Forum Moderators: open
Is it still just because almost everyone runs windows and IE comes installed on it?
Yes that is why... it is the same reason that Bing is making ground as a search engine, IE8 tries to force it on users as the default search provider.
FireFox could have the best marketing ever and it wouldn't matter, the fact is most users aren't savvy enough, or are too scared to change M$ default behavior.
Windows 7 is apparently shipping without IE and gives users the option of browsers to install, but just like with Bing, I am guessing they will default to IE and most people won't know any better to change the default.
Right now I have a little crush on the new Opera.
First of all why would they know about another browser ? Most of the gray masses don't even know the difference between a browser and "the Internet".
Next there is us webmasters trying to care as much as possible for their broken browsers. We don't use the nifty stuff other browsers can do (rounded corners: we'll use images, not border-radius) cause they are holding us back.
I feel this is slowly (extremely slowly) getting lifted for IE6, but IE7 and IE8 are holding us back just as much as IE6 has been over the past decade.
IE7: still is riddled with weird things like IE6, still has not full support of even CSS2.1
IE8: doesn't have anything of the pre-CSS3 al other browsrs have, is ridicously strict in some parsing even breaking things like CSS3 due to a very rigid adherence to CSS2.1 specs.
Then there is laxzyness: IT departments are given the tools by Microsoft to prevent their users from upgrading to new versions of IE. And installing another browser, well that's even harder to get done. So they're stuck -for mostly no more reason than that it is possible to do so-.
The only way out is to go back to what the IE fans did to win the browser wars
"This site is best viewed with any other browser but IE". As much as I hate it myself, it's the only thing done a wide enough scale that will make users switch in large numbers. And who's going to sacrifice the majority of their visitors to do that ?
The slower way to convert users is a dual approach:
- get "the press" to hype other browsers
- get off our "we can't do that cause IE can't do it" excuse for not making better sites. Sure IE users will see the content, but for the fast eye candy they'll need to switch and get a real browser. This means that if they try a new browser all of a sudden all the sites they know look much more pretty. Wanna bet the IT departments that force users onto IE6 will get more and more demands to allow bette browsers if we offer the users more ?
Thankfully some larger sites are starting to do this for IE6.
YouTube is giving a message to IE6 users that soon the site won't work for them. Digg is also reportedly dropping support for IE6.
I think FB has something similar coming but I have only heard rumors.
Hopefully the bigger sites, which IE6 support costs them real money, will all jump on board... however as pointed out even IE7 and IE8 have issues, so even if we get rid of IE6 we still have to put up with the large IE market share.
Hopefully windows 7 gives us some relief but I am not holding my breath.
One company I was contracting to had 4 laptop and 3 desktop build images. 12 images to certify against over 100 custom applications. They elected to skip their IE7 upgrade so that they could certify XP SP3.
Others are still on Windows 2000 Professional still due to economics. Cost factor at that user scale for either testing or upgrade enters the 7 digit realm EASILY in the US with time spans approaching a year.
