5 Reasons Why IE9 Cannot Stop IE's Decline

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Microsoft: It's what came with the computer.

percentage of users that possessed the technical ability to install another browser but still chose Internet Explorer: 10%

Extrapolate that to the marketshare IE would have if there was a "choose your browser" window on every copy of windows:

Firefox 50%
Chrome 30%
IE 10%
others 10%
 
[citation][nom]cadder[/nom]You guys are ignoring the most important feature- Mozilla is much safer than IE. Browse indiscriminately with IE and you will pick up lots of malware. Go to the same places with Mozilla and you're safe.[/citation]


And this is the kind of retarded comment that makes people believe they are safe. I live with someone who believes the idiots who spew this and uses Firefox. His computer gets infected with a virus every month from browsing around. I have been using IE since 95 and have yet to get a virus from browsing around. Just because you use a specific browser doesn't mean your safe i wish people would think before they speak instead of misinforming people who don't know better.

For me IE 9 is fast responsive and reliable. So is opera. FF was garbage, safari was crap, and chrome........... some times it felt like it loaded pages really fast because it would hang while it downloaded them and them pop the whole page up in a split second. I use IE so i can have active X support which sadly opera doesn't have. If it did i might use IE less but i would never stop using it. Its the only browser that shows my web pages correctly. All the other browsers make it look odd drop colors or just arrange everything. Depends on the browser what it would change on my sites. ONLY IE shows it all as i lay it out. Hell safari would take everything pictures cells even words and put it on its own line making a rather long and strange site. which btw was the worst browser i have ever used.

I recently tried FF when i loaded ubuntu on my system. Two things i will never do again. though out of all the distros i used ubuntu made me the least aggravated.

BTW MS shouldn't have to support xp anymore.. its dead its over get over it. For me there is nothing wrong with vista i use it i have windows 7 i used all versions of windows and never even seen a fraction of the bs the people on this site complain about. When i see a bsod its a freaking shock. I cant even remember the last time i saw one. Unlike most the people on here i could care less about the new cool thing i use windows and IE they work flawless for me better then anything else i have tried. sorry but i wont b e jumping on the bandwagon for no reason.

Like XP they should let 32 bit die as well. Honestly i hope they strip all support for XP on the consumer level totally and make Windows 8 64 bit only.
 
[citation][nom]ekubaskie[/nom]Best thing I've noticed about FF4 is that it gets the heck out of the way. Best browser, IMO, is the one that uses the least display space per feature, leaving more room for content.[/citation]

That's funny, because IE9 takes up less space by default than FF4, even when you put the tabs on their own row.

I'm looking at a side by side comparsion of the two browsers right now with FF4 set directly over IE9 and Chrome set over FF4. Chrome, without the bookmark bar, takes up marginally more space than IE.

Of the three browsers, IE takes the less space. When you add the bookmarks bar, Chrome takes the lead by a fraction of a milimeter and IE still leads FF by about a milimeter.

Are these sizable differences? No, but I have all three browsers pinned to my taskbar. FF is superior for useful addons, chrome is useful for certain websites like MasteringChemistry.com (which doesn't function properly on IE), and IE is the fastest on my computer due to the hardware acceleration.

I use IE for most websites, like Toms, Cnet, IGN, and a few others, I use Chrome on websites that don't work properly on IE, and I use FF to download youtube videos or other things and not much else. It's slower than both IE and Chrome and it takes up the most space.

I say, screw browser wars; have them all installed so you can take advantage of one's strengths and have options to avoid its weaknesses.

As an aside, I love how in Windows 7 Safari's close, minimize, and maximize buttons, the ones that usually sit on the left side, get reset to be on the right side. Originality fail.
 
[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]You tried to make it like XP? You're using Linux, maybe you should have tried to make it work like Linux.[/citation]

Uhh, maybe because it *didn't* work in Linux?

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]This "downloading" that you keep referring to sounds to me like you went to the website and downloaded a source tarball. Well of course it isn't going to install. You're doing it wrong.[/citation]

Well excuse you - what could be more simple than downloading a single file and double clicking it to install? If Linux can't get that right then I'll stick with Windows, thanks. I'd much prefer to find and download software at my own discretion than be forced to use some packaged stuff.

[citation][nom]randomizer[/nom]In Linux (or more specifically, Ubuntu) they don't need to find and download an exe, double click it and install it. They simply need to open up the Software Center, search for what they're after, and click install. It's just a different way of doing things. At least this way there's no risk of picking a bad mirror full of spyware for that must-have browser toolbar. If you had followed the Windows method in Linux and wondered why things weren't working, you obviously forgot that Linux is not Windows.[/citation]

Yeah, I'm not going to use some crappy download center. It's called a web browser, and considering the fact that both Ubuntu and Windows supports a browser, you should be able to use them in a similar manner, such as downloading a file and installing it.

In case you were wondering, I was using Sourceforge.net for the downloads, which is (correct me if I'm wrong), one of the largest networks for open source downloads.

Oh you mentioned spyware. If you're worried about getting spyware then maybe you don't know how to use the internet or a browser correctly. I don't get spyware; plain and simple.
 
[citation][nom]Pherule[/nom]Uhh, maybe because it *didn't* work in Linux?Well excuse you - what could be more simple than downloading a single file and double clicking it to install? If Linux can't get that right then I'll stick with Windows, thanks. I'd much prefer to find and download software at my own discretion than be forced to use some packaged stuff.Yeah, I'm not going to use some crappy download center. It's called a web browser, and considering the fact that both Ubuntu and Windows supports a browser, you should be able to use them in a similar manner, such as downloading a file and installing it.In case you were wondering, I was using Sourceforge.net for the downloads, which is (correct me if I'm wrong), one of the largest networks for open source downloads.Oh you mentioned spyware. If you're worried about getting spyware then maybe you don't know how to use the internet or a browser correctly. I don't get spyware; plain and simple.[/citation]

1) Opera, Chrome and FF all offer an executable RPM (Fedora and relatives) and DEB (debian, ubuntu and relatives) package that functions like an .exe in every way. So if you like that method of installation, the option is there.

2) What's wrong with a software center? It's secure, convenient and more efficient than downloading things directly via your web browser. But if it's that much of an issue, fine. All software can be installed without it, either via a .rpm/.deb or via a command line prompt (which isn't scary at all, what can be simpler than typing 'yum install ' and entering a password?)
 
All reasons why linux will never gain any reputable market share. That software center was crap. and command prompt well. If we want to use that again i vote to bring back DOS.

This is way off topic but i spent a couple days trying to install programs that i need only to find there was no linux support or so little it didn't matter. Only to find out peoples answer was to use a windows emulator. I see no point in emulating something i could simply just use to avoid all that BS. though it did have a nice GUI in some respects it in no way felt faster or snappier then my vista install. and when it comes to just using it, it was hair pulling.

BTW the answer why would you want to use something closed source anyways was the number one answer to almost any forum post made from people trying to get something to work on linux. Most snobbish community i have ever seen. Personally i haven't seen anything in the open source community that is even worth writing home about yet.

You were right though about the browsers.. opera was the only simple download and click program i was able to get on linux from the couple days i tried to use it. Might have been a better experience if i could have ran as admin the whole time but i never did take the time to figure that part out.
 
[citation][nom]EnFoRceR22[/nom]All reasons why linux will never gain any reputable market share. That software center was crap. and command prompt well. If we want to use that again i vote to bring back DOS[/citation]
Why was the software center crap? It's the easiest way to install a program, even easier than windows. All you have to do is search for a program ,mark it for installation and click apply. Better still when an updated version is launched it gets updated automatically. No need to use tons of different services to keep your software up to date. DOS has to be one of the worst CLIs out there.
[citation][nom]EnFoRceR22[/nom]This is way off topic but i spent a couple days trying to install programs that i need only to find there was no linux support or so little it didn't matter. Only to find out peoples answer was to use a windows emulator. I see no point in emulating something i could simply just use to avoid all that BS. though it did have a nice GUI in some respects it in no way felt faster or snappier then my vista install. and when it comes to just using it, it was hair pulling.[/citation]
If you really think that windows vista is as snappy as linux, please install vista on a computer from 2004 with 512MB of RAM and compare it to linux running on the same machine.
[citation][nom]EnFoRceR22[/nom]BTW the answer why would you want to use something closed source anyways was the number one answer to almost any forum post made from people trying to get something to work on linux. Most snobbish community i have ever seen. Personally i haven't seen anything in the open source community that is even worth writing home about yet.[/citation]
The Linux community is perhaps the friendliest community out there. It's always ready to help someone, be it a new user or a experienced user. Also there are good open source software. Firefox, Chrome, in browsers for example. There are good open source codecs like xvid. The best h.264 encoder is x264 which is also open source. And there are many more examples.
[citation][nom]EnFoRceR22[/nom]You were right though about the browsers.. opera was the only simple download and click program i was able to get on linux from the couple days i tried to use it. Might have been a better experience if i could have ran as admin the whole time but i never did take the time to figure that part out.[/citation]
If you're new to linux you should stick to the most common distributions. Most software is available to Ubuntu through a deb package. Easier to install than using a windows setup. Even my mother has installed software on her netbook running ubuntu without problems. And her knowledge on computers is the same I have about knitting.
 
i don't see how its easier then download click install.. but perhaps i missed a lot?

From my exp the linux community are a bunch of snobs i couldn't find answers for much with out seeing 100 posts about why would you want closed source this or that and just use this blah blah. if i wanted to use a old ass computer i would never upgrade so i don't see any reason to bring up something made last century (which was the last time i used 512 megs of ram)

i use xvid divx and a few others.. also could care less about ff and chrome. I was using ubuntu also. I don't really care to look for programs thats emulate programs i want i just want to use the program.

By all means like what you want use linux. But its no where close to ease of use as windows.
 
[citation][nom]Silmarunya[/nom]1) Opera, Chrome and FF all offer an executable RPM (Fedora and relatives) and DEB (debian, ubuntu and relatives) package that functions like an .exe in every way. So if you like that method of installation, the option is there.[/citation]
If that is the case, then why didn't the files I downloaded work like that?

[citation][nom]Silmarunya[/nom]2) What's wrong with a software center? It's secure, convenient and more efficient than downloading things directly via your web browser. But if it's that much of an issue, fine. All software can be installed without it, either via a .rpm/.deb or via a command line prompt (which isn't scary at all, what can be simpler than typing 'yum install ' and entering a password?)[/citation]
What's wrong with it is that I did not know of its existence until today. Anyhow, the software I was looking for seems to be pretty obscure even on the web, so I doubt the software center would have helped me find what I was looking for.

What's simpler than needing to type 'yum install', is the fact that in Windows I don't even need to know commands like that to install anything. Obviously there are more advanced Windows commands I do know, but for a basic installation, your average computer beginner doesn't want or need to know anything about commands or command prompts, he just wants something to work by clicking on it.

If Linux is trying to gain users, it isn't helping itself by making use of command prompts or download centers. How is a Windows crossover user supposed to be aware of an existence of a download center if there is no such thing in Windows? More likely than not, they'll just end up going back to Windows, like I have. Oh I still have Linux as a dual boot on an older hard drive, but I'm busy ignoring it now.
 
[citation][nom]Pherule[/nom]If that is the case, then why didn't the files I downloaded work like that?[/citation]
You don't even need to download anything manually. All you have to do is simply add the two ppa's bellow to the software center, choose the software and the OS will take care of the rest, including updates. No need to have a bunch of services running in the background like google updater and bounjour to have your software up to date.

deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/mozillateam/firefox-stable/ubuntu maverick main
deb http://deb.opera.com/opera/ stable non-free

[citation][nom]Pherule[/nom]What's wrong with it is that I did not know of its existence until today. Anyhow, the software I was looking for seems to be pretty obscure even on the web, so I doubt the software center would have helped me find what I was looking for.What's simpler than needing to type 'yum install', is the fact that in Windows I don't even need to know commands like that to install anything. Obviously there are more advanced Windows commands I do know, but for a basic installation, your average computer beginner doesn't want or need to know anything about commands or command prompts, he just wants something to work by clicking on it.If Linux is trying to gain users, it isn't helping itself by making use of command prompts or download centers. How is a Windows crossover user supposed to be aware of an existence of a download center if there is no such thing in Windows? More likely than not, they'll just end up going back to Windows, like I have. Oh I still have Linux as a dual boot on an older hard drive, but I'm busy ignoring it now.[/citation]
You don't need to use the 'yum install' from the CLI. You can use the software center. However yum is very helpful when installing a large number of programs at the same time. Imagine you just reinstalled your machine. All I need in linux to install all the missing programs is opening the CLI, type "yum install" and all the programs I need for it to install. The OS will download them take care of any dependency and install them without any other user interaction. All I need to do is wait. The programs will all be up to date, no need to scour the web searching for the latest version.
For those that are used to using windows the transition to linux is going to be hard, even for a mac it can be hard at times. Like I already stated my mother which is in the 70s has linux and windows in her computer and she almost always uses linux. Her experience with computers began three years back. She even learned to install programs and update the distro without me teaching her how to.
Since she had no experience with computers prior to buying her netbook she wasn't accustomed to any OS and perhaps it helped her learning with less frustration (and believe me that to most "old" people without any experience with the computer it can be a frustrating process to learn how to use it, be the OS Windows, Linux or Mac OS). So she stick with it and with my encouragement she learned how to use linux and now she can't live without it.
Strangely enough she has tons of difficulties using windows 7 and hates it.
 
Bit bored of the whole "Internet Explorer" sucks argument.

I don't use Internet Explorer - but it doesn't suck. Sucks in whose opinion, exactly?

Often, Internet Explorer 'sucks' because the person who thinks it 'sucks' consciously *wants* it to suck to fuel their own nerdy fanboi passion for something different. To the rest of the non-technical world who use Internet Explorer (like my mom), it works just fine.

Safety is a non-issue. A browser is as safe as its user, generally speaking. I used Internet Explorer for over 5 years and never picked up a single virus.
 
As much as the article read as "yay for Chrome" (to me anyway) - the XP point is quite reasonable. IE9 comes out as the new browser that all good non-experimental Windows users should use, but when an XP user says 'I shall move on from IE8 then' that user will find themselves unable to and so either has to use a browser that's fine but not 'new' or go to one of the others. Thus IE 9 could reduce the penetration of IE in general.
We've just upgraded to IE8 at work (finally leaving IE6 behind), it seems fine. I tend to use FF at home, but other than the IE file menu etc being in a stupid place and not having customisation options to move it I've no problem with IE. FF has always seemed more sluggish to open for me. If I could upgrade to IE9 without needing to buy a new operating system, I would.
 
[citation][nom]Vladislaus[/nom]Imagine you just reinstalled your machine. All I need in linux to install all the missing programs is opening the CLI, type "yum install" and all the programs I need for it to install. The OS will download them take care of any dependency and install them without any other user interaction. All I need to do is wait.[/citation]
I expect I would wait a very long time if I were to try that with my connection. Doing that sort of thing is unthinkable in this country, unless you're one of the lucky few people who have uncapped.

It would be much easier for me to keep the applications on disk, and update them after installation, because generally updates' filesizes are a lot smaller than re-downloading the entire application again.

Take Firefox 4 for example; it's a 12MB download roughly, but I would sooner put it on a flash drive or transfer it over the LAN than re-download it on the other computers on the LAN.


Oh and I'm sure your mom is good at Linux, seeing as she has a son who appears to be a Linux addict. Even I have managed to get my parents to use Opera instead IE8 (they're on XP), as it's not nearly as hard to shift someone's viewpoint if you can talk to them face to face than it is across the Internet.

For the rest of the world, it's a bit harder to make the shift. Most of them don't care either, so why would they change?
 
"It is unclear how this will affect antitrust-regulations around the globe as the browser essentially is the operating system and offering an app as a secondary browser would be rather silly."

Problem solved: Use Ubuntu OS with Firefox as a choice. So no monopoly. :)
 
The slow development schedule sure isn't good for home users, but for corporate use it's very very good. If we had to update the internet browser of roughly 2200 systems every 6 weeks we could do nothing else. Especially not on the ones running windows antique with deepfreeze on top
 
[citation][nom]11796pcs[/nom]"I believe IE9 will accelerate IEs decline"What have you been smoking? IE9 is the best thing Microsoft has released since Windows 7 and I'm glad they limited the installs to Vista SP2 and 7 because this XP crap is going too far. It's 2011 not 2002. Also why would adoption of Windows 7 slow? There is almost 0 bad press on it unlike Vista and the average Joe with the dusty computer that won't check Facebook anymore is eventually going to have to go out and get a PC with Windows 7 on it. IE has also alwasy been tied to Windows so your arguments on Firefox's ability to reach more PCs is also old news. Your marketing section was also completely opinionated. You also end your article with "Microsoft needs to do more". Do more of what? I think IE9 can stop IEs decline but a complete reversal is probably highly unlikely[/citation]

Basically why the hell should I spend £90+ to upgrade my netbook to something that will offer nothing new? Seriously, for basic users what does win7 offer thats vastly revolutionary than xp? I would rather put that £90 towards a new laptop rather than spend it on a product thats only worth £200 when I got it. The upgrade doesn't justify the cost! On top of that I would have to fight with Microsoft to lift their install limit on office so I could reinstall it. its not worth the hassle for machine to browse forums and type up reports. If Microsoft want me to upgrade to use win7and use their browser then they can pay for it. TBH When Steam comes to linux I have no need for windows on any machine never mind their slow bloat heavy browser, microsoft can go to hell for all I care.
 
@ Kater5

Anyone who cannot see the importance of HTML5 seems to know very little about web development. HTML, as a standard, is crucially important. If browsers implement the standard correctly, it provides a cross platform, cross device environment for providing content to users. It is limited in scope, but that is exactly the point. It is meant as a simple interface for delivering content and providing features to the ENTIRE internet user base.

Comparing HTML5 to Silverlight makes you look quite foolish for several reasons.

1. Silverlight is proprientary
2. Silverlight requires installation on the users machince on top of the browser itself (it is a plugin)
3. Silverlight is not regarded widely successful
4. HTML5 is nothing like Java. Java has far more in common with Silverlight then HTML. Furthermore, Java as a language is far more
5. HTML strives to address a different need then Silverlight, so your comparison is rather moot in the first place.

It is funny how you phrased you post, because web developers and anyone relatively technology savy regard Silverlight as DOA.

It is also funny how you critize the article for being opinionated and subsequently expouse your opinion as fact. At least the article provided some rational arguements to support his opinion while you just made foolish, ignorant comments.

For me personally, I still boycott IE because I am bitter about Microsoft's capriciousnes when it comes to standards. All IE browsers pre IE8 are blights upon the internet and make development that is supposed to be simple, difficult.
 
People,

If you don't know anything about Linux, please stop posting about it. You are speading mis-information.

Linux has a learning curve. If you are not willing to take the time to learn this system, or you are too simple to do so, best to just keep silent rather than make inaccurate statements. If you have not spent several months using this kind of OS, you are in no position to comment on it.

That said, the Linux user base is comparitavly small. It will have virtually no impact on global browser adoption rates.


@ Pherule

It did not work like that because you downloaded the wrong files. Please understand the difference between .tar and .rpm

Also, depenceny resolution by a package manager typically reduces the amount of data that needs to be downloaded. Windows application have to assume that you do not have the required files and subsequently package everything that is required. Dependency resolution allows the missing files to be found upfront, before downloading, so that you are only required to download what is missing. Add to this applications which will delta versions of depencenies and the amount of data that is required to be downloaded is significatly less that what is required without a package manager.
 
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