Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

I'm guessing you meant to link to http://www.pcworld.com/article/id,131600-c,internetexplorer/article.html instead linking to "Even the introduction of Windows Vista...".

Thanks. I think I've fixed it. Clipboard bug in Mac Firefox. I still can't get the clipboard to accept new content with a copy in FF, though c&p from Tbird works so I was able to make the correction without restarting Firefox. Time to restart, I guess.

I might give ie7 the time of day when it comes through the auto-update. I just don't have any urgency to upgrade to it.
Im in Australia, being the reason why the auto update to IE7 has not come through.

The IE7 plateau may also have something to do with the number of users out there that... well, let's just say that they don't qualify under the Windows Genuine Advantage programme.

Partly, the IE7 update doesn't seem to have worked. The reason, I suspect, for that is that most people ignore the yellow shields (all three of my immediate colleagues, for example). I reckon there are lots of yellow shields just waiting to install IE7 out there...though there seem to be cases where it just doesn't work. On my PC it came through very quickly, but on two laptops it took a couple of weeks longer (in fact, I had to chase the update).

The other thing is that with the bigger differences between IE6 and IE7, many would feel that they are nearly choosing a whole new browser. They may have either heard of Firefox, or more likely been told of it (and obviously FF advocates tend to be louder than IE7 advocates). So they take the opportunity, while they're switching anyway, to switch to FF2.

Perhaps, though, it's a somewhat deliberate tactic by Microsoft. I'm not a software distribution expert, but might there not be some issues caused by several hundred million people all upgrading to IE7 within a few days?

I think a more diverse browser marked is a good thing for one reason: Less browser optimised websites and more use of the webstandards.

I may err, but I think if there is another wave of "security anxiety", i.e. if there are extremely serious security issues with XP and the press covers that, people will start updating.

If such an event will occur again, I don't know. But with so many holes in the software, it seems likely.

I think the problem simply is IE 6 has had a level of permeation of the market never seen before. Years, and years, and years of being the dominant browser. This mean that getting rid of it will be extremely hard and after the easy convert are gone, the others will stay on it until their machine is physically dead.

Just look how long NS 4 has survived being utterly technically dominated, but still used in some place. And it was dominant for a much shorter time, and crushed in a much stronger way.

The market is definitely better now than it used to be. Firefox, Opera and Safari have all pushed the envelope of what web developers can do, and Firefox's success has pushed those capabilities onto millions of users' desktops. And IE7 may not be there, but it's considerably better than IE6.

And even though IE7 is only at 30-40% of the total IE market, that means that, between Firefox, IE7, Safari and Opera, a large chunk of people are now off of IE6.

I think a lot of us in web developer land were hoping IE6 would die a quick death (I rather like CSS3.info's post, "Kill IE6 to Let CSS3 Live"), but it's clear that the cynical estimates were a lot closer to reality than the optimistic ones.

I think IE7 will probably reach the 50% mark around the end of the year, and it'll be at least another year -- a total of two years from launch -- before it replaces IE6 to the extent that developers can start writing it off as a dinosaur.

Unfortunately, Microsoft doesn't provide a smooth upgrade experience which is why Internet Explorer 6.0 still has some years to live. Even though Windows Update improved since Internet Explorer 5.0 there still is a large number of people (at least 30%) who will only upgrade with a new PC. Most important reason should be that the yellow shield doesn't require an action from the user meaning that many will not know what to do with it and will consequently ignore it. Others will dislike the hassle of large downloads and Windows restarts, those will not install updates until something happens.

The users who don't upgrade because of the user interface changes should be a minority - less experienced users will only find out when they already upgraded and it is too late to reverse the process. Ironically, it is easier to switch from IE6 to Firefox than from IE6 to IE7, which is one of the reasons IE is still loosing ground.

But anyway, IE7 is not the salvation for web developers. Instead of having one bug-ridden inconsistent reinvent-the-wheel browser we now have two of them. IE7 improved in a few areas but not consistently enough to make developing for it that much easier, it brought new quirks however - meaning twice the amount of testing. And the reason why Internet Explorer cannot really improve is backwards compatibility, by locking in web and application developers years ago Microsoft maneuvered itself into a trap. I am not too optimistic about the resolution of this situation, it could easily take 10 years until we can rely on browsers to be reasonably standard-compliant.

In the company I work (180,000 employees all over the world), our standard platform is Win XP SP2 with IE6. IE 7 is not yet approved and won't be in a long time if I'm comparing it with our adoption speed of Win XP (we dropped Win2k last year).

In the statistics, they always mention the higher rate of IE during the week, since people are then mostly surfing from work. If IE is installed at work, the normal user doesn't have the possibility to install anything else, not to mention upgrading a current product. This is why I back Asa and, alas, we will still have IE6 around for many years to come.

Spooky; I hadn't checked your blog in a while and I recently blogged about the W3Schools.com data showing IE7 adoption plateauing:

http://limulus.wordpress.com/2007/05/13/browser-wars-ii-5-years-of-w3schoolscom-data/
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/node/27548
The graph: http://members.shaw.ca/Limulus/files/w3sbw2-0704.png

The really striking thing is to compare the IE6/7 data with the IE5/6 data from five years ago; IE6 replaced IE5 in a pretty linear fashion.

I think:

1) a LOT of people just DON'T update their computers; they
just keep whatever is on there when they bought the machine.

2) IE7 is UGLY.

Fairly drastic UI changes, new security model, different rendering than IE 6 on some sites, sites (and apps, like Quality Center 8) sniffing the browser version and flatly denying access (QC 8 needs a patch)...

May as well change browsers altogether for all the work involved.

Our IT staff is flatly refusing to support IE 7 at this time, except for on the TINY number of Vista test machines rolled out to various labs. I know from friends and former colleagues that we aren't unique in this. IT does, by the way, officially support Firefox now.

Heck, LOTS of "browser-based" applications (thin client crap that relies on ActiveX) break or suck because of the retarded IE 6 update released in response to the (groundless) Eolas patent suit. At least with IE 6 companies can take steps to avoid applying this update; IE 7 ships with it.