Nikoport

A couple of days ago, Microsoft has launched open beta version of the Internet Explorer 8, also known as IE8. This should be quite an important release, which actually should have been IE7, because of the complete CSS 2.1 implementation, for which all webdesigners around the world have asked, screamed and cried for quite a number of years.

The final release of the IE8 be passing the ACID 2 test, which depending on the release time, may be even ahead of the Firefox. (Opera and Safari are already passing it for some time). Besides ACID 2 being just a synthetic test of the CSS 2.1 standard, it is quite an important mark as well – it at least tests some of the important functionalities of the Cascading Sheets and represents the dreams and wishes of a lot of webdesigners for years. I hope, that there will be an ACID 2.5 test, including some of the most complicated situations in CSS standard, especially those where the major browsers are still having problems. Such test would always be a motivation for browser developers to improve their respective products and for the rest of us mortals a simple comparison tool to see which one is making bigger effort in providing a higher quality product.

The most interesting thing about IE8 web standards compliance is that it won’t support standard compliance mode like IE7 by default. One will have to use much talked and contested “X-UA-Compatible” header. I do not like this idea at all – but i have no illusions that no scream of web developers community will make Redmond change its mind.

2 interesting technologies included in IE8 are those to combat Google: Activities (think embedded Google Maps,) and WebSlices( selecting a part of the web page for saving for later viewing – for years there are quite a number of plugins for Firefox allowing this functionality).

Activities will allow to check out the address on the webpage by selecting it and then viewing it on the maps (microsoft maps, of course), and also social services links like digg it, facebook share links, etc. There must be a number of plugins in the future to include your preferred social services. I hope it will eliminate all those useless social links on the pages in the nearest future. =O)

I am still testing IE8 beta and still not sure if i keep it for more time. What i am concerned at the moment is whether we will have a possibility to have 2 browsers at the same time on the same computer – we are about to have IE6, IE7 and IE8 active – i don’t remember seeing 3 Microsoft browsers being in statistics for quite a number of years… With the recent death of the Netscape browser it brings a lot of nostalgia to me. I do not think about having IE6 on Vista – it is impossible, but for argument’s sake i need to have IE7 and IE8 on Vista, cause i won’t buy another license for a virtual machine just to get 3 browsers working at the same time.

p.s. A lot of sites are broken, quite broken if i might add – some of mine are included. Also there are a lot of cases when text adjustment does weird things, and IE7 emulation is far from perfect – many cases text justification sometimes is quite weird, but i do understand that it is just a first beta.

It has been more than a year, since Microsoft has released the most awaited and anticipated version of their browser – Internet Explorer 7. 18th October 2006 saw the final release of the browser – available for Windows XP SP2, Windows Vista and Windows Server 2003, from the start it has been released only for the users who passed “windows genuine advantage” validation procedure. A couple of weeks ago, on the 5th of October 2007, it has been released for all the other users as well.

Now, one year after the initial release i decided to take a look at what part of the share of the browser market it has conquered so far, since the removal of the validation for installation is being a clear attempt into a wider distribution of it.

So, lets start with the numbers:

1. this site has a total of 44.84% of the Internet Explorer Market (not total one, just between all IE visitors), being about 10% behind Internet Explorer 6 (54.44%). For one year, i think these results are very nice, but this site contains more technical information, and tech people are fast for upgrades

2. One local portuguese site, has a 15.24% of visitors using IE7, with 82.78% visiting with an old and not so good IE6. The missing percentages are going for IE5 likes. It shows that in Portugal users still are bound to IE6, and thats sad, cause we desperately need to move on.

3. Portuguese on-line shop, which has actually more Brazilians visiting than Portuguese has 18.50% of the visitors using IE7, and with slightly more then 80% are still using Internet Explorer 6.

4. One web design firm, has 33.33% of the IE visitors using Internet Explorer 7.

5. Another web design firm, shows 29.98% of Internet Explorer 7 users between all the IE users.

6. Furniture store site shows 30.18% of the IE vistors using IE7.

7. A site dedicate to the medicine has 23.14% of the Internet Explorer market conquered by IE7.

8. W3schools on their statistics page shows for September of 2007 shows that globally 20.8% are using IE7, 34.9% – IE6, and 1.5% are still stuck on Internet Explorer 5. If we do some math, then the global market of Internet Explorer is 57.2% of which Internet Explorer 7 users are representing around 36%.

9. A site, with some references to the literature, has 16.39% IE7 market share of the all Internet Explorer visitors.

10. w3counter has a 29% of the IE market attributed to the IE7.

Looking at all those values, i am thinking that the true values should be ranging somewhere between 20% and 30%. I believe that the 25% should be the real value of the conquered market for Microsoft’s IE7.
I know that these statistics are not covering every possible area, and are not really, but i feel that they give the general feeling of what progress IE7 has made in one year.

I think that these results are fine, obvious is that Microsoft is not satisfied with them, and even more obvious that a lot of big companies are not going to do the upgrade, before fixing all incompatibilities in their sites and intranets. We all would be much more happier if in one year we would have another the situation when IE7 will dominate the failing IE6, and i believe that after the last Microsoft’s move this situation is going to happened for sure.

How do secure a market if you are a Microsoft, and your concurrence is starting to win the market ?

The answer is quite simple and trivial – release your project for free, to kill the concurrence. It was done in the 90s, when Microsoft started conquering the web, by releasing Internet Explorer free – and as a result Netscape was obliged to do the same. Besides the fact, that IE4 was better then NN4, the main reason the people made the switch was this one – it was FOR FREE. Now everybody sees Firefox conquering the market, gaining everywhere the percentages of the users, and as of now the most switchers are old Internet Explorer 6 users, who are ghm lets say have forgotten to pay for their Windows copy. They wish to gain access to the new functionalities – like tab browsing, RSS etc, but they are not prepared to pay the full price of a Windows to get it – so the only way is to get a Firefox, because a free upgrade to Internet Explorer 7 was closed by Microsoft.

Now Microsoft has realized once again – they cannot have the market without giving people something for free. In the ancient roman times the emperors were giving free entrances to the coliseum and free food in order to maintain people happy, now we have Microsoft giving its most important tool for free (few days ago the Windows validation check was required in order to download the IE7). No, i am not complaining because i have paid for Vista Business while some others are not – the reason the people pay for software is because they recognize the works of the others, and because they know how much it takes to create any small little insignificant piece of software, and what a monstrous effort it is to create something like an IE, even being crippled like it is.

Quite a smart move by Microsoft, which i welcome from the heart – we need to move on to the better quality browsers, IE6 have to die as soon as possible, and today in the morning my statistics for this site were telling me, that still 55% of the visitors are using it. All web developers will be jumping and throwing parties when IE7 will be the least available on the market – it is so far beyond the old crippled Internet Explorer 6.

Now it is the time to start the adoptation of the IE7, good or bad, true or false, we have the announcement that it should arrive this month, October, via updates to the millions of the computres with Windows XP SP2. If this anouncement is true, then starting from November the 7th Explorer is going to be a serious issue to consider, when creating a website.

Microsoft has given us enough time and information to begin the transition, so there are not much excuses, so lets get it started. I have allready started changing several things for adopting the “hacks” to be separated and included as an external IE conditioned stylesheet. I know that some of the work i did before, especially one site that i made at the beginning of the year, is going to have troubles displaying correctly in IE7 without some serious adoptations.

I have to confess that i am pretty excited about the fact, that finally some changes are going to happend, as well as to see the process of the conversion from the IE6 (to firefox, opera and IE7, i hope). So for me it is for sure going to be the month of adopting the websites to be compatible with Internet Explorer 7.

I think that it is becoming easier to make websites… It reminds me now about the end of the 90’s with the world-famous browser’s war between IE vs Netscape, but right now its becoming more webstandards compliant browsers vs IE.

What am i writing about ? In the sense of creating 2 versions of the same page: one – for standards compliant browsers and the other one for everyone’s bashing favourite – IE. In the old days people were doing 2 versions for Netscape and IE, and as of now we just have changed Netscape (which is powered by both Gecko and Trident) for the standards compiant browsers. With all the hacks that one have to use to adapt a design model for IE i do not hesitate to call it “a different version of the website”, though it largely depends on the design and its implementation. In the case of table-based design not much things needed to be changed especially for the IE, though if we are talking about fluid tableless design – the things are a bit complicated.

With the introduction of the 7th version of the Internet Explorer, it seems that some things are going to be easier, there are a lot of bug-fixes to see in the 1st RC of the Explorer, this way i have allready started to adapt the websites i am making (and have made) to include its support as early as now. No, its still far from being perfect, but i am considering it a nice step into the future, but it is turning the state of the 2 website versions of the into the 2.1 versions =O). By 0.1 version i consider including all those hacks and fixes that IE6 requires into the conditional commentary and separate CSS file, but its an important pass for decreasing the number of webdesigns per page which should happend exactly by the time IE6 is going to disappear from the website statistics.

Some days ago, Microsoft has announced, that the new IE7 is going to be “injected” via updates into the Windows XP Service Pack 2 systems.

I think that it is a very good and important move from microsoft. No doubt, that the most part of webdesigners are welcoming a new Internet Explorer with all the changes that it is going to bring (CSS, xHTML etc). The seventh version is going naturally and with the time replace the buggy IE6 and i believe that as soon as it is going to happend, as better for all of us. There are some pages over the net (mostly technical) which are allready showing between 0.5% and 1.1% percentage of their traffic belonging to the seventh version of the Internet Explorer, so even with the last beta3 version it is allready on the market, starting taking away the percentage from the sixth version. This all means that there is no point of ignoring it and we better start adapting our sites to the latest microsoft product.

No, i dont think that the IE6 is going to disappear in the next couple of years completely (No upgrade for anything bellow WinXP SP2 – that includes WinXP SP1, Win2000 etc), but i would say that if microsoft is going to deliver a Windows Vista in the beginning of the next year, then in about a year we are going to deal with a respectable percentage of the IE7 browsers.

It makes me happy to think that the progress is finally coming to the mainstream part of the Windows platform. =O)

Nice one …

The very first feeling – i have seen so many things somewhere else … where ? … OsX … again ?
Yeeees (with the intonation of Morpheus).

Interface has been twicked very nicely, thought the very first thought of mine was actually – is it IE 3 or IE 7, the icon should be undone, redone and so on. Oh, i know about that this icon make a part of the “new” aqua “air” interface, but at least on 2 different computers it does not look so fine. The “clear type” fonts are impressive – very nice antialliasing, Quick tabs – copright Apple Microsoft, Zooming feature – fantastic( thanks, Opera Microsoft ), but the most important feature of them all is a tendency (first step), into the direction of the good css support. The one, that the most webdesigners were asking, crying, calling, emailing, spamming, begging on their knees for the last 5(five) years. God wishes, we will have some more real websites by the end of 2006-2007, if iE7 will appear this year alongside with Vista, of course. =O) The search toolbar is where it should be – with msn search as a default option, add-on manager is a very nice and hopefully usefull functional option – you can see all(?) the activeX “stuff” installed on your computer, addons that “run without requiring permission”, currently loaded and currently used add-ons.

Usability – the reload and stop icons have been moved to a very strange position. From one side, its nice to have them separated from the rest of the functionality, but from the other side, you have to get used to their new place, and they are way too small, to be noticed instantly, and even after noticing, the people outside of the computer industry will have some problem understanding their functionality, judging only by the icons.

About CSS – some of the things i did with the hacks, are obviously broken, there is no big surprise here, but its nice to see some real css changes in microsoft policies.( I _hope_ they will get the stuff right, before the final release ) And as one of my friends is going to start working at microsoft – i have to be more careful, when writing about them. I will have a pleasure fixing these little things when i see the final product, but not before i will see it on my computer (promise != final_product && hope(7.0b < 7.0) )

On IE7 beta 2, this blog (which design is still very far away from my wishes) has some minor glitches, and i am going to twick them as soon as the final release going to appear. =O)

I see this effort as a very good and important movement of recognizing the importance of the web design. Lately, microsoft were "feeding" us with the new versions of development tools, but only last year i have finally heard the announcements of the new products dedicated web design. As at this moment the vast majority of the population is using IE, all of us depending on its progress.

In the next few days i am going to do more IE testing, as i am very excited about the progress, that the biggest share browser is going make.