Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Version Market Share

However, this may be more of a moral victory than anything as IE7 users are still migrating to IE8 (and quickly). Fully expect IE8 to be the browser king. But, this may be one small digital footprint for the non-IE world… one giant leap for the Internet user.

Internet Explorer still remains the world’s most popular browser. But, if trends continue, maybe one day the web developer community will rejoice at either A) Internet Explorer being relegated to a small piece of the browser user pie or B) they actually become standards compliant. I’d venture to guess at which one might occur first, but after a lifetime of betting on the Wolfpack, I’ll let this one play its course.

Source: StatCounter Global Stats – Browser Market Share

To date, Favre has passed for 1925 yards, 68% completion, 16 touchdowns to a scarce 3 interceptions and has posted a quarterback rating of 106.0. His average fantasy pick was 110! Talk about a steal…

Of course, much of his success can easily be attributed to Adrian Peterson. Favre himself has stated that he’s never played with a guy like Adrian (and few have, really). So this turn in events has caused us to rethink some things and restate our initial post.

It seems that Favre is hitting on all cylinders. Like Firefox, he’s add-on friendly (plays well in a variety of teams), is not the most popular of NFL quarterbacks (the Manning brothers or Tom Brady probably take that crown while the dastardly IE still has an overwhelming amount of browser marketshare), and he never crashes (his streak of starts is amazing… and this may be the one place he does differ from Firefox).

And thus, we apologize to Brett (we know you read this blog).

Once considered perhaps the greatest current version, this faulty, quirky, and bug prone passer has become the entity that just won’t go away.

Speaking of icons who just won’t go away, this gels nicely with the fact that Microsoft will be supporting IE6 until 2014…

The engineering point of view on IE6 starts as an operating systems supplier. Dropping support for IE6 is not an option because we committed to supporting the IE included with Windows for the lifespan of the product. We keep our commitments. Many people expect what they originally got with their operating system to keep working whatever release cadence particular subsystems have.

As engineers, we want people to upgrade to the latest version. We make it as easy as possible for them to upgrade. Ultimately, the choice to upgrade belongs to the person responsible for the PC.

Anyone else notice that the ‘IE Blog’ from that link above looks like crap too… just like IE6?

The rest of us are going to have to live with Microsoft’s crap a little longer… just as the Viking nation will have to live with what was once a great quarterback, but is now just an inkling of what he once was in the face of newer, younger, faster, stronger, and more accurate talent for at least the next year, as Favre is set to sign a 2-year deal today.

Let’s compare and contrast the icons:

But the Web as an application platform has plenty of flaws. Chief among them are the bevy of clients available for the reading of web applications each of whom follow their own set of rules. By far, the most frustrating thing about developing simple websites to advanced applications is making sure each entity is cross-browser compliant. Although the browsers are becoming more standardized with each new release, there is still a very relevant dinosaur that rears its ugly head every time. That dinosaur is Internet Explorer 6. Conceived as a part of Windows XP and Windows Server 2003, Internet Explorer 6 achieved a usage of nearly 90% in 2002 and 2003. The Internet Explorer series has slowly been on a decline since the release of Mozilla’s widely popular Firefox browser and Apple’s Safari browser. However, many legacy web applications are only supported on the Internet Explorer 6 platform thus many corporate networks restrict the installation of other browsers or even more updated versions of Internet Explorer which are much more standards compliant than the IE6 dinosaur.

Non-standardization across browser platforms is perhaps the greatest challenge when building sites and applications. Unlike the packaging process used for desktop applications which uses operating system componenents to render display, Internet applications require developers to code specifically for not just different browsers but different versions of browsers as Internet Explorer 6 behaves much differently from 7 or 8.

Typeface restrictions are second on my list of pet peeves in developing for the Web. Web developers tend to stick with standard fonts (of which there are around 7 or 8 ) because browsers require the end-user to have the specific font installed on their computer for it to render correctly. It is possible to embed fonts inside of websites to have the user’s browser download a specific font and then rendering it correctly, but this method solves few problems as most fonts are commercially licensed. Without the permission to distribute a selected font, which most if not all companies will grant, then you cannot legally use this method.

A few patch methods exist, but the implementation is difficult and often requires the user to have flash installed and javascript enabled, which a majority do, but nonetheless will prohibit some mobile browsers from rendering correctly.

Although the Internet as a platform has a few flaws that must be dealt with on a case-to-case basis, the ease of installation and upgrading on the client end more than makes up for it. The Internet’s shortcomings are more than made up for since the Internet can essentially deliver enterprise-level applications without a single install (ok, maybe you’ll need a few ActiveX controls, Flash, or some other add-on) and without forcing the user to manually upgrade their product with a new release. Further, the good news is that with each new browser release or upgrade, standardization becomes more and more mainstream. The typeface issue will likely be resolved by the end of the year as a commercial solution is on the horizon of release. I’ll of course keep you updated.