Firefox winning the Browser War
December 8, 2006

Taking a look at recent market share for browsers provides some insight into who is winning and losing the wars. Firefox continues to build momentum, Safari is creeping upwards, and Internet Explorer is losing ground. I’d like to comment on the three with my ‘theories’ of what is occurring.

• After destroying Netscape Navigator, IE really became the gold standard of the net. The browser was simple, functional, and pre-loaded with all Microsoft Products. As well, ActiveX had a short spotlight, requiring most folks to utilize IE. Why use multiple browsers when one of them supports all the different standards on the web? I myself was an IE user through version 6.
• With Internet Explorer 7, the web design world was really holding its breath for a browser that they could design for that would react in accordance with the latest technologies of Cascading Style Sheets. Unfortunately, IE 7 disappointed. In reviewing the IE Blog, it really wasn’t even on the radar until the browser was beta and the screams of anguish came from the web design industry. Some last minute development corrected some of the issues… but not enough to make the design world happy. Remember - many in the design world are operating on Macs… lacking Internet Explorer. But, unfortunately for them, their clients do use Internet Explorer.
• But alas, with Internet Explorer 7, Microsoft radically changed the interaction between the user and the client. For technophile like myself, some of the changes were kind of cool. But for the atypical user… not being able to simply navigate across the top of the screen was both puzzling and confusing. They started to look at what else was out there. Firefox.

Firefox