
RIP Internet Explorer: 1995-2021 - transburgh
http://mashable.com/2009/05/13/rip-internet-explorer/
======
aneesh
To stop their slide, and grow their market share again (which is, I presume,
the goal of the IE team at Microsoft), Microsoft basically needs to get
Firefox users to switch _back_ to IE. Everything becomes a lot simpler when
you think about it like that.

Firefox made it dead-simple for people to switch from IE to FF. The whole
install process for Firefox takes maybe 120 to 180 seconds, from the time you
click "Download" to the time you are up & running. And Firefox imports all
your IE data in one click, and also recognizes common IE shortcuts. Ctrl-E is
IE's shortcut for the top-right corner search box -- it also works in FF, try
it!

The reverse is not true. It's _hard_ to switch from FF to IE. IE takes 10-15
mins, plus a restart to install (at least it did when I installed IE8 it a
couple months back). It doesn't let me import FF data, and it doesn't
recognize FF shortcuts. By making it so hard to switch _to_ IE, they have
basically made it impossible to grow IE's market share. Is it any surprise
then that IE is dying?

~~~
cellis
besides this, does anyone else find the "Tick,Tick" sounds in IE as annoying
as I do?

~~~
philwelch
I had a job once where I had to use not only IE but also a "thick client" that
was .NET based and had similar audio feedback. I kept my computer on mute the
whole time because it sounded like a goddamn slot machine.

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etal
The interesting lines in the large graph are the faint ones showing the
adoption level of specific versions of each browser. With Firefox, each new
version quickly replaces the previous one in terms of adoption, so when you
see that Firefox market share is around 22%, that's almost entirely the most
recent release, installed over the last 12 months. Safari has similar adoption
curves for each version, but releases are more frequent so the sum is
smoother.

Now look at the peak of each curve for IE versions. IE6 held over 80% market
share for at least 2 years, by this graph, and probably longer. (IE5's peak
would have been even higher, if memory serves.) IE7 had a strong initial
uptake, and then gradually grew up to a plateau around 47% -- and now, with
the release of IE8, it's dropping again. Given that IE7 was a substantial
improvement over IE6 (tabs!), I don't see any convincing reason why IE8 would
have a higher peak adoption level than IE7 did.

That's an interesting trend, to me. If IE can't reverse it in subsequent
releases (IE9+), and Firefox stays the course, then the peak adoption levels
of FF3.5 and IE8 will be close, and as IE6 and IE7 inevitably drop off, it
will become increasingly difficult for IE to maintain its overall lead.

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irrelative
While it has remained linear up until now, I doubt it will continue,
regardless of which way you think it will diverge.

If Microsoft gets its act together and makes a browser that people don't mind
using (and I believe IE8 is significant progress), I could see that level off
around the 50% mark.

Similarly, if Webkit or FF makes some tremendous progress or has some killer
feature, I could see IE's share drop very abruptly. So far however, the
competition has mostly gone for feature parity.

One of the things that bugs me about the IE6 browser wars is that the majority
of outspoken people think supporting standards would help. In nearly all
fields (with healthy competition) supporting standards is something you need
to do before anyone will adopt your product, and then you get to worry about
new features.

I think this mindset of standards compliance has caused FF and Webkit to not
push more interesting ideas. Want to support a video tag? Do it. Just make
sure you follow the HTML 5 spec first. That's where real innovation comes from
-- for instance, the creation of AJAX wasn't a standard, but Microsoft adopted
it, and the other browsers thought it was a good idea.

~~~
SwellJoe
_I think this mindset of standards compliance has caused FF and Webkit to not
push more interesting ideas. Want to support a video tag?_

But...Firefox 3.5 beta _does_ support the video and audio tags, and tons of
others.

