Surfin' Safari, ignoring IE

Actually, the browser that poses the biggest threat to Internet Explorer's dominance is lurking in the shadows, ready to pounce very soon.

So forget Safari, Opera, Firefox and Chrome. They're not doing nothing to IE's marketshare compared to this new beast.

And that browser is: Internet Explorer 8.

From the pages I've tested it on, it will do more to kill IE than anything else. Pages I spent hours making IE6 & IE7 friendly are totally scrambled on IE8. It breaks perfectly good pages.

The sooner MS can get it to market, the better, coz it is guaranteed to destroy what little goodwill is left for IE.

I use Safari more often then Opera. Then I recently got Firefox for the mac (becos of nuke anything enhanced and downthemall). If not for the useful Activity function in Safari as well as its integration with Keychain, I'd have moved over to FF completely.

IE ActiveX is much more seamless than plug-ins, can be easily auto-installed with proper security settings.

“You are tying to run some javascript locally which you wrote on your computer in your web browser.

BUT I stopped it running under the pretence I am protecting you even though your javascript shouldn't be able to do any damage to your computer (not that you'd want to because you wrote it!) but it could potential do so because we made such a mess of things when integrating IE into Windows.”

So seamless…

I would question hugely whether IE is faster for general use. My experience has never ever found this to be the case.

IE is a poor product, has been a poor product for years and the latest version doesn't look like it is going to get much better.

Paul Thurott thinks Apple is lying when they say IE7 has compatibility issues with modern web standards which affect Web 2.0 applications.

He (and many others) are no doubt basing this on the “other sites work” assumption without realising the hoops developers have to jump through and Heath Robinson tricks they must perform in order to get their pages to work right.

The only way IE will lose share is if pages starts breaking in it, just when like non standard, IE only sites break in Safari and Firefox. As users will nearly always blame their browser (see “smak” above) they will leave IE and find something else. But stuff won't break whilst so many people still use IE.

It's a vicious circle.

I personally use Safari for Windows because I like the interface and the way it handles bookmarks and RSS feeds and the built-in spell check; but, there are many things, some small, some big that make IE the better browser for the enterprise and for power users.

IE tends to be faster in general use
Security Zones (and the ability to manage them with group Policy)
Safari download window is a nuisance
Cannot relocated cache folder or modify size
Safari has many caching issues
IE ActiveX is much more seamless than plug-ins, can be easily auto-installed with proper security settings. Many ActiveX applications.

Safari/Firefox simply doesn't have the framework to compete in the enterprise, but at home, I would like to see the download window auto-close and be able to control the size and location of the cache folder. Would like Speed increase in Vista as well.

As it stands, even with Safari's shortcomings, I prefer to use it for personal use over IE, that includes IE 8 beta 2.

I wonder if IE6 is still more widely used than IE7?

as a web designer/developer I loathe IE6 and it's insubordination when it comes to the coding of CSS/XHTML compliance...mostly because it's noncompliance is so easily seen.

"Fanboys should note that IE's share has been steadily dropping over time."

FTFY; those of us without an emotional stake in this crap don't care.

"What does this all mean? Not much..."

You got that right. Thanks for the heads-up, though. By the way, what are the numbers for Office-iWork usage? How do those look?

"While that change seems infinitesimal, readers should note that IE's share has been steadily dropping over time."

Is that counting from the Big Bang or from the moment when Apple started pushing Safari installation through iTunes update? I am still quite young but I remember IE gaining market share several years ago. Finally these changes aren't infinitesimal but measurable numbers.

And wheres Camino in this? Like, .03%?

It would be nice if Mozilla could actually put out a 512x512 icon for Firefox 3. Next-gen browser my ass!

That's some yummy lookin' pie.