IE9 May Not Be Enough To Save IE

An anonymous reader writes "The October market share numbers are in and Net Applications' numbers show a surprising drop in IE8 market share — the first time since the browser was introduced. Strangely, IE9 has not gained much and IE7 as well as IE6 are losing as well. The only two browsers gaining are Chrome and Safari — and both browsers have hit new record market shares. The frenzy around IE8 may have subsided already, and Microsoft is under tremendous pressure to roll out IE9 soon. StatCounter's numbers indicate that Firefox is close to surpassing IE in Europe."

Comments

Hmm.

[tenchikaibyaku]

The frenzy around IE9 may have subsided already and [...]

What frenzy? :-)

Re:Hmm.

[jd]

Sharks go into a feeding frenzy when things are being ripped up.

Re:Hmm.

[JWSmythe]

    I'm pretty sure it was more like a tasteless odorless chunk of chum was thrown into the ocean, and there was no reaction. There was no interest at all.

    More importantly, it hasn't even been released yet. It is available as a beta, but you have to implicitly install it.

    First, go to Google, and search for msie 9

    The first link takes you the Internet Explorer 9 Test Drive

    Which the download button doesn't download, but takes you to the Explorer9Beta page

    (Does Ford know that they've hijacked the "Explorer" name?)

    The download button does actually download.

    And no, I'm not a fanboy. I was just curious. Don't ask about performance though, all I got to was the download page. I didn't actually install it. :)

Re:Hmm.

[h4rm0ny]

The frenzy around IE9 may have subsided already and [...]

The one the Slashdot editors try to pretend there was in order to stir up some more juicy-post-count boosting flamewars. IE9 beta came out. Surprisingly seemed quite good and certainly zippy. Some people made comments. Apparently that's a "frenzy" to Slashdot editors.

Re:Hmm.

[Z00L00K]

IE might have had a better response with version 8 if they just hadn't started to mess around with those startup questions and halting the installation to ask stupid questions.

I can't find any reason to actually provide Microsoft with my web usage statistics, so when they ask for it I always answer NO, and that is something that puts me off too - because that means that they do track people on the web in unclear ways. And when I answer NO, it also means that most other security-minded persons will do the same thing. The result is that it's only the unaware, noobs and fools that they get statistics from - which also explains why it seems like their software seems to be more and more adapted for dummies for every generation.

Re:Hmm.

[foobsr]

(Does Ford know that they've hijacked the "Explorer" name?)

Well, from Wikipedia: "The Texas Instruments Explorer is a family of Lisp Machine computers. These computers were sold by Texas Instruments in the 1980s. The Explorer is based on a design from Lisp Machines Incorporated, which is based on the MIT Lisp Machine."

CC.

Re:Hmm.

[man_of_mr_e]

Everyone does that, so do Google and Firefox. They claim that the data is only used to help them determine which features people use, or how often certain things go wrong.

Re:Hmm.

[sjames]

By even asking the question, they make me wonder if they realize that no means no or if they're going to decide that I must have meant yes.

Re:Hmm.

[JWSmythe]

    Very good, prior art to my prior art. Pytheas would be proud, and Erik the Red would kill us both for not recognizing him. :)

Re:Hmm.

[JWSmythe]

    Actually, go to about:config in Firefox, and put in "http" as your filter criteria. It can (and does) send information off-site. Try changing the filter criteria to "safe", and see what it comes up with. It should be a more discrete list places that every request is sent to, like "http://safebrowsing.clients.google.com/safebrowsing/report?".

    I'm not paranoid. If you're going to information so private that no one should know it, you shouldn't be playing on the Internet.

    I was working on a project once, where it was a stand alone machine (like an kiosk with no Internet connection), and we built a browser based application for it. It saved a lot of hassle of making a custom GUI, managing graphics, layout, etc, etc. It also made it easy to hand off to another developer, who would only need to know how to make a web page. :) Without an internet connection, it suffered a speed decrease, because it was trying to resolve and then request things like the safebrowsing URLs. I believe there were about 25 entries to remove to get rid of all functionality like that. Other pesky ones were ones like the automatic update checks (we disabled them). It became very speedy on very slow hardware.

    But, these are just the ones that we can easily find. Is there such a resource for MSIE or Chrome? I know Chrome has a very primitive configuration interface by design, so we have to trust that Google is following the "do no evil" motto. I trust Microsoft will not only record and send the info somehow, but they'll deny it to the end.

Re:Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

ummm it's a browser , couldn't give a crap which one. They all suck pretty much the same, they all crash, they all have bugs. When google or apple come even close to putting a dent into OS shares maybe I'll get interested. Really who cares about the "browser wars" anyhow? Browser wow way to go you render crappy html code, who gives a shit.

Re:Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Being tracked? On the web? Say it ain't so!

Re:Hmm.

[Beat The Odds]

(Does Ford know that they've hijacked the "Explorer" name?)

You do know that the Ford Explorer is not a web browser, right?

Re:Hmm.

[rgviza]

It wouldn't hurt if Microsoft fully supported the same standards everyone else does too, like CSS3. The best way to get them to fix it is to not support IE's deficiencies if you are a developer and you can get away with it. I don't.

Luckily I don't make my living schlepping web sites. If my boss says to (for example) make rounded corners on a table, I just tell him IE doesn't support that so it will look like crap in IE. He doesn't care. I'm sure as hell not going to spend 8 hours in the GIMP trying to get anti-aliased rounded table corner images to look right in 5 colors. not being a GD I'm slow, and we don't have a GD so no one cares. They'd rather have me spending time writing stored procedures, cleaning up security issues and integrating systems. On my own external projects (a facebook game being one) I put a note in the footer saying "Looks better in any browser but IE" and put a link to the page on Microsoft's site with the list of supported CSS3 stuff. It's a pretty small list.

Re:Hmm.

[DCstewieG]

Sure, if you'd like, leave the tinfoil hat on. I'm happy to provide data to MS (well, I would be if I used IE). I've become very interested in usability so it makes me jealous to read about all of the data they get to make decisions with. Just read this blog entry and look at all of the percentages they know about real world usage and how they used that for the IE9 UI overhaul.

A few examples:

• over 97% of IE sessions have 5 or fewer tabs
• 54% of people have 2 or fewer items on their Favorites bar (we ship with 2 by default)
• The most commonly used item in the Status bar was “Select Preset Zoom” used by 1.6% of people

Re:Hmm.

[daremonai]

You were sending mixed signals. Your button-clicking said "no," but your lack of mashing the keyboard in frustration said "yes."

Re:Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

(Does Ford know that they've hijacked the "Explorer" name?)

You do know that the Ford Explorer is not a web browser, right?

Now I do.

Re:Hmm.

[93 Escort Wagon]

IE might have had a better response with version 8 if they just hadn't started to mess around with those startup questions and halting the installation to ask stupid questions.

Agreed - such as the stupid question that basically tries to trick users into running IE by default in "fundamentally broken mode" (what they call "compatibility mode"). It's like the last gasp of those Microsoft geezers who still think they can lock in users with IE-only websites.

There's no point in this. If a user is in a company that actually has an ActiveX-based intranet, it's highly unlikely that user is going to be installing IE himself. This primarily affects home users - and it was a dumb, dumb decision.

Re:Hmm.

[dryeo]

(Does Ford know that they've hijacked the "Explorer" name?)

Actually I think it was more hijacking WebExplorer, the browser that shipped with OS/2 in 1994.

Re:Hmm.

[ConceptJunkie]

I think you meant to say you have to explicitly install it.

Yeah, it's hard to judge how IE9 will do when it's not even out yet, but I wouldn't expect it to do a whole lot to reverse the trends. MS has 15 years of inertia to overcome. They didn't earn their reputation in the browser market overnight.

Competition is a good thing. I only wish Office weren't an unbreakable monopoly and there were real competition for it. Competition got MS off their collective duffs to actually improve IE (even if it was too little, too late), maybe some pressure would spur them to make Office less aggressively awful.
   

Re:Hmm.

[ConceptJunkie]

10+ years ago I used to use POV-Ray to generate all the rounded boxes and corners I needed, but in this day and age, knowing that CSS has this capability it would be ludicrous to have to do this just to appease Microsoft's arrogant indifference towards the thousands (millions?) of hard-working web developers in the world who must do twice as much of more work just because Microsoft can't be assed to put even a tiny fraction of their world-conquering, OEM-strong-arming, standards-exterminating, chair-throwing resources towards supporting the standards much smaller companies seem to have no problem with.

Re:Hmm.

[Anonymous Coward]

Does Ford know that they've hijacked the "Explorer" name?

It is also a brand of vodka.

Re:Hmm.

[mcneely.mike]

(Does Ford know that they've hijacked the "Explorer" name?)

And do they know where their towel is?

Re:Hmm.

[Pigskin-Referee]

IE might have had a better response with version 8 if they just hadn't started to mess around with those startup questions and halting the installation to ask stupid questions.

I can't find any reason to actually provide Microsoft with my web usage statistics, so when they ask for it I always answer NO, and that is something that puts me off too - because that means that they do track people on the web in unclear ways. And when I answer NO, it also means that most other security-minded persons will do the same thing. The result is that it's only the unaware, noobs and fools that they get statistics from - which also explains why it seems like their software seems to be more and more adapted for dummies for every generation.

I agree! In fact, when I visit a Doctor and asks me stupid questions like, "Where does it hurt", or "How long has this been happening", I immediately tell him it is none of his business. His job is to fix me, not inquire about my personal information in the slight chance that it might help him provide me with better service.

By the way, you are aware that Google and Firefox and even perhaps that deprecated, suck up to the EC, piece of garbage Opera also exhibit the same traits?

Re:Hmm.

[JWSmythe]

    I wonder how they translate pounding your head on the keyboard. Probably as full acceptance of any of their decisions.

Is it worth saving?

[sempir]

Seemingly not!

Silver Lining

[rakuen]

IE9 might not be gaining market share, but thank the diety of your choosing that IE6 is losing market share. Microsoft should probably throw an office party for the occasion.

Re:Silver Lining

[Anonymous Coward]

Goes to show that Europeans are just that bit smarter than Americans

Re:Silver Lining

[gad_zuki!]

Naww, EU regulators just have more teeth and US "regulators." The 'anything goes' version of American capitalism is sub-optimal.

Re:Silver Lining

[Anonymous Coward]

Do you think that maybe the fact that Microsoft must offer users a choice of browser when installing Windows in Europe might have had an effect? Or the orders forcing Microsoft to sell unbundled versions? Or is it just the stupidity of Americans?

Re:Silver Lining

[Anonymous Coward]

No, what they should be doing is the responsible thing and fixing the mess they started.
Release a sandboxed-to-complete-hell-and-back version of IE6 with ActiveX, problem solved.
It's not like they will pay to upgrade their intranet software or applications if it just works now.

Will they do it? Will they hell. It took them bloody long enough to get off their asses and make IE7, which was terrible in both standards they decided to support as well as interface.

Re:Silver Lining

[Anonymous Coward]

Why not all three? Why so quick to defend thy dumbass countrymen?

Re:Silver Lining

[tbannist]

Hmm... Is that "Anything Goes" or "Everything Goes"?

Re:Silver Lining

[arose]

Release a sandboxed-to-complete-hell-and-back version of IE6 with ActiveX, problem solved.

So essentially a copy of XP in a virtual machine? I doubt you could untangle ActiveX from the underlaying OS without breaking half of the apps that rely on it.

Re:Silver Lining

[QuantumBeep]

Not required. The baseline interface ActiveX uses is not that big (IE6 ran on Windows 98). if you bundled an entire basic install of Windows 98 as a compatibility layer, it would still be a fraction of the size of Adobe Reader.

Re:Silver Lining

[whiteboy86]

Yet they let slip nasties like popular site not showing pictures to a certain type of a browser, flashes the user with the 'good browser' download link. Only in the EU.

Re:Silver Lining

[thunderclap]

J. R. "Bob" Dobbs doesn't care about Microsoft either.

Re:Silver Lining

[Jens Egon]

The Micro$oft tax goes to America.

US regulators like that. EU regulators doesn't.

Re:Silver Lining

[Lennie]

Do you really believe that ? I think more goes to Ireland and the Netherlands (thus Europe) than the US, because they get taxcuts there:

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/content/10_44/b4201043146825.htm

Re:Silver Lining

[Lanteran]

Though it is, my bet is that we'll have to continue coding for IE6 until: A. Windows XP dies (2040's, 50's maybe) or B. Until free software conquers the computing world.

Re:Silver Lining

[Jens Egon]

There's a difference between were there money is registered as earned, for tax purposes, and in what pockets they end up.

Anyway, yes, I think EU regulators are acting towards Microsoft as if they (Microsoft) were an immoral foreign entity.

(As opposed to one of our wholesome homegrown immoral entities.)

As Wham! Once Wrote...

[PmanAce]

Wake me up before you go-go...

Hang on a minute...

[Anonymous Brave Guy]

Since when was IE9 actually launched? Are we seriously predicting the doom of IE because not so many people downloaded a browser that isn't even released yet?

There are legitimate concerns for web developers about how widely IE9 will be adopted, not least the operating systems it will run on (or not), but for goodness' sake, this whole story is just premature.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Monkeedude1212]

Since when was IE9 actually launched? Are we seriously predicting the doom of IE because not so many people downloaded a browser that isn't even released yet?

Help... About... IE8... hmmm.

Start... All programs... Windows Update.... Huh... no IE9...

Google: IE9 ... Download the Beta?

Yeah it looks like they're making a big deal over an unreleased product. I think they should slow it down some. I prefer MORE time in between my IE releases, who knows if this next one is going to break my application.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Spad]

Oddly enough, the only people downloading IE9 *beta* seem to have done so within a few weeks of it being made available and so it's reached saturation. Regular users aren't going to download a beta version of "the internet" and techies grabbed it, installed it, tried it and forgot about it pretty quickly.

I eagerly await the article a couple of weeks after the IE9 RC is made available trumpeting the massive increase in IE9's market share.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't follow MS pre-releases do you? You'd be depressed to learn how many people installed the W7 betas. There are literally millions of people who eagerly await and install all trial products with Microsoft's name attached. Reading their fans' forums is eerie; it's like entering into another universe.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

I prefer MORE time in between my IE releases, ...

Like the 5 years between IE 6 and 7?

Re:Hang on a minute...

[shadowrat]

Yeah! At one point chrome, safari, opera and firefox had 0 market share. That didn't mean they were a failure. It meant they didn't exist.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, hardly any undeserved sense of superiority among the posters. Signifigantly fewer assholes than you'll find on several of your more popular linux boards.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Kilrah_il]

I can't understand it, about once a day we have someone complain that /. posts stories after everyone else. "Late to the party" is the phrase I seem to recall. For once they are ahead of the curve and now someone complains that they are "premature". There's no satisfying some people :)

Re:Hang on a minute...

[noidentity]

Since when was IE9 actually launched? Are we seriously predicting the doom of IE because not so many people downloaded a browser that isn't even released yet?

Anonymous Brave Guy, meet Mr. Hyperbole.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[NicknamesAreStupid]

Yeah, and IE10 has ZERO market share, too. People aren't even talking about IE11. Bunch of losers.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Anonymous Coward]

The point is not that IE9 has failed. The point is that IE8, IE7, IE6 are all dropping, and the evidence suggests they are not early adopters switching to IE9 Beta.

Will IE9 be good enough to make people switch back to IE from whatever else they're using? Maybe, but I personally wouldn't have confidence enough to expose myself to any business risk.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Bert64]

Does IE9 let you install the beta while keeping the stable version installed as well?
When i try out beta versions of firefox i generally run them from my home directory, but go back to the system wide installation of the stable version if i have any problems (like sites which check the user agent and don't recognise the new version).

Re:Hang on a minute...

[bonch]

This is Slashdot, where submitters are free to craft their own fantasy world in the space of a paragraph. Of course, when Windows Update installs IE9 on everyone's machines, reality will override fantasy.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[jpate]

o rly?

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Missing.Matter]

No, and this is why I removed IE9 from my system. IE9 was incredibly unstable, and would crash repeatedly from a fresh start (loading MSN.com). I need IE to view a couple sites I frequent, so I had to uninstall IE9 to use IE8 instead.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Lennie]

You all forget that the TOTAL share of IE is falling, it is not like when IE9 is installed people will all switch immediately.

Re:Hang on a minute...

[Lanteran]

I'm not sure if its available for windows, but here's a useful extension that I use to test minefield and beta firefoxes alongside my usual 3.6:https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/141505/

Save IE?

[kellyb9]

Really? I hate IE as much as the next web developer, but I don't think it needs to be saved. Seems like its doing well enough already.

Re:Save IE?

[Nerdfest]

Much better than it actually deserves to be, really.

If 6 Was 9...

[digitaldc]

Now, if IE6 turned out to be IE9
I don't mind, I don't mind
Alright, if all the hippies cut off all their hair
I don't care, I don't care
Dig, 'cause I got my own browser to live through
And I ain't gonna copy you...

Re:If 6 Was 9...

[Anonymous Coward]

Newsflash! Microsoft rename browser from IE to IB! Mozilla also change name of browser to UB!

Release schedule clash results in IB6, UB9.

Save?

[saleenS281]

They've to 60% of the market! Are they losing market share? Definitely. But to claim it needs to be "saved" is ridiculous. When they're at 2% market share, then we can discuss whether or not the product will actually die and possibly go away. I realize this site likes to hate on MS, but can we be just a *BIT* less biased in the story summaries?

Also, they're under tremendous pressure to release IE9? By who? The public? You can't say people are fleeing because IE9 isn't a big deal, and then turn around and say they have to get it out because all these people are waiting for it. Reality is, the average Joe has no idea that IE9 is in development, has no idea when it will be released, and *DOESN'T CARE*. They click the blue E, and they get to the internet. And every couple years, the window looks a bit different and they don't really know why, but it still works so that's good enough. *THE MAJORITY OF WORLD ARE NOT TECH GEEKS*.

Re:Save?

[ElectricTurtle]

The pressure to release IE9 was internal to MS. MS is concerned in part that Chrome is making so much noise with their rapid release schedule that it makes the competition look like they are falling behind.

Re:Save?

[LWATCDR]

Frankly I fear that Mozilla's stand on H.264 will help IE a lot. I mean why download Firefox if it will not play a large amount of video on the web. If IE9 doesn't suck you will see a lot of people stick with it instead of Firefox.

Re:Save?

[saleenS281]

Care to cite that? I can't say I've ever seen an interview with anyone at Microsoft where they claim they're worried about Chrome's rapid release schedule. Again, the majority of the public have no idea when their browser even gets updated unless it notifies them with some impossible to miss notification page.

Re:Save?

[DarkXale]

IE9 in its current state is actually quite sweet. Not enough so that I'd switch from Opera to it mind; not quite got the features I like (though many are the sort the average user probably wouldn't bother with) - though it does LOOK good. Unless you're a heavy addon user; its definitely superior to Firefox - which really has been moving to take over IE as the 'worst browser' for a while now. Vanilla Firefox is a damn disgrace at the moment.

Re:Save?

[mark72005]

The issue is that for the available consumer market, IE is in the throes of death.

By "consumer" I mean, not business. Business users are probably going to still use IE for their work-related apps. Consumer meaning... people computing at home.

By "available" I mean, people who are smart enough to choose between browsers, and which one actually gets used.

Of the available consumer desktops out there, what is IE's market share there? If you subtract business users? Falling off a cliff, and that's what they are concerned about.

Re:Save?

[ElectricTurtle]

Care to not be a lazy ass and search for something yourself if you're actually interested? This isn't Wikipedia or formal writing, and unless you're sourcing a counter opinion (and you have sourced none of your assertions) I have no inclination to do extra work on such a trivial point.

And nobody at MS would ever say in an interview "we're scared of the competition, so we're doing this!" I mean really, how naive are you? Analysts and industry observers have said these things.

Re:Save?

[Mike Mentalist]

You made a claim and he asked for a source or citation. There is nothing lazy about that.

Re:Save?

[LWATCDR]

But who uses Vanilla Firefox? I have moved to Chrome because they have the plug-ins I need.

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

What do you mean Mozilla's stand on H.264? It's MPEG-LA that refuses to license H.264 for free software!

Re:Save?

[k8to]

It's the passive-aggressive way to say "you're probably wrong" without doing any of the legwork you demand that your target perform. It's not lazy, it's annoying.

In informal discussions, it's pretty traditional to respond to claims with questions, or to challenge it with ideas of why you don't see how it works/makes sense. However, in informal discussions requiring a citation is just dumb. No one's going to go read the citation anyway.

Can slashdot accommodate vigorous debate? Sort of. Kind of poorly. Is that really what it's good at? No.

Re:Save?

[DarkXale]

A shocking amount of people, actually....

Re:Save?

[shugah]

Certainly people who create web content and layouts are pressuring MS to release IE9. Currently if you want rounded corners, drop shadows, element transforms, transitions, or HTML5 elements (canvas, nav, header, etc.) you have to bash on IE with multiple, version specific blunt objects (javascript). Most of the jQuery / javascript you see in modern websites are there to force various versions of IE to behave like a modern browser.

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

I realize this site likes to hate on MS, but can we be just a *BIT* less biased in the story summaries?

Nope! We like to hate on MS, and we likes the biased story summaries. You must be new here.

Re:Save?

[saleenS281]

I have searched and come up empty. From either MS or "industry analysts and observers". Given your response, I'll just assume you pulled that "quote" out of your ass.

Re:Save?

[h4rm0ny]

If IE9 doesn't suck you will see a lot of people stick with it instead of Firefox.

If you're doing web-development, you use Firefox for the lovely Firebug and Web Developer plugins. If you want the best browsing experience you use either Chrome or IE9 (imo). A lot of people who "defected" to Firefox wont return to IE if they find Firefox has become bloated and heavy, they'll move to Chrome, and those who are on IE and want to move, similarly will start to drift to Chrome rather than Firefox. And let's not forget that Google provides the lion's share of Mozilla's funding. Firefox has been a useful stalking horse for Google in stopping MS from resculpting web-standards to their whim. But that job is done now. Will Google really fund a competitor to themself? We'll have to wait and see,

Imo, the future battle is going to be between Chrome, IE9 and whatever Steve Jobs decrees Mac users will use. Firefox has enough market share that they ain't going anywhere soon, and if the next Firefox is awesome, then everything I've said could be wrong, but this is how I think it's going to play out. All that said, I'm typing this in Konqueror, but I don't kid myself that there are as many of us as there are IE, Firefox or Safari users. ;)

Re:Save?

[h4rm0ny]

Doh! Forgot to cover Opera. Opera is huge, but less so in Western Europe and the US. I should have limited my above comments to these areas.

Re:Save?

[Captain Spam]

What do you mean Mozilla's stand on H.264? It's MPEG-LA that refuses to license H.264 for free software!

Perhaps, but the end user won't see "MPEG-LA refuses to license H.264 for free software". They'll see "Firefox won't play this cute cat movie" and stop there.

Re:Save?

[Bert64]

I doubt Google really consider Firefox to be a competitor...
Chrome is not a competitive product they make money from, it is an enabler which facilitates access to their other services which they *do* make money from.

The reason for chromes existence is more to target microsoft than mozilla, the lacklustre state of ie was dragging the advancement of web based applications (the very thing google makes its money on) down, not to mention that microsoft also operate the biggest competitor to the part of google that actually makes money and actively use their browser to drive users away from google.

I doubt people at google really care if you access their sites with firefox, chrome, chromium, safari, konqueror etc, so long as you use a fast modern browser that gives you a good experience with web based applications.

Re:Save?

[QuantumBeep]

Citation-demanding is just an easy way to filibuster a discussion. You aren't entitled to a citation.

It's a conversation. You know, casual talking about stuff. If someone says something, and you think they may be full of shit, say "I think you're full of shit", and if they care, they may cite their source.

They probably won't care.

Re:Save?

[Pentium100]

And Mozilla can make Firefox use the codecs (DirectShow on Windows, gstreamer on Linux and whatever OSX has) already in the system, just like Windows Media Player or ZoomPlayer or a lot of other media players do. There is no technological problem in doing this.

The fact that they do no do it citing their philosophy makes it Mozilla's stand.

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

However, in informal discussions requiring a citation is just dumb. No one's going to go read the citation anyway.

Wrong. I would have read it if a link followed.

Re:Save?

[ThePromenader]

Hear hear! If you want to diminish the amount of code circulating across the web by half, eliminate (the need for) those (#&$^&#) IE6 hacks.

Re:Save?

[illogict]

Why "shocking"? Save for Flashblock and Tineye, I use no addon with Firefox - and am pretty happy with it.

Re:Save?

[BitZtream]

Unfortunately all Chrome's rapid release schedule does is make more users think updating is a waste of time after they go through 8 'updates' and they can't notice a single difference.

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mozilla gets enough money from Google each year to afford to license H.264. They've responded to this criticism by claiming that licensing it would affect those downstream that distribute Firefox in one form or another, but they could easily make codecs pluggable and have the browser pull them from Mozilla when needed to allow downstream distributors to avoid needing a license.

At this point, Mozilla's stand is either overly idealistic or miserly. Either way, lots of us have given up on it and moved to more pragmatic open source options.

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Chrome, who are you fooling with your inflated version numbers?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/74/Timeline_of_web_browsers.svg

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

He did say that, except much more politely. He was just also offering a method to convince him.

I'm cool with the idea that not everything needs a cite since this is a casual forum. But I'd much rather somebody politely ask me for a cite than to just say I'm full of shit.

Especially since I really do think ElectricTurtle just made that up (or repeated something that was just made up). We're talking about pressure to release IE9 like it's a given that it exists and we're just wondering where it's coming from, and I think that's skipping an important step. And it's *also* okay to make something up if you frame it as an opinion rather than a fact.

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

To some extent it was there to push forward javascript performance, but Firefox and Safari were also far behind the original Chrome -- saying IE was the worst is like making fun of the nerdiest LARPer. The latest builds of all the browsers are far better than in those days.

But mainly it's part of their data-mining operations (and even if you turn it off and use Chromium, using it at least prevents competitors from data-mining).

Re:Save?

[Anonymous Coward]

So Mozilla's overly idealistic for wanting their free software to continue coming with all four freedoms intact?

Re:Save?

[JohnBailey]

Perhaps, but the end user won't see "MPEG-LA refuses to license H.264 for free software". They'll see "Firefox won't play this cute cat movie" and stop there.

Ahh.. You mean like when iPhone and iPad users see the little lego brick and angrily return their iProduct..

Re:Save?

[Lennie]

Their are currently no webpages using H.264 directly embedded in the page, they all use flash.

Anything which uses the video-tag is actually using webm (sometimes Theora).

Re:Save?

[Lanteran]

Assuming you're not joking: WebM

Re:Save?

[DarkXale]

"Shocking" in the sense thats really all Firefox has going for it at the moment. Its a slow starter (even worse with addons), currently the weakest browser security wise, and it takes up a large amount of screen space (although some also prefer having bookmarks on screen at all times). I used Firefox for years; but had to abandon it eventually as it has been unable to keep up in the competitive environment it was responsible for creating to begin with.

Re:Save?

[Bert64]

True about the javascript performance, although they could have simply contributed to the javascript engine in firefox or webkit. The trouble with javascript performance (and browser innovation in general) is that all the other browsers were several times faster than ie, but most websites are designed for the lowest common denominator so all the advanced features and javascript performance simply go to waste.

Re:Save?

[tjhart85]

Unfortunately all Chrome's rapid release schedule does is make more users think updating is a waste of time after they go through 8 'updates' and they can't notice a single difference.

Updates are seamless. The end user doesn't even know that they've been updated, unless they check (and honestly, why would they).

Have you used Chrome?

Popularity contests...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm saving my judgement until after IE9 is released. Caring about which major browser most people are using is as rediculous as voting for the winning candidate just because they are winning.

I just hope they fix the issues with text looking like crap when GPU acceleration is enabled. Firefox 4 has some of the same issues as IE9 in this regard.

Re:Popularity contests...

[Lennie]

They are using the same API on Windows 7 and Vista.

Competition is Good

[chill]

I would prefer it if there is no clean winner. Competition is driving the companies to put serious efforts into the browser market. The result is everyone benefits from faster, more robust and frequently more secure browsers.

I like having Safari, Firefox, Chrome, Opera, IE and all the others out there, at each other's throats.

Re:Competition is Good

[dkleinsc]

The real kicker is that the potential direct revenue from web browsers remains $0. Even if they win, not one of these players will be able to make a browser a profit center. Which is great for everyone who uses a browser, of course, as you mentioned.

Re:Competition is Good

[gaspyy]

Yes, yes, yes. This is what fanboys of brand X forget. Having a dominant brand in any area is bad for us.
In photography, for all Canon vs. Nikon bickering, the fact that they have similar power and because they are constantly challenged by Sony, Pentax, etc. forces them to innovate.
Same with iOS vs. Android, browsers, cars and just about everything.

Personally, I'd love IE9 to be the best and coolest browser (for a while anyway). It would be yet another incentive for users to abandon IE6 or 7 and would force the others to keep up and fix long-standing issues, like the painful problems in Chrome's graphic library (Skia). I'd love to see Firefox losing some market share as a wake-up call.

Re:Competition is Good

[bunratty]

Mozilla and Opera get their revenue from their respective browsers. Microsoft makes money from users who need to buy Windows to run IE to access web applications that require IE.

Re:Competition is Good

[Mystra_x64]

We don't need IE in this. It's just making sure we all have to wait more for something that others already do.

Re:Competition is Good

[Bert64]

Personally i'd love to see IE completely die, and for competition between the other browsers continue...
IE has done immeasurable harm to the web, and continues to do so to this day, and if they ever gain a dominant market share again you can pretty much guarantee a repeat of history and another 5 year (or longer) period of lock-in and stagnation.

Re:Competition is Good

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes and yes. Well said sir.

Re:Competition is Good

[Lennie]

Google makes money when people use the internet (advertising) instead of desktop applications.

Re:Competition is Good

[Lennie]

I'm afraid IE9 will be like IE6 all over again. :-(

It looks like it will, when IE9 has been released (which will be last, this round), it will support everything the other have supported for years.

Re:Competition is Good

[Lanteran]

I like having them at each other's throats (if they weren't, we'd get another IE6) but I still think IE should be killed off quickly, yet painfully.

FTFS (mostly offtopic)

[Pojut]

Statcounter is a pretty awesome site for tracking stats on a website/blog. It's transparent, easy to use, and best of all it's free (unless you want a bigger log.) I know there are a lot of options out there, but if you're looking for a free way to track the statistics on a smallish website of yours, I highly recommend you check them out.

Not a paid endorsement; I'm just a satisfied user of their services.

IE is dead in Germany

[Nimatek]

http://ompldr.org/vNjA3aw

Re:IE is dead in Germany

[DarkXale]

Should check out Russia as well. IE is loosing both to Firefox and Opera. (24% vs ~32% for both)

Re:IE is dead in Germany

[surveyork]

I see your Germany and I throw in a Phillipines, where Firefox is also dying BTW, and top it with some Mongolia, Malaysia, Myanmar and, the final blow, Indonesia. IE is doing extremely well in Taiwan, China and South Korea, though. I noticed that IE is doing quite well in all the "Anglo-Saxon" countries (UK, Ireland, US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand).

Re:IE is dead in Germany

[muszek]

Ukraine ( http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-PL-monthly-200910-201010 ) and Ukraine ( http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-PL-monthly-200910-201010 ) seem to have the weakest IE market share. 19% and 20%. Still, there are some sites that require IE (I know of 2 banks).

Re:IE is dead in Germany

[ArsenneLupin]

Sorry, typo in URL
http://ompldr.org/vM2kwZA

Re:IE is dead in Germany

[shallot]

I think statcounter.com per-country stats just plain aren't reliable. Their graph for Croatia shows Firefox in a clear lead, but some generic popular Croatian sites whose logs I happen to have access to show a completely different picture - for example last month 43-49% IE, 35-37% Firefox, 8-12% Safari. I'm guessing their sample of local users/sites isn't representative for whatever reason - most likely, they just don't care.

Re:IE is dead in Germany

[surveyork]

Well, there are lies, damn lies and browser statistics :)

There's obviously something wrong when NetStats says that global IE usage is around 60% and Fx around 23%, and then StatCounter says IE is around 50% globally with Fx around 31%. Some other browser-o-meters also show differing figures. I admit the specific statistics for a country may be unreliable or totally wrong, but the global up/down trend seems to hold up for both NetStats and StatCounter: IE descending, Fx stable/slightly descending, Chrome skyrocketing, Safari slightly ascending, Opera stable/slightly descending.

IE-only websites

[Toe, The]

And yet just last week, a friend told me he couldn't make a filing with the Georgia Department of Revenue because "his browser was insecure." Nevermind that he was using the latest version of Safari, which is likely more secure than any version of IE.

What they actually meant was "we are too lazy to program for anything but IE... but that's OK, because 99% of the world uses IE... right?"

Re:IE-only websites

[causality]

And yet just last week, a friend told me he couldn't make a filing with the Georgia Department of Revenue because "his browser was insecure." Nevermind that he was using the latest version of Safari, which is likely more secure than any version of IE.

What they actually meant was "we are too lazy to program for anything but IE... but that's OK, because 99% of the world uses IE... right?"

Now that's interesting because they are making a positive claim about browser security. They are not merely saying "at this time we only support Internet Explorer," which would be completely different.

Since we like to solve problems with litigation in this country, to the point that there are often few or no effective alternatives, I have an idea. Why don't the makers of Safari and other browsers sue the State of Georgia for libel? They are making a claim of insecurity. As evidence, save the snippet of code/markup that checks the user-agent string and produces the message stating "your browser is insecure". Claim that the message is libel because it is based on merely not being IE, not on any rigorous study of browser security, and therefore cannot use "truth" as a defense. In fact it would not be hard to come up with evidence contradicting it. Therefore, intentional or not, it amounts to an attempt to coerce users to use IE and therefore Windows for no good reason.

The point is to make it more expensive to defend such a suit than it would have been to make a standard, browser-agnostic site. A government agency in particular has no excuse for not making their sites as accessible as possible. They are not like private companies where you can just go to a competitor if a given company refuses to be reasonable.

Re:IE-only websites

[Anonymous Coward]

And yet just last week, a friend told me he couldn't make a filing with the Georgia Department of Revenue because "his browser was insecure." Nevermind that he was using the latest version of Safari, which is likely more secure than any version of IE.

That depends on your definition of secure. IE 8 runs in a low privileged Protected Mode by default. This results in the browser running at a privileged level that is much lower than the user who launched it and is quite effective at preventing certain attacks from working.

Last I checked, Apple still hasn't added support for low privileged/low integrity mode in Safari, which means the Safari binary has all of the privileges of the user who launched it.

Re:IE-only websites

[viralMeme]

What happened when you clicked on the link?

"We have detected that the browser you are using is incompatible with this application. This site requires Internet Explorer 5.0 and above, Netscape 7.0 and above, or Firefox 1.0 and above"

Re:IE-only websites

[Anonymous Coward]

From what I remember, they haven't added full support for ASLR yet either (http://secunia.com/gfx/pdf/DEP_ASLR_2010_paper.pdf). This means successful buffer overflows (if found) can cause exploit code to run much easier than it can on other browsers who have embraced ASLR.

Re:IE-only websites

[h4rm0ny]

And a comment that contained only factual information that happened to compare IE8 favourably against Safari, was modded down Troll almost instantly.

Re:IE-only websites

[clang_jangle]

And yet just last week, a friend told me he couldn't make a filing with the Georgia Department of Revenue because "his browser was insecure."

Always a mistake to make a claim based on a second-hand anecdote. GA resident here, no windows in the house, no trouble with my state filing...

Just recently one of my Linux users was having a cow because she "couldn't log in" to an FAA site. "Only allows explorer", ahe said. Yet I logged in no problem to the same site with Opera on FreeBSD. People are stupid and helpless, that's why they need geeks to do everything for them. :)

Re:IE-only websites

[icebraining]

It was also modded up. Cowards start at 0.

Re:IE-only websites

[Anonymous Coward]

To be fair, OS X uses address randomization everywhere.

Re:IE-only websites

[Anonymous Coward]

Address space randomization is an all-or-nothing deal. You can't just set the flag on all executable images; you need to do it on all imported libraries as well. Otherwise, it's pointless (and makes NX pointless as well) because you still have executable code at predictable locations.

Sadly, Apple still hasn't resolved compatibility issues and still loads a few system libraries at predictable addresses in every process. Until they they address this problem, the Mac OS X ASLR implementation is just for show, and doesn't provide any real security value.

Re:IE-only websites

[93 Escort Wagon]

That depends on your definition of secure. IE 8 runs in a low privileged Protected Mode by default. This results in the browser running at a privileged level that is much lower than the user who launched it and is quite effective at preventing certain attacks from working.

Last I checked, Apple still hasn't added support for low privileged/low integrity mode in Safari, which means the Safari binary has all of the privileges of the user who launched it.

Apples and oranges, to some degree. In Windows you still generally have to run as an administrator for many things to work - so you really, REALLY want your browser to run at a lower privilege level than administrator!

On the Mac, things work just fine running from a non-admin account.

The big problem with my statement, of course, is that the default install does set up a single user as an administrator on the Mac - so unless the user takes that one extra step to separate the admin account from his day-to-day account, your point is a valid one. But on the Mac there's no significant downside to running the day-to-day stuff from a non-privileged account, unlike in Windows.

Re:IE-only websites

[Missing.Matter]

What exactly is the downside of running as standard user in Windows? If I need to do anything advanced it just prompts for my admin password.

Re:IE-only websites

[cbhacking]

Actually, there have been quite a few exploits for Safari as well. Also, compromising it gives the attacker as much access as the user, because it's not sandboxed (unlike IE, on Vista and Win7 at least).

The Pwn2Own contests have fairly clearly demonstrated that it's actually very easy to break Safari. It just isn't economically worth doing. Even if it takes 5x as long to get an exploit for IE, you can make 10x as much money, so that's where everybody is looking.

Re:IE-only websites

[KingMotley]

No, in windows you generally don't have to run as administrator. Only poorly written applications ever really "needed" to run as administrator, and I'll be happy to compile some code for you on linux that requires root access to run, then you can say the same thing about linux NEEDing root.

Really, have you even used windows in the past 10 years?

IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[Tumbleweed]

Gee, I wonder why a beta browser from Microsoft isn't gaining market share. Don't predict any death knells for the browser until it's actually, you know, released. Geez.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[Tom]

It's not about marketshare, it's about user numbers already declining.

That means people have tried the beta, and gone back to whatever they were using before. That is not a good sign, especially for the 50% or so that are going back to an older version of IE.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is that a bad sign? This is a software beta. Not a Google-version of a software beta, but a real software beta, and an early beta, which is not intended for actual production use. The people who downloaded it and played with it are those people who are testing their sites, testing any of the desktop integration stuff and are just checking out the user interface. Of course they'd be returning to some other browser for day-to-day use. It would be silly to expect otherwise.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[twidarkling]

Thank you. I'm not a fan of IE by any stretch (sadly, I'm in the more futile "Opera user" segment), but this really seems like a non-story. Maybe I'm just annoyed because of all of Samzenpus's troll stories yesterday being followed up with this, but I think the failure to note anywhere that IE 9 is in beta beyond "roll IE 9 out soon" is a significant failure in the summary.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[shutdown -p now]

It's not about marketshare, it's about user numbers already declining.

IE user numbers have been declining for the last, oh, 6 years or so? It's not news. IE9 is supposed to change that, but it's too early to tell.

That means people have tried the beta, and gone back to whatever they were using before.

Your typical IE user won't ever bother trying a beta (he doesn't know what a "beta" is, and doesn't hang out in places where it was announced). The people who tried the beta are mostly web developers, or just curious techies. In the grand scheme of things, they are a tiny part of IE's current 50% global market share.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[Piata]

That's because any good web developer will check to see how their sites work in IE9 and then return to their browser of choice. Your average consumer is not going to try the beta, nor will many people stick with a beta indefinitely until it's released. I have Firefox 4 installed on my computer but I only use it to check out major updates to the beta; otherwise I'm using Firefox 3.6 or the latest version of Chrome.

This article is pretty irrelevant in regards to how well IE9 will do once it launches.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

Chances are, the same happens for Firefox Betas too. It's not that they don't like it, it's that it's a beta and you can never be sure.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[QuantumBeep]

I think IE9 might help. The minute IE stops being the SOURCE OF ALL COMPUTER PROBLEMS EVER, I will stop having my users select and migrate to a different browser.

"good enough" is a huge thing in browsers.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[ThePromenader]

Almost. Most of the 'people' who tried the IE9 beta are most likely webmasters/web app developers/tech guys. The declining shares of existing (aka: being used by actual everyday web-users) is indeed important, but comparing the two is apples to oranges.

Re:IE9 hasn't gained much? Really?

[Tom]

That's because any good web developer will check to see how their sites work in IE9 and then return to their browser of choice.

Those people don't show up on browser statistics of other places.

Beautifully Gone

[jimmerz28]

Oh no I won't be able to see that more "Beautiful Web" after all -.-

Letter to IE

[Yuioup]

Dear Internet Explorer,
Please die.
Signed-
The Internet

Re:Letter to IE

[wikdwarlock]

Mr./Mrs. The Internet,

Like it or not, I've been shaping and defining you for more than a decade.

Signed-
Internet Explorer

Re:Letter to IE

[MobileTatsu-NJG]

Dear Internet Explorer,
Please die.
Signed-
The Internet

Dear Internet Explorer,

Thank you for being part of the competition that's keeping browsers from stagnating. We wish you long life.

Signed-
The Sensible People on the Internet Who Didn't Just Spout that 'Competition is Good' in Order to Earn Insightful Mods.

Hi Miss Interpret, this is Captain Obvious

[VGPowerlord]

FTA:

This is not the result Microsoft would have hoped for, but the writing was on the wall when we heard last week from CEO Steve Ballmer that IE9 was downloaded only 10 million times within 6 weeks after launch.

FTA's other article, that the quote is from:

According to Ballmer, 10 million IE9 Betas have been downloaded in the six weeks after launch, making it the most successful beta browser in Microsoft's history.

See a difference there? If there were 10 million downloads of IE9 after it's launched wouldn't be surprising (it's usually not pushed out on Windows Update then), but that is actually a LOT of betas, even if people were just downloading it to see if the hardware accelerated rendering actually worked.

Who knew that one word (Betas) made that big a difference.

Re:Hi Miss Interpret, this is Captain Obvious

[Arancaytar]

Who knew that one word (Betas) made that big a difference

Looks like MS learned from Google on that point.

Re:Hi Miss Interpret, this is Captain Obvious

[VGPowerlord]

Who knew that one word (Betas) made that big a difference

Looks like MS learned from Google on that point.

Except that products Microsoft label as betas really are betas*, unlike Google who labels everything as Beta until it starts affecting their business interests (See: Gmail).

*Insert obligatory "Microsoft releases are betas, too, or should be since they're only beta quality."

I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Rogerborg]

What's that? I need to pay you to "upgrade" my XP Pro partition to Vista or Windows 7 first? Ah hah, ah hahahah. No, but seriously... what, you are serious? Aaaaaaaaaahahahahaha! Oh, you're priceless, you really are. Unlike your software.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[ztransform]

Microsoft Vista? $200. Microsoft 7? $300. Losing your hard-drive and being unable to recover because your licence is tied to a particular disk in a particular physical machine? Priceless!

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[twidarkling]

Have fun as more and more software says "Fuck you" and you can't run it on your fancy-shmancy XP Pro any more, because you think using a decade-old OS is a great idea. Since you said "XP Pro partition," you're apparently no stranger to running multiple OSes. Get with the times, there's ways to get Win7 for pretty cheap. Find one.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Civil_Disobedient]

Why? Is there some software that requires Win7? Oh! Right! IE9.

Chicken... meet egg.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[saleenS281]

What's that, they aren't releasing software for a platform that's a decade old? Jerks! Are you equally pissed you can't get firefox 4.0 for Redhat 7.2 from Redhat? Not to mention you haven't been able to get an update in how long? It never ceases to amaze me how unreasonable people are.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[0123456]

Have fun as more and more software says "Fuck you" and you can't run it on your fancy-shmancy XP Pro any more, because you think using a decade-old OS is a great idea.

At that point it will presumably be a good time to upgrade to Linux.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[bunratty]

Apples to oranges. Can you think of other popular Windows software that will not run on Windows XP, besides the latest version of IE?

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[jimicus]

Microsoft Vista? $200. Microsoft 7? $300. Losing your hard-drive and being unable to recover because your licence is tied to a particular disk in a particular physical machine? Priceless!

It isn't, the OEM license is tied to the motherboard. New motherboard, new license. The only exception is a like-for-like replacement in order to effect a repair - if there's no like-for-like on the market, then it sucks to be you.

Interestingly, this means that Microsoft are essentially forcing small PC shops (which can't reasonably be expected to keep a good stock of spares for every PC they've ever built, not when motherboards seldom stay on the market that long) to either break the terms of the license or absorb quite a bit of additional risk over the large OEM - the customer can't very reasonably be expected to fork out for another Windows license when their motherboard failed under warranty.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[KiloByte]

Considering how big a regression Vista and 7 are, it's a rational decision to use XP if you still need Windows.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Beelzebud]

Direct X 10 and 11.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[bunratty]

I was thinking along the lines of end-user applications, not APIs supported by the operating system. Sorry if I did not make this clear. I thought the intention of the question would be obvious. Users run applications. Are there other applications that users need to upgrade their version of Windows in order to use the latest version?

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Mesh

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[TheRaven64]

Calling XP 'a decade old' is misleading. Until very recently (i.e. this year), it was still shipped by MS OEMs - if you bought a Netbook in January, for example, it probably came with XP. Supporting a product that you were shipping less than a year ago is very different from supporting a decade-old product. Your comparison ti Red Hat 7.2 is misleading, because Red Hat 7.2 wasn't being sold by Red Hat early this year. You could still get updates for Red Hat Enterprise Linux 4 (including updates of third-party software), which was superseded by RHEL 5 in 2007, until 2009.

Using FireFox in your example is also misleading, because it's not made by the same company, and no company has any obligation to support another company's products. A better example would be Safari on OS X, as both are made by Apple. Last time I turned on my PowerBook, running OS X 10.4, it had an update to Safari 4 waiting, which contained a back-port of most of the features of Safari 5. Apple stopped shipping OS X 10.4 long before Microsoft stopped shipping XP.

When did Microsoft stop shipping XP? I just checked on their site - apparently it was one week ago: October 22, 2010. Not quite a decade.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[bunratty]

I've never heard of Mesh. Perhaps you could think of popular applications that will not run on Windows XP? Besides, it looks like Mesh is also from Microsoft. Any popular non-Microsoft applications that will not run on Windows XP?

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[canajin56]

Just because your unreasonable expectations have thus far been met by Herculean backwards compatibility efforts doesn't make them reasonable. If you use new API calls, it won't work on old systems. Thus, nobody ever uses new features, and everything stagnates. In another article, somebody posted that they won't upgrade to Windows Vista/7/8 because they no longer correctly run Windows 3.1 software. Insanity.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Colonel Korn]

Microsoft Vista? $200. Microsoft 7? $300. Losing your hard-drive and being unable to recover because your licence is tied to a particular disk in a particular physical machine? Priceless!

For well under $300 you can get about a hundred Windows 7 (10 for each version of 7, spread over the many versions) licenses for your family's computers via Technet. Or you can buy a single license for $100. Or you can buy 3 in a Family Pack for $50 each. Even the non-upgrade retail license is $170, not even close to your $300.

And there are no versions tied to a disk. The closest is an OEM version of the OS, which is tied to a motherboard. But even then, if you want to change motherboards you can just call MS and they'll happily let you reactivate provided the 5 word explanation, "I have a new motherboard."

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Anonymous Coward]

Regression? Are you high? Tighter more granular security controls, better process threading, better multitasking, better and more stable scalability, ability to run applications that were developed this decade.

Windows Vista wasn't a very strong product, but it did offer several improvements over Windows XP, at the cost of system requirements and some driver issues, mostly as a result of the kernel changes.

Windows 7 is a huge jump in usability, simplicity, and stability. When you start using a product in the real world, outside of your parents stern warnings about messing up their computer, you might actually have an idea of what's being offered.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[surveyork]

I'd add that I don't see the "decade-old" argument as valid. XP is old, yes, but it's quite good in its last incarnations, SP2 & SP3. The only reason I'm using 7 right now is because my old motherboard broke and there were no replacements/a replacement would be awfully expensive, so --> new computer. 7 is good, but so was XP. Now, some may say that I grew accustomed to XP and that's why I don't value 7. To those I say, well, I grew "accustomed" to Me too, but my cyber-life took a turn for the better as soon as I could ditch it. Now that I ditched XP, my cyber-life hasn't improved much. I'd say it stays about the same but with Aero Glass (tm) graphics. And yes, I do know that things have changed under the hood too, but the whole XP-to-7 experience feels meh. I'm not complaining, though, because the experience could have been awful, like many people's (with exceptions) XP-to-Vista. tl;dr: 7 is good. XP is old, but good, too. I understand why people don't upgrade until their computers broke/software won't run anymore.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[VGPowerlord]

You won't upgrade to Windows 7 because there are no "popular Windows software that will not run on Windows XP."

Programmers won't create Windows 7-only programs because there's not users that have Windows 7 to justify ending support for Windows XP.

Chicken... egg.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[DarkXale]

None, yet (that doesn't exist modified/simplified in some ways for XP) - because XP still has a too large userbase - and most standard programs just aren't sensitive enough to care.

What can kill XP however are 64-bit programs. Now you don't need to point out that XP has a 64-bit version; i know that; but what does need to be pointed out is that the 64-bit version of XP is poorly supported. Tons of missing drivers, and outdated drivers, results in a OS that regularly doesn't behave that nicely compared to the NT6 OSs and XP 32-bit.

This however is still likely some ways off.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Doctor Faustus]

What's that, they aren't releasing software for a platform that's a decade old?

And still the market leader. There's no way they would ever not release for WinXP if it wasn't the same company.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Anonymous Coward]

Supporting existing products is nothing at all like developing for them. When people mention "XP is a decade old" they don't mean it's been 9 years since the last update... they mean it's been 9 years since the original platform release. There are a lot of differences between XP and 7. The top 3 most relevant are probably, Direct2D (new), Media Foundation (new, replacing DirectShow), WIC (new, replacing GDI+ codecs).

People paint SP2 and SP3 as a development 'refresh' of Windows XP, but quite frankly they don't know what they're talking about. I'm sorry but very little changed underneath.

Essentially IE9 isn't even portable to XP because DX10 is stopping it. The IE team would need to introduce a D3D/GDI+ compatibility layer for XP. So what's the point? I too would say "Fuck you!" to the XP users if I were Microsoft. Even if you legally purchased XP, you would be doing Microsoft a favor by pirating Windows 7.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Anonymous Coward]

"Windows 7 is a huge jump in usability, simplicity, and stability."

Another MS fanbot.

XP runs everything I need it to.
XP is paid for.
Usability and simplicity improvements are totally subjective.
Stability is a toss up since XP drivers are more mature but the W7 OS is more secure.

The bottom line is that W7 can not answer with tangible numbers how it will increase my revenue or reduce my expenses.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Briareos]

Just Cause 2?

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Bert64]

Technet subscriptions are only for "evaluation and testing"... If you are using such software in production then you are breaking the terms of the license.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[surveyork]

Oh, yeah, that's the other argument: Lots of differences under the hood, Direct whatever not available for XP... Yes, 7 is better, but that doesn't change the fact that XP was/is good enough (I know, I know) for most users.

Some of those features not available for XP could have been ported to XP if MS really wanted to. But MS wants to sell new OS licenses.

Obligatory car analogy: Vista & 7 are like brand new models of cars with ESP, Super-Mega-ABS, 12 airbags, GPS, iPod dock... while XP is like a humble, but still perfectly-functioning sedan with ABS, 2 airbags and a CD player. The ESP, Super-Mega-ABS and 12 airbags are very nice, sure, but the humble sedan still does the job for most people, and the economy is not ripe for unnecessary expenses. When the sedan breaks beyond repair, people will buy the new model.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Bert64]

Most applications currently being developed still support XP, despite its age.

For general day to day use, 7 is not really any more stable than xp was. And other under the hood improvements mean nothing to the average user either.

Windows 7 is significantly different to XP such that users will face a learning curve to use the new interface, this may not have much impact on the average slashdot user but to joe public it can easily put them off. linux and mac have the same problem, a new interface may technically be superior and given a clean slate (ie someone with no prior experience) might be easier to learn, but users are burdened by what they're already familiar with and hate change.

There are also gaps in the driver support in 7, many older peripherals will simply not work, also some applications no longer work.

And finally, while not as much of a pig as vista was, 7 still has significantly higher system requirements than xp, meaning it generally runs slower on the same hardware.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[scot4875]

XP runs everything I need it to.
XP is paid for.
Usability and simplicity improvements are totally subjective.

Then quit calling people names and just stick with XP? None of us will care. Honest.

--Jeremy

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[QuantumBeep]

Counterexample: I had MS' activation drone tell me to buy Windows again when I told him I had a new motherboard.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[hedwards]

That's my plan. Few of the programs I use really require Windows and most of them are available for OSX for the price I've already paid. Or run under Crossover Office. Having been screwed one too many times by MS, I'm not going to be buying anything more from them. It'll be a challenge and I may have to tolerate giving them a small amount of money through G4WL and such, but I'm not buying anything that they sell, especially not Windows or Office.

But what's likely to hurt them more is that I'm not going to fix their problems. Meaning that it's going to take more and more to get me to fix problems that are caused by MS' incompetence. I've lost way too much time troubleshooting what turned out to be their mistake trying to use their incompetently written documentation. Thankfully Google makes it a lot easier to troubleshoot than in the past, but still I shouldn't have to do that.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[QuantumBeep]

A lot of people don't upgrade their stuff until it needs replacing. Your arguments are similar the the standard logic for deciding when to buy a car.

Windows 7 is good. You can do your stuff. It doesn't run slowly on a remotely modern computer. It doesn't crash.

The mistake here is expecting any operating system to be a "huge jump" in anything. Windows 2000 is good enough for almost everyone. Windows 7 lets you get a *whole lot* more stuff done if you have a lot of software, multiple monitors (I'd be lost without the new titlebar-dragging mechanics), gaming hardware, etc etc etc.

The other thing that happens when you get a new operating system is that you get all the latest backend stuff that users don't know about but get upset if they don't have (DX11, WPF, desktop compositing, IPv6, WDDM, that kind of thing).

It's a lot easier to write and maintain spiffy, modern software if you're using recent APIs and standards. You're welcome to stick with what works, but don't expect the rest of the world to wait for you.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[hedwards]

Is that even legal? I mean MS can put anything it likes in the EULA, but actually getting it enforced is another matter. They've chosen to be bound by the laws of WA state for these things, and they'd have a really tough time getting any money in court for that sort of infringement as state law requires them to prove damages.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Anonymous Coward]

Just Cause 2

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[QuantumBeep]

It's not apples and oranges, it's apples versus half-apples. Software does run on old operating systems, but often features have to be lopped off.

DX10/11 is the most obvious example, of course. Your game will run on Windows XP. If you like tesselation/dynamic DOF/CUDA, you need to upgrade.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Anonymous Coward]

XP doesn't have updates for software enhancements, it only has security updates now. Nice try, but your OS is too old to be supported. Also, the hardware accelerated rendering uses technology not available to XP (DX10/DX11). Mozilla had to run it on OpenGL for it to work on XP.
 
It doesn't matter how long ago you got XP, it's not supported, period.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[jimicus]

The contents of your average Microsoft EULA were, for some reason, mostly ignored in the antitrust trials and even today contain clauses that should raise eyebrows.

For instance, a company can't use an OEM version of Windows to form the basis of an image they roll out to their PCs. They can, however, use a version they purchased through an Enterprise agreement. Such agreements include language to the effect that you license Windows for every PC which is capable of running Windows - no exceptions. So that includes those that came with an OEM license that already covers the version you're buying - and you can have Linux on the desktop but you'll be paying for Windows anyhow.

I agree that I'm not sure how well such things would stand up in court but I have yet to meet an organisation that has the stomach to openly take Microsoft on.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[bunratty]

I never said anything about an argument not to upgrade to Windows 7. I said that it's fair to complain about Microsoft not making IE 9 run on Windows XP, because all other browsers and popular programs from other companies do run on Windows XP.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yes, that's a great idea. Backport the new WDDM driver architecture to the stable XP. Are you crazy or something?

As if that itself isn't enough...

Nevermind the fact that none of the XP PCs at the time are even DX10-capable (DX10 machines came preinstalled with Vista). Nevermind the fact that it took 2 years for IHVs to create stable WDDM drivers for Vista... which also would've tarnished XP's reputation. Nevermind the fact that this would create two official competing driver models, with only one supporting DX9 (XPDM) and the other DX10+ (WDDM)... nope not confusing at all.

Major fundamental changes to a Windows version? When has Microsoft decided in favor of that? Windows doesn't work in that way. Linux does. And both policies suck in their own special way.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[bunratty]

You can optionally use newer API calls and fall back to older ones if they aren't available. Besides, this has nothing to do with my or anyone else's expectations. The bottom line is that Windows XP users, which still make the majority of the desktop and laptop market, will not be able to run IE9. Most IE8 users who want a newer browser will need to switch to Firefox or Chrome. They're not going to buy a new computer or do a OS reinstall just to get a newer browser.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[vlueboy]

Technet subscriptions are only for "evaluation and testing"... If you are using such software in production then you are breaking the terms of the license.

Plus the GP assumes all geeks just buy in packets of 3 and 10 when adding a single new PC to our living rooms. He's also assuming we'll pay the min $200 USD to save less than that same $200 dollars for the one PC we're building per year. He is also assuming that we all have fat pipes to download the 4GB DVD's, and that we don't prefer shrinkwrapped proof in case MS activation ever acts up. MS only gives you boxes in the 3-times-costlier tier of pro subscriptions.

But we'll bite. Just have our IT boss foot that personal use bill... oh, wait.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Anonymous Coward]

This just in: Macfag doesn't like MS. Congradulations fuckface.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Lanteran]

I still want to know what idiot had the idea of putting windows 7 on a netbook...

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[Kjella]

Yep, bought be a netbook this summer (May? June?) and it came with XP, I couldn't get it without the Microsoft tax but I figure at those rates it couldn't have been much. I see buying a legal OEM Windows 7 Home Premium here costs 995,- NOK and the total for the whole netbook was slightly over 1900,- NOK. I think Microsoft were selling these licenses at "please don't ship with Linux" rates, really.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[mjwx]

Interestingly, this means that Microsoft are essentially forcing small PC shops (which can't reasonably be expected to keep a good stock of spares for every PC they've ever built, not when motherboards seldom stay on the market that long) to either break the terms of the license or absorb quite a bit of additional risk

Or call Microsoft to have the activation limit reset. BTW, I think for a retail copy of Windows that limit is about 3.

I hate Microsoft as much as the next /.er but they do enough actual evil. We don't need to make shit up.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[foxylad]

Hear hear. I moved to linux years ago, and one of the unintended benefits was that I could honestly say "I haven't used windows for ages - you'd be better off finding someone else."

Linux has given me days of my life back, and I don't miss that sick trapped feeling where you "just take a quick look" and end up doing a full reinstall and still have them coming back day after day because some other odd application they used to have has disappeared.

Oh yes, and virtualbox is an end run around all those "I can't move off windows cos I need to run X" excuses. (Where X is a given application, not Xwindows, ya geek!)

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[jimicus]

I'm not making shit up. Microsoft have a dedicated licensing team who are happy to answer all sorts of questions, and I called them about this exact issue.

In Microsoft's view, the OEM license is tied to the motherboard. You can have the activation reset if it complains at you, eg. because you upgraded some other bit of hardware. But (again, this is Microsoft's view, not mine), a motherboard replacement which is not a like-for-like repair - regardless of the reason - is sufficient to effectively kill the OEM license. If you're a small computer shop and you couldn't source an identical motherboard so you had to use something else - tough. Sucks to be you.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[mjwx]

1. Select "Activate by telephone".

2. Ring the number and type in the 36 character long string displayed on screen.

3. THEM: Hello Welcome to Microsoft Australia (from a man with a thick Indian accent)
ME: Uhh, Hi, I'm unable to activate Windows.
THEM: Your activation limit has been reached.
ME: I've had to get my PC repaired.
THEM: Please type this code into the box one number at a time in six number blocks.
/minutes of bad Indian accents and slow typing.
THEM: Windows should have now activated.
THEM: Is there anyting else I can help you with.
THEM: Would you mind completing a short survey about your experience with Microsoft support?
ME: No thank you.
/click.

4. Profit^W Activation.

As I said, no need to make shit up, if you cant figure out this simple process I've been using for years then it really must suck to be you.

Re:I quite fancy giving IE9 a try

[jimicus]

I am well aware you can work around it. I'm talking about the letter of the EULA, not whether or not such a scenario would leave you high and dry in the real world.

For me, IE = work only

[gstoddart]

I only ever use IE for work machines, because far too many web sites I use at work are Microsoft stuff that doesn't always play well with other browsers. For most stuff at work I use Firefox.

I just don't trust IE -- for years it was one of the worst vectors for exploits, malware, and all sorts of annoying shit. If there's an equivalent to noscript for IE, I might consider using it.

Until then, IE is a "when all else fails, and you have to trust the site", otherwise, it's something I stay away from as much as possible.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[RivenAleem]

Don't you mean, "for years it was the only browser worth attempting to exploit"? Perhaps with a greater market share we might start seeing exploits (coughFiresheepcough) for other browsers.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[Mordok-DestroyerOfWo]

Firesheep isn't an exploit. It's a plugin that allows capturing packets and recreating other user's cookies. If you want to spread FUD, please make it believable.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[gstoddart]

Don't you mean, "for years it was the only browser worth attempting to exploit"?

No, I don't mean that at all. I love how people on Slashdot think that they know what I mean more than I do. Firefox and Mozilla have been around for a long time, it's not like they're brand new and nobody is aware of them.

I mean IE ran with a security policy that more or less was wide open, and that you could set to "allow everything" or "allow nothing" -- invariably some %^$#^& POS web-site the company I worked for would force us to use basically expected to be able to run everything. When it didn't work, HR would say "oh, just turn down your browser security".

Basically these shitty IE specific sites would only work if you ran in the most unsafe mode that existed. The solution was to keep IE as an insecure browser because the stuff I was required to use it for demanded it.

Perhaps with a greater market share we might start seeing exploits (coughFiresheepcough) for other browsers.

I have no idea that people are going to work on exploting Firefox -- though, the example you give isn't an exploit against Firefox, it just uses it.

Things like NoScript allow me to turn off the most likely vectors of attack, or at the very least, get rid of some of the annoyances. While it doesn't stop all of them, it at least gives me better control over what I'm willing to run. I am not aware of a tool in IE that allows me to selectively say "run this, don't run that" -- I can go through the nuisance of setting a site as a trusted site, but for a one-time thing, it just doesn't work.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[Late Adopter]

Firesheep is an exploit against ALL browsers, if the *site* being browsed is vulnerable. Firesheep is coded for Firefox for the *exploiter* to use, not the exploitee.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[swilver]

One would think that "work" usually being the most anal about "security" it would be the place where IE was seen least.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[gstoddart]

One would think that "work" usually being the most anal about "security" it would be the place where IE was seen least.

At my old company, HR were among the worst offenders -- regularly requiring us to go to survey sites or various 3rd party sites to do various stupid tasks. Sometimes Finance did this as well.

Several times I tried to tell them "why the hell are you sending me to a 3rd party site when we have something that does this in house" or pointing out that the sites were requiring way too many permissions for what they were doing for us. Unfortunately, the tedious people in the beaurocracy of some organizations just don't understand why you're objecting to being sent to a 3rd party site that needs to install an ActiveX control.

Not visiting these sites for the stupid reasons cited was something which would get you in trouble.

In many cases, requirements from HR and some of the other groups more or less meant you couldn't have your IE set to the level of security IT mandated. So, they essentially forced us to run IE as an insecure tool, and only use it for very limited things.

It really does come down to stupid and lazy outranking sane and careful in some cases.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[twebb72]

Theres a solution to your problem... Stop watching pr0n at work.

Re:For me, IE = work only

[hedwards]

And interestingly enough, the devs that handle Firefox are still putting in new features to head off future exploits. It's not that they're immune from vulnerabilities, it's that they sit on them for less time before fixing them.

Mobile devices

[Albanach]

I wonder if the figures include iPads? Apple have shipped almsot ten million all of which are pretty much required to use Safari as their browser. I'd have to imagine ten million additional clients would show up in the stats.

Re:Mobile devices

[jomegat]

iPads are just a teardrop on the ocean. What about phone browsers? My guess is that browsing from a phone is becoming a bigger part of the pie, and IE just isn't in that game. Note that the browsers that are growing are the ones available for phones.

Who cares?

[Anonymous Coward]

Does it really matter if your browser has a large market share?

We don't pay for these browsers and there are no advertisements on the browsers. What difference does it make which browser you choose?

Re:Who cares?

[bunratty]

The larger the usage share of the browser you use, the more likely web developers will be to test their sites in the browser you use, and thus the more websites will work properly in the web browser you use.

Re:Who cares?

[hedwards]

True, but there isn't much advantage once you get above 30% or so. And really if you've got 20% of the web share, competent devs can't ignore that.

Re:Who cares?

[satuon]

Maybe having more than that will insure the incompetent devs don't ignore you as well?

Still Enough Market Share

[s31523]

While the IE is losing ground a bit, they have enough share to make it a pain to develop web apps... I am still plagued with clients that have older IE versions and don't upgrade and I end up having to work around all the HTML and CSS standards that IE does not support or just plain ignore... So, I am glad to hear they are losing ground. I wonder if it is because web developers have stopped making exceptions in their source code for shitty IE browser support of STANDARDS and people are switching browsers to get their web pages to look the right way... Microsoft, are you listening?

Frankly...

[jd]

...I'm not impressed with any browser right now. Chrome still has privacy issues (and also has standards conformance issues), Firefox is getting very slow and will occasionally leave zombie processes, IE is as naff as always, Opera and Safari don't support the plugins that I actually do need.

And NONE of them support scripting using LaTeX or Metapost (HTML is becoming an inferior typesetting language rather than the presentation language it used to be, with virtually nobody implementing the complex standards anyway). Seems to me that if people want CSS and HTML to let you typeset, you'd be better off with a browser supporting LaTeX 2e and the A tag natively, then emulating HTML. The results can't be any worse and would add all the features people wanted in HTML5 and will doubtless pester for in HTML6.

Re:Frankly...

[Chrisq]

...I'm not impressed with any browser right now. Chrome still has privacy issues (and also has standards conformance issues), Firefox is getting very slow and will occasionally leave zombie processes

If its any consolation Firefox 4 beta is a lot faster. It is less stable than the stable version (Doh!), but I have not had to kill any zombie processes. If they get the reliability right before release FF4 could be great.

Re:Frankly...

[BitZtream]

So your solution to the fact that browsers don't currently actually follow the published standard they are designed for is to add another standard, which they weren't designed for, and have them support it properly?

When someone can't chew gum and walk at the same time, you don't give them a stick of gum, keys to your car and keys to your boat and tell them to chew gum while driving the boat around the car as it goes down the road.

I assure you, the results would be FAR worse.

Re:Frankly...

[jd]

It's more a case of "if they don't support the published standard, maybe they can use something that does fully support all the stuff they want and only have to write one tiny bit of code". I think I can trust these developers to handle one tag.

Stories like this make me mad

[gravis777]

I'll probably get marked redundant, but, come on, really? IE9 hasn't been released yet! The fact that it had 10 million downloads in six weeks while IT WAS STILL IN BETA should say that IE is not dying. Its marketshare may be slipping, but not by enough to worry about.

I think the only reason this story even got posted is because this is Slashdot, and any chance to take a stab at Microsoft, whether founded on actual facts, fluff, or paranioa, always seems to be welcome.

Re:Stories like this make me mad

[sjames]

All those downloads that aren't just web developers wondering what new hell IE is bringing to their lives are people who want something different. Since the numbers are declining again, it indicates that whatever it is they were looking for, IE9 didn't give it to them.

MS is certainly happy enough to crow about the number of IE9 downloads, /. is happy to deflate the hype a bit.

Chrome issues ?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Chrome still has privacy issues (and also has standards conformance issues)"

What issues would that be?

Re:Chrome issues ?

[shugah]

lacking support for CSS 4.0?

Re:Chrome issues ?

[jd]

It doesn't support drag-n-drop properly, for starters. A lot of webapps I'm using at the mo use this, which means I can't use Chrome with them.

One swallow does not a summer make

[Jozza The Wick]

But, I recently installed Chromium on my wife's laptop. This is a person that didn't like 'Mor-zilla' (as she kept referring to FF) and doesn't like 'change', nor things that aren't 'mainstream'. She prefers Chromium over IE though...

Re:One swallow does not a summer make

[surveyork]

Is your wife Spanish, by chance? Morcilla and Nocilla, typical Spanish cuisine :)

Re:One swallow does not a summer make

[Jozza The Wick]

No, she's a Canadian-born, Missouri-raised, midwestern girl.... :)

Spin Cycle

[westlake]

The spin put on this story is strange - when you look at Net Applications itself:

Windows 7 has by far the highest share of Internet Explorer 9.0 beta users. Our browser usage numbers show that Internet Explorer 9 Beta has grown about 2.5 times from 0.61% in September to 1.46% in October on the Windows 7 platform. Worldwide, Internet Explorer 9 Beta represents 0.32% of browser usage share across all operating systems. Windows 7 and Internet Explorer 9

The IE9 Beta replaces 32 and 64 bit IE 7/8.

That is something new for IE and for Windows as a mass-market OS.

In Net Applications' OS platform stats only Windows, OSX and iOS have a greater than 1% global market share. That is a very impressive performance for Apple's mobile devices - and Win 7's performance doesn't look too shabby. But, for all the attention given to mobile, it remains a very small part of a picture that doesn't seem to be changing very much. Top Operating System Share Trend

IE9 does "improve" Vista, nice little bonus

[vriemeister]

I refuse to pay Microsoft for an upgrade from Vista to Windows 7, an upgrade I believe should be viewed as a massive UI bug fix. But I was pleasantly surprised that installing the IE9 Beta also installed or updated various other software components so that Vista is at least mildly less annoying. For instance: right clicking the taskbar no longer results in a 10 second hdd thrashing pause before my dual-core 2gb ram machine figures out how to pull up a menu. So that's nice. I still surf the web with Chrome though :)

Re:IE9 does "improve" Vista, nice little bonus

[Colonel Korn]

For instance: right clicking the taskbar no longer results in a 10 second hdd thrashing pause before my dual-core 2gb ram machine figures out how to pull up a menu.

Vista is about 10x faster than that even on a netbook with 1 gig of ram. Something's not playing right with your hardware, I think.

Re:IE9 does "improve" Vista, nice little bonus

[surveyork]

I had a similar problem with XP. The "Sent To" menu was quite slow, and it was quite annoying when I hovered over it when trying to point to some other option. But I digress. When I switched antivirus, the problem was gone.

for those too lazy

[__aatirs3925]

For those too lazy to search you can check out the w3c browser statistics here and you'll notice that the stats are:
IE: 31.1%
Firefox: 45.1%
Chrome: 17.3%
Safari: 3.7%
Opera: 2.2%

Those are the estimates for September and I'm assuming that's from all of the doctype fetching. Though, I predict that Firefox will lose numbers to Chrome soon because FF isn't what it used to be, rather Chrome is what FF used to be to IE back in the day IMO.

Re:for those too lazy

[Lanteran]

I'd argue that w3c is generally visited by web developers. You're pretty much guaranteed to get a lower IE turnout among those who actually code for it.

Re:for those too lazy

[__aatirs3925]

I would assume they get the numbers from the doctype ie:

!DOCTYPE HTML PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/strict.dtd"

That one is from /.'s source code.

Hey, it's a FREE Program

[Nom du Keyboard]

Interesting how so much is being read into a program that is free from most vendors. This is not exactly adding to the bottom line in any direct fashion for any of these companies.

Don't run on Linux

[devent]

IE9 don't run on Linux, neither does IE8. Just tried to install it for fun, and see if how IE looks now. Didn't used IE since IE6 with Windows 2000, or something.

Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[recoiledsnake]

Talk about jumping to conclusions:

This is not the result Microsoft would have hoped for, but the writing was on the wall when we heard last week from CEO Steve Ballmer that IE9 was downloaded only 10 million times within 6 weeks after launch. That is a big number, but given the expensive marketing campaign, Microsoft surely needed much more. We remember: Apple got 11 million Safari 4 downloads within one week and with a simple press release.

Err, that's 10 million beta downloads according to the linked article, making it the most popular IE beta ever(according to Ballmer). That's in contrast to the Safari number which was a regular version launch.

And the drop in IE8 numbers was:

This trend is even more puzzling as IE8 shed market share for the first time in its history and fell from 29.06% to 29.01% (a number that does not included shares of IE8 fragmented versions as Net Applications recently decided not to publish this data anymore.)

A drop of 0.05%? That seems to be well within the margin of error and might have to do with the non-inclusion of IE8 fragmented versions.

The article is bad and the title and summary of the Slashdot are even worse. Lets save the news of IE9's death after it has been released(in Spring 2011), okay?

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Saint Gerbil]

TBH the drop IE usage is probably more to do with the "browser choice" update finally getting to more users.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[commodore64_love]

Yeah the summary is painfully pathetic.

I looked at the share and see IE is still outnumbering Firefox by almost 2 times but somehow the submitter translated that to "Firefox is close to be surpassing IE in europe". Uh... no. If this was a NASCAR race, firefox would be 2 laps behind and still trying to catch up. Not close.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[shawb]

And using the phrase "may not be enough to use IE" is a bit hyperbolic considering that IE is still used over 50% of the time. That's twice as much as the current second place browser, Firefox. Which has twice as much usage as the third place browser, Chrome.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[tbannist]

Apparently you didn't look hard enough.

From the article:

"IE is now a 39.53% in Europe and Firefox at 38.65%."

Unless you're using some new fangled kind of math, that's not double.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[commodore64_love]

Ooops. I was looking at this "Europe: IE's defenses are down... Firefox with 31.24% and IE with 49.22%," but that's the world numbers.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Kjella]

Yeah. If you look at the graph, you'll see that Firefox is lower now than a year ago. If Chrome hadn't been there it's quite possible they'd be the biggest already.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Anonymous Coward]

Who the fuck cares about IE9? What I want to know: Is IE6 dead yet?

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Anonymous Coward]

Sensationalism produced by arbitrary exaggeration and misinterpretation?

On slashdot?

Say it ain't so!

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Hal_Porter]

The real news is that Opera is number one in the Ukraine.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-UA-monthly-200910-201010

And the women there are hot too. All I need is an AK47 to keep off the gopniks and a plane ticket and I'll be all set.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[ThePromenader]

(Prods spear into side of rotting, deformed IE6 cadaver, just to be sure. After a moment of thought, heads to the shed for the gas can.)

Here's hoping it doesn't return as a zombie.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Anonymous Coward]

Safari is a pile of junk. Who in their right mind would use it?

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[captain_dope_pants]

Unfortunately not - as a web developer I wish it were. In some sectors (business / politcal in the UK) it's up at 10% ish due to companies being locked in to old, old software written specifically to work with IE6. One site I wrote that is aimed slap bang at those sectors had 12% IE6 about a year or so ago - now down to 8%. I wish it would die - I hate having to write for it - but my clients don't want to alienate their potential customers.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Anonymous Coward]

also take into account (and I'm not on a mac) that Safari 4 would have been an 'automatic update'
apple pushed it out and people just included it in the list of other updates coming through

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Anonymous Coward]

Nobody gives a shit about what Europe is using. The majority of the world uses IE.

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[Skrapion]

The reason Europe's numbers are interesting is because in Europe Internet Explorer isn't bundled with Windows 7. On new machines, people actually choose their browser, which makes for statistics with less skew. (There's still some skew because Windows 7 is still the minority and because of regional differences, but it's a step up.)

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[dudpixel]

or the fact that the market is growing, and not as many new devices are getting IE. The market share drop does not necessarily mean people are ditching IE8. The number of IE8 users could in fact still be growing...who knows?

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[sac13]

Apparently you didn't look hard enough.

From the article:

"IE is now a 39.53% in Europe and Firefox at 38.65%."

Unless you're using some new fangled kind of math, that's not double.

He's using politician math... You get whatever results you need to support your preconceived notions...

Re:Reports of IE9's death greatly exaggerated.

[anton_kg]

the most beta - that's because all IE releases never leave a "beta" stage.

Why is Europe more hostile to IE?

[jurgemaister]

I'm kind of curious what makes the European market adopt non-IE browsers faster than the North American market.

Re:Why is Europe more hostile to IE?

[doktor-hladnjak]

A legally mandated ballot screen. http://www.engadget.com/2010/02/19/windows-7s-european-browser-ballot-screen-revealed-rolling-out/

Re:Why is Europe more hostile to IE?

[jurgemaister]

If that's how fragile IE customer loyalty is it's obvious that IE/msft has as much as a credibility issue as a technology issue.
Not that it surprises me. Every person I know with more that average insight in computers has been advocating anything else as long as there has been a real alternative.

Re:Why is Europe more hostile to IE?

[surveyork]

The ballot screen provided a few extra downloads for the other browsers, but didn't change much, if at all. Early reports were encouraging for IE competitors, but it turned out that the balance didn't tip as much as some had anticipated. Note that, when faced with the ballot screen, many people dismissed it/chose IE, because they only knew about the big "e". Europe as a whole doesn't like IE much, but the trend was already rolling before the ballot was in place. Did it help? Just a tad.

According to StatCounter, IE still rules in Europe, but only by ~1%.

Re:Why is Europe more hostile to IE?

[99BottlesOfBeerInMyF]

The ballot screen provided a few extra downloads for the other browsers, but didn't change much, if at all. Early reports were encouraging for IE competitors, but it turned out that the balance didn't tip as much as some had anticipated.

I don't really think the results of the ballot screen will be noticeable for some time. Given average turnover rates only about 6% of people in the EU in an average sales quarter would even see the ballot. So we need to wait at least a year to get numbers outside the margin for error of the studies I've seen. It will be four years or more before we can accurately judge the level of impact the ballot is making. Note, I'm not saying it is effective, just that trying to draw conclusions at this point is just bad math.

IE6 has more share than IE7

[Arancaytar]

This seems weird, but makes sense in a way. While IE7 initially took a huge market share away from IE6, this is a self-selecting sample of people who both care enough about security (but not enough to ditch IE completely, evidently) and are flexible enough (no intranet lock-in) to upgrade to new versions of IE. These people were more likely to upgrade to IE8. The remaining users of IE6 weren't going to switch then, and aren't going to switch now.

That's why IE8's growth comes out of IE7, not IE6. It will be that way for IE9 as well.

This is frustrating news for web designers, but with the market share down to 15%, it soon will be justifiable to stop maintaining IE6 compatibility on websites.

Re:IE6 has more share than IE7

[surveyork]

Agree. Also, I think that, apart from the IE6-custom application lock, IE6 numbers are so big thanks to the pervasive piracy of XP in China and other places. People use pirate XP, so they use IE6 (many can't/won't care to update) -> local developers design webs for IE6 -> vicious circle. IE6 rules in China. Its numbers are declining now that Windows 7 hit the (pirate) markets, and, consequently, IE8 is rising there. It'll still take some time before IE8/9 outstrip IE6 in China.

Letter to FF

[Animaether]

Dear Firef *waits 9 seconds* ox. Please di *waits 5 seconds* e.

Signed-
The *waits 30 seconds* Internet.

in before "what add-ons and plug-ins do you have installed":
A. The ones that make FireFox actually worth using.
B. None when I last reproduced the above scenario and that made for a very fun browsing experience all day long, let me tell you. Please, by all means, ask me to do that again after changing some undocumented about:config value. I have time and sanity to waste (as evidenced by posting comments at /.)

Time to give Chrome another shot, despite its inane UI (if I want more screen real estate for the page I'm visiting, I'll hit fullscreen, and keep my useful menus and button on-screen otherwise, thanks).

Re:Letter to FF

[gullevek]

I am all to aware of this. Can be *very* frustrating.

Safari Firefox JIHAD Chrome iOS JIHAD JIHAD!

[Anonymous Coward]

they should sue the state of Georgia for violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution .

Does Christine O'Donnell work for the State of Georgia now?

which browser

[viralMeme]

I use both Firefox Namoroka and Chrome ..

Don't underestimate Microsoft

[MikeRT]

IE 4.0 was a dramatic leap in quality over 3.0. Shockingly good compared to IE 3 and Netscape 4. Microsoft has already warned their competition that they fully intend to make IE9 really, really exploit the native capabilities of Windows. They don't intend it to be cross-platform in the least. Rather, it'll be built almost as a show piece for what modern Windows installations can do in its use of DirectX and other features.

If I were Google or Mozilla, I would regard this as a warning that "the empire is rearming, man the barricades."

The fact is that if Microsoft goes balls-to-the-wall on exploiting every last advanced feature of their OS, they might end up creating a product that can, at the very least, curb-stomp Firefox in performance.

Re:Don't underestimate Microsoft

[swilver]

Microsoft, being a commercial entity, has some trouble catering to the people that don't want to be bothered by exactly those entities.

Really?

[Anonymous Coward]

I love how these articles omit Asia, the largest web using population, which is still dominated by IE. Also, IE9 is still in beta, its a little early for articles like this.

For the HTML 5 game developer community, IE9 is actually the best candidate so far for quality games using HTML 5 canvas and SVG.

Re:Really?

[Lennie]

On english speaking sites, Asian visitors have just as up to date browsers like everywhere else, sometimes more.

Goodbye.

[unity100]

i think im speaking for all developers/webamsters and their hairs which they wont be pulling out now, since it seems in future they wont have to fix innumerable discrepancies in regard to html code interpretation each ie version introduces.

Who uses Safari?

[crow_t_robot]

The only two browsers gaining are Chrome and Safari — and both browsers have hit new record market shares.

The only way I can imagine this has happened is because it is due to the rise in market share for iMacs and people are just using the browser that came with the OS. I run iMacs in my house and never run Safari, though.

Re:Who uses Safari?

[shugah]

When you install iTunes, I believe it prompts you to install Safari, that's probably how most Windows users end up installing Safari.

Re:Who uses Safari?

[Angostura]

My guess would be that it is the iOS version of Safari that is boosting the numbers.

Re:Who uses Safari?

[crow_t_robot]

This is it. It didn't even cross my mind at first. I feel stupid too because I use chrome on my Droid since Firefox is still in beta and feels very unfinished.

Nice things going for it

[Enderandrew]

The browser has nice things going for it, and I still won't use it.

Microsoft has done this to themselves. They two have two groups. One are the enterprise environments who drank the Flavor-Aid way back in the day and wrote all their internal web apps to rely on IE6 specific features. Since Microsoft spurned compliant HTML/CSS rendering, their newer browsers have trouble handling IE6-specific sites. These shops refuse to upgrade to IE7/IE8/IE9, and thusly refuse to upgrade to Vista or 7. The only reason Microsoft hasn't really hurt themselves with this has been selling Vista and 7 licenses to these customers, but allowing them to downgrade to XP.

The second group of users care about web standards. They care about speed and security. They realize that IE is dead last in standards compliance, speed and security. So even when Microsoft rolls out some neat hardware acceleration features, they aren't worth all the other massive trade-offs involved.

Honestly, how many people are there that will want to use IE9 as their primary browser?

Re:Nice things going for it

[Lennie]

The home users on Windows Vista and 7 who don't understand what a browser is and just use what is already installed when the update for IE9 comes out.

They will get a shock with the new interface though.

The choice is NOT yours

[Anonymous Coward]

Any Windows user is stuck with one form of IE or another. Personally I find the IE7 is OK, but IE8 is really slow on my 64bit system. So I uninstalled it and just use IE7.

But if I want to surf the web generally I would use Chrome. This is because it's quicker and easier to use and also seems better at detecting malicous sites.

Don't bother with Firefox as there is no need, but I know some people like all the add-on's.

Because everyone is on a phone app

[big dumb dog]

Some of the web traffic is going to smart phones.Until Microsoft has a successful smart phone, they could loose more & more.

Hey now...

[yoshi_mon]

We need IE dammit.

How else I'm I supposed to download Firefox on a fresh install?

Re:Hey now...

[Anonymous Coward]

http://linux.about.com/od/commands/l/blcmdl1_curl.htm

Re:Hey now...

[laffer1]

FTP. That's how I did it on early windows 95 installs (netscape obviously) without IE.

Re:Hey now...

[BitZtream]

Same way you always have, using FTP.

Re:Hey now...

[rts008]

How else I'm I supposed to download Firefox on a fresh install?

What always works for me is:
sudo apt-get install firefox

Piece of cake.

Re:Hey now...

[hb79]

Well, if it's not there by default, a few options comes to mind. :-)

apt-get install firefox-3.6

yum install firefox

FIREFOX="http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.6.12&os=linux&lang=en-GB"

wget $FIREFOX

lynx $FIREFOX

links $FIREFOX

Re:Hey now...

[dobedobedew]

I know you were being funny, but I just ran into this recently.
The IE install on the system was so broken that I had to go to cmd and start an ftp session to ftp.mozilla.org. That told me to use releases.mozilla.org, which had the latest version ready to fetch. Downloading firefox that way worked fine.

This is the news?

[Kjella]

The news is that Chrome is eating market share at 0.5-1% per month, check out the graph here. I'm more interested to see what this means for Firefox, pretty soon they might not be that interesting to back. I'd say it's more Firefox that should be worried what will happen if IE stems the tide to alternative browsers and Chrome starts putting Firefox into a decline. The streams could cross already in 2011 if this trend keeps going...

Re:This is the news?

[shugah]

But if you look at the graph, Firefox is holding its own, or seeing slight declines in market share while IE is bleeding users. It appears that Chome's growth has come at the expense of IE, not FF. Mozilla will recapture some market share with the release of FF 4.0, but the question remains if Microsoft can do the same with IE9.

Large IT shops are scrambling to update internal portals and apps that rely on IE6. I fought the good fight on standards with a big5 accounting firm in the early 2000's and lost. However now, the proliferation of blackberrys, iPhones and Androids is forcing this as much as the Windows XP end of life. Once they start the move to standards based internal apps, are they going to repeat the mistakes of the past and develop "for" IE9, or will they develop standards based, cross browser apps that also support their burgeoning mobile users?

Personally, I think (hope) IE9 will get a bit of a dead cat bounce and then slowly decline into irrelevance.

Re:This is the news?

[Lennie]

Also remember Firefox 4 will come with a MSI-installer, only Microsoft has that now.

Re:This is the news?

[wunderbus]

What about this MSI-installer for Chrome? http://www.google.com/chrome/eula.html?msi=true

Re:This is the news?

[Anonymous Coward]

No, it won't.

Seriously...

[thestudio_bob]

I'm an Apple fan, but I don't count MS out of anything. Maybe it's from all the years of people saying Apple was dying, which obviously never came true.

When you have a hard-core fan base, such as Apple and MS, that company isn't just going to die off easily. MS will hopefully learn some important lessons from all the past mistakes and perhaps pull off something extraordinary. I personally, I hope they do. Having one company dominate the market is just bad for the consumer. Having some healthy competition is always a plus.

Re:Seriously...

[peppepz]

I agree with you. I don't understand why most press supposes that commercial entities must either dominate a market segment, or "die". You can see it every time a new product is introduced and it gets called "%s-killer", where %s is the name of the best competing product according to the person who is spreading the news. I've never seen such "killings" succeed - most often, the new product takes it share of the market, both products coexist gracefully, and then they usually die approximately together, when they get "killed" by the new generation of products brought about by the respective manufacturers.

To my eyes, this obsession about "extreme" competition makes the media look childish, to say the least.

Reply

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear The Internet,
Don't you understand, we are the one and the same. You are just my better half.

Signed-
  IE

Re:Save? WTF

[Anonymous Coward]

MS MS MS MS MS. You sound like a whiney 2 year old.
I switched to Chrome from Firefox you insensitive clod!

Re:Hi Miss Interpret, this is Captain ObviousTMZ

[Anonymous Coward]

Didn't you hear? TMZ is buying Slashdot.

Who uses iTunes?

[surveyork]

Who installs iTunes? :)

Re:Who uses iTunes?

[shugah]

You see there are these things called iPods ...

Re:Who uses iTunes?

[surveyork]

You see, there was a ":)" at the end.

Re:Who uses iTunes?

[shugah]

Yeah - missed that.

Facts versus interpretation

[kstahmer]

The above October browser market share facts are correct. Their interpretation is subject to debate. Here are the facts without interpretation.

PeopleSoft??

[Zippy_wonderslug]

Firefox may be gaining popularity in the corporate world because the latest version of PeopleSoft does not currently support IE8. The recommended work around is to use Firefox

Market share if IE not required...

[skiman1979]

I wonder what the market share for web browsers would look like if Internet Explorer wasn't mandated as THE browser in certain organizations. (ignoring the fact that it's merely installed on every Windows PC). How much of an effect is Chrome or Firefox or Safari making in corporations where a majority of users don't have admin rights to their system and therefore can't even install other browsers if they wanted to (or knew about it)?

Re:Market share if IE not required...

[Lennie]

Firefox 4 will come with a MSI-installer, only Microsoft has that now.

May?

[curado]

I have to disagree with the choice of the word 'may.'

I dont care what the poster says..

[twebb72]

First off, its still in beta...
Second, go to PDC site and watch the previews of IE9 if you dont want to install..
Soon IE9 will be the only game in town that supports full graphics acceleration. So you will have the option of browsing the 'fast' web in chrome, or have a completely new user experience in IE.

Re:I dont care what the poster says..

[surveyork]

Chrome and Firefox are working on hardware acceleration.

Re:I dont care what the poster says..

[twebb72]

Chrome and ff both have poor implementations. Both arenas are probably a 6-12 months behind Microsoft.

Re:I dont care what the poster says..

[QuantumBeep]

So you will have the option of browsing the 'fast' web in chrome, or have a completely new user experience in IE.

Dude...
Er...

Okay, you need to get out of the sun for a while. Have a glass of water. It's going to be okay. We'll be over here using every other major browser in the world with full hardware acceleration.

Re:I dont care what the poster says..

[twebb72]

... every other major browser in the world with full hardware acceleration.

Please cite source. Keyword: "full"

Re:I dont care what the poster says..

[QuantumBeep]

No. You are not entitled to citations during a conversation with people. Ever.

Re:I dont care what the poster says..

[Lennie]

Their is no IE9 for XP and Chrome and FF even have hardware acceleration on XP. XP is still 60% of all windows users.

'fuckie' article tag.

[Anonymous Coward]

"fuckie" opinion tag != News Site (OPINIONS FOR NERDS. STUFF THAT MATTERS TO US.)

c wat i did thar?

You're welcome America.

frenzy of complaints for non-IE compatible sites

[h00manist]

Some frenzy of automated of negative-publicity for sites detected that don't work right without IE, for activeX or whatever reason, would be great. I have met more than a few users who simply stick to IE just because "it works with all sites".

We don't trust Microsoft

[Anonymous Coward]

Anyone that trusts IE has rocks in their head.
After years of non-compliances and lock-in, you would seriously have to be a fool to trust MS again.
Why is there such a huge market share for other browsers? Because we don't forget. We suffered at the hands of Microsoft until Firefox (competition) came along. Then all of a sudden Microsoft put an ounce of effort in again. If IE takes off again ... guess what?

AC

Try Pale Moon

[surveyork]

I think I had the same problem with Fx. There's, at least, one bugzilla bug report regarding Fx's pauses, lags, jerkiness. Mozila folks are aware of the issue and they claim to be working on it. I haven't tried Fx 4, but I use Pale Moon plus some anti-lag tweaks I found on the web and now the lags while filling forms, etc. seem gone.

Re:Try Pale Moon

[Animaether]

*eyes mods* Flamebait, huh? Yeah, that's pretty much the treatment people with FF problems get in general, I guess. Thankfully there's also people like surveyork.

surveyork: I'll give that a shot, thanks! :)

Re:Try Pale Moon

[surveyork]

My pleasure. I feel your pain. I don't understand why you were modded flamebait. I suffered exactly what you are (justly) complaining about. As I said in my previous post, Fx developers (at least some of them) are aware of the lag/pauses problem and there's at least one bug about that. It's a real problem. Not everybody seems to suffer from it, but it's real. As usual, Fx developers and ultra-fans blame it on the user (dirty profile, lots of and/or bad extensions, old hardware, 3rd party apps, etc). Those factors may account for some lagginess, but people with clean, fresh installations of Fx in out-of-the-box OSes have experienced lags. There seem to be underlying problems with garbage collection, cycle collection, useless recursion and generalized unnecessary repetition of tasks. If someone is interested, take a dive in Mozilla's bugzilla. I hope the issue is fixed in Fx 4.

Good riddence.

[Anonymous Coward]

I recently went to help someone out who was having trouble with their Comcast mail. When they would try to compose a new mail and start typing the recipient's name in the "to" field, the auto-complete was not working. They were using IE at the time. I didn't want to spend forever debugging this. First thing I did was open Firefox and have them try it again. Everything worked as it should. They were running IE8. Now they're using FF instead.

Amazing

[assertation]

It is amazing that there will be an IE 9 coexisting in the world with an IE 6 in use.

I'll take Firefox

[assertation]

I'll take Firefox.

Safari is a nice browser, but it is proprietary and Steve Jobs has proven he is willing to be quite the dick that way.

Chrome is also very nice, but I don't trust Google not to spy on me.

I'm sure at some point I will be on a Windows box for work and will have to use IE 9 at least little bit, you know, check to make sure things work there after I make sure it works in Firefox.

IE mattered because it saved Windows

[billstewart]

Microsoft didn't launch Internet Explorer to take over the lucrative browser market - they gave it away free, competing with Netscape who gave it away free, and older browsers like Mosaic, some of which were also free, or even because it helped them take over the web page development tool market, which they could charge money for. They did it to save Windows, and to save their products which depend on Windows, like Office and Mail.

The threat to Microsoft was the combination of Netscape, Java, and AOL, which were enough of an application platform to make the underlying operating system irrelevant, plus a distribution system that had people willing to feed dubious coasters into their home computers and a popular enough email system to compete with MSMail/Outlook. If the market got committed to that platform, and to compatibility with those standards, then it wouldn't matter if the underlying OS got replaced by Linux or Solaris or whatever.

By giving the public IE, and making sure that it wasn't quite compatible with Netscape and taking advantage of its proprietary or non-standard features, Microsoft was able to take over enough of the browser market that Netscape/Java/AOL couldn't displace them.

Installing KDE 5 on my netbook now. No, seriously.

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, yeah! Nobody is installing IE 9.0! Nobody is installing Office 2012! Nobody is installing Windows 8! Nobody is installing Visual Studio 2012! Nobody is using Zing, the (future) succesor of Bing! Sell all of your Microsoft shares! Sell them to ME! I will buy them all!

In related news, nobody is buying the iPhone 5 3D or the iPad 2 Marble Edition. We are still waiting Steve Jobs reaction. Rumour has he is hiding under his bed. People is starting to change the Apple logos on their devices for penguins. They think they are cute.

save IE? ie9?

[wizzlepig]

why are they bothering? I can't imagine how they will make it worse than IE8... but I know they won't let me down. Come on, IE9, suck, and suck big!

Here's the link (from OP)

[Toe, The]

It wasn't a personal tax filing. I just looked up the division he was filing with.

Go here:
https://gaefile.dor.ga.gov/HelpLinks/welcome.htm
the last link is:
https://gaefile.dor.ga.gov/AUT/welcome.aspx/
which in Safari leads to:
https://gaefile.dor.ga.gov/AUT/BrowserCheck.aspx

"We have detected that the browser you are using is incompatible with this application. This site requires Internet Explorer 5.0 and above, Netscape 7.0 and above, or Firefox 1.0 and above.

The use of an incompatible browser could possibly cause line and image format problems, as well as functionality issues when using this application.

To upgrade your Internet Explorer browser, go to Microsoft.com

To upgrade your Netscape browser, go to Netscape.com

To upgrade your Firefox browser, go to GetFirefox.com

So he was right that it didn't let him in with Safari, but admittedly quite wrong that it said anything about security.

But it is very weird. The programmers decided they can program for IE 5 and Firefox 1 but not Safari 5?

What people really want to know is...

[Anonymous Coward]

Can it download Firefox or Chrome any faster than IE8?

Surprised we don't see more of this comment

[LostMyBeaver]

Frankly, as a former developer at Opera Software, I haven't personally used IE other than out of curiosity for years. My kids use it regularly though since their web games often don't run on anything else.

Frankly IE is still the browser targeted and tested by developers most often. Things are changing with the soon to come Web 2.0 (it's still not quite here) as people are coding less in EcmaScript directly and coding more in languages that actually compile to EcmaScript instead. Therefore the compilers/libraries/engines themselves are being altered to support all browsers as opposed to the developer needing to screw around to make it happen.

IE is still actively used because of many reasons. ActiveX being a huge one.

Browsers lack standardized support for :
- Sound (input and output)
- Video (input and output)
- 3D graphics
- focus control
- plug-ins that don't quash surrounding content.
- DRM for videos with content rights control

ActiveX while insecure as hell over the years was actually one of the best technologies ever introduced to the browser. Netscape plug-ins (and I personally added plug-in support to Opera for several platforms... and even MADE the NPAPI changes for them) was a dirty nasty hack. The only platform they weren't really trashy on was actually Mac Classic which didn't have OS level support for "windows". Developers simply had to draw to specific parts of a window, handle translation and clipping themselves. On other platforms we just instantiate a window and draw within it.

Interaction between the document model and the plugin was non-existant. Even now, it would be a massive improvement if plug-ins would be forced to simply execute by altering a canvas element, but there'd be no point to it as it wouldn't give you 3D or a high speed graphics context for raw video.

ActiveX resembled the Mac Classic model more closely and therefore ActiveX content became more "part of the page" and less "another application running in a section of a web page".

HTML5 brings us the video tag... which frankly sucks for anything but youtube like video... WITHOUT DRM which means you'll still need to use plug-ins to view content which has viewing restrictions. That means ActiveX friendly browsers will work best because of the aforementioned reasons. Plug-ins will still suck and make every web page where a plug-in is used right below a HTML based drop down menu unusable.

The canvas object and 3D canvas will solve many problems. This means most kids games will be able to be modified to play 3D games... mostly.

Graphics require sound and sound even in HTML5 is rudimentary at best. There needs to be a sound canvas element which offers support for multi-channel sound, audio filters, time-lining, the ability to cancel or apply mixing filters in real time to sound which should be stopped based on some event etc...

That means, it'll still be better to write games for Flash or using custom made plug-ins like the Unity3D player for games.

Performance is a huge issue in browsers for fancy development as well. I promise you that within 5 more years, EcmaScript will be the fastest runtime platform for any language. I mean that EcmaScript (not including DOM interaction) will be faster for every task than even C and C++ or often hand coded assembler... with the exception of cases where vectorization will be useful. This is because Google, Firefox, Opera and IE are all working like made to make the fastest environments for "web 2.0" related things. Their compilers are gaining the fastest code generators for each platform and rapidly gaining the fastest garbage collectors possible (this really does count and is where C and C++ generally lose as all memory management must be handled immediately).

In fact, even now, it would be incredibly effective to implement distributed tasks like Seti and Folding @home in a browser environment... if all that mattered was CPU (as opposed to vectorized code w

Microsoft my arsehole.

[dogzdik]

I used to like porn - and some porn sites, but years ago the IDIOTS who ran many of them thought the best way to get people to like us and pay for out content was to write "pop up advertising scripts" to bung 20 or 30 or more adds up all over your screen......

.

And the only way to kill them off really was to shut down the browser - called Internet Explorer.

.

It pissed me off no end, and so I started to look at other options like Opera and Firefox and Netscape etc... and they all had or had gotten "POP UP BLOCKING" in their functions.

.

So I then complained to Microsoft - and they basically told me to go fuck myself by both ignoring me, doing nothing about it, AND worst of all, they too another 5 or 6 years - yes - you heard right; MICROSOFT took another FIVE or SIX YEARS to put pop up blocking into Internet Explorer - AFTER every other browser company had done it.

.

HELLO? - is there anybody in there?

.

Trouble is that because MS has done such a fucking shitty job of everything - along with their NAZIFICATION of the web - people have just walked.

.

Every bit of fucking stupidity that Microsoft imposes upon me is one less reason to use that product - so much so, I have become a full time linux user....

.

Fuck their browser / naziware / covert surveillance software.

Or a chair...

[KayakFun]

Sorry, couldn't resist the combination of Microsoft and throw in one sentence.