Internet Explorer – fully funded

Internet Explorer 6 was released August 27th, 2001.  That is right, 2001 and it only had partial support for CSS level 1.  It is now February, 2009 and last months’ stats according to the W3C, had 18.5% of the people online using it.  That forces web designers to stick with technology that is 8 years old.  I am guessing that we will no longer have to support IE6 sometime in 2010.

Internet Explorer 7 was released in October 2006 and it only had partial support for CSS level 2.  Now please realize that CSS level 2 specs came out in 1996.  That puts Microsoft 10 years behind when it comes to one aspect of browser technology.

Let me cut Microsoft some slack and guess that IE7 will only have a life-span of 6 years.  To me, that means that 5-10% of the people online will be using it in 2012.  So, designers will be able to drop support in 2012.

The extremely sad piece is next.  Initially, IE8 was supposed to be released late in 2008.  Shockingly enough, that did not happen.  A public RC (release candidate) was released in January 2009 and the final version should be released in later 2009.  IE8 is slated to support only CSS level 2.1.  CSS level 2.1 specs came out in 2005.  Why Microsoft has to be so far behind is beyond my comprehension.

So let’s do the math again.  Let’s say IE8’s life span is 6 years.  We will finally be able to support CSS level 3 in 2015 in all browsers.  Assuming that there is an IE9 sometime before then (Ok, I’m sure they will release something, but not before CSS level 4 is out).

Open Source – some funded, some not

Now let us think about the Open Source movement.  Let me give you a quick little run down on some of them.

• Firefox – In my opinion it is Netscape’s grand-daughter.  Netscape gave birth to the Open Source Mozilla, and Mozilla gave birth to Firefox.
• Konqueror – A browser for Linux/Unix.  It’s engine is called KHTML.
• Safari – Based on the KHTML engine.  Safari’s engine became known as Webkit (and Webkit has submitted code back to KHTML)
• Chrome

So, are you wondering which one of these browsers are CSS level 3 fully compliant?  Well, none of them of course.  At least, none of them that are not in Alpha or Beta.  Chrome and Safari though, in Beta both passed the Acid3 test, according to the Acid3 web site.  Firefox 3.2 Alpha is almost compliant, and Konqueror shortly behind Firefox.  I am assuming that in the next few months they all will be passing the Acid3 test.  This means that shortly every popular Open Source browsers will be light years away from Microsoft when it comes to Internet browsing.

Why Is Microsoft So Far Behind?

I would think that the people that have 90% (that number is a guess) of the desktop market share would be winning, and be pushing technology.  Obviously that is not the case.  Open Source is just working better for the users when it comes to the Internet.  I am guessing that they have way too much red tape in the organization to get anything done.  Maybe it is because Microsoft tries to be backwards compatible, which slows development down.

There must be a reason why they slow down technology, it is just a fact.  It makes web designers and developers miserable, the end user suffers, and web applications are not where the could be if Microsoft did not slow everyone down.

What A End-User Do?

Quit using old browsers.  Please use Chrome, Firefox, or Safari for everything you can, and update it often.  Tell everyone that you are more secure using one of the Open Source browsers.