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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."
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!
My work here is dung.
This is the best news since... the last news that IE market share was dropping...
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
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.
Pretty good is actually pretty bad.
"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?
...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...
Non-supporter of Online Activation and any other draconian DRM
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.
My work here is dung.
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
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
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?
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.
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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.
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.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
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.
I see you work in marketing.
"IE. Not the unholy creation of Satan it once was."
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."
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>
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.
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:
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.
-- Two men say they're Jesus. One of them must be wrong. - Dire Straits
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.
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.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.