— Home of XPL (eXtensible Process Language)
It's like XML, but you can store source code in it.
MSIE 10 was released with
Windows 8 in August. Some of the people who upgraded to Windows 8
apparently gave MSIE 10 a try, giving the browser a tiny tiny boost
in tracking statistics for the last part of the year. To read some of
the commentary (at least blog article titles), you'd think Microsoft
was making a come-back.
The battle between the
stats shows MSIE still on top according to some sources and well
behind both Chrome and Firefox according to others. The difference is
as simple as unique visitors verses raw hits. Half the people who
ever get on the Internet via a browser are still using MSIE. But the
vast majority of Internet traffic (vastly vast) comes in via other
browsers. This means that MSIE use is dominated by people who don't
use the Internet very much. So, why should we care? (They don't.)
There is more to the
story, and developers and their customers should be keen to
understand it all. Microsoft has traditionally done things in its own
proprietary way, creating havoc and costing Internet content
providers untold billions upon billions of dollars in development and
maintenance costs. Other browser providers have supported the move to
common standards, allowing developers to create one more easily
maintainable version of complex websites.
Microsoft promised and now
claims support for modern common standards in MSIE 10. Yeah, well,
let me know how that works out for ya. My trials indicate that
support for the modern standards is still rather slim at best (less
than they say); just enough to let marketing make the carefully
worded claim (i.e. there is some). Besides that, version 10 has only
recently become available on Windows 7, and isn't compatible with
earlier versions. So, you have a lot of Windows users out there who
can't even use what MSIE 10 provides. Thus, the trend in meaningful,
profitable Internet use is bound to continue to favor other browsers.
I have a somewhat off the
top of my head, but educated quick estimate for you. MSIE use that
really matters to most developers (their customers) lies in about the
same region as the Windows Mobile market share, around 5%. And yes of
course, if you include people who are just interested in cat pictures
and email from the grandchildren, you can get a higher number.
They're probably using Hotmail, so job done.
But wait, there's more.
You might be thinking that MSIE has a chance in the future because of
their (although rather tepid) announced decision to support common
standards. You might have missed Microsoft's legal dodge against
monopoly proceedings and the near successful effort to force them to
sell off their browser business. In case you still don't know why
it's now impossible for you to uninstall MSIE from Windows, it's
because it's no longer a web browser as we commonly understand the
concept. It's an integral part of the Windows operating system,
impossible to sell off separately because it isn't separate.
This can only mean that
MSIE, the unbrowser, is destined to remain behind, with this huge
heavy ball, Windows, chained to its ankle. If it cuts the chain,
allowing MSIE to run free, the courts will once again be looking at
the possibility of removing the 'MS' part. Microsoft has trapped
itself in its own web. MSIE will continue to live with granny and her
cat pictures. For everyone else, MSIE doesn't matter.
