The Fall, and fall of Internet Explorer.
It seems that I’m always giving out about or battering Internet Exploder, erm, sorry, Explorer around here, and deservedly so most would say. Well, IE fans, don’t get your hopes up too high because it seems that all my complaints were warranted, and finally the real world has some stats to prove the continuing decline of the Microsoft browsing behemoth. I stated at the beginning of the month that only 69.75% of you guys visiting this site were using Exploder, and now it seems that in the “real world”, Internet Explorers market share has dropped to 88.9% from its 95.5% level in June.
This makes me happy, very happy indeed. Finally, the general public have had enough of Microsoft fannying about with IE, ignoring standards, and providing us with a browser that is not only lacking in features, but enormous in download size. If you want a “full featured” experience with IE then you’ve got to download a 3rd party program that sits atop IE to add the functionality.
So where are all the people going to, well, they’re going to Firefox and the Mozilla browsers (and others to, Mac users to Safari etc..) with Firefox racking up an impressive 5 million downloads over version 1.0.
But why are people moving? The answer for some is security. Internet Explorer’s security record is nothing to be bragged about, but then again, that number of vulnerabilities found is also because of it’s popularity. Expect to see the number of announced vulnerabilities of other browsers increase proportionately to their market share.
So if it’s not security, it must be functionality, and what could be more functional that Firefox? It’s a small download only about 4 to 5 mb, yet has tabbed browsing and built in RSS capability. Then there are the extensions, loads of small free little plugins that allow you to customise Firefox anyway you want. From themes, to toolbars, buttons to blogging, html to rss editors, firefox has them all available is small little plugins, and I’d wager that even if you downloaded them all, it still wouldn’t weigh in as heavy as an IE install.
Oh, did I mention that Firefox also loads faster than IE and is standards compliant!
So, what’s in the future for Internet Explorer? Well, we know the IE team is beavering away on it, but it looks like Microsoft has no plans to do anything new with IE until the release of Longhorn (long wait?). By that time, at the current rate of slippage, Microsoft is going to have a huge battle on it’s hands in order to win back dominance.
What’s worse for Microsoft is that this time, they won’t be fighting another company like Netscape (or who ever?), there will be no corporate face to claw at. Just millions of users happily downloading…
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Brave and using Firefox. You’re right, Paul. Although…is Firefox really ready for prime time? Read the feedback and comments on its performance on the Net…
Well, I have been looking at the reports of Friefoxs’ performance on the net, and have been using it avidly for a couple of months now.
I have seen one or two reports that Firefox 1.0 is less stable than 1.0 PR, although my own experience differs from that. I have had no issue’s with it to date. And if I do, then it won’t bother me to much as the release and update/bugfix rate of the Firefox team has been phenomanal to date.
Is Firefox ready for primetime? Yes, as a browser it is. It is also ready for primetime as a platform. The people who aren’t ready for primetime however, are the extension writers. The individuals and groups who have been writing great little extension programs that you and I can download for free and plug into FF, just haven’t gotten their act together yet.
Some of the extensions that I had installed prior to version 1.0 still haven’t been updated are are incompatable with 1.0.
Alas, the failure of individual extension writers is the problem, as these independant plugins to the platform are seen by many users as being “firefox”, as comming from Mozilla, and if the extensions aren’t ready then neither is the browser. People need to realise that the browser/platform are there, are ready and at nearly 5% of the market share, ARE primetime.
All that’s left now is for the extension writers to get coding.
LOL, you couldn't have picked an older post to comment on? It's almost 5 years old at this point.
I'm using 2.4.11 as well and never noticed any IE8 problems, but then again I've been tinkering with it for so long.. I'm not sure what's left of the original.. LOL
I'm assuming by the "link at the top to google" you mean the advert. I've actually manually inserted the code into the header.php between the "headerad" div tags that start at line 70.
If you drop me an line via my contact form and let me know what troubles you're having I'll get back to you asap and help you as best I can.