Internet Explorer's market share has been falling for several years now, while browsers like Firefox, Safari, Opera and Chrome are growing in popularity. From a web designer's perspective, This is a welcome migration. Internet Explorer (IE) has long been the bane of our existence due to its lack of support for web standards. For every site built, a designer or web developer must spend hours getting IE6 and IE7 to play nice with their code. IE8 has made many improvements but still doesn't natively allow for some of the simpler things like rounded corners or a decent drop shadow. Much of this is slated to change for IE with the introduction of IE9 which has decent HTML5 support and better support for CSS3 and other web standards.
Perhaps Microsoft is just finally waking up and smelling the reality of the web these days with their extensive enhancements to IE9. Or, perhaps this is all in an effort to gain back their dominating web browser market share, which was as high as 90%+ at it's peak.
In many situations, people will use what's readily available to them regardless of how well or how poorly it gets the job done. This is especially true in situations where users are less tech-savvy and don't feel comfortable, don't care or don't have the knowledge to change their browser's default search engine. I'm sure a very significant portion of web users fall into this category. All search engines are available in all browsers but some browsers come with a default search engine already set. Regardless of the reason for Internet Explorer's dominance in the past, that dominance is waning while Microsoft is taking part in a well-marketed battle with Google for a portion of the online search business. Could this desire to gain a foothold in the search market be the reason that Microsoft is implementing a bigger, bader (not bad meaning bad but bad meaning good) IE9? If Users migrate back to IE9, Microsoft's Bing search engine stands to cut into a significant portion of that valuable search business from Google. The great search wars are far from over but Google is obviously winning very big at this point. We'll have to wait and see over the next few years if Bing can hold it's own in a market where the other players are well embedded. Either way, at least we're getting some signs of a better IE.
The children are our future. Teach them well and let them… benefit from your volunteer activities. Nashville Interactive recently designed and performed a large portion of the front-end build for the newly launched schoolvolunteers.org. The site is a tool used by volunteers and coordinators to log and track hours as well as for posting and finding new volunteer opportunities. The target demographic for this particular website design dictated that the site have a very quick load time while retaining a professional and branded look. The site uses sparse and well optimized images and relies on web-safe fonts and css backgrounds for most of the design. The target users are also almost exclusively using various versions of Internet Explorer, including our old friend IE6. This meant that backward compatibility was a must for this project. The site is a great resource for a great cause and will be a great resource for users.
I normally hate exclamation points though I couldn't help but use one here. Internet Explorer 6 user rates are down to 13% according to w3schools.com. The number of IE6 users has been falling by about 1% per month for the last year or so which is music to my ears. I'm officially stating that I will not support IE6 once the number falls below 10%. I've spent many, many, many hours dealing with version 6′s inconsistencies and I feel that it's time to move on. That being said, I think it's only right to offer IE6 support and testing for a nominal fee. (since I can't collect that money from Microsoft). By my calculations, IE6 should be off of my books by early 2010. Not a bad run for a browser released eight years ago.
I've never been a fan of Microsoft. Mostly because of Internet Explorer's poor web standards and all the pain It's caused myself and thousands of other web designers over the years. Now Microsoft has fallen even further out of favor with much of the web design community with their imposition of Bing onto its customers. Basically, Microsoft is trying to play catch-up with Google in the online advertising arena. They've already failed in my eyes.
Bing is now the default search engine for Internet Explorer. When the update was first released there was no choice in the matter, however Microsoft has fixed that "bug" so now it is apparently possible to switch the default search engine if you know how. I can see the logic behind promoting your own product versus the competition's but haven't past anti-trust cases taught you anything Microsoft? I have to think that one of the largest corporations in the world could do a little testing on their software updates before they release them. Missing such a major bug (not being able to change the default search engine in IE6) considering the touchy anti-trust subject, is inexcusable to me.
Also, in certain situations it seems that if you type an actual website URL into the address bar of Internet Explorer, you get Bing search results rather than the actual website you were looking for. (I hope this is a bug but I doubt it) Now, I realize that many people who use the internet utilize the search feature when they're trying to get directly to a site anyway. (i.e. typing "facebook.com" into the Google search bar rather than the address bar at the top of the browser). But I expect to get directly to the site I'm looking for when I type its URL in the ADDRESS BAR. I'm not looking for search results and paid ads. Search engine FAIL in my eyes.
