There has been a lot of negative press surrounding Internet Explorer. This week, Google sent an email to Google Apps administrators explaining their intentions to phase out support for Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0. Just last month, French and German governments asked citizens to stop using the Internet Explorer browser (no matter the version). Yes, there is even a blog titled “Why IE Sucks.” (Parental discretion advised).
We’re of mixed opinion on the matter. Do we believe people should dump Internet Explorer? Yes! In fact, I outline three reasons why below. At the same time, due to subpar browsers like Internet Explorer, the value of cross-browser functional testing using Selenium is that much more important and relevant. Call it job security for testers.
I have no secret reason to pan Internet Explorer. I work closely with all browser flavors including Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari, Chrome and Opera. Though I am a former Googler, I have no built-in bias to push one browser over another. And even though I recommend users not use IE, Sauce Labs supports and will continue to support IE in our downloadable products, Sauce IDE and Sauce RC, and our cloud testing service, Sauce OnDemand. With that context, here are three reasons why I feel you should dump Internet Explorer.
1) IE is a virus magnet
Virus authors target IE/Windows users because IE still has the majority market-share. If they targeted Opera users, even if they had 100% success rate, they’d still not have a massive impact. In this case, following the herd can get you more hurt. Meanwhile, creators of Firefox and Chrome argue that their browsers are more secure than IE in that their open source nature makes it easier for security analysts to inspect the source code and fix security holes. Of course, the best way to test that argument will be when Firefox or Chrome reaches majority market share (already true in some places) and virus authors target those browsers, too.
2) IE is slower
IE 6,7,8 are all significantly slower compared to Firefox, Chrome, and Safari when viewing very dynamic sites (like Google Maps or Gmail). Google Chrome is arguably the fastest. Among the “alpha geek” set, Google Chrome (and the non-Google branded Chromium version) is becoming their every-day browser because it is so fast.
3) Web-standards and innovation
MS is becoming irrelevant to the conversation. Microsoft is not keeping up, so users are missing out on new features. HTML5 brings offline storage, and new kinds of applications that leverage the new <canvas> and <video> tags. Microsoft is moving so slowly that web developers are more often ignoring IE to focus on Firefox, Chrome, and Safari when building bleeding-edge applications. IE users will be left behind for these new applications. This is especially true on mobile devices, where the WebKit rendering engine is the de facto standard. On the desktop, Chrome and Safari are built on WebKit and are benefiting in new features and bug fixes because of the innovation going on in the mobile space.
I agree with a lot of those comments, but quite honestly with the huge demand out there for IE it would be nuts not to support it. That demand has also built a market place of some SaaS offerings only supporting an IE environment and not even worrying about other browsers. This has built a strange relationship indeed but honestly until someone actually puts some marketing revenue out there to help drastically change the marketshare. I dont see any of this really changing.
Off the clock, I use a mix of IE, Firefox,and Chrome. There are certain things I like and dislike about all three. Chrome is probably my favorite.. but whenever i run into a bug.. i startup one of the others.. That being said.. as i write this. I’m looking at the top of my browser window.. sure enough.. its IE 8
Jason — Great post. I personally am switching back and forth between Chrome and FF. For some “strange” reason, I am having a lot of problems with running Google Apps and Gmail on FF. But that’s a different story…
@Mike Verinder: note that Google didn’t say they are not supporting IE in general, just IE6, which even Microsoft is encouraging users to move away from.
For those interested, there is a great piece on TechCrunch today about updated browser market share rankings and the issue of the dynamics among IE versions 6, 7 and 8. Check it out here: http://www.techcrunch.com/2010/02/02/internet-explorer-browser-share/
On my own blog, http://gevaperry.typepad.com, which is a small sample and mostly of “alpha geeks” and generally, tech-savvy early adopters, Firefox is already leading with 43.49% versus 28.64% for IE at number two. Although not statistically significant — I consider this a leading indicator.
Geva
As a SaaS vendor, both hosted and behind the firewall SaaS appliance, we have a number of customers who may never move off of IE 6 or IE 7. They have custom browser-based applications of their own that they can’t or don’t want to port to more modern browsers. Yes, they pay a big price in performance, but that is not their primary concern. So in order to continue to serve them, we need to continue to develop and test in IE 6/7/8 for business, not technical, reasons, at least for the forseeable future.
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Is this the only fucking information from mozilla how to fix a plugin that worked until 3.5? Are you fucked up at mozilla, not to provide ANY information about how to pass your bullshit plugin check besides some foreign bullshit blog? damed…