IE Market Share Falls To Historic Low 472
An anonymous reader writes "Predicting that Microsoft will lose market share from month to month isn't especially difficult. Yet it is amazing to see the downfall of what was once a bastion for Microsoft. It appears that Microsoft can't defend IE against Firefox and, as it seems, Google's Chrome. Net Applications now believes that IE has a share of less than 60%, which is about the range that IE had in early 1999, when IE5 was launched. IE is now officially back in the 1990s. Chrome, by the way, is the fastest growing browser, both in absolute numbers and percentages. It is well ahead of Safari and more than tripled its share within 12 months."
Why is this surprising? (Score:2, Insightful)
Most people are not complete morons. If they get burned once with IE, they'll tell their friends to use a different browser. And of course, they themselves will use a different browser. As the number of people recommending alternative browsers increases, more people will switch away from IE voluntarily...
Re:Why is this surprising? (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not so sure about that. I have to wonder if the explosion of iPhone and Android based phones has not contributed significantly to this. Since IE is not available on those devices, one has to wonder, especially considerging that chrome and safari account for more than 5% of the drop in IE's share. (according to the charts, firfox is less than 5%, and opera stayed the same).
What that means to me is that a significant number of people aren't switching on the desktop. The market is just growing, and those people using phone based browsers are probably still using IE on the desktop.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
> and Android based phones has not contributed significantly to this.
I won't say they haven't contributed, but I don't think it's really the major factor. The 2010Q1 stats from our website at work (which, admittedly, is small and of mostly local import) show all known mobile platforms combined at less than 1% (and just barely ahead of Iceweasel), compared to Firefox (branded as such) at 19%, Safari at 16%, and Chrome at 4% (up *
Re:Why is this surprising? (Score:4, Informative)
The default browser for android phones is a google browser, chrome based...
Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:5, Insightful)
As a web developer who has "done the dance" with former versions of IE late into the night too many times I hate hate hate and welcome this news. Nothing can undo those atrocities. IE6. Never forget!
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:5, Funny)
I *almost* agree wit cha. I've been there to. However! I do remember a time (maybe a brief time) when I could pass the buck and say, It looks good on IE, who cares if it craps out on Netscape/Firefox!" Good times. Good times.
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:5, Interesting)
Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with, you would have been able to just design your pages per the standard, and never had to worry about any browser. Even now, my company is just getting around to piloting IE8, and only because the inevitable rollout to Windows 7. I suspect a lot are in the same boat, where they skipped Vista, and made no effort to stay current with the browser that came packaged with XP. I don't know why my company chose to just stay on IE6 but I suspect it worked at the time, it was updated from MS so they got their security fixes in a standard way along with the other OS patches, and it was simply conveniant.
My company is usually very keen on get current stay current, but they failed miserably on IE. I can only assume that they design apps specifically for IE6 and simply couldn't break away, or didn't see any need to move on. Now that the move to Windows 7 comes bundled with IE8, they simply have no choice.
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:4, Informative)
Netscape wasn't sticking to standards, either, though.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Well, and standards didn't exactly help those browsers which did try to stick to them back then...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with
Actually, that's *exactly* what they did. They stuck with the same standards as were around in 1999, and didn't improve ;) You may not recall this, but in 1999, they were the browser with the best standards support. So perhaps you'd care to rephrase that ;)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
It was the Mac version of IE (5.x i believe) which had the best standards support of the time, the windows version was always woefully behind...
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Yes, but had MS stuck to standards to begin with, you would have been able to just design your pages per the standard, and never had to worry about any browser.
Bollocks. Even following the standards you *still* have cross browser issues - take the HTML5 Browser Storage standard for example, part of which involves an event raised on field changes. The problem is, while the event handler is included in the spec, no requirement is placed on *where* the event handler listener is to be placed in the HTML.
Safari requires it to be placed on the body tag, IE on the document object, and Firefox doesn't really care where you put it. So again you have differences across b
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like a quote for a T Shirt from Think Geek
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Mine Nipples Explode With Joy! (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.zazzle.com/ie6_never_forget_tshirt-235264592789806116 [zazzle.com]
And may it keep dropping (Score:5, Funny)
This is the best news since... the last news that IE market share was dropping...
Re:And may it keep dropping (Score:5, Insightful)
I honestly don't feel that much difference anymore. A year ago it was something like 30% non-IE browsers, now it's 40% non-IE. Both are too big to ignore and many replacements of old IE-only systems from when they had 90% market share probably would have happened anyway. From here to about 80-90% non-IE where you can consider dropping IE support you are supporting the same anyway.
Re: (Score:2)
It allows people to drop IE6 and possibly IE7 support. IE8 is much better about supporting standards, thus the entire development process becomes much easier. Writing to straight standards will get you what you're looking for much more often with those two version of IE gone.
Sure, if you go back far enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
There was a moment in time when MSIE had effectively 0% market share right? So this 60% is still a huge triumph if you choose to spin it that way.
But seriously, any drop in market share is a historic low for Microsoft. And here's what I love about it -- Microsoft will be hard pressed to explain why it would choose to not completely support competing browsers with its web based applications such as Outlook Web Access and the like. It has been a while since I looked at it, but OWA did not offer full functionality to browsers other than MSIE. I don't know if that is still the case, but I suspect it is.
In any case, it is in large part due to Microsoft's behavior that our next enterprise email server at the office will be anything but MS Exchange.
Re:Sure, if you go back far enough... (Score:4, Interesting)
In any case, it is in large part due to Microsoft's behavior that our next enterprise email server at the office will be anything but MS Exchange.
Sadly, somehow our department has gotten it into their heads that "Microsoft is the way to go.". They had a few years when they tried to get OSS (mostly FreeBSD, but some Linux) systems working for most of the servers, and a lot of the tasks were delegated out to people who had no Unix experience at all. End result is that they became frustrated and rather than try to educate themselves, they blamed the system.
Fast forward to today. Our CentOS/Apache web server has been replaced with IIS (and that was one thing that had always worked great - they basically just replaced it because they wanted to go all Microsoft). Our PHP code on our site has been replaced with ASP.NET. Our Samba setup is being replaced by Windows + Active Directory. Our Lotus Domino server is being retired and there are plans to replace it with MS Exchange. And I just heard recently that Firefox is "just becoming a headache because there are still things it doesn't work right with. Maybe it's time to look at IE again?". Even simple stuff that it makes no difference on - for instance, just something to run VMWare server on. You never even touch the interface, but they want to waste a Windows license (and more system resources) on that because they feel that Windows is "just the way to go".
Sometimes I just want to scream.
Re:Sure, if you go back far enough... (Score:4, Informative)
Well, it sounds like they had real reasons to switch to IIS. You basically need it to use ASP.NET, and ASP.NET has significant traction these days and provides significant value for a lot of companies, at least over PHP. The functionality offered by Java/JSP is a lot closer, but PHP vs ASP.NET is like bringing a bazooka to water ballon fight.
That's not to say that PHP is bad or sucks. Lots of sights make great use of it, but it just doesn't offer the same level of control, supportability, and enterprise integration that ASP.NET does. C# really is a vastly superior language to PHP's c-like system, which only recently became semi-object oriented. PHP simply isn't the right tool for a lot of jobs.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
That's a sad story with the exception of Lotus Notes. I seriously HATE that program. It is what we are using now. It is a royal pain in the buttocks.
Unfortunately, Microsoft is the biggest cause of IT woes for many reasons. Not only are their implementations generally not standards compliant, they aren't even compliant with their own standards. Further, their achievement of "critical mass" has enabled them to abuse the market further by convincing the market that Microsoft "works" and everyone else is
The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft is desperately updating their browser to meet the same modern standards as the competition. IE9 is supposidly going to be a revolution for them, supporting all sorts of long standing stuff like SVG, CSS3, HTML5 and supporting a fast Javascript engine, which is exactly the direction in which Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera have been developing lately.
Obviously Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to gain some market share again. It's great for web developers, because they can finally start really deploying some of that shiney new tech. But in reality, most people aren't aware of these webstandards at all and aren't switching to Firefox or Chrome because MSIE doesn't support them. They're switching because other browsers are faster, more secure, less obnoxious, more cool and support more plugins and other goodies.
I don't think IE will ever be as big again as they once were, but because MS doesn't get what the root of the problem is, they're helping the web forward in the process of trying to get some users back. Which is actually great for everyone.
Re:The great thing about this: MS doesn't know why (Score:4, Insightful)
Not too little, but definitely too late. SVG should have been supported since IE7. Same goes for quirk-less CSS2.1 support.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Obviously Microsoft is doing this in an attempt to gain some market share again.
If that were entirely true, then the browser would be made to work on XP systems. XP is still the most widely-used operating system on planet earth, remember, at least for a few years yet. I understand that Windows 7 is the best OS they've come out with and all that, but a lot of people aren't looking to upgrade to 7 any time soon. Desktop users and businesses alike. It's hard to see how much marketshare they can claw back by making it Vista+ only.
historic? (Score:5, Funny)
"Falls To Historic Low"
[...]
"which is about the range that IE had in early 1999"
?
So, it's historic, because it's the second time it's around that range?
Re:historic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:historic? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes.
The first time something happens, it’s unprecedented.
The second time, it’s merely historic.
Re:historic? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re: (Score:2)
When's the last time any other product took over the market due to monopolistic tying and then got beaten back?
This is historic because it shows Microsoft being handed a reversal.
What bugs me... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not as if it really affects me as an Opera user, but having to put up with Firefox at work, I'm not too excited about this, since the company I work at usually takes its time to update (FF 2.0.0.7, here).
Oh well, at least MS's share is dropping...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
At least now two alternative engines are starting to get recognition around the world, and newer one of those two seems to strive more for standards compliance (they wouldn't make this post [chromium.org] otherwise). There was a time when a lot of sites appeared to be made primarilly with "IE + FF" in mind...which didn't really change that much in the grand scheme of things.
But now perhaps sites will, to a greater degree, simply target standards... (just look at the link above to see why that's great news for you)
BTW, reg
It is impossible to get rid of MSIE on Windows (Score:3, Informative)
The reporting is also flawed because even if you change your default browser from MSIE to firefox, programs will still use the MSIE branded http dll to download things. To wit, make your proxy reject all requests that contain MSIE in the user agent string, and try to install the next version of lets say skype. Or browse in Outlook internet content. Or try to access any link through http from an Office 2007 document: http://blogs.msdn.com/vsofficedeveloper/pages/Office-Existence-Discovery-Protocol.aspx
http://superuser.com/questions/41935/clicking-hyperlinks-in-email-messages-becomes-painfully-slow/42237#42237. I wonder if any of the legislators in Europe who settled with Microsoft over the Browser wars were aware of these issues. Bottom line: you cannot get rid of MSIE because Microsoft designed it that way!
Re:It is impossible to get rid of MSIE on Windows (Score:5, Interesting)
i develop for the web (Score:5, Interesting)
so i have ie8, firefox, chrome, safari, and opera installed on my desktop
i often find myself in this common usage scenario: 4 browsers open at the same time. ie8 opened with code being tested, opera running pandora, chrome with nytimes.com and other reading media on it, and firefox open with some online code documentation
i use those 4 browsers all the time, i don't use safari at all really unless testing code (but since its webkit like chrome, that's often redundant)
honestly, i lately have found myself prefering chrome over firefox. i love firefox, but chrome has a sleek ui and seems faster (opera's latest ui is pretty hot too, but opera has some compatibility issues, such as google map's api)
chrome just has more... chrome. consider this small bird adequately bedazzled by the shiny bells and whistles
currently i rank the browsers according to this personal preference:
1. chrome
2. firefox and opera tied for second best
3. ie8 and safari not at all
if firefox wants to win my heart back, it has to be super fast and bedazzle me with a hot ui. opera is doing a good job of that, but opera has issues
Re:i develop for the web (Score:4, Interesting)
I love Chrome's speed. But I miss Firefox's rich library of extensions whenever I try Chrome (or a Chromium-derived browser). Most critically, I miss Adblock Plus and Flashblock. To a lesser extent, some of the other extensions I use.
When I last tried Chrome, I believe I found that there was an ad-blocking extension for it (Ad-Sweep) but it required switching to the "developer channel" rather than the standard "channel". Rather than just downloading a beta version of the browser, there was an arcane process to switch channels that simply didn't work at the time. As in I jumped through the hoops, but Chrome never properly entered into the developer channel mode. The Channel Changer was simply broken at the time. Don't try to be too clever Google, just make a separate beta or nightly build and let me install it.
Sure, there are proxy-based solutions and the like, but I can't use a browser that I can't add ad-blocking rules to easily and customize easily.
I'll give Chrome a try again in 6 months, but it looks like for now, AdSweep still requires using Channel Changer, and unless that's been fixed I ain't screwing around with it again.
Sure, Firefox can't compete with Safari and Chrome on speed, but on a modern Core 2 Duo or Core i5/i7 machine the difference is only perceptible on the most Javascript-intensive of sites.
Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block (Score:5, Insightful)
I really don't mind ads on web pages, per se. The ad supported model is reasonable. Yet, I find that there are numerous web pages I won't read because of their ads, and eventually I installed ClickToFlash to get rid of the worst of it. Here's what ticks me off:
If websites cannot find a way to stay in business without the annoying kinds of ads, then they need to find a new business model. This is not my problem, it is theirs. Or yours, as the case may be.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
how do you think the shit you like gets paid for?
Depends - I do pay for some shit, when they ask me to pay (or go elsewhere if I don't think it's worth the money). If they don't ask, then why should I care?
but if you were smart, you'll shut the fuck up about it, because the more people who do that, the more the websites you like disappear. if you don't understand that, you're an idiot
Websites are a dime a dozen today, and, thanks to Google, finding one for a given topic is not a problem at all. In practice, it's websites which compete for users' attention, not vice versa. If you do not understand it, you're an idiot.
show some fucking discretion, and stop telling people you block ads. its nothing to be proud of, and you are obviously so very fucking proud of your smug smarmy self
I don't block ads, but I'm seriously tempted to do so now just to spite you. You're obviously very smug to think that
Re:as a web developer, i hate you fucking ad block (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the reality is that people don't want to pay for it - at least not as much as advertisers.
Let's take a brief math example: The superbowl had 62 ad slots which averaged 3 million dollars in 2008 and 98.7 million watched it. That's 1.90$ per person watching, but since it was only 48.1 million households a PPV licence would have to work out to about 4$. But that is assuming there'll still be 98 million viewers and 48 million households, which is unlikely - it's RIAA/MPAA math. First of all, many people just casually interested might not watch at all, those that do would be gathering more and you might see maybe 60 million viewers on 20 million households. Then it's a 9-10$ / PPV license which drives away more people and the numbers work out even worse and so on.
If advertising is simply made unfeasible, there will have to be large cutbacks all around. It's not just that people can get the same thing for free as they get behind the paywall, it's that people value the content much less than the advertisers value the eyeball time. I think this whole scenario that everything will be behind paywalls are ridiculous, the harder it becomes to get eyeball time the more it'll be worth - it's basic supply and demand. Eventually when enough content is behind paywalls it will again be profitable to run ad-based sites. Which I don't even think will happen in the first place.
Download Statusbar (Score:3, Informative)
Additionally, I've never been too savy with the seperate window it opens when you want to download something. To me, these are on par with pop up ads.
You need Download Statusbar: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/26 [mozilla.org]
For Chrome, the following wouldn't hurt... (Score:2)
Here's what I mean: -
1: Better aesthetics. I mean, the current theme and all available ones are not that appealing to
the eyes.
2: Print Preview: Heck how can a today's desktop application fail to have this important
resource? An application from Google should have "everything" necessary to be productive,
and print preview is one of those things I believe.
3: The over minimalistic paradigm Google has followed has gone too far. Heck, what ends up
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I own a netbook, like most netbooks it has a 1024*768 resolution. Firefox and Opera can take up to a third of the screen just to show my File dialogs, etc.., 99% of browsing doesn't involve these dialogs so why should they continously take up space?
WHAT?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Chrome has the best UI amongst all browsers, hands down. I adopted Chromium months ago and then went to Chrome, and despite minor incompatibilities now and then (mostly rendering issues), I can't leave it. I tried to switch back to Firefox for a while, but after a week or so I came back to Chrome, primarily on the strength of the UI.
Nobody else seems able to come up with a UI that is:
- Businesslike and no-nonsense
- Small and out of the way
- Free of rendering artifacts and glitches
The default Firefox theme i
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Why would you ever need to print? (Score:2)
Print? Why would you ever need to print? If you need to send a copy of a document to someone else, that's what Gmail is for. If you need to read documents away from a PC, that's what an Android phone with a $60/mo plan is for.
</sarcasm>
Now Officially Back In The Nineties (Score:2, Funny)
Internet Explorer has always been stuck in the nineties. That was the problem, really.
Every month, this is posted (Score:3, Insightful)
Yet I know I will see this posted again next month...so would someone please explain the agenda to me?
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Of course the popular browser stats don't match your company's data or your client's data. The hit your see on your servers are not representative samples of worldwide browser usage. Why would you expect them to be?
What do you think I'm giving "my opinion" on? It's not "my opinion". It's the data presented by browser stats companies. Look them up. They will almost certainly not match the data gathered on any particular web server, because the data for one particular web server is not a random sample. It is
Firefox's usage share is stagnating (Score:4, Informative)
I noticed a couple of months ago already, that Firefox's usage share is flat by all indicators. [wikipedia.org] It's been stagnating since July-August last year.
Maybe that's fine compared to IE, which is shrinking, but pretty sad compared to, say Chrome.
Which I really like and would use also at work, if there was a portable version (so I can run it without installing it).
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
If you mean Portable Firefox, it's here [portableapps.com]. If you mean Portable Chrome, it's here [portableapps.com]. If you want to try Portable Opera, it's here [opera-usb.com].
And Portable IE7, though I believe you need IE6 installed, which isn't very portable at all, but it's here [keznews.com].
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Agreed - I use vmware-server, and it is annoying that their remote console viewer plugins don't work with chrome.
So, the firefox people will just say "install firefox!" So, that's wonderful until you discover that their plugins don't work on the most recent release of firefox either. You need to install some old v2-based firefox browser to get it to work.
A standards-compliant plugin that works in all browsers also will tend to work across browser versions. That's why I don't want to see majority market s
Are we being fooled? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's been great to see MSIE lose its grip on the browser market, but it seems that maybe things have become more complicated.
As bad as MSIE is, the user can add whatever they want to it. For example, Flash delivers new codecs and Google was able to deliver an HTML5 compliant core that worked with MSIE6.
But one of the browsers taking share from IE is Safari on the iPhone/iPad/iPod. Those users can't try a different browser or use any technology that Apple doesn't approve it. Can a third party deliver a new codec to Safari on these devices? Does Opera Mini for the iPhone come with Ogg codecs (I mention Ogg because I'm imaging Apple would Opera mini if it did)? I really don't know the answers to these questions and I hope someone will enlighten me.
While Safari supports HTML5, times changes, and other things like codecs are becoming more important.
So perhaps now we are looking at a much more fundamental threat.
best practices: how to code for IE (Score:5, Funny)
<script language="JavaScript">
if ( navigator.userAgent.toLowerCase().indexOf('msie') != -1 ) {
window.location.replace("msie.html");
}
msie.html:
<meta http-equiv="Refresh" content="5; url=http://www.microsoft.com">
</head><body><p>msie users move along. There's nothing for you to see here.</body>
Re:best practices: how to code for IE (Score:4, Funny)
Why do you got to be hating my BumSieve browser?
Like Water You Can't Drink (Score:4, Insightful)
Ours is 50%:) (Score:4, Interesting)
www.pcc.edu for the last 30 days.
Internet Explorer 532255 50.94%
Firefox 334610 32.02%
Safari 119225 11.41%
Chrome 53363 5.11%
Mozilla 1922 0.18%
Opera 1463 0.14%
SeaMonkey 578 0.06%
Mozilla Compatible Agent 482 0.05%
Camino 377 0.04%
Opera Mini 306 0.03%
re: tired of IE's BS (Score:2)
ed
Re:Tired of IE's BS (Score:4, Insightful)
I recently forced my sister and her husband on to Opera because they kept getting new spyware every month.
Methinks the problem is not their browser.
Re:Tired of IE's BS (Score:5, Insightful)
If the tool can't be handled safely by novices, yet is rammed down the throats of novices, then it's the tool and not the end user that is at fault.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
because they kept getting new spyware every month.
They shouldn't run their PCs as administrators. So changing browser didn't really solve anything, the moment Opera is targeted by hackers, you are back to square one. Remove the ability of your family to run Windows as administrators and they can use whatever browser they want and they'll be much safer.
Re: (Score:2)
Spyware doesn't need admin privileges to be an hassle. They can still load at user's session login, read every user file and connect to the interwebs. Besides, there are such things called "privilege escalation exploits".
Re:soooo? (Score:5, Insightful)
why is this news that people should care about?
*rolls down his turtleneck to reveal the permanent bruise from trying to hang himself after spending an endless night trying to figure out what was causing IE6 to crash but not Firefox*
*rolls up his coworker's sleeve to show the scars of slash marks on his wrist after trying to get alpha transparency working in PNG images inside IE6*
*holds up a memorial plaque of yet another coworker who jumped to his death from the top of the building after trying to code Javascript that would abstract many functionalities so that they would work both in IE6 and Firefox*
Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone [bringdownie6.com]. The damage continues to this day [slashdot.org].
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Trust me, as a developer who has tried to understand the madness that is IE6, we care and we are not alone [bringdownie6.com]. The damage continues to this day [slashdot.org].
Guess I'm lucky, my last 2 jobs got to drop IE6 as a supported browser, and my current one doesn't even directly support IE7! It's standards only, and if it works on Firefox, Chrome, Safari and Opera, we really don't give a rats ass about IE other than that IE8 doesn't make a complete mess of the pages. In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue. Amazingly enough, almost everything works in IE7 as well.
Re:soooo? (Score:5, Interesting)
In truth, IE8 does a much much better job of displaying standards so this has been almost a non-issue.
True, IE 8 is a huge improvement over IE 6, but it still doesn't support W3C event model. For example, in IE 8, what's the recommended way to specify that a script shall run once the DOM content is ready? Or how do you attach multiple event handlers to an object, such as multiple things to run on load? IE is the only browser to support attachEvent and the only modern browser not to support addEventListener.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Indeed. DOM seems to be the only area in which IE has consistently failed to improve. I'm hoping that will change in IE9.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Or to a particular element:
Of course you have to use a bit of object detection to determine whether to use attachEvent or addEventListen
Re:All this despite no forced unbundling... (Score:5, Informative)
Wasn't there a news explaining that a big part of that market share drop was due to the new "choose a browser" screen the EU forced Microsoft to include in the latest Windows versions?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
If that were true, one would expect Firefox's share to have risen significantly, but in reality, it's stayed pretty much the same, in fact it's at the exact same level as in November of last year. Further, the Browser selection screen has only been out there for 3 months and the trend of chrome and safari goes back a lot further than that.
Frankly, I'm more inclined to believe the rise is due to the rise of iPhone and Android based browsers rather than much change on the desktop.
No forced unbundling? (Score:4, Insightful)
http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/07/24/1927255/Microsoft-Agrees-To-EU-Browser-Ballot-Screen [slashdot.org]
http://news.slashdot.org/story/10/02/19/2135254/Details-Emerge-On-EU-Only-Browser-Choice-Screen-for-Windows [slashdot.org]
+Chrome "bundling", sort of (in a way..not really) (Score:4, Informative)
Yes, the deals Google supposedly cut with some PC manufacturers are probably insignificant. But Google promotes Chrome...everywhere, I believe. Not only on almost all their websites, also for example on largest social networking sites. OK, not exactly bundling; but at the least a marketing campaign which jumps at you several times per day, it seems.
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that IE’s woes are due to much more than only the forced unbundling. Saying that there has been none is not correct, however.
Re: (Score:2)
Wasn't last summer also the date when decision regarding browser choice screen started really circulating in mainstream media?
Nobody here is saying it's the decisive factor; but it might have easily contributed a bit even before the update went live, just because a lot of people heard about the decision and "other browsers"
Re: (Score:2)
Unbundling wont work because of all the parts of Windows and of Windows Apps that use the IE rendering engine.
All of the various Help technologies Microsoft has used and supported in the last decade (including HTML Help and its replacements) use IE to render. Game related programs like GameSpy and Steam use (or have used) IE to render. All kinds of custom written software (written for specific companies or markets) use IE to render HTML.
Even more apps use various parts of IE to do things like HTTP up/downlo
Re: (Score:2)
Hardware bundling lock-in defeated by even more hardware bundling lock-in?
Wow.
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Re: (Score:2)
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:good (Score:5, Funny)
I see you work in marketing.
"IE. Not the unholy creation of Satan it once was."
Re:good (Score:5, Funny)
The visits to the dev team must be stressing though.
"Hey guys, I'm preparing the campaign. How's the new IE coming out?"
"IF THOU BE THE SON OF GOD, COMMAND THAT THESE STONES BE MADE BREAD."
Re:good (Score:5, Insightful)
I think its about time we reccomended the right tool for the right job, as opposed to just avoiding it outright.
I totally agree with that. IE6 for those legacy internal corporate applications that don't work with anything else. The latest Firefox for all other web-related work.
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depends, if he tells the people clearly after installing the trigger, i'd say he is well within his rights, especially if he fixes computers for free.
Lots of people expect us nerds to just fix their computers because we are good at it, and it is supposed to be our hobby, fuck that. If i fix a machine i am doing you a favor, and if i give advice on the use of a computer, they should listen (hey, i'm the computer expert right?), if they chose to ignore my advice and in the process destroy my work, am i an ass
Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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Don't forget bookmarks, god fucking help you if a user loses their bookmarks, they will bring the wrath of god down on you and everyone else around them.
Re:P.S. NEVER start a sentence with "but" (Score:4, Interesting)
Yes, you can use a comma and have it be an additional clause. That is perfectly valid. It's also valid to start a new sentence with "but". It retains the same concessive semantics, but can be used in situations where you don't want two clauses to be joined to each other in a single sentence. Consider the following example:
"We have developed all kinds of advanced technology and because of that, we consider ourselves to be the greatest species on the planet. But without that technology, we are as
fragile, if not more so, than many other species."
You can't convert the period before the "but" to a comma without creating, at best, a run-on sentence. You also lose the strong contrastive force. If it were an additional clause, it would be a concession as a mere afterthought ("I would go, but I don't have time"), perhaps even just a clarification. At the beginning of a new sentence, however, it says "what I just said is about to be seriously questioned or refined". It applies instead to a whole string of thoughts, not just to the clause preceding it.
You might say "however" or "yet" would be better. They sound a bit stuffy and perform the same function as "but". Thanks the flexibility of language (which pedants, such as yourself, seem intent on needlessly stamping out, lest people be able to express themselves in anything but sanitary prose), the word can be used as a plain old coordinating conjunction, or it can be used as a sentential adverb (or even as a preposition -- gasp!).
The point is, there's no good reason to avoid putting "but" at the beginning of the sentence, and there are actually very good reasons *to* put it at the beginning of a sentence. In light of that, I will gladly put "but" at the beginning of sentences where appropriate.
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It is incorrect to put “but” at the beginning of a sentence because it (like any conjunction) connects two words, phrases or clauses together... not two sentences.
You didn’t answer my question, though. Does “without” not indicate a sharp enough contrast?
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Re:good (Score:5, Interesting)
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I hear this claim all the time, but it ignores reality. There is a huge difference between ignoring standards, and deliberately breaking them. At one point in time IE6 had the best standard conformance of any browser. Believe it or not, but it's true. However, IE6 was stagnant for many years and new standards came along (or were improved) and new browsers came along (or were improved).
IE's standard conformance did not get worse in that time, as would be expected to support your claim that MS was deliber
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Think of Open XML... Nuff said.
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Really? What standards does OOXML break? Geez people, seriously? Does blind hatred of Microsoft make you stupid? Does this argument even make ANY sense?
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ummm. Rather than use existing standards, OOXML creates a whole new set by simply anointing existing Microsoft technologies as new 'standards'. If you don't think using monopoly power to prevent existing standards from taking hold is equivalent to breaking standards, then you deserve a job in the MS PR department. What is the purpose of standards beyond the goal of multiple implementations? That is definitely not Microsoft's goal, though. So unless you think it's appropriate to redefine what a standard
Re:good (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh please, let's not get into "is equivlent" BS. That's just subjective, and isn't in any way accurate.
No. I don't care who you are, or what your opinions. Promoting your own competing standard is *NOT* breaking the other guys standard. Breaking the standard means deliberately implementing it incorrectly, and there is no other way to interpret it.
It's funny, but i'll bet you're one of those people that say "Copyright infringement isn't theft" (which it's not). Call something what it is. If it's bad, it's bad without equating it to something diferent that is also bad.
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By the way, I know you were being sarcastic, but ActiveX is actually a standard maintained by the Open Group.. The same people that maintained X Windows for years (not sure if they still do). And ActiveX had all the same problems that Netscape plugins had, although those had to be manually installed (there is nothing in ActiveX that requires automatic installation, that's just something IE did).
The fact is, ActiveX (or something like it) was needed back then. Less so, now.. but many corporate environemnts
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Regarding the shared code and such, browsers use a *LOT* of private memory, that was one reason why Firefox used a ton of memory a few years ago because it cached forward and back pages. The shared code is relatively insignificant compared to the memory used for everything else.
Take Firefox, and open 20 pages in seperate windows. Check out the private memory usage statistics.
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Net Applications doesn't say anything about users and what they have installed or use. They look at website and which browsers people use to access them. So apparently, out of every 100 hits on the websites they monitor, less than 60 of them use IE.
So whenever you surf with Firefox, you'll be counted as a Firefox user. And when you surf with something else, they'll count your hits too and put them under some other browser.
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Care to point out which part of the code [chromium.org] acts as a keylogger?
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Sounds like they have matched Firefox functionality.