Posts Tagged ‘IE8’

Google’s Chrome developer team has a good reason to celebrate. For the very first time. Google surpassed IE8 with a single version of its browser. For two days, Chrome 14 maintained the role of, the world’s most popular browser as it trumped IE8 by more than half a point of market share.

As the browser strategy of Microsoft, Mozilla and Google unfolds, we are noticing a seismic shift in the browser landscape. Google is claiming a bigger slice of the market every month, which gives the company greater control of web trends. A near perfect browser update model is supporting Chrome’s success, while Microsoft and Mozilla are struggling with a fragmented platform that could turn into a  nightmare to support. Especially Mozilla needs to figure out how to deal with requests for a stable platform model.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer hit a historic market share low this weekend, with IE share dropping below 40% for the first time in about 13 years, which falls into the product time frame of IE4.

Mozilla’s latest browser is slowly, but consistently growing its market share and now claims a greater portion of the browser market than IE7. IE9, however, has not seen similar growth and the automated update has not shown an impact yet.

There are plenty of good reasons why you would consider a switch from IE6 to IE9. But you may still depend on IE6 apps in your company, even if HTML5 offers a new world of opportunities. Microsoft isn’t making this move especially easy as IE9 isn’t compatible with IE6. ‘Tough luck’ is the answer you will get from Microsoft, but there is an option to run IE6 apps on IE9. It will just cost you.

Has Mozilla gambled Firefox’ future away? Browser market share data released today indicate that Firefox may have suffered a big blow against its market share, while Chrome and especially IE8 were able to gain. Both Net Applications and StatCounter now state that Chrome has reached a milestone and now has more than 50% of the market share of Firefox.

Microsoft tries to kill IE6, desperately, but there are still plenty of environments that depend on IE6 or IE7 browsers. If you are a web developer targeting these users, there is now and updated and free virtual machine download that includes IE6, IE7 or IE8.

Today’s release of browser market share numbers, as far as they have been made available by Net Applications and StatCounter, and Microsoft’s spin on those numbers got us scratching our heads. Microsoft is trying hard to attach a smile to a browser that is sinking in popularity by selecting data sets that do not matter in the big picture. Or, Microsoft is simply oblivious to the severity and reasons  of IE’s market share decline: Microsoft continues to make the same mistakes with IE8/IE9 that got it into trouble in the first pace with IE6.

Internet Explorer 8 suffered an unexpected loss of market share in October – for the first since the browser became generally available as a beta in March of 2008. The reason is not so much the launch of the IE9 Beta, but a strong adoption rate of Google Chrome, which is now set to break the 10% mark by the end of the year. In Europe, Firefox is ready to take the lead from Microsoft. At this time, IE9 cannot stop IE’s bleeding of browser market share.

If you have not had any reason to move up from IE6, this may be a compelling reason to look for something new. Or an even more convincing reason to stay with IE6.

Microsoft has begun supporting the falling market share of its Internet Explorer browser with a TV campaign that highlights how easily you can fall victim to online scams and how you can avoid it: Simply download IE8.

Microsoft just can’t get rid of IE6. According to Net Applications, almost 19% of web users are still browsing with IE6, which was released with Windows XP in 2001. Would you drink spoiled milk, Microsoft asks and gives a subtle hint to upgrade to IE8, along with a request to send along email addresses of people who still use IE6. No, Microsoft, of course we don’t want to drink spoiled milk. But what if spoiled milk is all you have?