To stop their slide, and grow their market share again (which is, I presume, the goal of the IE team at Microsoft), Microsoft basically needs to get Firefox users to switch back to IE. Everything becomes a lot simpler when you think about it like that.
Firefox made it dead-simple for people to switch from IE to FF. The whole install process for Firefox takes maybe 120 to 180 seconds, from the time you click "Download" to the time you are up & running. And Firefox imports all your IE data in one click, and also recognizes common IE shortcuts. Ctrl-E is IE's shortcut for the top-right corner search box -- it also works in FF, try it!
The reverse is not true. It's hard to switch from FF to IE. IE takes 10-15 mins, plus a restart to install (at least it did when I installed IE8 it a couple months back). It doesn't let me import FF data, and it doesn't recognize FF shortcuts. By making it so hard to switch to IE, they have basically made it impossible to grow IE's market share. Is it any surprise then that IE is dying?
I agree they need to work on the installation/transfer process, but to their credit, they have made some big changes and even innovations in IE8. The kind of thing that will probably slow the trend but not reverse it.
Firefox also gets you more hooked with its add-ons. This is getting worse with time.
Little things can make a big difference & FF leads the way in little things. Big things (big add-ons like firebug or colorzilla) are obviously deal-makers, but the little things are big friction points.
For example, the main reason safari irritates me is that they don't have the bottom of the page chrome. I like to see the URL of links before clicking.
The interesting lines in the large graph are the faint ones showing the adoption level of specific versions of each browser. With Firefox, each new version quickly replaces the previous one in terms of adoption, so when you see that Firefox market share is around 22%, that's almost entirely the most recent release, installed over the last 12 months. Safari has similar adoption curves for each version, but releases are more frequent so the sum is smoother.
Now look at the peak of each curve for IE versions. IE6 held over 80% market share for at least 2 years, by this graph, and probably longer. (IE5's peak would have been even higher, if memory serves.) IE7 had a strong initial uptake, and then gradually grew up to a plateau around 47% -- and now, with the release of IE8, it's dropping again. Given that IE7 was a substantial improvement over IE6 (tabs!), I don't see any convincing reason why IE8 would have a higher peak adoption level than IE7 did.
That's an interesting trend, to me. If IE can't reverse it in subsequent releases (IE9+), and Firefox stays the course, then the peak adoption levels of FF3.5 and IE8 will be close, and as IE6 and IE7 inevitably drop off, it will become increasingly difficult for IE to maintain its overall lead.
While it has remained linear up until now, I doubt it will continue, regardless of which way you think it will diverge.
If Microsoft gets its act together and makes a browser that people don't mind using (and I believe IE8 is significant progress), I could see that level off around the 50% mark.
Similarly, if Webkit or FF makes some tremendous progress or has some killer feature, I could see IE's share drop very abruptly. So far however, the competition has mostly gone for feature parity.
One of the things that bugs me about the IE6 browser wars is that the majority of outspoken people think supporting standards would help. In nearly all fields (with healthy competition) supporting standards is something you need to do before anyone will adopt your product, and then you get to worry about new features.
I think this mindset of standards compliance has caused FF and Webkit to not push more interesting ideas. Want to support a video tag? Do it. Just make sure you follow the HTML 5 spec first. That's where real innovation comes from -- for instance, the creation of AJAX wasn't a standard, but Microsoft adopted it, and the other browsers thought it was a good idea.
[+] [-] aneesh|17 years ago|reply
Firefox made it dead-simple for people to switch from IE to FF. The whole install process for Firefox takes maybe 120 to 180 seconds, from the time you click "Download" to the time you are up & running. And Firefox imports all your IE data in one click, and also recognizes common IE shortcuts. Ctrl-E is IE's shortcut for the top-right corner search box -- it also works in FF, try it!
The reverse is not true. It's hard to switch from FF to IE. IE takes 10-15 mins, plus a restart to install (at least it did when I installed IE8 it a couple months back). It doesn't let me import FF data, and it doesn't recognize FF shortcuts. By making it so hard to switch to IE, they have basically made it impossible to grow IE's market share. Is it any surprise then that IE is dying?
[+] [-] endtime|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] netsp|17 years ago|reply
Little things can make a big difference & FF leads the way in little things. Big things (big add-ons like firebug or colorzilla) are obviously deal-makers, but the little things are big friction points.
For example, the main reason safari irritates me is that they don't have the bottom of the page chrome. I like to see the URL of links before clicking.
[+] [-] cellis|17 years ago|reply
[+] [-] etal|17 years ago|reply
Now look at the peak of each curve for IE versions. IE6 held over 80% market share for at least 2 years, by this graph, and probably longer. (IE5's peak would have been even higher, if memory serves.) IE7 had a strong initial uptake, and then gradually grew up to a plateau around 47% -- and now, with the release of IE8, it's dropping again. Given that IE7 was a substantial improvement over IE6 (tabs!), I don't see any convincing reason why IE8 would have a higher peak adoption level than IE7 did.
That's an interesting trend, to me. If IE can't reverse it in subsequent releases (IE9+), and Firefox stays the course, then the peak adoption levels of FF3.5 and IE8 will be close, and as IE6 and IE7 inevitably drop off, it will become increasingly difficult for IE to maintain its overall lead.
[+] [-] irrelative|17 years ago|reply
If Microsoft gets its act together and makes a browser that people don't mind using (and I believe IE8 is significant progress), I could see that level off around the 50% mark.
Similarly, if Webkit or FF makes some tremendous progress or has some killer feature, I could see IE's share drop very abruptly. So far however, the competition has mostly gone for feature parity.
One of the things that bugs me about the IE6 browser wars is that the majority of outspoken people think supporting standards would help. In nearly all fields (with healthy competition) supporting standards is something you need to do before anyone will adopt your product, and then you get to worry about new features.
I think this mindset of standards compliance has caused FF and Webkit to not push more interesting ideas. Want to support a video tag? Do it. Just make sure you follow the HTML 5 spec first. That's where real innovation comes from -- for instance, the creation of AJAX wasn't a standard, but Microsoft adopted it, and the other browsers thought it was a good idea.
[+] [-] SwellJoe|17 years ago|reply
But...Firefox 3.5 beta does support the video and audio tags, and tons of others.