I like Internet Explorer but if there is one thing that drives me nuts about
Microsoft it's their unwillingness to update the browser. The copyright on my
version (6.0.2800.1106.xpsp2.030422-1633 sheez!) of IE is 2001 and other than a
ton of security fixes there have been few if any noticable feature
improvements to either MSHTML (the rendering part of IE) or it's UI shell known
as Internet Explorer. In fact, this really goes back to before IE6 since, IMO,
there were only a few minor features added to IE6 so basically we're talking
more than 3 years of stagnation. What other company in the world of Windows
desktop software could let their app stagnate for so long and continue to enjoy
an ever increasing usership that MS has with IE? Come on MS, toss us a friggin'
bone here! I suppose it'll likely take yet another _major_ OS upgrage before
we'll see anything new from the folks in Redmond.
Fortunately, there are a few companies/individuals picking up where Microsoft
dropped us all off, for example, there is MyIE which is a replacement for the shell
portion of the browser that provides popup protection, tabbed browsing and
grouped favorites among a host of other long overdue ideas. But what about
rendering, take CSS3 for example, this page pretty
much says it all and that's just one of many sites that detail the aging of IE's
rendering capabilities.
Lastly, it's nice to see that Firefox is still alive and
kicking and using my handy zoomin tool it almost looks like there might even be
a bit of an uptick in the line on Google's Web Browsers Used to Access
Google chart which denotes Mozilla. I'd love to see Mozilla reinvigorate
the browser wars 'cause there was nothing better then when MS had competition
and updates came fast and furious.
Update June 18, 2004: I love it, Joel referres to the state of IE development
as the “lock-IE-developers-in-a-dungeon
project”
UPDATE: Look what's being said about IE: IE Market Share Tumbles for
First Time in Six Years. Btw, I'm typing this using Mozilla Firefox.
