Microsoft talks Internet Explorer 8, hints at release date
By Jonathan Schlaffer
With IE 6 and IE 7 losing market share to Firefox, Opera and various other browsers that are not based on the IE engine, Microsoft figured it was time to talk shop about IE 8. While a specific release date was dodged around the whole time, hints were dropped that IE version 8 would ship around Q4 of 2008. Mozilla is set to release Firefox 3.0 before the end of this year; Microsoft has some catching up to do.
ComputerWorld stated that the release date between IE 6 and IE 7 was five years when IE6 was left to fester and grow some mold with a nasty smell and an even worse taste. That paved the way for Firefox to really take some market share in 2004. Three years later Firefox sees 15% market share and among all versions of IE it sees 78% down from 90%. Other browsers make up the odds and ends.
If you think IE 7 is secure well, maybe you should reevaluate your position but Microsoft is positioning IE 8 to be even more secure than IE 7 is today. Yeah, right. With security holes popping up left and right for not only IE 7 but their flagship operating system, Vista, forgive me if I don’t believe that.
I’m pretty sure IE 8 isn’t going to be that much better than IE 7 though it is early and there isn’t even a developer preview yet. Given Microsoft’s past would it really come as a surprise if IE 8 was hyped and its security features discussed in detail and then when it’s finally released, it’s somewhat of a disappointment? That’s what happened with IE 7 and that’s probably what will happen with IE 8.
The question is will IE 8 be released for XP or will it inherit the DirectX 10 syndrome and be destined for Vista only, we’ll just have to wait and see together.
Related:
Entry was posted
on Thursday, May 3rd, 2007 at 3:57 am
under 
Print This Post
Read more entries by Jonathan Schlaffer.
May 6th, 2007
“Firefox sees 15% market share”
Well, in North America anyway; the percentages vary across the continents; the real hotspots are in Europe: http://www.xitimonitor.com/en-us/browsers-barometer/firefox-march-2007/index-1-2-3-77.html
Overall, Europe has a Firefox usage rate of ~25%, but some nations in Europe are significantly higher; e,g, over 35% of Germans use Firefox and nearly 45% of Slovenians do. By the end of the year you should definitely see at least one European nation surfing with a Firefox majority (I’m not sure what the IE usage rates are; Firefox likely has a plurality in at least a couple countries right now).
May 6th, 2007
Yeah, that 15% figure was for the US, I should have made that clearer.
May 20th, 2007
[…] I also don’t make it a habit of using Alpha build software, it usually leads to trouble. Whatever the case is, I have high hopes for Firefox 3.0, not so much for IE 8. Share and Enjoy: These icons link to social bookmarking sites where readers can share and discover new web pages. […]
November 16th, 2007
Software Development Guide…
I couldn’t understand some parts of this article, but it sounds interesting…