_e]

The default browser for android phones is a google browser, chrome based...

Re:Why is this surprising?

[wvmarle]

IE is going down steadily, FF is virtually stable in market share, looking at the overall trend.

That means that the FF vs IE ratio is going up. And it seems that people are switching still from IE to FF. The overall trend of FF+IE going down could be either because of competition on the desktop, or by the increase of devices that do not support FF or IE (such as the iPhone and iPad).

Re:Why is this surprising?

[jonadab]

> I'm not so sure about that. I have to wonder if the explosion of iPhone
> and Android based phones has not contributed significantly to this.

I won't say they haven't contributed, but I don't think it's really the major factor. The 2010Q1 stats from our website at work (which, admittedly, is small and of mostly local import) show all known mobile platforms combined at less than 1% (and just barely ahead of Iceweasel), compared to Firefox (branded as such) at 19%, Safari at 16%, and Chrome at 4% (up *substantially* from just one quarter earlier).

What interests me is that there appears to be a lot of motion, people switching to one browser and then another, and it does not appear that everyone is moving in the same direction. It doesn't look to me as if everyone is moving en masse from one particular browser to another one, because the loss and gain numbers don't match up in a way that makes sense for that. Firefox numbers, for instance, have scarcely changed at all in the last year, although I know there are people moving to Firefox (especially from IE) and others moving from it (e.g. toward Chrome). I think the browser market has become competitive again, and people in general (not everyone, of course but more than just a handful) are starting to experiment with different browsers and make a choice based on personal taste. I view this as a good thing.

Incidentally my stats also show IE8 up to 22% now (up from around 1% a year previous), which makes it the single most widely deployed version of IE at this point. I'm showing IE7 at 14% and IE6 at 12%, down from 40% and 18% (respectively) a year earlier. Note the huge drop in IE7 (40 to 14, a loss of 65% of the market share it had a year earlier), compared to the slower drop in IE6 (18 to 12, losing 33% of what it had). Of course, that's partly because a lot more of the IE7 users had automatic updates turned on, which by default puts them on IE8 now, even if they took no special action. In the next year, I look for IE8 to continue to rise and IE7 to continue to drop significantly, possibly falling below IE6. Whether overall IE numbers will continue to drop, I don't know. It might depend on what kind of showing IE9 presents. I also don't know whether Firefox will be able to hold near 20% in the long term; I suspect it may have peaked. Chrome, obviously, is still on the increase. Opera appears to be holding its own in the less-than-1% range where it has always lived. Konqueror is below IE5 and apparently tied with IE4, which tells me that all the KDE users (not that there are that many of them in the first place, though it's difficult to measure this since the UA string does not generally disclose window manager or desktop environment) are using other browsers (probably mostly Firefox, but that's a guess).

Re:Why is this surprising?

[David_W]

Most people are not complete morons.

... You lost me.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[King InuYasha]

As much as most of us deride the masses, the people that make up those masses are generally not that stupid. Also, with the aging of a generation that has always worked with computers will raise the bar on computer and technology competency (granted, not by too much, but it is still some...)

Common sense dictates that if you've been burned once, you'll avoid it again later. Human addendum: Tell all your friends about your horrible experience, so they don't repeat it.

There are complete morons out there too, and that is what commercial tech support is for! And of course the more technically inclined can make money of off these people...

Re:Why is this surprising?

[hkmwbz]

Opera appears to be holding its own in the less-than-1% range where it has always lived.

What are you talking about? Opera's global market share is around 3%, while it's 5-10% in Europe (actually, up to 30% in some European countries). It does have 100 million users (whereas Firefox has 300 million users or so) after all.

Re:Why is this surprising?

[jonadab]

> What are you talking about? Opera's global market share

My post made it clear that I was talking about one particular website. Go read it again.

Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[eldavojohn]

As a human being I'm normally predisposed to abstain from unconditional hate.

As a web developer who has "done the dance" with former versions of IE late into the night too many times I hate hate hate and welcome this news. Nothing can undo those atrocities. IE6. Never forget!

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[poena.dare]

I *almost* agree wit cha. I've been there to. However! I do remember a time (maybe a brief time) when I could pass the buck and say, It looks good on IE, who cares if it craps out on Netscape/Firefox!" Good times. Good times.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Zeussy]

IE6. Never forget!

Sounds like a quote for a T Shirt from Think Geek

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[DJRumpy]

Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with, you would have been able to just design your pages per the standard, and never had to worry about any browser. Even now, my company is just getting around to piloting IE8, and only because the inevitable rollout to Windows 7. I suspect a lot are in the same boat, where they skipped Vista, and made no effort to stay current with the browser that came packaged with XP. I don't know why my company chose to just stay on IE6 but I suspect it worked at the time, it was updated from MS so they got their security fixes in a standard way along with the other OS patches, and it was simply conveniant.

My company is usually very keen on get current stay current, but they failed miserably on IE. I can only assume that they design apps specifically for IE6 and simply couldn't break away, or didn't see any need to move on. Now that the move to Windows 7 comes bundled with IE8, they simply have no choice.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[bhtooefr]

Netscape wasn't sticking to standards, either, though.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[sznupi]

Well, and standards didn't exactly help those browsers which did try to stick to them back then...

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[gabebear]

Is this shirt available?

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS THIS THIS THIS THIS ^ !!!!!

I put in a brief stint coding up a web page or two for clubs in college. Had a partner that helped me out with a lot of the art design, but knew nothing about web coding. Getting his stuff to look right in Firefox was fairly simple. Hacking around the finished site to make the site also look good in IE6 took 3 times longer than making the site itself.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[scottwilkins]

Being a developer myself, I'll stick with I.E. In my experience I.E. has returned expected results countless more times than Firefox, Chrome or any other browser. Version 8 answers most of the "not compatible/compliant" retoric anyway. And, overall I'd say it's the most secure browser on the web today. You can see it differently, but those glasses went out of style long ago.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[man_of_mr_e]

Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with

Actually, that's *exactly* what they did. They stuck with the same standards as were around in 1999, and didn't improve ;) You may not recall this, but in 1999, they were the browser with the best standards support. So perhaps you'd care to rephrase that ;)

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[man_of_mr_e]

That's why you should do all your development on IE, then make it work in FF and chrome. It's a lot easier to go the other way.

Yes, that's irony.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Bert64]

It was the Mac version of IE (5.x i believe) which had the best standards support of the time, the windows version was always woefully behind...

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Mr. DOS]

You forgot to mention that bit about the W3C completely reversing their spec for the CSS box model after Microsoft had released IE5. And then Microsoft released IE6; the problem was that not everybody upgraded (same reason we're stuck with IE6 now).

As much as I hate having to work with IE6, and as many issues as it legitimately has, it was the best browser at the time, and Microsoft takes a lot of flak for things that aren't exactly their fault.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[LWATCDR]

Let my make this perfectly clear.
IE is a nightmare but...
Part of the problem really needs to be laid at the feet of the W3C. They moved so slowly when it came to creating standards that it was just painful.
Netscape and Microsoft where at one time stuck with a standards group that moved at the speed of molasses in Antarctica in June and people wanting new functionality. Of course that was a long time ago band Microsoft spend a long time ignoring the standards that where set so we can blame them for that.
But frankly the beginning of the problem had a lot to do with the W3C.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes and no. It was Microsofts choice to go beyond the standard, and they have to accept responsibility for that. although it may have been painful waiting for standards to be certified by W3C, the functionality desired wasn't a 'must have' but rather a nice to have, and making it sound like the web couldn't function without these new standards is a bit disingenuous.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[man_of_mr_e]

Yes, IE5 Mac was beter than IE5 Windows, but IE6 actually was significantly better than both.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[man_of_mr_e]

Well, it's their fault for letting IE stagnate, but yeah. And the W3C didn't reverse the spec, they clarified it. It was previously vague and could be interpreted in different ways.

The specs have gotten better with time, and the other major browsers have followed suit. IE didn't. But again, that's not the same thing as claiming they "deliberately broke" the standards. Though you can say they deliberately ignored them.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

My company is usually very keen on get current stay current, but they failed miserably on IE. I can only assume that they design apps specifically for IE6 and simply couldn't break away, or didn't see any need to move on. Now that the move to Windows 7 comes bundled with IE8, they simply have no choice.

And this is why alarm bells should go off when evaluating the risk of developing for a web browser that is tied so closely to specific versions of an operating system.

Lets say that for some bizarro reason people managed to make web apps that only worked in old Firefox 2. Well, I have been able to run Firefox 2 under 95, NT 3.51, 98, NT 4, ME, 2000, XP, Vista, 7, and it will likely run under any newer Windows. Never mind it is also available for Mac, Linux, Solaris, BeOS, OS/2 and many more. If enough people had apps that only worked in Firefox 2 (and for whatever the bizarro hypothetical reason was newer Firefox versions could not be made to work with these apps) the source code is available and could be ported to any newer OSes not compatible with the old binaries. And it can coexist under the same OS with any newer versions of Firefox or other browsers, so you could use the old one for your app and the newer one for browsing the web.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with, you would have been able to just design your pages per the standard, and never had to worry about any browser....

You're exposing your ignorance here, man.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like the fact that IE6 scored an 11 on the Acid3 Test? Hell, even IE5.5 did better than IE6 on the Acid test.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[DJRumpy]

Microsoft themselves have admitted that they weren't very standards driven in regards to IE6:

"While it is true that our implementation is not fully, 100 percent W3C-compliant, our development investments are driven by our customer requirements and not necessarily by standards," said Greg Sullivan, a lead product manager with the Windows client group.

It doesn't get much clearer than that...

REF: http://news.cnet.com/2100-1032-5088642.html

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[unapersson]

By 1999 Mozilla had started their milestone releases, and they had better standards support than IE. They milestones may have been pre-beta but where still stable enough to use as your day to day browser.

http://www-archive.mozilla.org/releases/history.html

So when IE6 was released in 2001 it was already behind in standards support yet they still allowed it to stagnate.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[fermion]

To be fair, there were no real standards for what MS wanted to do, which was develop a cross-platform application front end for various MS Window systems. That is, create a front end that would look the same on current, past, and future versions of MS Windows. All the rendering vagaries would be contained in IE, while the code would remain the same.

The looking the same is they idea. HTML was never meant to look the same on all rendering engines, it was simply meant to define a context which could be rendered appropriately. That way someone could write an engine for a small screen, or an engine for people who had trouble seeing, or whatever. MS convinced the populous that such an idea of general rendering was not important. Rather, developers and managers began obsessing on the fact that different engines would look slightly different on different screens, and expending huge amounts of money fixing minor issues such as a character that is two pixels over.

So this is why IE and MS took over the web. Compulsive developers and managers. IE allowed the control freaks to gain a satisfaction that would not be available in the W3C standards until CSS. The web browser became an application front end, and web pages became highly sophisticated tools to deliver advertising to users. It did not have to be this way. We could have just put useful content on the web, and then allowed the browser to display the content in the most efficient way to the user, but that would have under monetized the web. A side effect of this is that MS would gain control of the web.

We still see this over active control today. On the iPhone many sites will redirect the user to a mobile subsection even though the iPhone can easily display a properly written web page. We iPhone users have to deal with limited content so the site can insure that advertising is prominently visible. Not that there is anything wrong with this. It is just that many willingly followed MS lead, and blaming MS now for IE is leaving out the hordes of developers and managers that willing ignored the HTML standard for short term gain.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Richard_at_work]

Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with, you would have been able to just design your pages per the standard, and never had to worry about any browser.

Bollocks. Even following the standards you *still* have cross browser issues - take the HTML5 Browser Storage standard for example, part of which involves an event raised on field changes. The problem is, while the event handler is included in the spec, no requirement is placed on *where* the event handler listener is to be placed in the HTML.

Safari requires it to be placed on the body tag, IE on the document object, and Firefox doesn't really care where you put it. So again you have differences across browsers when its perfectly possible to put a single line in the standard and force conformity across all browsers.

There are examples of this across all web standards and all browsers. It's not as obvious as the standard IE vs everything else issues, but it's there.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Parent isn't talking about platform specific differences which is to be expected, they are talking about specific instances where MS didn't comply with standards at all, either not implementing them at all, or using their own custom implementation.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Richard_at_work]

Read the part of his post I quoted, it specifically says 'code to the standard and you don't have to worry about the browser', and I give a specific up to date example of that being false, and even coding to the standard doesn't divorce you from browser specifics.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[vegiVamp]

*This* close to a Godwin, apparently.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, but you won't like the box it ships in..

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Toonol]

"...our development investments are driven by our customer requirements and not necessarily by standards,"

And that's not TOTALLY a bad thing. Sometimes standards aren't drawn up with consumer desires at the forefront (BluRay, for instance). We need the best of both worlds.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[prockcore]

The same could be said for any browser.

Most browsers introduce tags that aren't in the spec. Safari did it with Canvas, Microsoft did it with AJAX, Mozilla did it with rounded corners.

Sometimes it's a bad thing.. like when Netscape added the blink tag.

The W3C just takes what the browser makers do and ratify it. When they try to make their own spec from the ground up, you end up with XHTML and XForms.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Daengbo]

The biggest problem was that choosing "HTML 4.0(1) Transitional" (no URI) meant that it rendered like IE5. Just about everything on the web used that DOCTYPE for years.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[cyberstealth1024]

Even now, my company is just getting around to piloting IE8, and only because the inevitable rollout to Windows 7.

It must be nice living on the edge! We just got IE7 about a month or so ago at my work!

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[ZzzzSleep]

There you go... just for you!
http://www.zazzle.com/ie6_never_forget_tshirt-235264592789806116

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[cparker15]

Agreed. It wasn't called "Nutscrape" in my office for nothing!

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Mr. DOS]

Ah, alrighty then. I haven't really looked into this. Now that I think about it, I think maybe the article I read said that Microsoft had implemented the box model in the way that was generally regarded to make the most sense, and a few months later, the W3C clarified it to say largely the reverse of what Microsoft had done.

Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy!

[Bert64]

no, ie5 for mac (the version that came with osx 10.3) was most definitely better than ie6... its css support for instance was far beyond what ie6 had

soooo?

[Anonymous Coward]

why is this news that people should care about?

Re:soooo?

[eldavojohn]

why is this news that people should care about?

*rolls down his turtleneck to reveal the permanent bruise from trying to hang himself after spending an endless night trying to figure out what was causing IE6 to crash but not Firefox*

*rolls up his coworker's sleeve to show the scars of slash marks on his wrist after trying to get alpha transparency working in PNG images inside IE6*

*holds up a memorial plaque of yet another coworker who jumped to his death from the top of the building after trying to code Javascript that would abstract many functionalities so that they would work both in IE6 and Firefox*

Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone. The damage continues to this day.

Re:soooo?

[Gr8Apes]

Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone. The damage continues to this day.

Guess I'm lucky, my last 2 jobs got to drop IE6 as a supported browser, and my current one doesn't even directly support IE7! It's standards only, and if it works on Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, we really don't give a rats ass about IE other than that IE8 doesn't make a complete mess of the pages. In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue. Amazingly enough, almost everything works in IE7 as well.

Re:soooo?

[tepples]

In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue.

True, IE 8 is a huge improvement over IE 6, but it still doesn't support W3C event model. For example, in IE 8, what's the recommended way to specify that a script shall run once the DOM content is ready? Or how do you attach multiple event handlers to an object, such as multiple things to run on load? IE is the only browser to support attachEvent and the only modern browser not to support addEventListener.

Re:soooo?

[man_of_mr_e]

Indeed. DOM seems to be the only area in which IE has consistently failed to improve. I'm hoping that will change in IE9.

Re:soooo?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you really look into the details it's pretty obvious why corporate America, by and large, is still running with IE in general (and IE6 in particular). IE6 was one of those "right place at the right time" technologies. It hit when companies were really beginning the push to "webify" as many of their applications as possible. And IE6 was a bitch to code for, which meant that most applications were held together by an epic collection of tweaks, hacks, and work-arounds. But it works on IE6, so that became the corporate standard. And because IE6 was the standard in the company, they continued to develop for it. Now IE8 is out and IE6 is approaching EOL. What do you do? Do you pay all of your developers to completely recode all of your IE6-only applications to work on IE8/Chrome/Firefox? You could, but it's going to be an expensive prospect and companies don't want to spend a fortune recoding their apps when the only driving factor is to make it work on a new platform. Senior execs say things like "you want to spend how many millions of dollars just so we can continue to use the apps that we already use today? What do we get for that money?"

So basically, you have to wait for enough of the old apps to die out or be upgraded with newer versions that support newer browsers before you're going to get anything close to killing IE6, or IE-anything for that matter.

Re:soooo?

[JohnBailey]

So basically, you have to wait for enough of the old apps to die out or be upgraded with newer versions that support newer browsers before you're going to get anything close to killing IE6, or IE-anything for that matter.

Well.. that, and the death of XP in 2014(I think), when companies that have yet to move form XP will have to move somewhere.Or is there away to run IE6 natively in 7?

Re:soooo?

[ReneeJade]

Because it makes good conversation. Slashdot is as much a forum as it is a news site. This is a fun thing to discuss.

Re:soooo?

[Gr8Apes]

In general I use the lame "load the script in the last line on the page" approach. As I work underneath the HTML layer, building pages out of server side components, I do have control over when that script line gets injected into the outbound response. It's an approach that has worked for all my needs.

Re:soooo?

[Patik]

You can attach multiple event handlers very easily, since at least IE6.

document.attachEvent('onload',function1); document.attachEvent('onload',function2); document.attachEvent('onload',function3);

Or to a particular element:

myElem.attachEvent('onclick',function1); myElem.attachEvent('onclick',function2); myElem.attachEvent('onmouseover',function3); myElem.attachEvent('onmouseout',function4);

Of course you have to use a bit of object detection to determine whether to use attachEvent or addEventListener, but a function that handles that for all browsers is one of the first things I paste into my code. Then it's just a simple myAddEventFunction(HTMLelement,'click',functionName); and who cares what browser that runs in.

Re:soooo?

[acidrainx]

IE9 will support addEventListener.

Re:soooo?

[marsu_k]

document.attachEvent('onload',function1);

But isn't that equal to <body onload="function1()">, which is quite different than executing a function once the DOM tree has been parsed; the latter happens before all content, such as images, have been loaded. Which is very handy if you, for example, wish to hide some images.

I've been struggling with this as I've been writing a library for internal use and personal amusement. (I don't pretend to have invented this stuff, well not the WebKit and IE portions anyway, they're shamelessly ripped from around the web. For internal use, that's ok, right?)

Suppose you want to execute doStuff() once the DOM is ready. With Gecko/Presto it's quite straightforward:

document.addEventListener("DOMContentLoaded", doStuff, false);

It gets a bit trickier with WebKit-based browsers:

var _timer = setInterval(function() { if (/loaded|complete/.test(document.readyState)) { clearInterval(_timer); doStuff(); } }, 50);

And then, as always, we have IE. I've seen some hacks that utilize document.write for this - in my opinion, it is an abomination that should not have existed in the first place. So some more creativity is needed:

(function() { try { document.documentElement.doScroll("left"); doStuff(); } catch (e) { setTimeout(arguments.callee, 50); } })();

Seriously. It works, but is ugly as hell. If anyone would know a more elegant solution, I'm all ears. IE has improved, especially in the CSS department, but when it comes to DOM, there's still a lot of room for improvement.

Re:soooo?

[Anonymous Coward]

For example, in IE 8, what's the recommended way to specify that a script shall run once the DOM content is ready? Or how do you attach multiple event handlers to an object, such as multiple things to run on load?

$(function() { /* do crap here when the DOM is loaded */
});

$(function() { /* do a second set of crap here when the DOM is loaded */
});

http://www.jquery.com/

Re:soooo?

[prockcore]

For example, in IE 8, what's the recommended way to specify that a script shall run once the DOM content is ready?

$(document).ready(function() { console.log("ready"); });

Re:soooo?

[joost]

in IE 8, what's the recommended way to specify that a script shall run once the DOM content is ready? Or how do you attach multiple event handlers to an object, such as multiple things to run on load?

Exactly identical as in IE7, IE6, Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome. jQuery or Prototype.

Re:soooo?

[mjwx]

Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone.

Dear lord that page is hideous, would it look any better in IE 6?

And may it keep dropping

[Gr8Apes]

This is the best news since... the last news that IE market share was dropping...

Re:And may it keep dropping

[Kjella]

I honestly don't feel that much difference anymore. A year ago it was something like 30% non-IE browsers, now it's 40% non-IE. Both are too big to ignore and many replacements of old IE-only systems from when they had 90% market share probably would have happened anyway. From here to about 80-90% non-IE where you can consider dropping IE support you are supporting the same anyway.

Re:And may it keep dropping

[Gr8Apes]

It allows people to drop IE6 and possibly IE7 support. IE8 is much better about supporting standards, thus the entire development process becomes much easier. Writing to straight standards will get you what you're looking for much more often with those two version of IE gone.

Standards

[Anonymous Coward]

The main reason it is good, is because it will force people to develop against standards, rather than what IE accepts. Once IE's share drops enough, MS will be forced to adhere to open standards, or watch IE die.

Sure, if you go back far enough...

[erroneus]

There was a moment in time when MSIE had effectively 0% market share right? So this 60% is still a huge triumph if you choose to spin it that way.

But seriously, any drop in market share is a historic low for Microsoft. And here's what I love about it -- Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing browsers with its web based applications such as Outlook Web Access and the like. It has been a while since I looked at it, but OWA did not offer full functionality to browsers other than MSIE. I don't know if that is still the case, but I suspect it is.

In any case, it is in large part due to Microsoft's behavior that our next enterprise email server at the office will be anything but MS Exchange.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Mainly until very recently, the other browsers sucked. And browsers sucked in general. Viva notepad with a network connection!!!

Seriously - this is free software. Who gives a rats arse...It's just a freaking html viewer.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing browsers with its web based applications such as Outlook Web Access and the like. It has been a while since I looked at it, but OWA did not offer full functionality to browsers other than MSIE. I don't know if that is still the case, but I suspect it is.

You'll be shocked to hear, MS has begun to support 3rd browsers with OWA (which has been renamed to Outlook Web App). I'm not sure of the complete list, but Safari & Firefox can run the Full-Fat mode. Interestingly, IE6 has been relegated to Lite mode only.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[MBGMorden]

In any case, it is in large part due to Microsoft's behavior that our next enterprise email server at the office will be anything but MS Exchange.

Sadly, somehow our department has gotten it into their heads that "Microsoft is the way to go.". They had a few years when they tried to get OSS (mostly FreeBSD, but some Linux) systems working for most of the servers, and a lot of the tasks were delegated out to people who had no Unix experience at all. End result is that they became frustrated and rather than try to educate themselves, they blamed the system.

Fast forward to today. Our CentOS/Apache web server has been replaced with IIS (and that was one thing that had always worked great - they basically just replaced it because they wanted to go all Microsoft). Our PHP code on our site has been replaced with ASP.NET. Our Samba setup is being replaced by Windows + Active Directory. Our Lotus Domino server is being retired and there are plans to replace it with MS Exchange. And I just heard recently that Firefox is "just becoming a headache because there are still things it doesn't work right with. Maybe it's time to look at IE again?". Even simple stuff that it makes no difference on - for instance, just something to run VMWare server on. You never even touch the interface, but they want to waste a Windows license (and more system resources) on that because they feel that Windows is "just the way to go".

Sometimes I just want to scream.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Clueless Nick]

IIRC, this was about who controls the internet. Anyway, you are trying to troll / flamebait and I am trying to help by biting.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Clueless Nick]

Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing mail clients with its frontline applications such as Microsoft Exchange Server 2007. That is, if somebody has a stick big enough to get them to explain.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[ctrahey]

It's just a freaking html viewer.

And your javascript compiler & runtime. And your layout engine.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[gabebear]

My last job had this problem... I feel your pain

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[westlake]

There was a moment in time when MSIE had effectively 0% market share right? So this 60% is still a huge triumph if you choose to spin it that way.

Net Applications' openly published stats do not break down market share by markets.

They will not tell you which browser is most likely being deployed for corporate and institutional use, for example.

60% of the global market could translate into a much bigger slice of the enterprise market.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[ZaphDingbat]

Likewise here. I'm tired of trying to share the wisdom of Python and open-source solutions to problems. This place will always be a Microsoft shop, and heck, I'm sure they deserve it.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[man_of_mr_e]

Well, it sounds like they had real reasons to switch to IIS. You basically need it to use ASP.NET, and ASP.NET has significant traction these days and provides significant value for a lot of companies, at least over PHP. The functionality offered by Java/JSP is a lot closer, but PHP vs ASP.NET is like bringing a bazooka to water ballon fight.

That's not to say that PHP is bad or sucks. Lots of sights make great use of it, but it just doesn't offer the same level of control, supportability, and enterprise integration that ASP.NET does. C# really is a vastly superior language to PHP's c-like system, which only recently became semi-object oriented. PHP simply isn't the right tool for a lot of jobs.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

You are correct sir. OWA 2007 is even more horrendous than 2003 on anything other than IE.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[erroneus]

That's a sad story with the exception of Lotus Notes. I seriously HATE that program. It is what we are using now. It is a royal pain in the buttocks.

Unfortunately, Microsoft is the biggest cause of IT woes for many reasons. Not only are their implementations generally not standards compliant, they aren't even compliant with their own standards. Further, their achievement of "critical mass" has enabled them to abuse the market further by convincing the market that Microsoft "works" and everyone else is "broken." While there have been instances where Microsoft "lost" in this approach, Microsoft had to be enjoined from this practice through the legal system because nothing else will stop them otherwise. Microsoft's critical mass has also turned "IT" into a commodity rather than a specialty. Microsoft has systematically lowered our wages by making every IT solution "one-size-fits-all" in the eyes of decision makers which further enables all the other IT outsourcing issues we have all been suffering for the past decade.

Most people who are against Microsoft dominance have good reasons of their own. I rarely hear about Microsoft's dominance as the cause for the suppressed wages we have all been feeling in IT. But the truth of the matter is that "Microsoft labor is cheaper than other labor." That isn't going to change. The only solution is to push to make Microsoft less relevant. This is happening, thankfully, but not happening fast enough.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like your boss had a chat with the MS sales rep.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[WeatherGod]

I couldn't wait for my university to upgrade so that I could use Firefox to access my professor's calendar (it was the only way to make appointments). I have no access to any Windows machines, except for the severely crippled machines in the library. Then came rollout, only to discover that OWA uses the browser identification string to determine which modes your browser can do. So, if you are running a rebranded version of Firefox, forget it. If you are using a beta version of Firefox, forget it. You have to go and change your Browser Identity string so that it conforms with the string of an official released version.

I should point out that GMail allows you to log in using eLinks. OWA doesn't even let you attempt to log in.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[LWATCDR]

Well too be honest this makes sense to me.
You seem to have a lot of in house Windows knowledge and little to no OSS knowledge.
You already had OSS in place and then you decide to throw FreeBSD into the mix? What idiot came up with that idea.
Nothing wrong with FreeBSD but you where already using some Linux and it sounds like a lot of Windows.
So you add a third OS to the mix?
In any good sized company you really want to cut down on complexity.
You talked about how the people that the tasks where delegated too had no Unix experience. How many people had Windows experience and how many people have Unix experience? If most of the folks have windows experience only....
Really if you are going to use OSS in a company you need to do it in a smart way.
Don't use multiple overlapping solutions for the problems.
If you are going to use a OSS OS I suggest you pick one and standardize it.
If you are going to pick Linux for a server solution then I suggest that you pick one distro for all your servers.
I feel you where wise to pick CentOS and I would suggest that Ubuntu Server is also a good choice. They are very popular and are server distros. Red Hat if you want to pay or need pay support is good and of course Debian.
Also pick a sever distro. Fedora is not a good production sever distro. Server distros like Ubuntu Server, CentOS, and Red Hat tend to recive updates for years. The last thing you want to do with a sever is frankly any more than you have too. The ideal sever is one that is secure and working. You often don't want the latest or greatest on it but the most reliable.

Frankly it looks like you company saw only problems with OSS. Failed projects and complexity are all issues that a lot of companies just don't want to deal with.
They want it to just work
or
Have someone to blame when it doesn't.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[a_n_d_e_r_s]

Its just IE6 all over again.

People wants to use that whizzling Active/X and now ASP.

They are fooling themselves once more.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[man_of_mr_e]

Ummmm.. what?

ASP is a server side framework. It's not anything like ActiveX. It's the same sort of technology as PHP.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm pretty sure Exchange 2010's OWA will fully support Firefox.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

I am sorry, but MBGMorden said they were going to ASP.NET, not C#. There are tons of stupid vbscript like things you can do in ASP.NET and never embrace the main object world of C#. Since we are making all kinds of grandiose assumptions, mine are that they will code their new site just like they had it in PHP, only using ASP with no separation of data from interface. Using the classic string concatenation of text input into the sql lines and making db calls from the page itself. Not trying to flame you, but do not project your vision of what you would do on other peoples incompetence.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[mini me]

Perhaps he means that Microsoft may discontinue support for ASP.NET in the future. Meaning, unless you want to completely rewrite your application in the future language de-jour, you will be forever stuck running the version of IIS that is able to host your application along with all of its security and maintainability issues. There's Mono, but like we see with Firefox/Chrome/etc., it probably won't execute your application properly.

If you choose a language/framework that has greater support for a wide range of computer systems, when Microsoft stops supporting the IIS version that is able to host your application, you can jump over to virtually any other system without much effort enabling you to continue to take advantage of security updates, improved management tools, etc. as they become available in the future.

The moral: Always have an exit strategy for you application. For all you know, Microsoft will cease to exist tomorrow and a huge security flaw will be found in IIS the next. Then what?

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they want to be able to run updates in an automated fashion and not have to rebuild kernel modules after the auto restart. Oh wait...

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

I am curious. You mentioned this large conversion, but haven't really said how it went. Is it working as well or better than the old mixed systems did? Or worse? Are you having any particular pain now that the transition has been made (other than emotional, of course)?

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Exchange2010's OWA fully supports IE, Firefox and Safari on Mac. I don't know the specific versions, but if you Bing it you can find that out yourself.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[MBGMorden]

Most things are working ok, but most everything was working fine beforehand too. The admins just aren't complaining as much. I am complaining more myself, after having been required to convert my own systems over as well.

The main thing though, is that in light of this whole "economic recession" bit, we've been having to have required days off without pay (only 5 per year, but it's still aggravating) and the upper level administration (outside of IT) has been trying to save money every way they can due to budget cuts. It's INCREDIBLY frustrating for the entire organization to have required days off due to budget underruns while watching a few hundred thousand $$$ get sunken into replacing servers that were working just fine, just because the admin staff was frustrated and didn't want to learn something new.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[shutdown -p now]

You'll be shocked to hear, MS has begun to support 3rd browsers with OWA (which has been renamed to Outlook Web App). I'm not sure of the complete list, but Safari & Firefox can run the Full-Fat mode.

The officially supported list for full-featured OWA 2010 is IE7+, Firefox 3+ and Safari 3+.

IIRC, it's the same for SharePoint 2010.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Anonymous Coward]

Considering the gazzilions of PCs sold each year with windows pre-installed. Any drop is a huge failure. People are installing alternatives. Under normal circumstances, Microsoft get a fresh start with each new PC, the user has to go out of their way to do that. Each year, more and more people are doing so. It would be very interesting to see the figures split by home / business. Businesses are notorious for not allowing user preferred applications to be installed.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[clone53421]

I agree about Notes. It is most definitely a pain in the ass.

Its interface is dumb. It’s impossible to find anything. Links are called “hotspots” and you have to dig through the menus in order to create one. You can attach a picture, but to put the image into the body of the e-mail itself is a completely different process, and inserting PNG images isn’t supported. You can’t merely right-click the name of the sender to add them to your personal address book; that’s hidden somewhere in the menus as well.

F5, the universal “refresh view” key in every other application, is the “log me off” key instead in Notes. In Notes, for “refresh view” you have to hit F9.

Pressing Alt shows the underlines under the Alt shortcut letters, which are always hidden regardless of your Windows setting (to have them always underlined)... and this is glitchy too, because if you rapidly Alt-tab away from the application, the Alt shortcut letters are sometimes still visible...

Yes, I am in an irritable mood today... can you tell?

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[vlueboy]

Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing browsers with its web based applications such as Outlook Web Access and the like.

I think that on the contrary, they will casually point to their past behavior and say that other browsers "are inferior" because their technologies "cannot" be made to display their ActiveX-laced pages. Here we'll know that MS has forced users to get IE just to log into windowsupdate and hotmail, claiming "impossibility" in the past. The latter was tweaked to allow other browsers eventually, though I've seen it fail on Konqueror and other small-share free browsers. The good part is that given enough market pressure, MS changes some of their products to adapt. The bad part is that they make those adaptations very minor, like the EU-only browser ballot system. It is unfair that they're spending more money and development time supporting just a region of the world, but it seems MS crunched the numbers and found that it would cost them more in LOST revenue to fix the Windows platform worldwide to play fair without governments forcing them to.

It has been a while since I looked at it, but OWA did not offer full functionality to browsers other than MSIE. I don't know if that is still the case, but I suspect it is.

Yup. Even IE 6 has no problem with showing the OWA interface. Isn't it ironic? Firefox, Chrome and Safari under the OWA 2003 version worked in this "reduced" mode. Difference? I personally had trouble because of certain missing Search functions. What I didn't miss is the damn "new mail" popup OWA sends only to IE. It is downright annoying unnerving when your job involves distributed (casual) monitoring during high callcenter volumes.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[Patch86]

I believe he was just alluding to it being a similar situation, with a MS "killer app" that is compatible with only the MS software suite.

It is using the non-compatibility of a popular product as a stick with which to drive people to their other, not necessarily as popular, products.

I suspect he realises that ASP and ActiveX don't exactly have much in common.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[im_thatoneguy]

Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing browsers with its web based applications such as Outlook Web Access and the like.

Done. It's been that way for years now. The only Windows Server web service which I have to run in IE is Remote Desktop.

Re:Sure, if you go back far enough...

[thePowerOfGrayskull]

That puts a different light on things. Even considering the costs of training, I don't see how they could justify it as both a new and ongoing expense where there previously was (presumably) none outside of routine management -- which will also be required for MS servers.

All this despite no forced unbundling...

[Anonymous Coward]

Interesting, isn't it?

People were screaming at the courts because there was NO WAY that Microsoft's browser could be dethrowned without legal action. And, with a little help from Firefox, Chrome, and Safari (mainly on the Mac), We see a steady decline of IE share.. All without legal intervention.

Same thing with Windows Media Player, right? EU forced Microsoft to stop bundling Windows Media Player, because there's NO WAY it could be dethrowned without government intervention. And so, MS offered a version of Windows that didn't have WMP installed (did anyone buy it?) Along comes Apple and a little invention known as the iPod, and within a few years, iTunes is used FAR MORE than WMP ever will be.

Will people ever learn that it's through innovation and marketing that people can unseat software monopolies, and NOT through legal action?

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasn't there a news explaining that a big part of that market share drop was due to the new "choose a browser" screen the EU forced Microsoft to include in the latest Windows versions?

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[clone53421]

Hardware bundling lock-in defeated by even more hardware bundling lock-in?

Wow.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[jonwil]

Unbundling wont work because of all the parts of Windows and of Windows Apps that use the IE rendering engine.

All of the various Help technologies Microsoft has used and supported in the last decade (including HTML Help and its replacements) use IE to render. Game related programs like GameSpy and Steam use (or have used) IE to render. All kinds of custom written software (written for specific companies or markets) use IE to render HTML.

Even more apps use various parts of IE to do things like HTTP up/downloading, SSL and other things.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[man_of_mr_e]

If that were true, one would expect Firefox's share to have risen significantly, but in reality, it's stayed pretty much the same, in fact it's at the exact same level as in November of last year. Further, the Browser selection screen has only been out there for 3 months and the trend of chrome and safari goes back a lot further than that.

Frankly, I'm more inclined to believe the rise is due to the rise of iPhone and Android based browsers rather than much change on the desktop.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[Clueless Nick]

All around me, I see the otherwise-paranoid IT administrators allowing people to install VLC, because that is the easiest way to allow DVDs to play on a Win XP laptop.

I used to think I was a snarky anarchist installing free software to people's computers, and now they have gone and taken away my joy.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[clone53421]

Using a buggy, insecure rendering engine to render trusted content by installed apps is somewhat different from using it to surf the web.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[NotBornYesterday]

I firmly believe that the free market should hold the answers to most problems in the free market, but I also recognize that monopoly conditions alter the nature of a free market, and generally require outside intervention to set right. This is especially true in the case of a monopoly that will LIE, CHEAT, and STEAL(*1) to protect its monopoly, in which case they are actually destroying the free market that is required for a healthy economic ecosystem.

The primary effect of a monopoly running amok is the destruction of most other players in the market. MS accomplished that.

One secondary effect in this case was the html incompatibilities that MS introduced shattered the most basic premise of the world wide web - that information could be made available and read by all based on certain standards. The efforts of web developers to create work-arounds is all that prevented the www from being completely partitioned into IE and non-IE space. Unfortunately, there are still many important sites (or parts of sites) that *require* Internet Explorer in order to work(*2). The result has been real costs to people and businesses in terms of software costs, web development costs, and communication issues because of broken IE-only government web sites, to name a few. These are costs we have been forced to bear in order to line Bill Gates' pockets. In short, there is great harm in allowing a monopoly to go unregulated and unrestrained.

Having seen over a decade of a stifled, monopolized market (ie, no longer free) and a largely broken internet, resorting to government intervention is hardly unreasonable. The loosening of MS's grip on the de facto control of html has only happened through a combination of events and independent efforts. Firefox, Opera, and other innovators have breathed life back into the browser market, but it hasn't been easy. Government intervention (belated and heavy-handed, but in the end, I believe at least partly beneficial) has helped accelerate non-MS browser adoption, and clearly demonstrates that given a free choice, people are happy to choose non-MS browsers.

(*1) The overall list of MS's deceptions, market manipulations, and outright fabrications is too long to list here. However, I suggest you examine the federal case against MS in the late 90's in which they knowingly presented fabricated evidence to a federal court ... got caught ... and got away with it. Literally. Just for contrast, around the same time, a much smaller courtroom lie nearly toppled a sitting President.

It's not a truly free market when a monopoly is in place, but here's an idea anyway. The free market has no government intervention, right? Well, since the government already intercedes in the market on the behalf of copyright and patent holders, let's remove such protections from those that have monopolies. Let's stop feeling sorry for MS and its complaints about pirating. If you put a virtual gun to my head and force me to buy your software because you fucked things up by breaking the html standards, it is the duty of a free market to restore balance by removing your financial incentive to harm the market.

(*2) Sallie Mae's web site looks fine in many browsers, until you actually go to fill out the forms required for student loans, and then they drop the IE bomb on you.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[Bert64]

Also google has been quite heavily advertising Chrome...

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[man_of_mr_e]

The primary effect of a monopoly running amok is the destruction of most other players in the market. MS accomplished that.

Actually, no.. they didn't. If that were true, why are there so many browsers and media players today?

What a monopoly seems to do (and then, only if the monopoly product is "good enough") is to destroy the wounded gazelles... the products that aren't all that good and give no compelling reasons for users to switch away from the bundled version.

Once the bundled version becomes a monopoly, then even products with compelling reasons have a hard time, but as can be seen in this case, they do chip away at the incumbent.

I think we all owe microsoft a HUGE debt of gratitude for destroying Netscape. Without that, Mozilla would have never been born, and Firefox would have never happened, and Chrome would have never happened.

In other words, the non-Microsoft market would have continued with their "browser extension of the week" methodology to lock people into their products, and would not have been forced to use standards conformance as a competition mechanism.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[Will.Woodhull]

In all fairness, it needs to be pointed out that when people were screaming to the courts about MS's monopolistic abuse of the market, that was before FOSS had proven itself. What was true at that time is no longer true because the nature of the market has changed.

The market has changed, and MS's strategies for domination that worked so well in a purely capitalist market are failing in a market where the gift economy of FOSS mixes with capitalism. Now that enough contributors are working to make the whole pie bigger rather than playing a zero sum game of trying to take a larger slice than anybody else, MS needs to re-orient itself and find a business model that fits the new, improved, reality.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[compro01]

As far as I've heard, Opera has been gaining users like crazy since the "choose your browser" thing came out.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[man_of_mr_e]

According to the graph in the linked article, Opera has exactly the same share it's had for the last 16 months.

Re:All this despite no forced unbundling...

[NotBornYesterday]

Defending a monopoly by claiming it is beneficial is nonsense. Normal market competition eliminates or marginalizes the "wounded gazelles". Monopoly abuse resulted in the destruction of otherwise viable, healthy companies and the technologies they developed. It also resulted in direct and indirect costs to consumers through reduced competition, and broken compatibility with standards.

Thanking MS for delivering Firefox to us is an exercise in selective hindsight. By the same token, you can't say what innovations would have happened ten years ago, had MS not destroyed companies like Wollongong. They also had a browser out ... ever heard of them? 'course not ... they were killed off early in the Internet boom, back when MS started bundling their browser.

In other words, the non-Microsoft market would have continued with their "browser extension of the week" methodology to lock people into their products, and would not have been forced to use standards conformance as a competition mechanism.

That is exactly what Microsoft did - broke standards conformance, forcing the entire internet to conform to their broken, proprietary software or be odd man out. Had they not been a monopoly, they would have been in no position to force it on the rest of the world, and their "innovations" would have died the miserable death they deserved.

Tired of IE's BS

[kyrio]

I recently forced my sister and her husband on to Opera because they kept getting new spyware every month. I used to prefer IE to the others back when it was simple and fast, I can't stand it anymore.

It's become even more of a hassle now that everyone has a computer and is using it incompetently.

re: tired of IE's BS

[ed.han]

thank you, kyrio, for the opera love. i use opera in preference to everything else b/c it opens faster than everything else.

ed

Re: tired of IE's BS

[kyrio]

It's an excellent browser indeed. It's fat with features yet it runs like a Kenyan and never feels bloated.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[PNutts]

I recently forced my sister and her husband on to Opera because they kept getting new spyware every month.

Methinks the problem is not their browser.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[dc29A]

because they kept getting new spyware every month.

They shouldn't run their PCs as administrators. So changing browser didn't really solve anything, the moment Opera is targeted by hackers, you are back to square one. Remove the ability of your family to run Windows as administrators and they can use whatever browser they want and they'll be much safer.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[jedidiah]

If the tool can't be handled safely by novices, yet is rammed down the throats of novices, then it's the tool and not the end user that is at fault.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[icebraining]

Spyware doesn't need admin privileges to be an hassle. They can still load at user's session login, read every user file and connect to the interwebs. Besides, there are such things called "privilege escalation exploits".

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[dc29A]

An infected account is magnitudes easier to deal with than an infected PC. Just nuke the account, create a new one and voilà! Problem solved. Plus the majority of malware is still written by the assumption that user has administrator rights. Not saying it won't change in the future ... I am guessing once the easy admin access is gone, maybe malware writers will focus on privilege escalation.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[tbannist]

If you're going to think that way, there's not much point in using Windows at all. Due to inherent flaws in Windows any access to a Windows machine can be subverted into root access, thus hackers are much more likely to target that known flaw than any hypothetical but unknown flaws in Opera.

http://www.digital-copyright.ca/node/3284
http://news.techworld.com/security/115456/windows-7-inherently-insecure-says-researcher/
http://www.anti-trend.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=1
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/01/20/1359237/Newly-Found-Windows-Bug-Affects-All-Versions-Since-NT?from=rss

So... His best bet would be to switch his sister and her husband using Opera (or Firefox, or Konqueror, or Chrome, or something else) on Ubuntu (obviously as a non-root user) or really any non-Windows OS.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[icebraining]

My point wasn't that people should run as admin, is that they should do both: use a normal account and switch browsers.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[dc29A]

I definitely agree with you, non IE browser or non Windows OS is the best way to go and of course not running as root (whatever OS you pick). However, even if GP switches his family to let's say Firefox, and they still run the PC as administrators, one drive by Flash or Java install and the PC is hosed. IMO, with current market share of Windows and the way people use it (as administrators), the single most effective way to cutting out infection vectors is not running your PC as admin. Even bigshot security fellows agree.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[Anonymous Coward]

An infected account is magnitudes easier to deal with than an infected PC. Just nuke the account, create a new one and voilà! Problem solved. Plus the majority of malware is still written by the assumption that user has administrator rights. Not saying it won't change in the future ... I am guessing once the easy admin access is gone, maybe malware writers will focus on privilege escalation.

If you have a known compromised user account on a system (regardless of OS), and just nuke that, you are betting that no privilege escalation exploits were used to install stealth rootkits or other cross-account infections. Regardless of OS, that is also today a very daring bet, if you care about security on the system.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[elashish14]

I recently forced my sister and her husband on to Opera because they kept getting new spyware every month.

Methinks the problem is not their browser.

PEBKAC. Problem solved - time to upgrade.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[compro01]

When you've got drive by exploits in ads appearing on otherwise reputable sites (nytimes.com, for example), it doesn't really matter how careful and sensible you are when you're using IE.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[Bert64]

Hackers targeted IE because everyone used it, if 4 browsers each have 25% share it becomes a far less appealing target... Hackers will instead target something else that has close to 100% market share such as adobe flash plugin.

Re:Tired of IE's BS

[hkmwbz]

Changing the browser does indeed change something. Opera has a much better security track record than other browsers, and the false claim about low market share means hackers won't target it (Opera actually has more than 100 million users).

Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't help

[countertrolling]

And Google is spying on you, along with Facebook, Microsoft, your service provider, the government, etc.

You know, just in case you care about that kind of thing

The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[dingen]

Microsoft is desperately updating their browser to meet the same modern standards as the competition. IE9 is supposidly going to be a revolution for them, supporting all sorts of long standing stuff like SVG, CSS3, HTML5 and supporting a fast Javascript engine, which is exactly the direction in which Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera have been developing lately.

Obviously Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to gain some market share again. It's great for web developers, because they can finally start really deploying some of that shiney new tech. But in reality, most people aren't aware of these webstandards at all and aren't switching to Firefox or Chrome because MSIE doesn't support them. They're switching because other browsers are faster, more secure, less obnoxious, more cool and support more plugins and other goodies.

I don't think IE will ever be as big again as they once were, but because MS doesn't get what the root of the problem is, they're helping the web forward in the process of trying to get some users back. Which is actually great for everyone.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[tibit]

Not too little, but definitely too late. SVG should have been supported since IE7. Same goes for quirk-less CSS2.1 support.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[Anonymous Coward]

IE9 is supposidly going to be a revolution for them, supporting all sorts of long standing stuff like SVG, CSS3, HTML5 and supporting a fast Javascript engine

Wow, that's a new one... Microsoft promising that the next version of IE will be standards compliant.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[moogsynth]

Obviously Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to gain some market share again.

If that were entirely true, then the browser would be made to work on XP systems. XP is still the most widely-used operating system on planet earth, remember, at least for a few years yet. I understand that Windows 7 is the best OS they've come out with and all that, but a lot of people aren't looking to upgrade to 7 any time soon. Desktop users and businesses alike. It's hard to see how much marketshare they can claw back by making it Vista+ only.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[gman003]

Just like every feature, Microsoft is years behind. SVG is ten years old, with most other browsers supporting it for at least five years. HTML5 video tags have been supported for almost a year. Fast Javascript has been important since about 2006.

Microsoft has always been slow to add features, then announces them as revolutionary when they've been in other products for years.

Look at hardware-accelerated compositing. OS X had it since 2002. Windows didn't add that until Vista in 2006.

Virtual memory has been known since 1960, although the PC couldn't use that until the 80286 in 1982. Windows didn't support disk-based virtual memory until 1995. Preemptive multitasking is similar: it had been used in mainframes since 1969, and AmigaOS introduced it to home computers in 1985, ten years before Windows partially supported it.

Microsoft has always been behind in technical matters. The best thing to do on Windows is to replace whatever you want with better alternatives. The only area they're ahead on is game support, and that's not entirely their doing.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[Culture20]

most people aren't aware of these webstandards at all and aren't switching to Firefox or Chrome because MSIE doesn't support them. They're switching because other browsers are faster, more secure, less obnoxious, more cool and support more plugins and other goodies.

I think most people don't notice or care about the speed or plugins. Obnoxiousness, yes, but security is the big point. Either they or their friends have gotten a driveby that pwned them (probably because they were running under an admin account). They hear on the news or from friends that IE is the cause, and they leave it for FF or Opera. In other words, MS's favorite tactic -- Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt -- is working against IE.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[siride]

Windows actually did have compositing in 2k and XP. But it was on a per-window basis. It also didn't use a compositing manager to redirect all windows and composite the entire desktop like we have now with DWM.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[Kjella]

I don't think it'll work, because I think the average impression by now is that IE is some old crap we have to keep around for intranet purposes. Like for example one "new" install image I know that was being deployed in 2009 with IE6, despite a rather large campaign here in Norway of "please upgrade" on many of the country's most popular websites. I suggested to that company that maybe they should consider including Firefox as well for "normal" browsing and essentially deprecate IE, I don't know if they did but the idea was at least taken very seriously. I think that'll be the solution for most companies, very many of the new web applications are updated very slowly or they don't want to pay for upgrades to the latest version. Give users a different browser for browsing, rename IE as "intranet explorer".

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[shutdown -p now]

They're switching because other browsers are faster, more secure, less obnoxious, more cool and support more plugins and other goodies.

You do have a point, but IE has been dealing with those points as well. IE8 is quite impressively secure - I believe that the only browser with a better sandbox today is Chrome, while both Firefox and Opera lag behind. Performance is a huge problem (I hate how long it takes for address textbox to be focused after you press Ctrl+T to open a new tab), but that seems to be a focus for IE9 as well - while I didn't see any mentions of UI speed improvements, a new JS engine was announced, for example.

Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why

[BZ]

No one has quirk-less CSS2.1 support.

Of the browsers which come close, IE8 is arguably closest. Something to do with getting to implement _after_ all the spec changes that have happened over the last 5-6 years, not as they're happening, for one thing.

historic?

[beh]

"Falls To Historic Low"
[...]
"which is about the range that IE had in early 1999"

?

So, it's historic, because it's the second time it's around that range?

Re:historic?

[CensorshipDonkey]

Yes. You have to look into history to find the last time it was at these levels. 11 years is a very long time ago in the relative timescale of software.

Re:historic?

[clone53421]

Yes.

The first time something happens, it’s unprecedented.

The second time, it’s merely historic.

Re:historic?

[V for Vendetta]

Look at it that way: in 1999 it was probably a high (NN out of business, Firebird in beta, Opera was not free at that time). This time its a low.

Re:historic?

[Anonymous Coward]

It is historic because it is a FALL and not a rise like it was the first time around. The range isn't what is historic.

Re:historic?

[oodaloop]

It's the first time it's fallen to that range. Last time, it was on the way up.

Re:historic?

[jedidiah]

When's the last time any other product took over the market due to monopolistic tying and then got beaten back?

This is historic because it shows Microsoft being handed a reversal.

Re:historic?

[Clueless Nick]

Just like those stock markets indices

Re:historic?

[ClosedSource]

"When's the last time any other product took over the market due to monopolistic tying and then got beaten back?"

Sometime in the future?

What bugs me...

[Ranma-sensei]

...is that most people now either use Firefox or Chrome - which heightens these browsers' endangerment concerning malware specific to them.

It's not as if it really affects me as an Opera user, but having to put up with Firefox at work, I'm not too excited about this, since the company I work at usually takes its time to update (FF 2.0.0.7, here).

Oh well, at least MS's share is dropping...

Re:What bugs me...

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you understand how a percentage of market share works? If IE is still at 60% market share, then most people are still using IE.

Re:What bugs me...

[icebraining]

...is that most people now either use Firefox or Chrome - which heightens these browsers' endangerment concerning malware specific to them.

Most malware is related to plugins, far second is Javascript. Get NoScript and you'll be very well protected.

Re:What bugs me...

[sznupi]

At least now two alternative engines are starting to get recognition around the world, and newer one of those two seems to strive more for standards compliance (they wouldn't make this post otherwise). There was a time when a lot of sites appeared to be made primarilly with "IE + FF" in mind...which didn't really change that much in the grand scheme of things.

But now perhaps sites will, to a greater degree, simply target standards... (just look at the link above to see why that's great news for you)

BTW, regarding safety of Opera - considering that it's big in post Soviet Block areas (typically #2 browser; in places #1, ahead of IE already)...maybe they just don't want to eat their turd? ;)

Re:What bugs me...

[Anonymous Coward]

...is that most people now either use Firefox or Chrome - which heightens these browsers' endangerment concerning malware specific to them.

It's not as if it really affects me as an Opera user, but having to put up with Firefox at work, I'm not too excited about this, since the company I work at usually takes its time to update (FF 2.0.0.7, here).

Oh well, at least MS's share is dropping...

Yow! Firefox 2? Your work place better worry about malware targeted toward Firefox if they don't even take the time to run the security updates. Does your IT dept. disallow program installs and updates? If I were in that position, I'd try to upgrade it myself.

Re:What bugs me...

[gmuslera]

You should check the market share on older versions of those browsers. Seems that the culture,the warnings of new version, or the autoupdate makes them much harder to keep being used as outdated and insecure versions. While still a big enough percent of IE users keep using the widely known as insecure version 6.

Re:What bugs me...

[Rogerborg]

most people now either use Firefox or Chrome

ORLY?

Firefox gained 0.07 points to 24.59% [...] Chrome had another impressive month with a gain of 0.6 points that boosted Google's share to 6.73%

31.32% is "most people"? MATHS DOES NOT WORK THAT WAY!

Re:What bugs me...

[noidentity]

...are posts whose title is just the beginning of the first sentence.

Re:What bugs me...

[Ranma-sensei]

Well, they might not be too savvy on technology, but sadly, they managed to disallow them.

Re:What bugs me...

[Ranma-sensei]

It all sounded different in my head. Let me clarify:
What I meant to say, was that most people dropping off the IE share start using FF or Chrome.

Re:What bugs me...

[Ranma-sensei]

At least now two alternative engines are starting to get recognition around the world, and newer one of those two seems to strive more for standards compliance (they wouldn't make this post otherwise). There was a time when a lot of sites appeared to be made primarilly with "IE + FF" in mind...which didn't really change that much in the grand scheme of things.

Thanks. Quite interesting, though it only seems to test JavaScript compliance, as far as I understand it.

But now perhaps sites will, to a greater degree, simply target standards... (just look at the link above to see why that's great news for you)

No news to me, but thanks again.

BTW, regarding safety of Opera - considering that it's big in post Soviet Block areas (typically #2 browser; in places #1, ahead of IE already)...maybe they just don't want to eat their turd? ;)

I frankly can't figure out an answer to that.

IE might become safer :)

[youn]

Ironically, if the market share for IE keeps droping; the number of hackers targetting IE will drop and the people trying to hack firefox's security will rise... and maybe IE will become safer then... nahhhh, even then I'll be worried.

That's why the 10 users of Opera and the user of lynx for all practical purposes are considered safely browsing the web :)

Re:IE might become safer :)

[icebraining]

What about RMS? He mails a daemon that fetches the page with wget and mails it back to him. I bet he's safe.

Re:IE might become safer :)

[sznupi]

I really wonder how that ends up, in practice, for Opera. Sure, it's rather unknown in large part of the world - but it's typically #2 (yes, leading the pack of "alternative browsers") and sometimes #1 (ahead of IE) browser in the post Soviet Block. Where supposedly large part of "internet crime" has its roots.

Is it related somehow? Do they leave alone Opera for fear of conflict with local authorities? (doubtful, IE and FF are still used in large numbers after all) Using what is, in the end, inherently safer?

Re:IE might become safer :)

[hkmwbz]

Opera has more than 100 million users (while Firefox has 300 something million users). You really should stop parroting this inane "Opera has no users" lie.

Re:Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't hel

[DumbparameciuM]

Tinfoil much?

I'm happy to hear that Chrome is on the up and up.

I'm not sure that anybody could really be shocked by this news. Internet Explorer has been grabbing at straws since IE5. They continue to implement other companies ideas in a very poor way. The current IE is a complete farce, I don't understand how anybody could use it, unless you were forced to by restrictions at work.

I know it would be impossible to glean, but the amount of people using various versions of IE while at work would be interesting.

It is impossible to get rid of MSIE on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

The reporting is also flawed because even if you change your default browser from MSIE to firefox, programs will still use the MSIE branded http dll to download things. To wit, make your proxy reject all requests that contain MSIE in the user agent string, and try to install the next version of lets say skype. Or browse in Outlook internet content. Or try to access any link through http from an Office 2007 document: http://blogs.msdn.com/vsofficedeveloper/pages/Office-Existence-Discovery-Protocol.aspx
http://superuser.com/questions/41935/clicking-hyperlinks-in-email-messages-becomes-painfully-slow/42237#42237. I wonder if any of the legislators in Europe who settled with Microsoft over the Browser wars were aware of these issues. Bottom line: you cannot get rid of MSIE because Microsoft designed it that way!

Re:It is impossible to get rid of MSIE on Windows

[Nemyst]

That's changing too, hopefully. I was surprised to see that the new Steam UI runs all of its web pages on WebKit. Although the move makes sense since they want to port Steam to OSX and Linux (WebKit being compatible with all three platforms while IE obviously isn't), this is still a very good development. The fewer things use IE's rendering engine, the better.

Re:It is impossible to get rid of MSIE on Windows

[Anonymous Coward]

until everyone is using WebKit and some massive flaw effecting every WebKit browser is found. Then we're all fucked.

Re:It is impossible to get rid of MSIE on Windows

[shutdown -p now]

I wonder if any of the legislators in Europe who settled with Microsoft over the Browser wars were aware of these issues.

I would imagine they were, because it in no way affects the market of web browsers. An HTML rendering engine (which is what MSHTML is) is not the same as web browser, and doesn't compete with the latter.

Then also, what you describe is mostly how other OSes work. WebKit is a stock library used by all OS X applications when they need to render HTML. In KDE, KHTML is also a system component, and removing it would cause a great many applications to stop working.

i develop for the web

[circletimessquare]

so i have ie8, firefox, chrome, safari, and opera installed on my desktop

i often find myself in this common usage scenario: 4 browsers open at the same time. ie8 opened with code being tested, opera running pandora, chrome with nytimes.com and other reading media on it, and firefox open with some online code documentation

i use those 4 browsers all the time, i don't use safari at all really unless testing code (but since its webkit like chrome, that's often redundant)

honestly, i lately have found myself prefering chrome over firefox. i love firefox, but chrome has a sleek ui and seems faster (opera's latest ui is pretty hot too, but opera has some compatibility issues, such as google map's api)

chrome just has more... chrome. consider this small bird adequately bedazzled by the shiny bells and whistles

currently i rank the browsers according to this personal preference:

1. chrome
2. firefox and opera tied for second best
3. ie8 and safari not at all

if firefox wants to win my heart back, it has to be super fast and bedazzle me with a hot ui. opera is doing a good job of that, but opera has issues

Re:i develop for the web

[Fnkmaster]

I love Chrome's speed. But I miss Firefox's rich library of extensions whenever I try Chrome (or a Chromium-derived browser). Most critically, I miss Adblock Plus and Flashblock. To a lesser extent, some of the other extensions I use.

When I last tried Chrome, I believe I found that there was an ad-blocking extension for it (Ad-Sweep) but it required switching to the "developer channel" rather than the standard "channel". Rather than just downloading a beta version of the browser, there was an arcane process to switch channels that simply didn't work at the time. As in I jumped through the hoops, but Chrome never properly entered into the developer channel mode. The Channel Changer was simply broken at the time. Don't try to be too clever Google, just make a separate beta or nightly build and let me install it.

Sure, there are proxy-based solutions and the like, but I can't use a browser that I can't add ad-blocking rules to easily and customize easily.

I'll give Chrome a try again in 6 months, but it looks like for now, AdSweep still requires using Channel Changer, and unless that's been fixed I ain't screwing around with it again.

Sure, Firefox can't compete with Safari and Chrome on speed, but on a modern Core 2 Duo or Core i5/i7 machine the difference is only perceptible on the most Javascript-intensive of sites.

Re:i develop for the web

[Chameleon Man]

I have the exact same feelings as you when comparing Chrome and Firefox. The key difference I tend to focus on more though, other than speed, is the obtrusiveness of their plugin and download screens. After using Chrome and going back to Firefox, I've become increasingly annoyed by the little window that pops up telling you about plugin upgrades when starting firefox. Additionally, I've never been too savy with the seperate window it opens when you want to download something. To me, these are on par with pop up ads.

Re:i develop for the web

[Anonymous Coward]

There seems to be many different adblock plugins https://chrome.google.com/extensions/search?itemlang=&q=adblock. I'm using adblock chromium and it seems ok. Installation was 2 clicks.

Been using Chromium almost exclusively since last autumn. First on my old Thinkpad since firefox was too much for 1.2 PIII with 512MB and especially for 1024x768 resolution. Pretty soon I switched to it on my desktop and work computer also.

Re:i develop for the web

[pjbgravely]

There are extensions for Chrome now. There is no Noscript but others you mentioned are there.

Google has repositories where you can get nightly builds of Chromium ( I believe) and weekly builds of Chrome.

Re:i develop for the web

[btcoal]

And now the mandatory xkcd insight: http://xkcd.com/198/ Where the hell are my flying cars?

Re:i develop for the web

[rovolo]

Most of what I use Safari for is reading RSS feeds; it handles that much more nicely than the others I think.

For Chrome, the following wouldn't hurt...

[bogaboga]

Here's what I mean: -

1: Better aesthetics. I mean, the current theme and all available ones are not that appealing to
      the eyes.

2: Print Preview: Heck how can a today's desktop application fail to have this important
      resource? An application from Google should have "everything" necessary to be productive,
      and print preview is one of those things I believe.

3: The over minimalistic paradigm Google has followed has gone too far. Heck, what ends up
      happening is that extensions have no where to live at the bottom of the browser, crowding uup
      space elsewhere.

If these are implemented, it will surely not hurt...or will it? I stand to be corrected.

Re:For Chrome, the following wouldn't hurt...

[thetoadwarrior]

I do agree with Google minimalist approach. Fair enough most space should go to the page but it doesn't take that much to eat up space with add-ons. If they haven't changed it yet, I'd also like control of how many websites display on my homepage. Perhaps it would look ugly to them but I want to display more than 8.

Re:For Chrome, the following wouldn't hurt...

[Stevecrox]

I use chrome because of the minimalist UI, I don't want a web browser to take up screen real estate. Before that I used IE because it used the least screen real estate.

I own a netbook, like most netbooks it has a 1024*768 resolution. Firefox and Opera can take up to a third of the screen just to show my File dialogs, etc.., 99% of browsing doesn't involve these dialogs so why should they continously take up space?

Re:For Chrome, the following wouldn't hurt...

[clone53421]

Firefox and Opera can take up to a third of the screen just to show my File dialogs, etc.., 99% of browsing doesn't involve these dialogs so why should they continously take up space?

Firefox: View, Toolbars, Menu Bar.

And they’re toolbars, not dialogs. The File dialog is what appears when you click File, Open File (and you really only see it when you’re picking a file to upload).

Re:For Chrome, the following wouldn't hurt...

[The MAZZTer]

1. Plenty of themes available in the Chrome Extension Gallery. Although they are less customizable than full-blown Firefox ones (but more customizable than Personas).
2. Print Preview is targeted for Chrome 6.
3. An upcoming context menu API should give extensions somewhere else to live soon hopefully. A "toolstrip" was experimented with for the bottom of the browser window for extensions but the devs liked the current toolbar buttons more and deprecated toolstrips quickly.

Stastics & polls....

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I have 6 computers & 2 laptops. 2 of the computers are mac, 1 of the laptops is macbook pro, 2 other computers are Win7, 1 Xp32 & 1 debian. Each computer has 3-4 browser installed (at minimum) with browsers segmented by usage/persona set. How in the world does that factor into the polls where there should be only "1 wiNAR!!!!"??

Re:Stastics & polls....

[dingen]

Net Applications doesn't say anything about users and what they have installed or use. They look at website and which browsers people use to access them. So apparently, out of every 100 hits on the websites they monitor, less than 60 of them use IE.

So whenever you surf with Firefox, you'll be counted as a Firefox user. And when you surf with something else, they'll count your hits too and put them under some other browser.

These % estimates are stupid

[Slash.Poop]

I have Internet Explorer, Fire Fox and Chrome. I regularly use all 3.
So in what group do I fall into?

Re:These % estimates are stupid

[thetoadwarrior]

Most people won't do that and unless you're into pain, you probably do use one more than the others. I have all the main browsers installed mainly for testing but I use FF by far more than the others though I occasionally feel like using Chrome for awhile. Chrome is, imo, better in performance, but their minimal design and need to treat everyone like a bit of a stupid baby gets old after awhile so I only use it in small chunks.

Re:These % estimates are stupid

[bunratty]

You fall into the IE usage group when you use IE, the Firefox usage group when you use Firefox, and the Chrome usage group when you use Chrome. These stats give the percentage of visitors that use a particular browser.

Re:These % estimates are stupid

[arndawg]

If you use all equally you would fall in to the group of 1/3 explorer, 1/3 Fire.............FOX news, and 1/3 Chrome. If you where the only web-browser user in the world, this would be their market share.

Re:These % estimates are stupid

[mgblst]

Moron?

No forced unbundling?

[clone53421]

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/24/1927255/Microsoft-Agrees-To-EU-Browser-Ballot-Screen
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/19/2135254/Details-Emerge-On-EU-Only-Browser-Choice-Screen-for-Windows

Re:No forced unbundling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the graph, you'll see that the IE share has been dropping steadily from august. While the selection screen is from last few months. In the same time chrome grew from almost smallest to 3th player. Maybe the advertising google has been doing has something more to do with it?

Re:No forced unbundling?

[clone53421]

I agree that IE’s woes are due to much more than only the forced unbundling. Saying that there has been none is not correct, however.

Re:No forced unbundling?

[Anonymous Coward]

Look at the graph, you'll see that the IE share has been dropping steadily from august. While the selection screen is from last few months. In the same time chrome grew from almost smallest to 3th player. Maybe the advertising google has been doing has something more to do with it?

3rd

Re:No forced unbundling?

[sznupi]

Wasn't last summer also the date when decision regarding browser choice screen started really circulating in mainstream media?

Nobody here is saying it's the decisive factor; but it might have easily contributed a bit even before the update went live, just because a lot of people heard about the decision and "other browsers"

Re:No forced unbundling?

[Anonymous Coward]

That is the sort of pedantic nonsense up with which I shall not put.

Re:No forced unbundling?

[clone53421]

I will not put up with that sort of pedantic nonsense.

FTFY. Don’t use passive voice.

Re:Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't hel

[countertrolling]

Yeah, after reading what these people do, I am a bit paranoid..

IE works fine for me. And on business machines, I do restrict third party installations. Maybe it's because I'm lazy, but it makes my job much easier.

Now Officially Back In The Nineties

[Arancaytar]

Internet Explorer has always been stuck in the nineties. That was the problem, really.

WHAT?!

[aussersterne]

Chrome has the best UI amongst all browsers, hands down. I adopted Chromium months ago and then went to Chrome, and despite minor incompatibilities now and then (mostly rendering issues), I can't leave it. I tried to switch back to Firefox for a while, but after a week or so I came back to Chrome, primarily on the strength of the UI.

Nobody else seems able to come up with a UI that is:

- Businesslike and no-nonsense
- Small and out of the way
- Free of rendering artifacts and glitches

The default Firefox theme is just huge. Any replacement themes are buggy, loud, amateurish, and often glitchy. The "personalities" or whatever they are (you know, my web browser is now my wallpaper) are just ridiculous. There is a chrome UI for firefox, but it's not as fast and doesn't actually have all of the great behaviors of the Chrome UI, just a basic appearance.

Everybody else ought to take a page from Chrome!

Re:WHAT?!

[Ash-Fox]

Chrome has the best UI amongst all browsers, hands down.

I don't particularly like the UI personally. I hate it when applications don't follow the OS GUI scheme - This includes colors to interaction of editbars.

Free of rendering artifacts and glitches

I have experienced these on Chrome, particularly with font rendering.

The default Firefox theme is just huge.

Well, I loaded up Firefox and Chrome here - I'm not really seeing this "huge" thing at all? I mean, yes, there is two extra bars by default in Firefox, but huge? No idea.

Re:WHAT?!

[gmack]

I agree.. The only thing stopping me from using Chrome right now is the throw back to the 90s cookie controls.

Re:WHAT?!

[Antiocheian]

The default Firefox theme is just huge.

Firefox is not about defaults, it's about freedom and customization. That's how I read your posting. (standard firefox small buttons relocated on the menu bar, tiny menu & tabkit). If you find it huge, it's in your power to change it...

I tried Chrome but I found myself confined it its defaults.

Re:WHAT?!

[aussersterne]

Problem is, despite periods of intense searching, I find nothing I would like to change the Firefox theme to. In fact, nothing that is even acceptable. Chrome may offer only one option, but that option is better than anything I can find in the entire Firefox ecosystem.

Re:WHAT?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Chrome has the best UI amongst all browsers, hands down.

I don't particularly like the UI personally. I hate it when applications don't follow the OS GUI scheme - This includes colors to interaction of editbars.

I hate it when applications do that too. Like all Apple software does.

Except, Chrome doesn't do that; it uses the current Windows theme. The picture on Google's Chrome website is using a custom theme.

The titlebar-for-tabs is a legitimate UI complaint. But it's the most novel in modern GUIs that I've seen in years, and I absolutely love it.

I don't know what to say about "editbars." I haven't noticed a peculiarity in Chrome with those. But maybe I wasn't looking hard enough.

Re:WHAT?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Yep, Like Office 2007 - We've just had that POS piled on us by our IT department here at work - combined with IE6...
I spent the first day getting rid of the ribbon in all my applications (what the heck? Who had the bright idea to dump the entire menu contents onto screen all the time?! I'd heard a lot about it, but that didn't prepare me adequately for the shock!!), but it still uses its own colour scheme, 'cause office knows much better than I do what it should look like.

Re:WHAT?!

[KiwiSurfer]

Mod parent up. Insightful post.

Why would you ever need to print?

[tepples]

Print? Why would you ever need to print? If you need to send a copy of a document to someone else, that's what Gmail is for. If you need to read documents away from a PC, that's what an Android phone with a $60/mo plan is for.

</sarcasm>

Re:Why would you ever need to print?

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Hey! I print all the time!

Well, ok. I'm printing to PDF, but I'm still clicking on the print button.

Re:Why would you ever need to print?

[Low Ranked Craig]

The only time I print is when someone sends me an e-mail with the "please consider the environment before printing this e-mail" signature, then I print it and shred it. Seriously, knock it off with the holier-than-thou messages in your e-mail. I'm an adult and I can decide if I need to print something or not.

Re:Why would you ever need to print?

[TooMuchToDo]

You joke, but I can't remember the last time I used my printer. Hell, I got a Gap coupon the other day via email and before I printed it out, I noticed it said I could just show the barcode to the cashier using my phone. When my laser printer dies, I'm done with paper.

/uses Gmail
//and Nexus One
///no more paper FTW!

I use chrome on my home computer

[Conspiracy_Of_Doves]

Firefox just starts up way too slowly. I still keep it around in case I need to use FireFTP or ChatZilla.

Or if I need to download an attachment in my Yahoo email.

Every month, this is posted

[kaizendojo]

and every month I say the same two things:

• Net Applications numbers only include their customers as a dataset
• Since they do not reveal ANY of their methodology, their entire study is suspect.

Yet I know I will see this posted again next month...so would someone please explain the agenda to me?

Re:Every month, this is posted

[bunratty]

They've taken a sample of web usage. Their data approximately matches the data given by other companies that take their own samples. I suppose you could say their data is suspect if no one was able to repeat the observations. Why do you think there's an "agenda"?

Re:Every month, this is posted

[kaizendojo]

Their data approximately matches the data given by other companies that take their own samples.

Interesting; it doesn't match my company's data or any of my clients data. Can you give me something more than your opinion?

I suppose you could say their data is suspect if no one was able to repeat the observations.

Please reference above...

Why do you think there's an "agenda"?

Oh, I guess you got me there - since everyone at /. is sooo MS Friendly.... It's not like there's a picture of Gates as an Evil Borg on the header or anything...right?

Re:Every month, this is posted

[bunratty]

Of course the popular browser stats don't match your company's data or your client's data. The hit your see on your servers are not representative samples of worldwide browser usage. Why would you expect them to be?

What do you think I'm giving "my opinion" on? It's not "my opinion". It's the data presented by browser stats companies. Look them up. They will almost certainly not match the data gathered on any particular web server, because the data for one particular web server is not a random sample. It is a biased sample.

Are you're saying there's a conspiracy to make IE's share look smaller than it is for the purpose of bash Microsoft? Do you think there's anything I could possibly say to sway you from that opinion?

Re:Every month, this is posted

[kaizendojo]

I'll just refer you to this article on slashdot then, and let you come to your own conclusions.
http://ask.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/02/12/1823232

Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[blind biker]

I noticed a couple of months ago already, that Firefox's usage share is flat by all indicators. It's been stagnating since July-August last year.
Maybe that's fine compared to IE, which is shrinking, but pretty sad compared to, say Chrome.

Which I really like and would use also at work, if there was a portable version (so I can run it without installing it).

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[dylan_-]

Which I really like and would use also at work, if there was a portable version (so I can run it without installing it).

If you mean Portable Firefox, it's here. If you mean Portable Chrome, it's here. If you want to try Portable Opera, it's here.

And Portable IE7, though I believe you need IE6 installed, which isn't very portable at all, but it's here.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Anonymous Coward]

Your wish is granted.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Locklin]

I never understood the obsession with majority usage shares. If Firefox maintains ~1/3 of the market, that is great, there is no need to dominate the market unless you plan on manipulating it. I don't wan't to see a browser dominate the market again, even if it is OSS. The internet is growing, and maintaining a 1/3 market share means people are still discovering Firefox, Mozilla's income will continue to grow, and a fresh developers will continue to discover the project. Any project that falls between insignificance and dominance is a success in my opinion.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Anonymous Coward]

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Rich0]

Agreed - I use vmware-server, and it is annoying that their remote console viewer plugins don't work with chrome.

So, the firefox people will just say "install firefox!" So, that's wonderful until you discover that their plugins don't work on the most recent release of firefox either. You need to install some old v2-based firefox browser to get it to work.

A standards-compliant plugin that works in all browsers also will tend to work across browser versions. That's why I don't want to see majority market share in this area. If there are 5 major browsers then everybody needs to figure out how to make their stuff work with all of them, and that means standards.

I feel the same way at work - I don't like Oracle-only applications even though we run Oracle. Why? Simple, an Oracle-only application is likely to choke every time Oracle changes any detail in their implementation. An ANSI SQL-based app already needs to be flexible, and that means that you're less likely to have it break every time a vendor releases an upgrade because those basic standards don't change much.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[hollywoodb]

Here's how I run "Chrome": First I go to http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/waterfall/console Then I find the build that's all green for Windows and green for the first dot in the first column. This is how I decide it's a good Windows build. Do the same for your OS of choice. Make note of the build number on the left. Find the build here: http://build.chromium.org/buildbot/snapshots/ Navigate to the snapshot build directory. For Windows, you'll find a "portable" zip directory. Doesn't require install. There's also a mini-installer, which I use. End result is Chromium, up to date, and without some of the Google-added things that I don't really want.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Anonymous Coward]

"If"? I'm posting this comment from Portable Chrome as we speak.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Chowderbags]

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/firefox_portable Portable Firefox has been around for years. I used it at least 6 years ago to bypass my high school's insistence on Internet explorer.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Daengbo]

Agreed. I'd love to see the browser space split into equal shares (by rendering engine) of Trident, Gecko, and WebKit. Breaking the Desktop OS market into thirds would be great, too. Phones (iPhone OS, WinMo, and Android)? Not so much. The more the merrier.

Re:Firefox's usage share is stagnating

[Anonymous Coward]

have you bothered searching for, say, portable chrome?

from sept, 2008

http://lifehacker.com/5045439/portable-chrome-puts-chrome-on-your-thumb-drive

more recently:

http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/google_chrome_portable

+Chrome "bundling", sort of (in a way..not really)

[sznupi]

Yes, the deals Google supposedly cut with some PC manufacturers are probably insignificant. But Google promotes Chrome...everywhere, I believe. Not only on almost all their websites, also for example on largest social networking sites. OK, not exactly bundling; but at the least a marketing campaign which jumps at you several times per day, it seems.

Re:Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't hel

[icebraining]

Do you restrict *any* kind of alien exe file? 'cause I'd use Portable Firefox anyway.

Re:Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't hel

[Anonymous Coward]

It logs every key press? Every single one? Do you know what a keylogger really is?

Re:Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't hel

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it -is- a keylogger, just fire WireShark and intercept the data, they are really transmitted, it is not a joke. Autocompletion is cool, but there is the main downside. Firefox AwesomeBar give better result and use local data only (the search bar is a keylogger, but you are searching anyway, so it does not really mater), it is much better.

Are we being fooled?

[Qwavel]

It's been great to see MSIE lose its grip on the browser market, but it seems that maybe things have become more complicated.

As bad as MSIE is, the user can add whatever they want to it. For example, Flash delivers new codecs and Google was able to deliver an HTML5 compliant core that worked with MSIE6.

But one of the browsers taking share from IE is Safari on the iPhone/iPad/iPod. Those users can't try a different browser or use any technology that Apple doesn't approve it. Can a third party deliver a new codec to Safari on these devices? Does Opera Mini for the iPhone come with Ogg codecs (I mention Ogg because I'm imaging Apple would Opera mini if it did)? I really don't know the answers to these questions and I hope someone will enlighten me.

While Safari supports HTML5, times changes, and other things like codecs are becoming more important.

So perhaps now we are looking at a much more fundamental threat.

Re:Are we being fooled?

[spikeb]

No and no.

Re:Are we being fooled?

[fermion]

Here is what happened to IE. MS stopped developing it, as they have in the past. They also tried to kill other OS by removing IE. This did not work because most websites no longer required IE. This is the 5% rule. If you can get something to 5%, marketers will no longer ignore it. The only sits that require IE are likely to be internal corporate sites.

So, as you note, everything that is not MS is not going to use IE. Even those things that run MS, such as MS Windows Mobile might be running a modern browser like Opera. Gecko and Webkit has major marketing now, so IE has to compete, which it can't.

Re:Are we being fooled?

[shutdown -p now]

Does Opera Mini for the iPhone come with Ogg codecs

Opera Mini doesn't do video streaming at all (not HTML5 video, not Flash, not anything else).

Re:Are we being fooled?

[marcosdumay]

Who cares, Safari doesn't dominate the marketplace. If it gets behind, people will be anoyed, and change browsers, Apple has little power to keep them against their will.

Re:Are we being fooled?

[BZ]

If we're talking about Safari on iPhone/iPad (as GP was), then in fact Apple has the power to prevent people changing browsers without going through a great deal of pain (or switching to totally different hardware).

Re:Are we being fooled?

[marcosdumay]

As you said, one must only change the device. People do that from time to time, and if Apple's one gets lame, people will change from it. Not a big lock-in.

Re:Are we being fooled?

[BZ]

You assume most people will consider the inability to change browsers lame. History doesn't necessarily support that view...

Re:Are we being fooled?

[marcosdumay]

No, I'm not assuming that.

as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad blockers

[circletimessquare]

how do you think the shit you like gets paid for?

i mean, go ahead and block ads, nobody will ever stop you from doing that

but if you were smart, you'll shut the fuck up about it, because the more people who do that, the more the websites you like disappear. if you don't understand that, you're an idiot

show some fucking discretion, and stop telling people you block ads. its nothing to be proud of, and you are obviously so very fucking proud of your smug smarmy self

don't forget the smartphones / tablets...

[Anonymous Coward]

People *do* surf from their smartphones / tablet. And it's pretty much an all Un*x world there baby. Good luck Internet Explorer on these fast growing markets ;)

How many people download and actually use?

[Anonymous Coward]

I see on several pcs that come into our shop Safari, Chrome, Firefox and IE.

When I ask people which they want as the default, they usually don't even know what the other three are and prefer to use IE.

Now most people download Chrome because youtube/google say want a better browsing experience? And iTunes now has the option to download safari. Most people just click yes okay and next on the installation process.

IE6 was great for Ajax, lousy for CSS

[Anonymous Coward]

As a developer with a cross-platform web based product (not a css template, a real money-making product), I can tell you that IE6 was vastly superior to Firefox 1.0 and even 2.0. I would often find myself bringing up the IE JavaScript debugger to fix a bug in Firefox since Firebug is rather inadequate, still is. All this IE bashing sounds more like jumping on the bandwagon than having a properly informed opinion of the browser. That being said, I don't use IE6 anymore but I still have lots of customers that do and it works fine for them.

Re:Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't hel

[clone53421]

Firefox AwesomeBar give better result and use local data only (the search bar is a keylogger, but you are searching anyway, so it does not really mater)

More accurately, it gets search suggestions as you type, which naturally requires transmitting what you’ve typed so far.

best practices: how to code for IE

[SMOKEING]

index.html:
  ...
  <script language="JavaScript">
  if ( navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie') != -1 ) {
    window.location.replace("msie.html");
  }
  ...

msie.html:
  ...
  <meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5; url=http://www.microsoft.com">
  </head><body><p>msie users move along. There's nothing for you to see here.</body>

Re:best practices: how to code for IE

[kingcool1432]

I suppose the missing "

" tag on your IE-only site best reflects the spirit of your post :)

Re:best practices: how to code for IE

[phallstrom]

Why punish your non-IE users by making them run that javascript? Use IE's conditional tags to sneak it in there but get it ignored by all but IE.

Re:best practices: how to code for IE

[Ubi_NL]

it can be done simpler though.

I don't like internet explorer

Re:best practices: how to code for IE

[iYk6]

Why do you got to be hating my BumSieve browser?

With apologies to Leonard Cohen:

[medcalf]

First, we take OWA; then we take SharePoint.

Download Statusbar

[mister_playboy]

Additionally, I've never been too savy with the seperate window it opens when you want to download something. To me, these are on par with pop up ads.

You need Download Statusbar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26

Re:Download Statusbar

[ReneeJade]

You need Internet Download Manager (just be careful never to select "open with " for EXE files with this download manager. I once ended up with all my .exe files opening with Adobe Reader - fun times)

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Abcd1234]

as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad blockers

Tough shit, asshole.

If you want someone to blame, go blame the website operators, who've forced users to block ads because they got steadily more and more obnoxious, until they were simply too unbearable to endure any longer.

And yes, I block ads, asshole. I block ads as a big "fuck you" to you to all the douchbags out there that made browsing the web a fucking nightmare without it. Does that mean I end up punishing the "good" websites, too? Yup! Tough shit.

Meanwhile, if these sites have decent content, people will pay for it. If they don't pay for it, then evidently it's not worth the money. But if your little fantastical nightmare scenario comes true, all the good content will be hidden behind paywalls, and so if we really want it, we'll pay for it anyway. Which is fine by me, as long as I don't have to put up with pop-ups, pop-unders, overlayed ads, interstitials, flash ads, and all the shit that comes with them (including drive-by virus infections, among other things).

So, in short, fuck the website operators, and while I'm at it, fuck you too.

P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[siride]

Why not? You can't express certain thoughts without doing that.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[drcln]

Why not? You can't express certain thoughts without doing that.

Sure you can. However, it is shorter to use "but."

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[clone53421]

No.

You may think you need to do it, but you should be using a comma instead because you are continuing the thought of the previous sentence.

See how that worked?

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[siride]

Yes, you can use a comma and have it be an additional clause. That is perfectly valid. It's also valid to start a new sentence with "but". It retains the same concessive semantics, but can be used in situations where you don't want two clauses to be joined to each other in a single sentence. Consider the following example:

"We have developed all kinds of advanced technology and because of that, we consider ourselves to be the greatest species on the planet. But without that technology, we are as
fragile, if not more so, than many other species."

You can't convert the period before the "but" to a comma without creating, at best, a run-on sentence. You also lose the strong contrastive force. If it were an additional clause, it would be a concession as a mere afterthought ("I would go, but I don't have time"), perhaps even just a clarification. At the beginning of a new sentence, however, it says "what I just said is about to be seriously questioned or refined". It applies instead to a whole string of thoughts, not just to the clause preceding it.

You might say "however" or "yet" would be better. They sound a bit stuffy and perform the same function as "but". Thanks the flexibility of language (which pedants, such as yourself, seem intent on needlessly stamping out, lest people be able to express themselves in anything but sanitary prose), the word can be used as a plain old coordinating conjunction, or it can be used as a sentential adverb (or even as a preposition -- gasp!).

The point is, there's no good reason to avoid putting "but" at the beginning of the sentence, and there are actually very good reasons *to* put it at the beginning of a sentence. In light of that, I will gladly put "but" at the beginning of sentences where appropriate.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[clone53421]

We have developed all kinds of advanced technology and because of that we consider ourselves to be the greatest species on the planet. Without that technology, though, we would be as fragile as other species – if not more.

That doesn’t sound stuffy to me. Do you disagree?

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[siride]

It lacks the force of my version. There is no sharp contrast connoted.

And you are still avoiding the key issue of whether there is anything wrong with starting a sentence with "but". Sure, you often can safely recast the sentence to avoid an initial "but". And sometimes you can recast it and end up with a weaker version. But why do that when you can just use "but" at the beginning of the sentence? Methinks it more reasonable to put a "but" at the beginning of the sentence than to go through contortions, or at least minor rewordings, to avoid it. Do you disagree?

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[clone53421]

“Without” doesn’t connote a sharp contrast? I personally think that my version was forceful enough to clearly draw the distinction. The word that draws the comparison is without, not but.

The force of your version is entirely contained in the fact that “but” was improper. I had an instructor in college who occasionally used colourful language in-class (e.g. “shit”, “fucking”). At one point he explained that he sometimes did that for emphasis. What you’re doing is no different.

The problem comes when eventually people (such as him, or yourself) think that you can’t be forceful without using improper language or grammar, and I disagree with that.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[siride]

Okay, please tell me what is "improper" about using "but" at the beginning of a sentence? And I can't believe that you actually compared that to using swear words. This is why I hate grammar pedants.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[clone53421]

It is incorrect to put “but” at the beginning of a sentence because it (like any conjunction) connects two words, phrases or clauses together... not two sentences.

You didn’t answer my question, though. Does “without” not indicate a sharp enough contrast?

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[siride]

There's no reason why conjunctions can't join two sentences together. Of course, I don't think that's what's happening here. Instead, I think we have a sentential adverb that sets the mood of the sentence, or acts as a semantics-only conjunction, connecting the sentence with thoughts before it without having an explicit syntactic connection. Pronouns and articles already get to do this. But in answer to your question, no, I don't think "without" necessarily indicates contrast. The sentence could go on to be "without these technologies, we'd still be the greatest species on the planet", which confirms the previous thought, rather than conceding it. OF course, in that case, you'd definitely want to use a sentence-initial "and": "and without these technologies, we'd still be the greatest species on the planet". Omitting the "and" leads to a slightly stilted and somewhat disconnected series of sentences. My real problem with your entire line of argumentation is that it is both unsupported by logic and is also limiting. Why force people to avoid useful language because of personal prejudices and opinions? Instead, let's allow people to be flexible in their language, that they may express shades of meaning and nuance that wouldn't be available with the kind of strict, bare-bones approach taken by the modern language pedant (no doubt well-versed in Strunk and White nonsense). Using "but" at the beginning of a sentence does nothing to take away from the meaning of sentence or series of sentences, nor does it contribute to confusion and vagueness (a legitimate concern in effective communication). Rather, it offers a nuanced alternative to other constructions (such as "however" and "though" -- themselves quite valid and useful). I simply can see no downside to using sentence-initial "but" and "and", save for an overzealous strictness when it comes to parts of speech and word usage. We aren't talking about unnecessarily vague and annoying synecdoche like "CPU" for "computer", where an incorrect metaphor has weakened the language of some speakers. If you had called someone out on that, I would have agreed with you. But I can't here because I see nothing wrong with "but". And neither should you, although you are free not to use it at the beginning of your sentences. Just don't tell people they are wrong for doing so.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[siride]

There were paragraphs in there, but I forgot to select Plain Text, so it has all been joined together into an unfortunate wall of text. For those who care, the paragraphs start at "There's no reason", "But in answer to your question" and "My real problem".

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[guyminuslife]

...up with which we will not put.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[Alphathon]

"But" is a conjunction, which means it can only be used to connect two parts of a sentence together, not start a new one*. Incidentally, "and" is also a conjunction, so your second sentence is also incorrect. If it helps to understand it, a sentence must make sense on it's own, otherwise it is incorrect**.

While on the subject of grammar, your first sentence isn't a question, so the question mark is also incorrect. What you did was make a request for information, not ask a question about it. If it were rephrased "What is what is "improper" about using "but" at the beginning of a sentence?" then it would be a question. Both would have the same answer, both your version is not a question.

*In the way I used it, "but" is the subject of the sentence, since I was talking about the word, not using the word to talk about something else.

**Please note that "must make sense on it's own" does not mean "can be fully understood out of context".

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[Alphathon]

There's no reason why conjunctions can't join two sentences together.

Actually there is a reason: syntax. You may not accept it as a valid reason, but it does exist. As I see it, there two (incorrect) reasons to start a sentence with "but":

• What is being treated as a sentence should have been a new clause of the previous sentence.
• "But" is being used as a synonym for "however"

The comment I initially replied to would seem to fall into both categories (not at the same time) for the first use of "but". If it were used as a single sentence, it would have been fine (if you ignore other parts of the post). If "but" had been substituted for "however" it would also have been fine. However, without either of these being true, it is incorrect. In spoken language this distinction makes no difference, as the punctuation marks are not very well defined, but it does have some repercussions on the meaning of the words.

I been faithful supporter of Firefox for the last few years. But I do think that Microsoft did some major advancement with IE(after IE6).

This can be rephrased as either "I [have] been [a] faithful supporter of Firefox for the last few years, but I do think that Microsoft [made] some major advancement[s] with IE (after IE6)." or "I [have] been [a] faithful supporter of Firefox for the last few years. However, I do think that Microsoft [made] some major advancement[s] with IE (after IE6)." and still make grammatical sense. Both versions convey the same information, but have different emphasis and tone. Splitting it into two sentences emphasises the second statement as it makes Microsoft the subject of a sentence. The reason why using "but" in place of "however" is incorrect is to do with the relationship between written and spoken language. One of the main reasons written language has rules is so that it can effectively convey emotion etc. while retaining the same words used in spoken language. You cannot easily convey volume (loudness) or force in text, so grammatical rules evolved to compensate.

I do agree that they still have much to do. But saying in an absolute manner that it's insecure, that's something I don't agree with.

This can be rephrased as "I do agree that they still have much to do, but saying in an absolute manner that it's insecure; that's something I don't agree with." or "I do agree that they still have much to do. However, saying in an absolute manner that it's insecure; that's something I don't agree with.". Again there is a difference of emphasis, as well as a subtle difference in meaning and emotion. All that using "but" achieves is ambiguity.

Regardless of the reasons though, I really don't think you are the right person to be commenting on whether or not grammatical incorrectness matters. You are, after all, the same person that writes requests as questions, puts "and" and "but" at the beginning of paragraphs and sentences, and thinks that thoughts cannot be expressed without using "but" at the beginning of a sentence. You say that using a proper alternative to "but" can reduce impact, when in fact the word "but" carries little to no implied force and any that is perceived is due mainly to sentence structure and the fact that but is incorrect (it implies that the phrase is following from something but isn't). I mean no offence, but you are wrong.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[Alphathon]

Also, it should be noted that the adverb "but" can indeed start a sentence, but the type of "but" used is clearly not an adverb. I probably shouldn't have made such a blanket statement as "NEVER start a sentence with "but"" without clarifying that. An example of the adverb starting a sentence would be "But a little rain fell that day", with "but" being synonymous with "merely", "just" or "only" (none of which would apply to the original post).

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[clone53421]

Ahh yes, the good old Winston Churchill:

Ending a sentence with a preposition is something up with which I will not put.

Which, of course, was his convoluted way of needlessly expressing in the passive voice what could have been simply stated in the active voice:

I will not put up with the practice of ending sentences with prepositions.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[clone53421]

...Would anyone like to guess why passive voice is discouraged by many English teachers?

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[clone53421]

The sentence could go on to be "without these technologies, we'd still be the greatest species on the planet", which confirms the previous thought, rather than conceding it.

It’s still a contrast: with and without. Rather than contrasting two opposite situations that result in opposite outcomes, you’re contrasting two opposite situations and then claiming they don’t play a significant role in the outcome.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[SlippyToad]

My English degree says you're wrong. Those "correct" and "incorrect" rules were mostly created by English gentry around the time the printing press was invented so they could still have something that separated them from the lower classes. Since literacy wasn't going to be the key anymore, silly and often counterproductive rules were adopted.

Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but"

[siride]

They were perpetuated by a variety of people with a variety of goals. Especially in the 20th century, the focus has been quality writing and effective communication -- both of them laudable. However, the rules are generally based on personal prejudices and biases and not on any solid linguistic analysis. As such, I usually don't take kindly to prescriptivist bullshit and will try to fight it where I can. I am all for clear communication. I am totally against, however, silly rules that do nothing to further that cause and instead serve almost as a shibboleth amongst the snobbish.

ah, the fight song of the freeloader

[circletimessquare]

bookmark your comment above

when the content you like disappears, you'll want to know why

ignorant twatstain

WHO PAYS FOR THE SHIT YOU LIKE, ASSHOLE

THE ADS DO, ASSHOLE

Re:ah, the fight song of the freeloader

[Abcd1234]

when the content you like disappears, you'll want to know why

It won't disappear. It'll get buried behind a paywall and I'll just pay a subscription fee for the content I like, or fall back on free content, such as blogs, forums, and other non-profit content providers. It'll be like back in the days of cable before they fucked their customers over.

Why is that so hard for you to understand?

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[medcalf]

I really don't mind ads on web pages, per se. The ad supported model is reasonable. Yet, I find that there are numerous web pages I won't read because of their ads, and eventually I installed ClickToFlash to get rid of the worst of it. Here's what ticks me off:

• Ads that pop up in the middle of text whenever my mouse moves across the text (not even hovering, just moving across). This interferes with my reading the text, which is why I'm there.
• Short web articles broken into two or three pages to increase the number of ad impressions. This is inconvenient and annoying.
• Ads that play music automatically. Sound is particularly annoying at work, because it disturbs my coworkers. It can also be annoying at home, because it's unexpected.
• Ads that involve motion. It's very distracting, because the human eye is drawn to motion. For the advertiser, of course, that's the point. But I didn't come for the ads, but for the content, and sites that using moving ads don't get much of my return views.
• Movies with sound are the devil's spawn, combining both of the previous points.

If websites cannot find a way to stay in business without the annoying kinds of ads, then they need to find a new business model. This is not my problem, it is theirs. Or yours, as the case may be.

advertising in germany on national TV

[Anonymous Coward]

MS is doing TV spots for IE8 in National TV in Germany right now. Unfortunately with a comedian I quite like.

Like Water You Can't Drink

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Microsoft is now producing a 'consumable' that cannot be easily consumed. I believe it was never their original intention, but the market has evolved, and they did not adapt. Internally, they probably feel obligated to support their installed base for compatibility reasons, but I suspect the team senses they are on the Titanic. It is rare, but sometimes you get to watch the inevitable unfold in slow motion before your eyes. It is tragic and spectacular to witness. Wait until MW7 releases with an IE8-compatible browser, it will sadly make their current situation seem bearable by comparison.

IE is still the best browser there is

[Anonymous Coward]

It's all I ever use.. coming from an IT veteran.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Anonymous Coward]

Control yourself you fucking idiot!

WereWolf

[Anonymous Coward]

I love Chrome!!

things could look up, potentially

[buddyglass]

Will be interesting to see how (if at all) this changes when two things happen: 1) IE9 comes out with all its speed improvements, 2) HTML5 video becomes more prevalent and FF still doesn't support H.264. Note: Yes, I realize all browsers continue to offer better and better performance, but the delta between IE9 and IE8 is likely to be much larger than between Safari 4 and Safari 5, FF 3.x and FF 4, etc. IE9 may be the release with which Microsoft achieves "rough parity" with the other browsers with respect to performance.http://tech.slashdot.org/story/10/05/03/1258258/IE-Market-Share-Falls-To-Historic-Low?art_pos=2#

I don't trust any version of IE

[Antiocheian]

I first caught a virus in 1991. And it was also the last time in personal level. But professionally, I also caught one in 2001. Here is the story:

I was teaching some basic skills to people who had been asking me to help them learn how to surf the Internet, use eMail, and create and print documents. Despite my preference to Lynx/Mosaic/Netscape and then Mozilla, I wanted to give the students the standard experience -- the stuff almost everyone was using: Windows XP, Office XP and IE6.

I had fully updated and secured the systems with a few policies against unsigned activeX and taught the students to avoid clicking OK to messages that would install new software, despite the misleading text saying "the manufacturer asserts that this content is safe" in which YES WAS THE DEFAULT ACTION. I knew dozens of people who had installed dialers on their systems due to that design, but I thought that if no code would be installed, we would be safe.

Yet after a week, one of the systems had its home page changed into a porn site. It was a virus; the process could be killed only to be revived in seconds. Searched the web and found it was one of the worst viruses ever made; it had injected itself on system files of both partitions; no tools existed to remove it, so the entire disk had to be formatted.

I asked some other guys, who were doing this thing at a professional level, if they had the same problem and yes, they all did. But they figured that it wasn't an issue since the students were at the basic level and they wouldn't have important files to lose. They also wanted to conform to the exams who would require an additional process if an "alternate" browser was taught to the student. I found that unacceptable. Teaching basic skills to people should also have included basic principles. And at the time, avoiding Internet Explorer had to be such a principle.

My problem wasn't that some hacker had found their way to run code with IE. That was simply a mistake from Microsoft. But the fact that Microsoft would allow installation of software based on the message I linked above and considering that IE was the defacto browser of new, inexperienced Windows users -- now that was bordering with either malice or stupidity. Of course things must have changed since then, especially with IE8 and sandboxing, but the problem is not that I have simply lost my trust to IE -- it's that I find it counter-productive to try and get it back. Trusting IE again would require effort which I have no reason to make since the alternative (Firefox) is simply great.

Then comes the issue about standards. Yes, like many others here I've wasted time trying to make pages work in IE6 work the same way they do in Mozilla and Opera. Again IE8 is improved, but when I read people in Slashdot saying that IE6 is the only problem, I smell astroturfing. Hey fanboys, did you check IE8 Acid3 scores lately ? It's worse to what Firefox, Opera and Safari had been ages ago!

Re:I don't trust any version of IE

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it makes things very annoying when I want to view the solitary webpage which uses all the corner cases that Acid3 does.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Nadaka]

I don't block ads. But I don't see many because I do block flash and javascript on untrusted sites.

However, I am seriously considering add blocking ever since one of my "trusted sites" started using their own domain to serve some of the most horrific browser hijacking ads I have ever seen.

what is so hard for me to understand?

[circletimessquare]

you mean ECONOMICS?

ignorant smug jackass

the sites you use just appear by magic?

they get PAID for you ignorant tool

but again, its ok to adblock: no one is going to stop you. the problem is being proud of it. just be discrete, and just admit what you are: a freeloading asshole

its ok to be a freeloading asshole. as long as you are self-aware of your sleaziness and shut the fuck up about it

but if you smugly trumpet yourself in a public forum, as if you are doing nothing wrong, and i encounter your comment, i will call you out for what you are

you seem incapable of seeing your own shitty ignorant way of thinking about how the web actually fucking works financially. someday, maybe you'll understand reality. as it is now though, you're simply a parasite, and you don't even know it

Re:what is so hard for me to understand?

[Abcd1234]

Careful, you were bordering on incoherent before, and now you've finally crossed the line into nonsensical hysteria.

the sites you use just appear by magic?

No, they're like any other business. Someone with a neat idea secures some funding (either privately or via venture funding), develops a site, deploys it, and hopefully attracts a user base.

Ads or paywall, it works the same way either way.

Seriously, maybe you should try taking your head out of your ass and consider that there may be business models other than the ad-supported-content-model.

but if you smugly trumpet yourself in a public forum

Sure do! I block ads! Hey everyone, get an Ad Blocker!

as if you are doing nothing wrong,

I'm not doing anything wrong. What gives you the silly idea I am? If the websites wanted me to compensate them for their content, they'd ask me to pay for it. They don't, so I alter the content the strip the ads (as an aside, I do the same thing with my PVR when I'm watching TV).

i will call you out for what you are

With nonsensical rhetoric? Wow, bravo.

you seem incapable of seeing your own shitty ignorant way of thinking about how the web actually fucking works financially

No, it *has* worked that way financially. I might not work that way in the future (though I doubt it), in which case other business models will take hold. And so the web will evolve. So be it.

Re:what is so hard for me to understand?

[Fnkmaster]

Dude, absolutely EPIC karma burn. Keep it rolling.

Re:what is so hard for me to understand?

[Abstrackt]

Dude, absolutely EPIC karma burn. Keep it rolling.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/ is pretty much all I can say about it.

Re:what is so hard for me to understand?

[AK Marc]

but again, its ok to adblock: no one is going to stop you. the problem is being proud of it. just be discrete, and just admit what you are: a freeloading asshole

If I take a piss durring TV commercials, does that make me a thief?

its ok to be a freeloading asshole. as long as you are self-aware of your sleaziness and shut the fuck up about it

You are a web designer. You make things designed to spread information. Yet you whine when someone uses a website to spread information. Obviously, you aren't a web designer. You are a whore, I mean consultant. What you whore yourself out for is irrelevant, because you are a mercenary willing to go where the money is. You bash someone else doing what you are paid to do, probably because he wasn't paid to do it so it makes him bad.

you seem incapable of seeing your own shitty ignorant way of thinking about how the web actually fucking works financially. someday, maybe you'll understand reality. as it is now though, you're simply a parasite, and you don't even know it

You are a buggy whip maker. You decry that your preferred business model doesn't work, and you want to push others into supporting it. You could do other things. You could sell the content, rather than add space. You could have adds integrated with the content, rather than 3rd party ads, which are more convenient for you because you are lazy and incompetent. But no, you just whine that someone else somewhere is doing something you don't like, then you make up shit about how it's going to destroy the web (which, incidentally, was invented before it was commercialized, so the decommercialization of it shouldn't be able to kill it). But you don't know or understand what you are talking about. It's all just "that's inconvenient for me, so I'll lie and make up doomsday predictions that are absurd to try to scare people to my way because logic proves me false."

This was a Triumph!

[Anonymous Coward]

This was a Triumph!
That was a Joke. Haha. Fat Chance.
I'm making a note here: EPIC FAIL.

The cake is no lie: http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3077/2588746706_e393a221d9.jpg

They stuck with THEIR implementation

[Anonymous Coward]

They stuck with THEIR implementation of HTML. Not the standard.

Considering taking up using IE

[ReneeJade]

I am a Firefox girl through and through, but the last few days I've been helping a friend set up a new system and she wanted something more simple, so I showed her Opera and Chrome. Now I'm thinking maybe I should test all the browsers, including IE, so that I see for myself what is good and what's not.

do you LIKE paywalls?

[circletimessquare]

the more people who act like you, the more paywalls we have

if people just let the ads appear, then WE DON'T NEED PAYWALLS

isn't that a fucking radical concept? pfffft

we can have all the free content we want, without any need to pay for anything. JUST LET THE FUCKING ADS APPEAR

but no, you don't like a little ad. well ok genius, then the more people who think like you, then content creators notice. then what? then it is more likely all content is going to be locked up beyond our reach

but you're too smug and proud of yourself to see this simple economic cause and effect of your boastful freeloading

and so we will all pay the price for your foolish pride, because more of us won't get free content, because some parasitical assholes like yourself have to smugly and loudly avoid ads

asshole: go ahead and block ads. just do it QUIETLY you fucking moron, show some simple shame for your sleazy self, so we all don't have paywalls. don't be proud of a behavior you do which threatens the free content model

is that a coherent enough point for you, you cocksucking twatstain?

Re:do you LIKE paywalls?

[Abcd1234]

the more people who act like you, the more paywalls we have

So?

we can have all the free content we want, without any need to pay for anything. JUST LET THE FUCKING ADS APPEAR

Then it's not free. I'm paying for it. I'm paying for it with bandwidth, downloading the ads, and pain and aggravation as I'm assaulted by all the horribly obnoxious ways website operators are now using to try and grab my attention away from the content so I focus on the ads.

then it is more likely all content is going to be locked up beyond our reach

"beyond our reach"? Wha? What, you can't pay a subscription for the content you like? What are you, just a cheap asshole?

just do it QUIETLY you fucking moron

Nah. Dibsout. Block ads everyone! Fuck the website operators and their piece of shit ads! Fuck their popups, their popunders, their interstitials and overlays! Fuck 'em all!

is that a coherent enough point for you

At least you seemed to have a point this time. 'course, it'd be better communicated if you tried using capital letters and punctuation, but hey, small steps, right?

Re:do you LIKE paywalls?

[shutdown -p now]

the more people who act like you, the more paywalls we have

Well, maybe it'd cut down the number of trolls, at least.

Re:do you LIKE paywalls?

[soppsa]

I find it funny that your sig states "intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it" yet you savagely attack people blocking ads. Some people consider ignoring intellectual property law to be theft too... Pot calling kettle black? I dunno why you are so angry, if you are a recently out of work web developer, you have my sympathy. I work for an internet marketing company, and I for one enjoy my ad blocking.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Reapman]

Most people I know that got compromised were compromised via ad's. So I have zero sympathy. Sorry but me avoding getting a computer compromised is more important then some random web admin losing ad funds.

Web based advertising has to do a HELL of a lot of work to regain my trust before I'll open it back up. I don't care about ad's much if they're not in my face, but I'm not going to risk a compromised computer so you can get 3 cents a pageview.

Not surprising, IE8 is a disaster

[akakaak]

I'm not surprised at all. Having diligently tried to use IE8 for months, I can confidently say it is a horrible experience. Much worse than IE6 ever was. It hangs on a regular basis - not just one tab, but the whole progam. New tabs can take a long time to come up. It slowly eats more and more memory. I've experienced bizarre bugs, for example I load a page that renders incorrectly, I click through to another page, and then hit the 'back' button, and the first page now renders correctly. Etc... Microsoft is driving down their own market share by providing a shitty product. We're not talking bells and whistles here, just basic functionality.

Re:Not surprising, IE8 is a disaster

[avandesande]

Sounds like they have matched Firefox functionality.

what did i expect?

[circletimessquare]

that i was going to get a smug parasite to feel shame?

"the more people who act like you, the more paywalls we have

So?"

and there we have it, in a nutshell

thanks for everything, asshole

More Devices Now

[smist08]

I think the web is browsed much more by devices other than PCs. I would expect IE market share to drop given all the browsing done by Android phones, iPhones, iPads and various other non-PC devices. I suspect this statistic is reflecting the drop in the percentage of web browsing done by Windows based PCs.

Historic low? That was 0%

[yack0]

Historic low? What happened to the history where MSIE has a 0% share (no browser) or 3%, 12%, 16%, 22%, 32%.

There was a time when there was no MSIE, so to say there's a historic low is complete inaccurate. Unless of course the person choosing the headline wasn't around during those days.

Re:Historic low? That was 0%

[jaavaaguru]

You're thinking of a "record low" rather than "historic low".

Re:Historic low? That was 0%

[Antiocheian]

I believe he means a historic low in a decade range. If we consider Lynx as the first public www browser -- and I don't see why we should not -- we are talking about 18 years of web browser history, so I'd say one is justified in calling a decade "historic" (not an "all-time" of course).

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Kjella]

Well, the reality is that people don't want to pay for it - at least not as much as advertisers.

Let's take a brief math example: The superbowl had 62 ad slots which averaged 3 million dollars in 2008 and 98.7 million watched it. That's 1.90$ per person watching, but since it was only 48.1 million households a PPV licence would have to work out to about 4$. But that is assuming there'll still be 98 million viewers and 48 million households, which is unlikely - it's RIAA/MPAA math. First of all, many people just casually interested might not watch at all, those that do would be gathering more and you might see maybe 60 million viewers on 20 million households. Then it's a 9-10$ / PPV license which drives away more people and the numbers work out even worse and so on.

If advertising is simply made unfeasible, there will have to be large cutbacks all around. It's not just that people can get the same thing for free as they get behind the paywall, it's that people value the content much less than the advertisers value the eyeball time. I think this whole scenario that everything will be behind paywalls are ridiculous, the harder it becomes to get eyeball time the more it'll be worth - it's basic supply and demand. Eventually when enough content is behind paywalls it will again be profitable to run ad-based sites. Which I don't even think will happen in the first place.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Fnkmaster]

Well, you can obviously see from the response you got that basically nobody agrees with you. Why? Because we've all been barraged with shit ads ever since the internet became a mass-market ad-fest. The ads are excessive, the ads are abusive, the ads are intrusive, and frankly, ad-supported media sucks.

I love HBO. I love Showtime. I own a Roku box and pay for my Netflix subscription. I pay for my New York Times subscription, and read the online content. I've even paid for Slashdot a few times as a subscriber, though most of the value here is created by the commenters, not the stories the "editors" post. In other words, I do pay for the content I use most.

I am *happy* to pay for quality web content that is ad-free. You can have a reasonably amount of my money if you offer me good value for my dime.

I've been begging and begging for years for proper business models for online content. Like content consortiums, micropayment systems, etc.

You morons in the web content industry have failed utterly to provide this. And then you have the nerve to whine and bitch at me? Go fuck yourself. I hope you go out of business and fail if blinking banners and Flash ads are the best ways you can figure out to make money.

Re:Chrome is a keylogger, and scrambling won't hel

[jaavaaguru]

Care to point out which part of the code acts as a keylogger?

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Abcd1234]

Eventually when enough content is behind paywalls it will again be profitable to run ad-based sites. Which I don't even think will happen in the first place.

I actually completely agree with your scenario. What I take issue with is this idea that if people block ads, the Internets Will Be Destroyed! It's BS. As you say, we'll likely hit some happy equilibrium where there will be a mix of subscription- and advertiser-supported content, along with the current plethora of free content.

Safari/Firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I for one can acknowledge that I have moved to Mac OS X within the past few years. I never use IE anymore (always Safari). I also use Firefox on Windows XP at work.

"late adoption" is the new "revolution"?

[Anonymous Coward]

That word. You keep using it. I don't think it means what you think it means.
"finally starting to support the long-standing stuff" is more of a "reluctant change" than a "revolution".

"Oh look! We're the last to finally implement this; how revolutionary is that!?" (hint: not at all).

Slow news day

[rinoid]

On one site I manage which receives a modest ~2-3 million uniques a year, IE has been losing market share steadily over the past three years.

It's pretty much the same across other, smaller sites I manage or have developed and still watch stats on...

Move along!

No, MY browser is the fastest growing browser!

[Hurricane78]

I wrote it, five minutes ago, and it grew from zero to one today. Which is a growth rate of INFINITE! Beat that Chrome! ;))

(Wasn’t there an xkcd or Dilbert comic about how big percentages are irrelevant, if the starting value in extremely tiny?)

Why Chrome?

[hduff]

It doesn't seem to offer the flexibility of Firefox? I found it to not suit my needs. What's the attraction?

Re:Why Chrome?

[Yosho]

I found it not to suit my needs. What's the attraction?

Most people don't have very complex needs. They want to do their banking online, then check Gmail and Facebook and watch a few videos on Youtube. Chrome does all of that, and it does it much, much faster than Firefox does. That's the appeal: it's really fast. Even a typical "power" user doesn't need much more than Adblock, a Javascript debugger, and a Privacy mode, and Chrome has all of those, too.

Another way How to code for IE

[u64]

if(navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie')!=-1){window.location.replace("http://browserchoice.eu");}

The internet is best viewed without Microsoft Internet Explorer.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Blakey Rat]

If you want someone to blame, go blame the website operators, who've forced users to block ads because they got steadily more and more obnoxious, until they were simply too unbearable to endure any longer.

You have an interesting definition of the word "forced."

Re:+Chrome "bundling", sort of (in a way..not real

[shutdown -p now]

I think the main reason why Chrome is getting traction is because it actually is good in a way that users can immediately relate to: it looks and feels lightweight. It starts instantly. New tabs open in the blink of an eye. Firefox, while still faster than IE, still feels heavyweight enough that you don't get that feeling of a snappy app. Sure, the geeks know that Firefox brings more to the table in form of extensions, but I suspect that most casual users don't know or care, so for them Firefox is just IE with weird icons, while Chrome is observably better.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[shutdown -p now]

how do you think the shit you like gets paid for?

Depends - I do pay for some shit, when they ask me to pay (or go elsewhere if I don't think it's worth the money). If they don't ask, then why should I care?

but if you were smart, you'll shut the fuck up about it, because the more people who do that, the more the websites you like disappear. if you don't understand that, you're an idiot

Websites are a dime a dozen today, and, thanks to Google, finding one for a given topic is not a problem at all. In practice, it's websites which compete for users' attention, not vice versa. If you do not understand it, you're an idiot.

show some fucking discretion, and stop telling people you block ads. its nothing to be proud of, and you are obviously so very fucking proud of your smug smarmy self

I don't block ads, but I'm seriously tempted to do so now just to spite you. You're obviously very smug to think that whatever you have to offer on your website deserves that much attention.

Wow

[extrasolar]

Wow, at that rate everyone will be using it, even people who don't exist!

Re:as a web developer

[pitje]

as a fellow webdeveloper, I hate ads.

Shit gets paid by my customers, the people offering you their site. If they want to shove advertisements in your face, fine with me.
if you were smart, you'd find another job you'd stop whining and calling potential customers idiots.

Idiot.

Millennium

[Anonymous Coward]

Lowest market share this millennium.

Please help make this beast extinct!

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[apoc.famine]

You got pretty well flamed here for your post. Like the rest, I tolerated ads for quite some time. However, when I was quietly surfing the web one night, long ago, and one of my tabs started blasting out noise from a flash ad, I installed flash-click-to-play. A few years later, when I moused over an underlined word, and an ad popped up that obscured what I was trying to read, I installed noscript. When nearly every ad started moving, making noise, popping out of the page, and doing other fucking irritating shit, I blocked all the ads together.

I realize that you need to pay the bills. But if you fucking douchebag developers hadn't totally ruined the online experience with ads, completely fucked up and obscured the pages I was trying to read, and created the most distracting, worthless ads ever, I wouldn't have blocked ads. Nor would have a lot of other people here.

It's like wanting to be a lawyer, and getting pissed off that people hate you just because you're a lawyer. You should know that the hatred is well deserved due to the massive amount of douchebags in your field. Either suck it up, or change careers to one not filled with douchebags. Calling us "your smug smarmy sel(ves)" just makes you look like the rest of the douchebags we hate.

Firefox hit the ActiveX wall, that's why.

[Anonymous Coward]

Until the number of sites (corporate, mostly) that require ActiveX to work goes down, or a solid and newbie-friendly means of running ActiveX in Firefox appears* Firefox has gone probably as high as it can go.

Chrome is growing a little because of minor speed advantages and a lot because major marketing tie-in tricks with Google Earth, Desktop, iGoogle, etc. Not to mention that Google is almost synonymous with 'teh internets' these days, like AOL once was.
Safari exists as a statistical force at all largely because iTunes installs it as a tie in. Firefox and Opera however, grow only because people actively seek them out or do so at the suggestion of tech-savvy friend.

* no, IETab / Coral IETab don't count, they are not built-in, require some knowledge to configure effectively, and report their user agent as IE. Plus, from a technical standpoint they are a horrible kludge solution that makes matters worse overall by forcing you to run two browsers - okay one and a half since its not IE but Trident engine - to access one website.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Abcd1234]

You have an interesting definition of the word "forced."

You're right, poor choice of words. I should've used the word "driven", as in provided a very strong incentive to encourage the behaviour Mr. Circletimessquare seems to hate so much.

Of course, the alternative is to simply not visit those sites that are particularly obnoxious, and I've done just that in some cases. Unfortunately, when I receive a link from someone, I have no way to evaluate, apriori, if the site is going to spam me with popups, and so an Ad Blocker is, I think, all but a required tool to safely and efficiently browse the web these days.

Application Design Can Learn from the Harpsichord

[Max_W]

I would advise to the IE designers and engineers to listen to Elaine Wherry' talk:

"What Web Application Design Can Learn from the Harpsichord" http://chi.conversationsnetwork.org/shows/detail4404.html

Sometimes one has to stop to do a fancier and fancier design, but make things really functional and understandable.

Ours is 50%:)

[jwhitener]

www.pcc.edu for the last 30 days.

Internet Explorer 532255 50.94%
Firefox 334610 32.02%
Safari 119225 11.41%
Chrome 53363 5.11%
Mozilla 1922 0.18%
Opera 1463 0.14%
SeaMonkey 578 0.06%
Mozilla Compatible Agent 482 0.05%
Camino 377 0.04%
Opera Mini 306 0.03%

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[r_jensen11]

show some fucking discretion, and stop telling people you block ads. its nothing to be proud of, and you are obviously so very fucking proud of your smug smarmy self

Show me some disretion and let me be able to browse the internet on my 1.3Ghz G4 processor without locking up the system. Why should I have to purchase a new computer just to check the news and email?

That's great!

[marcosdumay]

Firefox is on a very confortable position with 1/3 of the market, and we really don't want another browser to own the Web.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Just Some Guy]

Meanwhile, if these sites have decent content, people will pay for it. If they don't pay for it, then evidently it's not worth the money.

I see you posting all over the place here, but there's no little asterisk next to your name showing that you've paid. I find that an interesting juxtaposition with your claims.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Anonymous Coward]

I use Opera with image animations off and Flash disabled by default. For sites like Youtube, I have set site options to enable Flash only there.

So I browse the web without any kind of animations or Flash ads; but I can see the good-behaved ads, so nice behaving webs have their ads revenue.

Except those CSS over-the-text ads. In those, I try disabling CSS for the page; if it doesn't work (usually, it does), I simply leave. Any web owner who allows those kind of ads should be tortured by all the eternity with table tennis rackets smashing in his face every 0.1 seconds while trying to read ever changing instructions about how to get food showing a character at a time. Note for advertisers: I don't mind if you put there a close button or make it dissapear after 5 seconds. That usually fails in some browser in some version, that usually is the one I'm using. And gets me very angry and very ill-disposed about whatever you are selling.

Re:Articles like this make me laugh...

[Itninja]

I agree on most points. The big thing for me the ability to use add-ons like NoScript to block only the scripts I want, without having to disable JavaScript globally. But IE starts faster and doesn't hog GB's of memory if left up for a few days.

Just to idea that the company that makes the browser also has a vested interest in preventing me from not viewing ads gives me pause. that and the fact that some flagship MS applications (like MOSS 2007) are incompatible (natively) with IE8.

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Anonymous Coward]

All I use for Chrome are these two gems:

FlashBlock extension
Dan Pollock's hosts file

FlashBlock images:
http://i43.tinypic.com/29f73vs.png (syfy.com -- one of the worst sites on the Internet)
http://i43.tinypic.com/29f73vs.png (FlashBlock options page)

Maybe once a month an ad slips through, but then I permanently block it.

Ditto for Flash. I think I have maybe seen 3 sites total that bypassed that extension somehow.

Re:moobs of the caveman

[ne0n]

we can only pray that those who have this shirt never, ever, ever take it off in public. *shudder*

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[Eivind]

Hi listen.

It's a war out there. Marketeers would, if they could, tatoo blinking ads on the inside of peoples eyelids. There's a battle for attention in public and private spaces, and advertisers have blown it. They have, repeatedly, proved that they'll do anything they can get away with. Please explain why I should treat with respect someone who has never extended the same courtesy to me ?

You are right that ads provide some revenue. But at the same time, who do you think -pays- for those ads ? When Microsoft or Shell or H&M pay to have ads displayed on websites, whose pockets does the money for that ultimately come from ?

Ads are unproductive. More ads in the world, does not generally speaking make my life better. Paying for ads, is thus against my self-interest. Yes, with less ads, some websites would close, and others might become more expensive in other ways. But on the flipside, other products would get cheaper, to a larger degree. The math works like this:

Company A spends 100K on ads, 20K of that is spent making the ads, 80K is paid to have them shown. Company B shows ads, but they use a ad-network for doing so, to not have to take the technical work themselves (plus A and B needs an arbitrator anyway), the ad-network takes a cut of the action, so though they're paid 80K, only 50K end up in the pockets of B.

End-result ? A have spent 100K, but B is only 50K richer. The rest is wasted in the ad-making-and-distributing-machinery.

Whoops

[Alphathon]

I accidentally hit the submit button rather than continue editing. The third sentence should have been "If it helps you to understand it", not "If it helps to understand it", while the second paragraph should have read:

While on the subject of grammar, your first sentence isn't a question, so the question mark is also incorrect. What you did was make a request for information, not ask a question about it. If it were changed to "What is "improper" about using "but" at the beginning of a sentence?" then it would be a question. Both would have the same answer, but your version is not a question.

Yes, it is.

[Anonymous Coward]

But most likely it is the whole environment.

My elderly mother uses Ubuntu and has had no problems with malware of any kind.

clone's also replying as AC to try fool us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think you're fooling anybody replying as AC now clone53421? Your now posting as AC is now caught too clone53421 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1639038&cid=32085082 where you admitted to posting as clone53421 on another forums to troll and stalk me, and in your reply in the url above you give that away clearly.

APK

clone's now posting as AC to try fool us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think you're fooling anybody replying as AC now clone53421? Your now posting as AC is now caught too clone53421 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1639038&cid=32085082 where you admitted to posting as clone53421 on another forums to troll and stalk me, and in your reply in the url above you give that away clearly.

APK

clone now replying as AC to try fool us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think you're fooling anybody replying as AC now clone53421? Your now posting as AC is now caught too clone53421 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1639038&cid=32085082 where you admitted to posting as clone53421 on another forums to troll and stalk me, and in your reply in the url above you give that away clearly.

APK

clone's now trying to use AC replies to fool us?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think you're fooling anybody replying as AC now clone53421? Your now posting as AC is now caught too clone53421 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1639038&cid=32085082 where you admitted to posting as clone53421 on another forums to troll and stalk me, and in your reply in the url above you give that away clearly.

APK

clone's using AC replies to try fool others now?

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think you're fooling anybody replying as AC now clone53421? Your now posting as AC is now caught too clone53421 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1639038&cid=32085082 where you admitted to posting as clone53421 on another forums to troll and stalk me, and in your reply in the url above you give that away clearly.

APK

clone's using AC replies to try fool us now? LOL!

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think you're fooling anybody replying as AC now clone53421? Your now posting as AC is now caught too clone53421 http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1639038&cid=32085082 where you admitted to posting as clone53421 on another forums to troll and stalk me, and in your reply in the url above you give that away clearly.

APK

clone admits to stalking me, right here

[Anonymous Coward]

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1640368&threshold=-1&commentsort=0&mode=thread&pid=32086288 Unbelieveable.

APK

Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block

[hrimhari]

I prefer NoFlash + to redirect the most obnoxious ad providers to 127.0.0.1 in my etc/hosts. It's a little less user-friendly, but I find it to be a good balance of getting rid of what bothers me most and not penalizing the "good" ads.

Try understanding "it's" vs. "its"

[whoever57]

If it helps to understand it, a sentence must make sense on it's own, otherwise it is incorrect**.

English FAIL!

Re:Try understanding "it's" vs. "its"

[Alphathon]

You're not wrong there: it was indeed an EPIC fail. Why is that I always make stupid mistakes like that when in grammar nazi wars? Perhaps I just need to proof read a little more.

Re:Try understanding "it's" vs. "its"

[whoever57]

You're not wrong there: it was indeed an EPIC fail. Why is that I always make stupid mistakes like that when in grammar nazi wars?

There is probably a law, along the lines of Murphy's law, that describes this very common phenomenon.

Re:Try understanding "it's" vs. "its"

[Alphathon]

Apparently so: Muphry's law. :P