Microsoft Says IE9 Beta Demand Overwhelming 203
cgriffin21 writes "Microsoft expected Internet Explorer 9 to be popular, but after more than two million people downloaded the IE9 beta in the first two days after its release, the software giant is having a hard time choosing which eye-popping statistics to cite. Microsoft says its "Beauty of the Web" site, which illustrates the aesthetic advantages of IE9's support for HTML5 and hardware acceleration, has had more the 9 million visits and 26 million page views since the IE9 beta launch on Sept. 15. Microsoft's developer-oriented IE Test Drive Site has had 4 million page views during the same period."
Not suprising (Score:4, Funny)
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The same with Vista. The demand was overwhelming, or so they say. To even think that people are rushing to a beta of a product and that rush is overwhelming is fallacy. Think about it, the rush to Win7 which is much better than Vista didn't evoke this sort of statement from Microsoft.
Frankly, at this point IE9 is just another browser in the mix of browsers. Others are better, much better. From the advantage point that Microsoft has the hardware acceleration is a good feature but won't long last in the
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Yeah, when we see all platforms with hardware acceleration then we can question again why anyone would want IE (any version).
Still running IE66 at work :-) (Score:2)
Our Corporate IT Overlords haven't been willing to jump to IE8 yet, though apparently on some laptop brands we're running IE7 at least.
Needless to say I run Firefox to do actual work unless I'm using an IE-only website, and even most of those aren't really stuck at IE6.
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It's still in beta.
They shouldn't be working around issues, they should be reporting any issues and demanding that MS fix them prior to official release.
Good to see (Score:2, Insightful)
I for one am happy to see IE becoming competitve again. It is good to have more than one viable alternative out there.
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Agreed. Not sure why people are seeing this as a bad thing...
Re:Good to see (Score:4, Informative)
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Wait...so you're saying that, in light of the other things you listed, Microsoft focusing on making things run smoother and work better with web standards is a bad thing?
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well, given past performance, it is quite reasonable to assume that somehow IE-9 will be borked up in some way, some odd rendering bug or something.. in that light, MS introducing IE 9 means all those poor web-devs will now have to support 'standard rendering' + IE 6-7-8-9 instead of just 'standard rendering' + IE 6-7-8.
i would prefer it if IE6 would be killed off once and for all though.. fucker needs to DIE
(and no, i dont think MS releasing IE9 is negative, i wont be using it, but i dont mind)
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There isn't any browser that is 100% compliant and implements all possible elements, properties, and events of HTML 5.
Re:Good to see (Score:5, Funny)
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Well those guys are not really in that much competition with each other. They are all really fighting against the IE juggernaut. Their advancements has been because of IE6 was the key browser for Way Too long, and IE7/IE8 are in essence attached to the Vista problem mind set.
Windows 7 has been a good OS.
I hope IE9 will be good too.
If Microsoft makes a good product that will force the others to try to make a better product too.
Re:Good to see (Score:5, Interesting)
I for one am happy to see IE becoming competitve again. It is good to have more than one viable alternative out there.
Highlights mine.
What do you define as a viable alternative? Firefox, Opera & Chrome have been around for quite a while and they all have been eating IE's lunch. By a lot of accounts, the big story is that IE9 is a radical departure from IE7/8 and has made major strides in catching up but it's not there yet.
Personally, I hope IE9 gets pushed out tomorrow. At work I'm stuck using IE8 and I would love to have something which approaches the Opera browser I use at home.
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Most statistics have IE with a bit over 50% of the market.
Re:Good to see (Score:4, Informative)
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which used to be 95% just a few years back...
if losing half the markt in ~5 years isnt getten your lunch eaten, then i dont know what is
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if losing half the markt in ~5 years isnt getten your lunch eaten, then i dont know what is
Perhaps losing 100% of the market in 5 years, which is what happened to Netscape when IE destroyed them.
Don't be fooled; IE is like the Borg... they might suffer a temporary setback, but they have the resources to very quickly come back and dominate again.
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I officially hate you. I just got IE7! Literally last week they upgraded us from 6 to 7... 8 has been deemed to insecure and unproven...
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IE8 is more secure and more proven than IE7 (and handles app crashes much better, has better UI features, and renders HTML in a less sucky fashion than IE7).
IMHO, nobody using Windows should be using IE6 or IE7 now. Period. Only on internal corporate LANs where they have old web apps that depend on IE6 should there be any usage of either of these browsers. And those corporations need to eventually suck it up and rewrite their crap to be standards compliant so they work in modern browsers.
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Believe me I completely agree with you on every point. I still haven't figured out how they made their conclusions...
Re:Good to see (Score:5, Informative)
Completely agree. I also like to see MS trying something new. The new UI is sweet, and this is FREAKIN FAST on my dual-core laptop with Win7. I haven't installed on the 6-core desktop yet, because its still rather buggy (several text fields on Facebook refuse to work), but I guess it wouldn't really matter, I still am a pretty big Firefox user and have it set to the default browser.
I was in shock with the HTML5 and the speed increase from going to GPU. Their Beauty of the Web pages are jawdropping, and I think this is REALLY going to change the web forever. I would have to say this (GPU accelleration and HTML5) is probably the biggest thing to hit the web since Flash / Shockwave came out 12 or 13 years ago.
I also like the increase in real-estate when browsing. Yes, I know I can turn my other browsers into fullscreen mode, but then I loose the address and search bars.
Actually, is it just me, or did IE9 practically copy Chrome's interface?
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The new UI is sweet
Tab bar on the same row as address bar is a braindead idea, though. It's okay if you have 3-4 tabs, maybe, but beyond that it really doesn't scale. It's a bit better on 1920x1200 with browser window maximized (which I normally don't do, sizing it down so I can see other stuff in background) - but only a bit.
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If by "becoming competitive again" you mean "stomp the ever loving shit out of IE6 until it dies and goes away"....
Right there with ya.
If it takes IE9 to do that, so be it.
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Early start (Score:5, Funny)
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26 Million views in 6 days... (Score:2, Funny)
Its running on windows azure (Score:3, Informative)
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsazure/ [microsoft.com] :)
Someone notify Dimitri (Score:2)
I would love to see his reaction to this
Beauty of the web (Score:5, Funny)
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I know 4chan is notorious for internet jokes, but getting their members to go download IE9 just to make IE look popular again is a bit much, even for them!
keeping up with the jones' (Score:5, Insightful)
Say what you want about IE's history (and lets face it, the jokes that come to mind are bountiful), but with Firefox and chrome pushing them that Microsoft has again started pushing IE development. Im not happy about that because I want IE to dominate, but because it keeps ALL the vendors honest.
Say it with me, competition is GOOD.
Obligatory (Score:3, Interesting)
Say it with me, competition is GOOD.
Unless it threatens a brand you like or comes from a brand you don't like.
(the general "you", not "you, Sprouticus")
Compete on Linux and OS X too please (Score:2, Interesting)
Why not one for Linux or Mac too....Why compete on your turf only ?
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Because there are plenty of alternatives on other platforms. There are plenty of alternatives on windows as well, but "IE" has become a platform in itself, due to the prevalence of shitty microsoft-HTML sites in corporate intranets. Currently the only browser that deals with the corporate intranet AND the internet without needing 2 browsers is IE. And its shit.
If you're on an open platform and don't use microsoft corporate intranet websites, you have no need for IE.
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Given that IE itself is free, what business goal would releasing an OS X or Linux version achieve?
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"Say it with me, competition is GOOD."
Remember that, when it comes to browsers, especially Microsoft's, it's less about competing products and more about competing standards. Having to craft a website that works in IE separately from one that works in everything else isn't good for anybody but Microsoft.
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So, there's less competition if IE goes away?
Yes.
On top of that competition tends to spring up when people are dissatisfied with the options. Considering Firefox is OSS it's hard to believe that if they truly stagnated somebody wouldn't fork them or start a competitor.
Having a closed source competitor to Firefox and Chrome will not diminish those two platforms. (Opera has not gained traction yet, and frankly I doubt it ever will). At worst it makes them look better (look at IE6 vs FF), at best Microsoft gives us a few new toys to play with at their own expense.
Personally I think having 3 or 4 browsers which are all around 25% is a good balance between standardization and choice. If any browser has too much market share their standards become overwhelming. If MS goes
IE 9 is actually good? (Score:2)
I must find out for myself!
ie9.downloadAmount++;
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Its great for a beta.. just keep in mind it will crash and act up everyonce in a while.
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Its great for a beta.. just keep in mind it will crash and act up everyonce in a while.
Just every once in awhile? That's much better than their previous versions. I think their best previous version acts up at least every twice in awhile.
Anyway it's too late. I proclaim Microsoft dead.
I.E. lock? (Score:4, Interesting)
I can see a few reasons for this:
1. Lots of intranet and other internal company websites are I.E. only. It would be good to know now if those sites will continue to function.
2. Lots of employees are locked into I.E., and want to know what is coming up.
3. I.E. still means "the internet" to a lot of people.
4. Everyone who has a plug-in or toolbar needs to know if this will work with their "product."
5. There are about 2 billion internet users worldwide. I.E. has about %50 marketshare. 2 million downloading a beta out of a group of 1 billion users is about half of a percent. That's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it doesn't seem out of line with expectations.
Re:I.E. lock? (Score:5, Insightful)
RE: 3.) The kind of people who think that would probably not be trying out a beta. I might be wrong though
5.) If you filter out the people who CAN'T run IE9 - XP users circa 60%, Linux and Mac users... it works out to be a bit bigger.
I think the biggest share is the people who are curious to see what Microsoft pulled out this time. Their form at late with software is getting much better. Windows 7 was great, Office 2010 was great as well... Microsoft are finally waking up in face of some competition.
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Their form at late with software is getting much better. Windows 7 was great, Office 2010 was great as well... Microsoft are finally waking up in face of some competition.
Whenever I see someone say this, I have to wonder... how?
Not meaning to be a troll or anything, but is it JUST the eye candy that you think is great about Windows 7 and Office 2010? You think the ribbon is really amazing? I've been using Windows 7 alongside XP for a while now and whilst it's different to Windows XP, I don't feel like I'v
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What I liked about Office 2010 is the 'menu on mouse over' thing which means to change formatting you won't need to move your mouse very much. The ribbon is intuitive and really helps - I thought it'd be horrible and ugly to work with, but I found it easier than the toolbar before.
Windows 7 is a visual work of art. The 'type to search' saves quite a lot of time. I prefer typing to be honest than clicking, and its fast enough to get the results without spending ages.
This is coming from an open-source fanatic
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1. Lots of intranet and other internal company websites are I.E. only. It would be good to know now if those sites will continue to function.
And most of those broke with IE7.
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I've rolled both IE7 and IE8 out throughout the company I work for, and none (not ONE) of our shitty 10 year old web-apps that were coded by idiots back in the late 90s/early 2000s broke.
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There are about 2 billion internet users worldwide. I.E. has about %50 marketshare. 2 million downloading a beta out of a group of 1 billion users is about half of a percent. That's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it doesn't seem out of line with expectations.
Certainly, but you wouldn't expect Microsoft to not proudly proclaim that $someBigNumber people downloaded their $crapSoftware, would you? Of course they will, and that's what this is: a fluff piece pandering to Microsoft's marketing team.
People are desperate for a fix! (Score:4, Insightful)
Browsers do not excite people. Getting their problems resolved does. Microsoft's "overwhelming" response is a strong indicator that people are displeased with what they have now and are looking for it to be fixed.
This is nothing new. Nearly every upgrade from the previous version of Windows was enthusiastically received by users who were hopeful that the problems of their previous version are resolved in the new one. People were happy with Windows98 and so WindowsME did not receive any welcome from users. (If they called in Windows98enhanced it might have gained popularity though) And the same happened when trying to get people to go from WindowsXP to Vista... people were happy with XP (and still are!) and see no compelling reasons to move to another OS. (The use of 64 bit will be the draw that will finally move people to Windows 7 though)
If there is a reason people WANT MSIE9, it is because the previous versions are not good enough.
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I beg to differ.. If browsers didn't "Excite" people then we wouldn't have this fascinating "War" of Google vs Firefox vs IE vs everything else. If browsers didn't excite people the open source projects would be ghost towns and people wouldn't be downloading & trying out a browser.
For me, the browser doesn't really "Excite" me, i'm just giddy for that "early days" feeling that comes about whenever some new stuff that we can tinker with heads out way. MS didn't just release a browser and say "here you
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As a web designer, I'll agree that IE needs improvement. However, dismissing the work of the IE team is wrong. At one point, the IE team consisted of a couple of people doing basic patch support on IE6. Competition forced Microsoft to do better and bring back the team. Why do you think the IE team sends a cake every time Firefox puts out a m
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We'll see how IE9 does once people are using a final production version on a regular basis. Pretty much all software will have quirks when it hits that stage, it's mostly a
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I know a lot of companies that want IE6 and only IE6. You might as well be asking them to change religions when you suggest upgrading to Firefox or Chrome.
What's more likely is there are a lot of developers making sure their sites are ready for IE9 considering the bulk of web users are now IE6 or IE8. IE7 was mostly cannibalized by IE8 and I'm sure IE8 will suffer the same fate with IE9.
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I was thinking same. If I had IE8 I would automatically want to download IE9 as I would assume it was a bug-fix version of IE8 (bit like each previous version, which has nothing new but lots of critical flaws fixes rolled into one release).
Phillip.
No Surprise IE7 and IE8 Were AWFUL (Score:2)
It's not surprise that IE users are quick to try IE9 - IE7 and IE8 suck.
IE7 and 8 are too slow, don't work right with many websites (it's amazing how many sites look different with a browser that support CSS round corners), are difficult to use (Internet Options, security zones, and the functionality blocker ribbon works anyone) and offer only the advantage of being able to access sites built exclusively for Internet Explorer (that number is dwindling and will continue to as people continue to run to Firef
Do my eyes deceive me? (Score:2, Interesting)
Hell may have frozen over. A JS engine that rivals the best, support for most of the CSS3 goodies, and budding hardware acceleration. This is looking like the best IE release in a while.
If they can keep security snafus down, alternative browsers are going to be a harder sell.
Can't beat Xenu (Score:2)
Wow... (Score:2)
IE8 must be pretty uncompetitive.
Beauty of the Web (Score:2)
It seems like too many people get caught up in the video debate and forget about all of the other exciting uses for HTML5. If those are just early examples, I can't wait to see what creative professionals will be able to produce in a few years.
Why am I not -- (Score:2)
-- amazed? Microsoft says something about a product of theirs to try and generate hype and interest in it. This is news? OMG!
Two Troubling Flaws (Score:2)
1) Pinned pages in Windows 7 are a great feature, but addons are disabled for pinned apps. It seems likely to me that MS is saying to online developers that if they customize their pages for pinning MS will grant them full control of the look and feel of the pages (including if ads are displayed) and what functionality the user can access in that window (spell checkers, password databases, etc). This makes the feature all but unusable for many pages that would be great as pinned pages like Gmail and Fac
well given the alternatives... (Score:2)
If your requirements include sharepoint and other microsoft web-apps, then you need IE. IE9 looks to be the first version of IE that doesn't genuinely suck monkey balls, so of course people are keen to test drive it.
Will IE9 replace the other alternatives in general use? Who knows - but it will certainly replace the browser people need for IE-only microsoft apps, and I know plenty of peopl
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If your requirements include sharepoint and other microsoft web-apps, then you need IE.
Not really, at least not with newer versions of this stuff. Both Outlook 2010 web access and SharePoint 2010 look much, much better in Firefox (indeed, it's a "first tier" browser for them according to the official browser support matrix).
Not a schocker (Score:4, Funny)
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"Pushed" is a stretch (Score:2)
Even with automatic updates fully on, you have always had to specifically choose to upgrade IE. Yes, it will show up in the "optional updates" list - but it was never checked by default. Expect the same for IE9. It's not like Chrome which silently updates - no questions asked.
(disclaimer: I use Chrome and I am quite happy with it. But I do understand how silently updating software will give some admins pause).
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IE updates have always been optional but they have always been checked by default.
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I guess I just feel like people should upgrade and quit whining like we're still in the early 00's. Techno
Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Informative)
Surely you jest. Just because IE 9 and Windows 7 are vastly better than their horrid predecessors does not make them top-of-the-line. And .Net is just Java with a flood of feature creep and syntactic candy. As Microsoft has done so many times before, they took something successful and copied it, while completely overlooking the reason for its success: Java's strength was and is in its lack of syntactic fluff. It makes the code take slightly longer to write but dramatically and mercifully faster to read and maintain.
Re:I can only assume (Score:4, Interesting)
And .Net is just Java with a flood of feature creep and syntactic candy. As Microsoft has done so many times before, they took something successful and copied it, while completely overlooking the reason for its success: Java's strength was and is in its lack of syntactic fluff. It makes the code take slightly longer to write but dramatically and mercifully faster to read and maintain.
Java's strength was in its simplicity, but that time is long gone. It was okay in mid-90s, but it's hopelessly outdated in 2010 (guess what, programming languages evolve, too!). Any simplicity that may be in the language has long been drowned by the complexity of the overengineered standard library and various "enterprise" frameworks with miles of XML configs, factories of factories, and other creative architectural decision.
In the meantime, C# has been adding features that actually make code both easier to write and clearer. LINQ is a prime example of that. Lambdas are another (when used with a well-designed framework of higher-order functions). A more obscure example, which might nonetheless resonate with Python developers, are iterator methods (Python calls them generators - with "yield" keyword).
And - "syntactic fluff", really? Then why did Java scramble to copy large parts of that "fluff" for 1.5 release?
Oh, and what about all the people begging for closures/lambdas in Java today (in C# since 2005)? Just to remind, it got postponed again, from Java 7 to Java 8. And a lot of people are quite angry about it.
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I find Windows 7 to be thoroughly mediocre. Sure, it's got a lot of shine, but it's broken a few of my old programs, and doesn't offer anything new and useful to me.
I find .NET to be thoroughly abominable. It's a forced-standard version of the Windows API, working in the Windows way, and requiring distribution headaches to get applications to run anywhere.
The one big improvement I had hoped for was search capability. I was impressed the first few times I used it to look for system goodies (control panel, downloaded programs, etc.), but then I tried using it to find text within ASCII files. Fail. Still broked as shit. Long live Windows Grep.
.Net is not necessarily evil, but it allows desktop developers to play web developer and generate really shitty HTML, in-line CSS, JavaScript on every control, ViewState several times the size of the actual generated code,
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You are at risk using IE. I agree with that. There's more to just patching the browser. If you understand how it is integrated into the OS and how you can download and run ActiveX controls (along with the other exploits) you'd know that you expose your whole OS to the world just by using the web via IE.
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Re:I can only assume (Score:4, Interesting)
i just gave beautyoftheweb.com two hits, one from chrome, in which all worked fine, but the fonts/scaling was borked to give me horrible alliased text, another in IE8 produced correct text, but all nice visual effects where gone, and surprise, all moving effects slowed to a crawl...
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I've been seeing horribly aliased fonts in alot of microsoft sites, this and technet included - happens in chrome and firefox so, but not opera. Perhaps a truetype issue?
Can any web devs give us a clue as to what MS are doing wrong on these sites from a W3C standpoint?
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It looks fine in Lynx. Wants me to download IE9, though. Seems like just a trick to get me to download another stupid piece of software I don't need. Moving on.
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Re:I can only assume (Score:5, Interesting)
Actually I think this number not completely honest. 6 Days ago Microsoft because a sponsor of Reddit and asked the Reddit community to test it out and give feed back.
"See, Microsoft is getting ready to release Internet Explorer 9, and they reached out to us because they genuinely want to start a dialog with the reddit community. In fact, they've taken the unprecedented step of putting the reddit team in charge of this entire campaign. This is a great deal of trust for an advertiser to offer, and we should both take it as a huge compliment."
http://www.reddit.com/r/blog/comments/depct/and_now_for_a_word_from_our_sponsor_because_for/ [reddit.com]
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They probably did something similar with other tech sites too. Well, you certainly can't criticise Microsoft's marketing department..
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However first essential thing in a successful marketing is having a good product which offers something new and competitive. And both Win7 and IE9 offer that.
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That community should know when it is being played.
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Silverlight absolutely only has the market share it does due to nagging Windows update. In fact, Microsoft has a feature that allows you to turn off the update prompt, but when you do, the next time you check it, it is back on. None of the other updates operate like that. You turn them off indicating that you don't want them and they are off. But Silverlight is different. It will remain as an update prompt forever.
And as far as Silverlight goes there's really no one using it (that I know of) except Net
Re:Fraudulous advertisement (Score:5, Insightful)
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Why on earth should he have to buy an entire OS - discounted or not - just to test a browser?
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lol u mad?