Browser Usage And Web Standards (Or IE Needs To Hurry Up And Die Already)
Doing a bit of webdesigning lately I’ve found my disdain for Internet Explorer growing exponentially. And this is coming from a guy who swore by IE until about a year and a half ago when I went Firefox and never looked back.
The problem is that IE isn’t very good when it comes to meeting web standards, especially when placed side by side with other browsers available. It’s also less forgiving when confronted with bad code (though I am as well so IE is a great way to find errors that Firefox or others might not worry so much about).
Microsoft seems to be taking standards into consideration with it’s IE8 development but it still lags behind Firefox for standards compliance.
The world may finally be taking notice not only of IE’s finicky nature when it comes to coding but overall usabiity for surfing the web as this past September marked the first time ever that IE was used by less than 50% of users on the web.
Part of IE’s decline may be explained by the growth of netbook sales, sub-$500 computers that typically run Linux and use Firefox. Also greater word of mouth push for Firefox and more and more college kids seeing the light has helped increase its share bit by bit over time.
Another part of the dip may be due to Google’s release of the Chrome browser, though Chrome’s release in August/September seemed to hurt Firefox more than IE but Firefox recovered in October while IE 6 slumped more than IE 7 grew. Firefox’s dip is easily explained by the market that Chrome targeted being the same internet junkies who already swear by Firefox giving Google’s browser a shot. Some were impressed, others went right back to FF (I went back to FF).
Maybe IE8 will stop the bleeding to Firefox. Maybe Windows 7 will feature IE so well that it’ll help the browser recover. Given that it’s Microsoft, Internet Explorer isn’t going anywhere any time soon. But as the numbers dip maybe, just maybe, Microsoft will consider making IE more compliant with the web instead of trying to force the web to be more compliant with it. It certainly couldn’t hurt.
[...] J’s Notes is reporting that Firefox has overtaken Microsoft Internet Explorer in the latest round of the “browser war” (such as it is these days), although I haven’t seen it. It would be nice to see MSIE fade away, as it’s a pain to support since it doesn’t support industry standards, but tries to impose it’s own standards on the rest of the industry. It’s nice to see that Microsoft hasn’t entirely dominated, but with 460 thousand page requests from MSIE compared to 135 thousand page requests for Firefox since April, it’s hard for me to say that MSIE is anything but dominant. [...]