Tag: Internet Explorer

I’ve not seen the Browser Chooser yet on my Enterprise installations of Windows 8, but it popped up today on the Windows 8 (home) demo machines we got at work last week.  The first screen (below) tells me that I have an important, possibly life altering, choice to make.

I’m then presented with my options.  IE10 was the 4th choice both times.

You might not notice it, but you can scroll the list of possible browsers to get something different to the first 5:

And there’s more:

I’ve never heard of most of those browsers.  What the hell is a FireFox? Didn’t Clint Eastwood steal that from the USSR for President Reagan to bomb furniture stores?  I picked IE10 and was rewarded with some congratulations:

Simples!

You might have heard that the EU is upset with Microsoft because the Browser Chooser that MSFT agreed would be included in Windows 7 for European Union customers was not active in Windows 7 SP1.  Strangely enough, I (a Chrome browser user) noticed this in my last few builds.

The EU forced Microsoft into introducing the Browser Chooser in Windows 7 for local markets.  This would prevent Microsoft from abusing a then monopoly position and enable other browsers to enter the market.  Fair enough I thought, and it worked well.  When you logged into a new PC, you could pick your default browser.  Some joked that IE was the browser you used to download your preferred browser. 

Then the news broke this week that the EU is investigating an issue where this browser chooser was not working in Windows 7 SP1.  And further, the EU could fine Microsoft up to 10% of their earnings over the 18 or so months period: $7 or $8 billion!

Interesting, because although IE still leads worldwide, I’d been hearing over the months that IE had lost the top position in Europe.  What do the stats say?

According to StatCounter, IE is #3 in Europe:

According to GetClicky. IE has continued to decline globally, despite the lack of the browser chooser:

According to W3Counter, IE also continues to decline globally, despite the lack of a browser chooser:

In other words, with a browser chooser or not, IE continues to lose market share even if Microsoft owns some 95% of the “PC” market.  We could question Microsoft’s monopoly position (IDC reckon they’ll sell 350 million PCs in 2012) too: Apple have 4% or so of the “PC” market, are set to sell 116 million iPhones ad 54 million iPads, almost exclusively using Safari.

Do we really need a Browser Chooser on Windows?  People have figured out what browser they want and IE is sliding.

And where is the EU mandated chooser for IOS devices?

It will be interesting to see what happens with Windows RT where IE and Office run on the desktop and no other programs can be installed there.  I wonder if the decision to include the limited desktop at all in Windows RT will backfire?  But that’s a whole other story and the lawyers/Eurocrats will decide that one (I’m not saying that this is good at all).

If you’re using Windows 8 Developer Preview (pre beta) then this Internet Explorer 10 Platform Preview might interest you.

It was announced this week at Build Windows that IE10 in the Windows 8 Metro UI would not support any plugins.  The goal is to eliminate common performance and security flaws, e.g. Adobe Flash in being increasingly viewed (at least by me) as a vulnerable attack vector that doesn’t get updated quite as well as it should.  This ban effects Flash, ActiveX, etc.

Note: IE10 via the desktop does still support plugins.

I paid little attention to this story until last night when a couple of developers I was spending time with expressed how they felt.  They were not happy; not one little bit.  One of them had made great investment in a SaaS cloud product that was based on one or more plugins.  Their work, if nothing changes with IE10 for Metro, will have been for naught because they will have to convert everything to HTML5.  I don’t know what the toolset is like so I am not sure about how easy/difficult such a porting operation would be.

This morning I was lucky to sit down for breakfast with two other developers who I had met the previous morning at breakfast.  I asked them what they thought.  Firstly, they hadn’t heard the news.  They made some very interesting points:

• Apple users have lived without Flash and other plugins for years.  OK, Apple users are a little different because they “do what they have done told by the turtle-necked one”, and they are used to not having access to all of the possibilities we PC users have had for 20 years.
• Developers and users might not have such a bad reaction if they are educated about they why’s and how’s of plugin removal.  Yes, there will be a vocal minority, but Microsoft has to have the toolset and education available to win them back.
• A critical plugin is ActiveX.  It apparently will not be compiled for ARM.  The same is probably true of lots of other plugins that are used in personal and commercial apps.  If true application universality across x86, x64, and ARM is to happen then there has to be a common denominator.  That is HTML5.

I’m sure this one will boil up slowly over the coming 6-12 months.  Maybe when launch happens, Metro UI will be ignored because of this, and users will focus on IE10 for the desktop.  Maybe legacy business apps that use God-knows-what will be an issue – let’s remember that IE6 is still widely used on XP because of them!