Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Web browser market share of all times visualized

figurepool.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 44 posts

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#11

Post by rimantas »

btipling wrote: post #3

What happened between 1998 and 1999 that flipped the percentage so dramatically in favor of IE? Was it all the new people joining the internet for the first time who simply clicked the blue e instead of installing netscape or did people abandon netscape in droves?

IE4 and Netscape4 happened. IE4 was the first really useable version of IE, and NN4 was a huge misstep for Netscape with the whole "layers" nonsense. By that time the first use of CSS started to appear in the wild, (fixed backgrounds and hover on links in particular). NN had this asinine CSS-via-JS implementation that sucked so much. In short: IE became better than NN and that hold true till Firefox showed up.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#12

Post by franze »

monsterix wrote: post #10

Brings us to a question in near term. What will Microsoft attempt to do next (other than developing IE10/IE11) to retain their browser market-share? This? http://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-to-acquire-Mozillas-... [Update & disclaimer: The page links to a question on Quora which is behind a sign-up overlay for non-users by Quora. I do not work for Quora.]

had to downvote, as you linked to a page that is unreadable thx to a blur-overlay for not logged in users.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#13

Post by monsterix »

franze wrote: post #12
monsterix wrote: post #10

Brings us to a question in near term. What will Microsoft attempt to do next (other than developing IE10/IE11) to retain their browser market-share? This? http://www.quora.com/Who-is-most-likely-to-acquire-Mozillas-... [Update & disclaimer: The page links to a question on Quora which is behind a sign-up overlay for non-users by Quora. I do not work for Quora.]

had to downvote, as you linked to a page that is unreadable thx to a blur-overlay for not logged in users.

Oh I didn't realize because I was logged in. But then that overlay is out of my control no?

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#14

Post by franze »

monsterix wrote: post #13
franze wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

had to downvote, as you linked to a page that is unreadable thx to a blur-overlay for not logged in users.

Oh I didn't realize because I was logged in. But then that overlay is out of my control no?

but the page you link to isn't

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#16

Post by franze »

rimantas wrote: post #9
franze wrote: post #4

i have been in web development sind 1998, and the worst time was 2004 to 2006. whereby 2002 and even 2003 IE 6 was seen as fresh air in the internet (oh, the things you could do), in 2004 the cracks and horrible limitations began to show, and no new version, no better browser, no better internet in sight (mozilla firebird still sucked at that time), 2006 was my personal year of browser depression, and i decided i don…

I agree with the first half, but regarding Mozilla… IIRC I switched to version 0.6 (then called Phoenix, iirc) as my default browser in 2003, and I don't remember it sucking. I remember still coding for IE5 compatibility in 2006, but it was not a problem. For me IE7 was more annoying, strangely enough.

IE 7 was annoying as you had to deal with IE 6 and IE 7 now. so instead of one problem, you now had 2 * the problem variations due to the different rendering-modes...

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#17

Post by brazzy »

franze wrote: post #8
mseepgood wrote: post #7

The market looks healthy at the moment.

as someone who went to more than one browser war i have to say: as long as there is still some blue in that chart, it's not over. and yes, i'm strongly biased. i would be years younger if ms would give me back the time i wasted with IE bugs/features/rendering/special-needs or whatever they call it.

> as long as there is still some blue in that chart, it's not over.

And that's a good thing. It would be best if it's never "over", because the only way for that to happen would be complete and unchangeable dominance of one browser, which would cause exactly the problems we don't want.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#18

Post by mtgx »

btipling wrote: post #3

What happened between 1998 and 1999 that flipped the percentage so dramatically in favor of IE? Was it all the new people joining the internet for the first time who simply clicked the blue e instead of installing netscape or did people abandon netscape in droves?

Microsoft included IE for free in their monopoly OS.

Re: Web browser market share of all times visualized

#19

Post by monsterix »

franze wrote: post #14
monsterix wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh I didn't realize because I was logged in. But then that overlay is out of my control no?

but the page you link to isn't

Absolutely. I accept your down-vote for poor (possibly) experience off Quora.

The question regarding browser market-share and its impact on Microsoft's positioning is relevant to the context of this thread so it makes sense to quote here.

Post reply on HN