Microsoft launches IE8 to the public this morning; you can now download it from the Microsoft web site. But do most web workers even care? Despite using a Windows machine, I haven’t touched IE for weeks. I downloaded the release candidate to check it out but since then I haven’t opened it up once.
IE’s marketshare has declined markedly over the past few years as better alternatives have entered the market. IE8 just doesn’t have anything to offer me over my two staple browsers, Firefox and Chrome. My thinking seems to tally with web workers generally: according to Google Analytics, only 22 percent of you access this site using IE, while more than half use Firefox.
However, as Om noted last night, for those people who are unwilling to consider alternative browsers, IE8 is an improvement on previous versions — particularly with regard to security — and probably does enough to stop IE’s browser share declining much further, so IE isn’t going away any time soon.
Will you download IE8?
Technically I’ve had IE8 since I installed Win7, but I use Firefox on the desktop and Chrome on the lappy.
Is there a reason why you use different browsers on the two machines, Jason? I would use Chrome fulltime but it doesn’t play nicely with the spellchecker in WordPress.
I can’t synchronize my feeds across multiple computers with IE8, so you know, I don’t use it…
IE8 has shown improvement over its predecessors(IE 7, IE6, etc.) but still is far behind the competition. From a development stand point I hope it doesn’t become popular.
Do Web Workers Even Care?
No.
At my main job I have to use IE for two web apps or they don’t work. The only other reason for me to use IE (any version) is to test what my web designs look like in IE. Otherwise I use FF and Chrome.
I like Chromes memory management, but not having Ad Blocker on it, makes loading pages soooooooo sloooooooooow.
I’ll install IE8 when I see enough people using it to worry about it from a designs point of view.
It doesn’t offer me anything personally, but it does represent a potential future of no longer needing to include conditional comments, specialized stylesheets, or CSS hacks in order to address non-compliance.
In that regard, it’s not the *launch* that I care about… but I will be watching adoption rates and hope that I’ll get to stop supporting 6 (and maybe even 7) sometime in the next year or two.
I use firefox always unless something won’t load without IE. FF is so much easier to use.
Unfortunately, I have to care because I still get traffic from IE users. But I’ve considered not making tweaks for IE compatibility and just posting a message saying, “If you’re viewing this site in Internet Explorer, you’re not my target audience”
Internet Explorer 8™ includes significant improvements for web developers so of course I’ll be installing it. Web workers who don’t care will be joining the unemployed.