A Dying Explorer

It seems month by month the used to be giant Internet Explorer is dwindling away. What used to set web standards is now nothing more than a boring, stale, hard to deal with experience. They have fallen behind in the browser wars now taking up less than 25% of the market. It seems like just yesterday that Internet Explorer was dominating – half of the people browsing the internet in 2008 would be using Internet Explorer. The only competitor was Mozilla Firefox, but once Google launched its revolutionary browser “Chrome” market shares plummeted and Google’s new browser rose to power. I am a little glad though since I haven’t used Internet Explorer in years because of how far behind it is in web standards. Will Microsoft ever be able to make a comeback in the browser wars or is it too late?

With the launch of Internet Explorer 9 and the upcoming Internet Explorer 10 it seems that Bill Gates will go out fighting. Microsoft is now making some pretty bold statements like the dropping of Internet Explorer Conditional Statementswhich is what keeps some websites together. Originally created because of how finicky older versions of Internet Explorer acted when pinned against each other. Then Microsoft announced that they would be dropping support for the browser that’s 2 generations behind. Meaning when Internet Explorer 10 comes out Microsoft will drop support for Internet Explorer 8. Which can you blame them? Google has also dropped support for Internet Explorer 7 for Google Docs and Gmail.

If Microsoft goes through with this (which of course they will) can Internet Explorer actually make a comeback? If they implement speedy updates and drop browser support for bad browsers (*cough IE7*) and making everything universal by getting rid of their conditional statements then they could have a chance. Now all they need is to bring back the spirit of testing the web standard limits like Firefox and Chrome are doing. I can see a comeback and I’m looking forward to see what Internet Explorer 10 brings to the table. Do you think Microsoft can make a comeback? Will Internet Explorer 10 revolutionize the web like the good ole’ days or should Microsoft just drop out and stick to Operating Systems?