The ides of March
With surprisingly little fanfare, Microsoft has released version 9 of its browser, Internet Explorer, and finally we can have rounded corners on boxes.
On March 14th, Microsoft made Internet Explorer 9 available for download and has begun offering it to users via automatic update. This version, the third major release in less than five years, is much more compliant with CSS standards than earlier versions and finally catches up with other mainstream browsers in being able to handle some basic and much asked for design concepts like shadows and rounded corners on boxes.
Unlike other browsers, new releases of Internet Explorer tend to create major compatibility issues for web developers but IE9 will be much less problematical. Thankfully this release focuses more on speed, stability and standards than with proprietary gadgets. Its rendering of web pages much more closely matches that of modern browsers such as Firefox, Apple's Safari, and Google's Chrome, so sites which have been built to HTML standards and which already work well with those browsers should also work smoothly with IE9. This move away from proprietary features and firmly towards web standards is welcomed.
The downside is that there are now four major versions of Explorer in use, and the userbase remains fragmented. IE9 will not run on Windows XP, only on Vista and Windows 7. Whilst Microsoft would like us all to spend money upgrading to Windows 7, Windows XP is still a very good operating system that is still used in many large organisations. On a global basis as of February 2011, around 40% of users are still running XP and it is still the most used desktop operating system. This means that for some time yet, distinct versions of Explorer will remain in use and websites still need to support these older versions.
In the past, Microsoft enjoyed near dominance of the browser market but that dominance is long gone. Whilst the majority of desktop users still use Explorer, that covers several distinct versions. On the sites we manage we find that for every 100 users of IE8 we have 23 users of Google Chrome, 26 users of Safari, 37 using IE6, 43 using IE7, and 49 using Firefox. Larger surveys covering the broad spectrum of websites consistently show an even smaller market share for Microsoft and most studies agree that Chrome now has more than 10% of the market. The survey from W3counter paints the bleakest picture for Microsoft. It reports that all versions of MSIE combined take just 40% of the market, Firefox grabs 30%, with Chrome coming in at 15%.
With the emergence of mobile web browsing in the form of smart phones, iPhones and iPods, Internet Explorer's market share is likely to decline even further. We are finding up to 5% of our daily web traffic now comes from mobile devices and that percentage is growing. One thing is certain. The days when websites could be built for one browser, one screen size, and one set of fonts are long gone. Its a diverse world out there.
29th March 2011
This article comes from the SKILLZONE email newsletter, published monthly since January 2008, and covering topics related to technology and the internet. All articles and artwork in the SKILLZONE newsletter are orignal content.