So what is the Life Expectancy of a Browser?
The first version of IE was the product of the hard graft of only five or six developers (to put that into perspective, we have more people than that in the web development team here at digital agency 9xb). The first version was sold as part of the additional Plus! bundle of Windows 95.
The years 1995-1997 saw IE become the default browser for Windows: undoubtedly the driving factor behind IE’s rise to most popular browser. IE2 supported HTML tables and cookies and IE3 was able to support CSS. IE3 was also Microsoft’s first browser to include a mail client: ‘internet mail and news’ grew up into Outlook Express. The birth of IE3 in August 1996 coincided with the introduction big blue ‘e’ that’s up there with the golden arches or the Star of David in terms of instant recognisability. Following such a golden era in internet browsing, the jokers at Microsoft could perhaps have been forgiven for placing a giant, metal, blue ‘e’ on the lawn of rival Netscape’s offices after the launch of IE4 in 1997.
As the new millennium approached, IE5 introduced the search history and favourites in 1999 and IE6 followed in 2001. Whilst the 6th incarnation of the world’s best known browser went on to achieve a staggering 90% market share, and even today is still widely used, it was universally berated for its poor track record on security.
Despite such widespread criticism- indeed at one point the US Computer Emergencies Readiness Team (CERT) issued the advice to use any browser but IE6- Microsoft left us until 2006 before offering us an improvement. By then, Firefox was gaining in popularity and many of the features of IE7 where borrowed from/copied from/ inspired by (depending on your personal opinion) it.
Of course, IE8 followed in March of last year, bringing with it Inprivate browsing and IE9 will be coming our way soon with promises of better support for CSS3 and HTML5. But hasn’t the browsing landscape changed quite significantly in the 15 years IE has been with us? Can it still compete? What exactly is the life expectancy of a browser?
Recent years have seen much diversification in browser use. Exact figures are hard to find, but Firefox is thought to have a 30% market share, Chrome almost 10% and Safari around 5%. Various versions of Internet Explorer account for around 55% of usage, so whether you like it or not IE is still up there.
But those figures are just a snapshot of exactly what’s happening now. If we looked at trends would things seem different? Certainly: for IE to have dropped from a market share of over 90% to 55% since the early noughties suggests that times are changing. And the fact that Chrome’s market share has doubled in the past year shows that web users are willing to embrace new browsers.
There are plenty of people who believe that IE6’s infamous security weaknesses were the straw that broke the web-using public’s back: indeed I recently read a PC World blog post placing IE6 in the top 25 worst tech creations. But whilst security is important, serious web users have other things on their mind: usability, speed, available add-ons, translations and that’s why Chrome and Firefox are taking off so rapidly.
So what is the life expectancy of a browser? I reckon about 15 years. Security might have been the first nail in IE’s coffin, but Chrome will be the last.
Tags: Chrome, firefox, IE, Internet Explorer
One Response to “So what is the Life Expectancy of a Browser?”
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Sadly, even IE6 isn’t officially dead. Despite all the campaigns (e.g. ‘IE 6 no more’ and ‘IE6 Funeral’), Microsoft still extended support of IE6 until 2014…note that if they stuck to the initial deadline we would officially be rid of it by now. The issue is primarily with businesses that run dated software / applets that only work properly IE6. They’re unlikely to upgrade to just ‘get with the times’; more likely that they’ll only upgrade once the compatibility of their tools broadens, or that not upgrading will actually cost them. The only respite one can take is that at a consumer level, IE6 is disappearing quite rapidly; thanks in part to Facebook, Twitter, Google (inc. YouTube) and Digg officially dropping support for IE6. Some praise has to go to Microsoft too, at least they’ve marketed the hell out of IE8; perhaps enough to shunt a decent proportion of people up a version. And of course, there was the security issue that many governments flagged up that probably made some difference too. In general, I don’t like Internet Explorer, but I wouldn’t mind so much if everyone was IE8….I’ve yet to write a CSS hack for it. The major issue now is IE8’s support for CSS3, or lack of it; which means now and in the future, they’ll be lots of graceful degregation. You can hope for IE9 to pave the way for CSS3, but the people who actually care for that kind of stuff will likely be using something else, and it will take decades for IE9 to catch-up.
Jason Hobbs says:
