MS Internet Explorer global usage share is 94.8%

To bad after AOL bought Netscape. They let it die.

I don't miss Netscape. I always preferred it until IE4 came out, at which point IE overtook Netscape in terms of ease of use in my opinion. Also, I found IE was easier to write HTML for my websites. Netscape didn't really seem to do much after version 4.

I think, reason for IE's huge popularity is:- domination of Windows, it comes with windows, it displays page most correctly, better at saving webpage to hdd.

Netscape is still alive in Mozilla. IMO, mozilla is better than Netscape

----------------
<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>

Try using Mozilla's Firebird, and let me know if you ever return back to IE !!!

I believe that the only reason the vast majority of those users use the IE, is because it comes integrated with Windows.

I've used mozilla firebird, and I love it. But it has no option for offline browsing. It's a big drawback for me, since I'm a 33.6k dial-up user (not 24/7 connection), I often use offline browsing. IE is better than any other browser for offline browsing.


----------------
<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>

What browser should I be using? I've got broadband & have used Netscape for years. Right now I'm running NetScape 7.1, but do feel that it's doggie & dodgey at the same time now. Is it time for a switch for me?


Dazzle them with Brilliance, or Baffle them with BS!

Use Mozilla. Netscape and mozilla is mainly same but Netscape comes with AOL bloatware.

----------------
<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>

IE5.0 loaded pages to slow for me. Netscape was faster. Now when 5.5 came out it worked better for me.

I agree, I use Firebird for more than a year and I have no complain at all!

Oh yes! One complain about those people who can't make web sites that run fine on any browser... Usually, I never go back to a site that don't display well on Firebird, these sites are not well coded.

NOTE: I know it, because I know PHP/MySQL!

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

Hey man. how you doin?

You have to take these stastics sites with a grain of salt. Its because there is no way of knowing what browsers are being used in general. All you can do is see what browsers your own users are using. With something like onestat, you have to find out what type of sites their clients are running. Who is it aimed at?

Generally you have to take the sampling biases from traditional statistics gathering and add a whole lot more weight to those biases, especially without knowing the background of the aimed users.

When I make web content, I like Opera and mozilla the best because they stick to standards. There was a time when ie had features beyond the standards, but not so anymore. IE has bad support for CSS and DOM. Even its PNG support is appaling.

I'll tell you one thing about most companies though. The web developers they employ know virtually nothing about usability. They design sites that are specifically for one browser, especially when they go into heavy graphics. There was a recent report saying 95% of FTSE100 companies had sites that would be classified as inaccessible according to the web accessibility initiative.

A huge number of them don't even know the first thing about web developemnt. They just know how to use dreamweaver or frontpage. That is just bad.

Personally I use firebird. I have ns4.7, firebird 0.7, mozilla 1.4.1 and opera 7.11 on my system that I use for testing content and usability.

All the stuff I write totally seperates content from presentation where possible. My stuff appears fine even on Lynx. If Lynx can read it, you've extended your audience to blind users as most voice and braille based browsers use lynx as the engine. If I write dynamic sites, I usually do a browser check in the beginning of every session to supply the correct stylesheets and scripts. Mozilla and Opera work in the same stylesheets. IE6 works fine from most style attributes, but its positioning and padding & margin just sucks. IE5.5 needs its own, as does IE5 for anysite that has complex positioning.

But the differences are subtle if you design your site properly so it is not as much work as it seems.


<b><font color=red>"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."</font color=red><font color=blue> - Benjamin Franklin</font color=blue></b>

Personally I'm yet to meet a people physically who use non-IE browser as main browser. 90% people I know personally, don't use anything but IE. Like me, some people use Opera/Mozilla as an alternate. I use IE for my 95% browsing. Now I use firebird more than Opera as an alternate browser. I don't think the survey is too wrong. If IE's global usage share isn't ~95%, it's surely near 90%

I know how stupid web developers can be. Many local websites are loaded with heavy graphics/flash, they forget that most of the Bangladeshi people use 33.6k dial-up. I hate to see a website completely made with flash

"IE's very forgiving about code rendering"- it's not a good feature for a web developer, but a really useful practical feature for general users, because you can't control how people is going to code their website.

BTW, I have plan to learn web programming few months later. Which language is good for creating a database driven website? I'm think about ASP.NET with VB (I have VS.NET 2003), Macromedia Coldfusion and PHP. Which language is the best for this purpose and which one is the easiest to learn? I know some VB, so I guess ASP.NET with VB won't be too hard and I've heard Coldfusion is quite easy. But I don't know much about PHP. Is it easy to learn and use?

----------------
<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>

True, Internet Explorer does hold the vast majority of users in general. But I don't think its forgiving nature is good for general users at all. If something was wrong with the code and IE rendered content correctly, the creator of the site would see something is wrong and would have tried to fix the problem.

Sometimes you get problems because of a mistake you made in some remote part of the page. You have to go through the entire page to find the mistake. In the other browsers it usually stops where the problem is, or the wrong rendering is near the problem. This means if you didn't carefully read your site after developing it, users are probably missing some content IE isn't rendering.


I'm not sure about the commercial situation in Bangladesh, but I usually develop using JSP. VS.NET is also quite popular here. Many companies do use PHP but I don't have any experience in that. I think cold fusion comes last.

PHP is supposed to be easy to learn. ASP.NET is quite easy to and has a pretty large library of components you could simply add to your site. All of these do db driven sites quite well. I'm a C++/Java programmer, thats why I stick with JSP/JDBC most of the time.

<b><font color=red>"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."</font color=red><font color=blue> - Benjamin Franklin</font color=blue></b>

Yeah I know. The other browsers have a lot of features that IE lacks. The thing with all IE windows crashing when one of the crashes can be avoided if you launch each window in a seperate process. This can be done somewhere in the options. It takes more memory though.

Downloading using IE used to be a problem for me before I got broadband, cos the connection drops from time to time and I would have to restart downloading. Mozilla also has a built in download manager which solved that problem.


<b><font color=red>"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety."</font color=red><font color=blue> - Benjamin Franklin</font color=blue></b>

Micro$ has download manager with MSN9.

This problem doesn't happen with browser integrated download managers.

----------------
<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86" target="_new">My Website</A></b>

<b><A HREF="http://geocities.com/spitfire_x86/myrig.html" target="_new">My Rig & 3DMark score</A></b>

It used to be that Netscape made up 80%+ of the browsers out there. ICQ was the biggest IM program by a long shot.

Then AOL bought them both out and they went to crap.

Everything AOL touches goes to shite.

_________________________________________
<font color=red><b>GOD</font color=red> <font color=blue>BLESS</font color=blue> <font color=red>AMERICA</font color=red></b>

My what a delusional world you live in. Netscape "stuck to the rules"? As if. Netscape grew to power because they were creating new and useful rules while also supporting the latest HTML standards. IE wasn't even a consideration by anyone until M$ began to do the same, and that wasn't for years after Netscape.

Even after M$ was pushing development into IE as fiercely as Netscape's development Netscape still held a considerable majority of the market just because they had been better for longer so people were used to using Netscape.

Then Netscape did something stupid, they went purist. In one daft (no, not deft, daft) move their own idealism killed them. Suddenly pages wouldn't load right in the latest versions of Netscape even though they had always worked in the past. Netscape customers were <i>forced</i> to either live with pages that didn't load correctly anymore, live without an upgrade and wonder if they would ever be able to upgrade ever again, or move to IE because it met their needs. Some loyalists hung on to old versions, but most just gritted their teeth and moved on to IE.

It was <i>Netscape</i> that caused IE to become the browser of choice by the majority, not M$. If Netscape had never let their idealism damage the functionality of their own browser then to this day they would still have the market share because their business would never have collapsed like it did after their blunder.


"Sad is the elephant upon the ice who went to put on his wooly coat only to realize that he left it in his other trunk." - DeEvolution

More reading for ya.

Safari developer David Hyatt has attacked Internet Explorer for letting website developers get away with writing 'malformed code' and consequently holding back the development of Apple's browser. In his weblog Hyatt explains that most of the reports he receives about 'bugs in Safari' are 'essentially differences in error handling and error recovery between Safari and the dominant Web browser, WinIE'. 'If we lived in a world where browsers could refuse to display malformed content (with useful error notification of course so that authors could easily repair their content),' he says, 'then all of these "bugs" would simply disappear. I could focus my efforts on real bugs, and not have to waste my time emulating the behaviour of WinIE.'

He continues to emphasise his point: 'The whole reason nearly all Web pages on the Internet are malformed is because browsers let Web page authors get away with it. As long as browsers are permissive in their error handling and recovery, Web authors will continue to produce invalid Web pages, because they won't even have any idea the pages they are authoring are invalid!' So next time you come across a site that doesn't work in Safari, it's not Apple's fault, its Microsoft's.


If I glanced at a spilt box of tooth picks on the floor, could I tell you how many are in the pile. Not a chance, But then again I don't have to buy my underware at Kmart.

My original post you questioned as delusional

"I'd say that is a pretty acurate description. No blame on Netscape they stuck to the rules but microsoft had all the advantages and could make their own rules."

Are you saying netscape 3 did not conform to html 3 or netscape 2 to html 2?
Yes they did maybe they could do more but they always worked with the rules.

So netscape stuck to the rules they always followed them and because

The microsoft bowser was free and then they bundled it with windows and made it unremovable netscape lost.

Why would joe schmoe get a computer with win98 which has IE working so great bother getting Netscape.


Re : The 'bundled' IE was for years so primative that no one used it unless absolutely necessary. Even when bundled and free IE was still a tiny minority in the market for quite some time, especially in the timescale of internet business.

That spyglass thing was garbage there was lots of garbage things back in those days. It was not untill netscape became dominate with version 2 that microsoft saw the threat. Thus IE 3 and a race from there where microsoft had all the advantages. You need office you must install IE you want win98 you must have and use IE 4 which cannot be removed. plus it was available in pretty much every single MS programme you tried to install.

You cannot possibly dissagree with the courts on the fact that microsoft abused its monopoly to force netscape out.

Like I said netscape followed the rules HTML rules it was always compatible with them. Netscape lost because Microsoft abused its monopoly period. How long can netscape survive when IE is free and why is it free.


You sound like you know a thing or to on the subject but I'm amased you can not see that microsoft won by abusing its monopoly.


If I glanced at a spilt box of tooth picks on the floor, could I tell you how many are in the pile. Not a chance, But then again I don't have to buy my underware at Kmart.

I just finished a Apache/PHP/MySQL course. It's easy to learn if you know C/C++ or Perl. If you know the programming basics, you will feel at home.

It's a great OpenSource! You might be interested in <A HREF="http://www.EasyPHP.org" target="_new">http://www.EasyPHP.org</A> it's a Windows based installation of Apache/MySQL/PHP/phpMyAdmin fully fonctionnal and preconfigured...

Your first script will be :
<?php
// Here is a php script
echo "Hello world!";
?>

--
Would you buy a GPS enabled soap bar?

Did early versions of Netscape <i>support</i> the HTML standard? Yes. Did early versions of Netscale 'conform' to the HTML standard? No. They made their software <i>more</i> flexible than the strict HTML standard <i>and</i> they added non-standard functionality. <i>Just</i> Like M$ did with IE. <i>Neither</i> company followed the rules explicitly. Therefor it is a moot point. In and of itself it had nothing to do with Netscape's fall.

1) IE was free. Netscape was free. Moot point.

2) Bundling IE with Windows meant nothing either. Numerous ISPs (including AOL, which was <i>the</i> most popular ISP at the time) were bundling AOL with their service. So even though every M$ desktop had IE, nearly every internet-capable desktop also had Netscape. So again, moot point.

3) Removable or unremovable makes no difference when you can delete the icon for it <i>and</i> you can readily install and use other browsers instead of it.

Why? Does 'why' really matter when the vast majority of people who had an M$ OS and surfed the web on it did so anyway? And in case for some reason the 'why' does matter, I still <i>already</i> said why: because at that time Netscape was better than IE.

Actually, I have not as of yet read through the exact declarations of the courts pertaining to the IE/Netscape browser war. However if your point of view was the exact conclusion of the courts, then yes, I do disagree.

Netscape's downfall was nothing other than their own bad business decisions. For years they had been beating M$ in the browser wars. Then suddenly one day they fell. Why? Because they chose to force HTML purism upon every single Netscape user. Their fall was as simple as that. Netscape made one bad choice and then refused to go back and change that decision. Netscape destroyed themselves. M$ was merely competing, as most capitalistic businesses are wont to do.

Two persons are competing in a hundred meter dash. Person A is remaining ahead of Person B by just a few steps. Person A suddenly trips and falls over their own untied shoelace. Is Person B to blame for Person A's failure just because they won the competetive event? Certainly not. Anyone who claims otherwise is deluded. It is just that simple.

Honestly at this point I do not remember, but it is quite possible indeed.

Forums are forums. These days they all use generally the same markup language as a replacement for the 'dangerous' HTML. This was hardly the first forum that I had ever used, nor even the first markup language that I had ever learned. In addition at the top of this forum's reply template is the statement "<b>HTML is disabled. Markup is enabled, so you may use <A HREF="http://forumz.tomshardware.com/modules.php?name=Forums&file=faq" target="_new">markup in your posts.</b>"</A> So while I appreciate the compliment, in light of the reality of my situation it is in actuality undeserved.


"Sad is the elephant upon the ice who went to put on his wooly coat only to realize that he left it in his other trunk." - DeEvolution

I have to admit that I am not truly surprised that you cannot even get that much correct. I did no such thing. I stated that you lived in a delusional world. And thusly my statement is proven. I say one thing, you hear another. You live in a delusional world where your facts are as warped as your words.

Read one human interface book by Bruce Tognazzini and then tell me that I should not send some brie to go with David Hyatt's whine.

I cannot? Oh really. Then what pray tell is the point of the appellate courts? As I said, delusional. In the <i>real</i> world people can, and do, disagree with judgements made in court. In fact the judicial system was even designed with this fact in mind. It happens. Judges are not always right. In fact, truth be told, I put about as much faith in the infallibility of any one judge as I do in George 'Dubya' Bush's ability to give a speech without making at least one humorous blunder.

Actually, you know nothing. The court system has one enormous failing: the judges. Judges were once lawyers. However unlike most of the lawyers whom practice their vocation without emotional vestment in their clients most judges were in fact once prosecution attorneys. It is a well known fact that the psychological profile for those whom have the ambition to succeed as a prosecutor includes an emotional investment to 'fight' for a specific cause. This is what gives them their flair for their job and is the 'fire' that often earns them a position as a judge. As a result an unfortunately large number of judges are in fact biased in one form or another. And thusly the chances of M$ actually winning any such court case is far slimmer than statistical fairness would dictate because of the combination of the perception of them as a predator and the bias of most judges towards the perceived victim. This in and of itself weighed heavily against their odds of winning.

On top of that however is the fact that M$ did in fact do many other anti-competitive acts. They are far from clean. (Hence my use of M$ instead of MS. I would have thought that my underlining bias was obvious enough.)

However in this one thing M$ is in fact not responsible for the falling of Netscape. It was Netscape's own mistake, made at quite possibly the worst time for them. All that it took was one bad step to move from the winning position to the walk of shame in their race with M$ because their competition was already so fierce.

They <i>should</i> have forced M$ to release a <i>well documented</i> and <i>complete</i> list of <i>all</i> of their APIs. They <i>should</i> have forced M$ to go through every last line of code in their code examples (at least at MSDN) and make them all bug free. And they <i>should</i> have forced M$ to stop it's anti-competitive OS pricing scheme for OEMs.

Breaking M$ into seperate companies would have accomplished nothing. The two companies would have still communicated between one another the same as they do as one company now. All that it would have done is added a little more managerial overhead, and we all know that M$ could have certainly afforded that. It was just as stupid of an idea then as it is now. It only <i>sounds</i> good, but the truth is that it would serve no real purpose. Nothing would have changed had it happened.

The seperation of IE from the OS is of course at least one small step in a positive direction, no matter how misguided that step actually is. It makes no real difference in the end either, but at least it shows some thought. The IE API will no doubt simply become part of the Windows API and the IE application just a shell. I cannot see M$ actually removing the IE functionality from their file browser or desktop. Nor should it be removed. The ability to better display information graphically is a logical portion of any OS. So while the intent of the courts was positive, the seperation will not occur in the manner that they intended and this is actually a good thing because their decision was not well thought out.

No, the courts have repeatedly failed. They simply do not know how to handle the situation. They do not understand the technical aspect, nor do they actually appreciate the situation. They have made bad judgements and meaningless resolutions. M$ does deserved to be punished, but the courts are incapable of properly rectifying that situation.


"Sad is the elephant upon the ice who went to put on his wooly coat only to realize that he left it in his other trunk." - DeEvolution

<i>If</i> I was wrong then I would readily admit such. In this however I am not. Netscape failed by their own hands. Any business analyst at the time would have told you as much. Any human interface expert would say as much.

Netscape established a behavioral pattern of their software. They also established a definite user interface layer. Their users came to expect that their software behaved a certain way and looked and operated a certain way from upgrade to upgrade. Then one day Netscape changed both their GUI and their software's behavior when handling HTML. In one fell swoop they drastically changed the look and feel of their browser. In doing so they repulsed and alienated the majority of their users who were not happy with those changes. And thusly Netscape lost a large portion of their user base and fell to the inferior product that was IE. It was a bad business decision at the worst possible time. No more, no less.

Again, you and your delusional world. Netscape was most certainly <i>not</i> the center of Microsoft's antitrust trials. Just because M$ <i>is</i> guilty of anti-competitive behavior does not mean that M$ was the reason that Netscape failed. In fact just because M$ wanted to crush Netscape does not mean that M$ was the reason that Netscape fell. You give M$ more credit than they deserve.

I never once said that M$ <i>didn't</i> act inappropriately. In fact I clearly stated otherwise. I also made it quite clear that my point was that this impropriety in actuality had very little if anything at all to do with Netscape's downfall.

No, and if you were capable of leaving your delusional world for even the briefest of moments you would never have even needed to ask such a ludicrous question.

And that has what exactly to do with the price of tea in China? If you believe just merely stating such in a competitive environment is akin to or evidence of committing a crime (or even just a lack of morality) then I highly suggest that you never watch the WWE, or any sports at all for that matter.

Only <i>The Shadow</i> knows. I suppose as much as it takes until I get bored of seeing you whine. Or mayhap I will become distracted by the journeys of life once my weekend begins and you will get your reprieve. Time will tell.

I find it interesting that so far you have yet to actually disprove a single argument that I have provided while you in turn have stopped providing any, and yet you are calling <i>my</i> argument weak. Do you know of the word transference?

And, by the way, you <i>still</i> have not even tried to answer my question of "Then what pray tell is the point of the appellate courts?" Could it be that you have no answer? Do you even understand the question?


"Sad is the elephant upon the ice who went to put on his wooly coat only to realize that he left it in his other trunk." - DeEvolution

You know, that is a good question and I am afraid to admit that you have caught me at a disadvantage. My memory for numbers falls quite short of spectacular I'm afraid. If memory serves me correctly however it was four point something. I seem to remember it being right around the time that they changed from Navigator to Communicator.


"Sad is the elephant upon the ice who went to put on his wooly coat only to realize that he left it in his other trunk." - DeEvolution