Island Web Works

The internet is a great medium for users to be able to access choices in just about anything they can think of. One of these choices is the application used to browse the web, the web browser. There have been battles in this area for years, often resulting in court action and sometimes in the demise of the product. Just like you “know” your detergent is better than all the others, you also know your chosen web browser is the most secure, fast and friendly browser available.

There are a number of web browsers available at the moment, such as the incumbent market leader Microsoft Internet Explorer and the “new kid on the block”, Google Chrome. Other browsers exist, each targeting specific features such as speed, platform (mobile phones, etc.) or privacy. The chart below from MarketShare illustrates the performance of each browser in the last 2 years or so. (Download the PDF)

Browser version market share since July 2008 (click to zoom)

As various versions of the web browsers are released and market-affecting court action is announced, it is clear how browser share is affected, particularly with the decline of Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 and 7 (towards version 8 ) and the increase in adoption of alternative browsers. The recent European Court ruling that users should be given a choice has resulted in Windows 7 users being presented with a browser election screen will be more forceful in that choice, giving users who wouldn’t otherwise be aware of alternatives the opportunity to move away from the “operating system browser”, Internet Explorer.

This choice is good for the user, but presents us with challenges. We need to embrace the latest technologies such as those offered by HTML5, but this needs to be tempered by implementation of those technologies by browsers and ability for older browsers to be able to provide an equivalent experience for users. A challenge any web developer [should] have is being able to facilitate users of Internet Explorer 6 (”IE6″). IE6 has been around for years. Shipped as part of Microsoft Windows XP, it is “stuck” in that users of Windows 2000 who upgraded to IE6 cannot upgrade to IE7 and corporate/enterprise users can’t perform upgrades themselves and as such are restricted to whatever the IT department dictate. Therefore, there will be a “hardcore” contingent of IE6 users for years to come yet, particularly as official support for Windows XP (and therefore IE6) only ends in July. These users need to be catered for, regardless of your market persuasion.

This morning, Scott Hanselman drew attention to a CNN article claiming that Internet Explorer 6 was about to die for good, having decreased to 4.7% of browser market share in the US. This seemed to be very optimistic, based on the figures we have seen.  Our understanding, provided by MarketShare and being a global metric, is that IE6 continues to retain 17.13% of the browser market share. (Which also illustrates the disparities in statistics collection) So while its death is surely coming, it’s too early to arrange the wake and we will continue to support IE6 in the meantime for the sites we develop.

Nathan Web Site Development Google Chrome, Internet Explorer 6, MarketShare, Scott Hanselman, Windows 2000, Windows 7, Windows XP

It’s Friday again, and what a glorious Friday it is! The sun is shining, the sky is blue and the mountains white with snow. Hopefully this weather will keep for the weekend as well. But, this being a weekday, we’re still all stuck in the office, working through our seemingly never ending lists of projects.

This week I’ve been playing around with our blog settings, switching to the iNove theme and changing the colours around a bit. I also thought it would be nice to have our mug shots as avatars next to our posts, but then Stephen had the good idea of using silhouettes instead. So, faced with the usual protests (”No! I can’t have my picture taken today!”) I’ve been taking profile snapshots of my colleagues and then photoshopping them into silhouettes. I think it turned out rather nice in the end.

Nathan has been getting far too excited over Scott Hanselman’s essential .NET Developer Tools. If you’re a developer (.NET or not) this is a list of tools well worth looking at. It covers .NET, XML, Debugging, Launching, Viewing, Editing and pretty much anything else. It’s like a sack-load of Christmas presents for a developer.

Charles is busy evangelising why CRM is ‘too strategic to abandon in recession’. He found a research article by Gartner which highlights how customer relationship management is too strategically important for businesses to abandon in the recession. As the recession deepens, however, companies are looking to drive greater efficiency and lower the costs of their CRM projects. Gartner believes that CRM is seen by many businesses as an important tool in the worsening economic environment, as it minimises customer churn and the value of each customer. The survey found that the CRM projects concerned will primarily focus both on improving customer retention and increasing wallet share. Gartner found that while there had been a shift in thinking about new CRM initiatives, the news was far from bad. “The responses to this later survey [December] indicated that, as expected, some budgets for CRM initiatives were negatively impacted, but the latest survey results showed that their earlier budget allocations for CRM initiatives largely remained in place,” said Chris Pang, principal research analyst at Gartner.

Stephen has reluctanly had to uninstall Internet Explorer 8 from his machine for the time being. The latest release, although more compatible with existing web sites than the previous Beta 2 release, seems to be more unstable with frequent crashes and other issues. Hopefully the final release due this summer will have addressed this.

So there you have it. Another week gone. As usual it’s been both challenging and rewarding, making you look forward to a couple of days off but also feeling rather excited about what next week will bring. Have a good weekend, people!

Andreas Friday Feeling Gartner CRM survey, iNove, Internet Explorer 8, Scott Hanselman