IE (vs) FireFox: A New Leader Emerges

For the past 7 years, W3Schools.com has been keeping track of what internet browsers are most commonly used, what screen resolution is at, what operating systems are being run, etc. I checked in on them this past week to find that Internet Explorer is no longer the most commonly used browser (as of Jan '09). After more than a decade of being the leader in internet browsing technology, IE has about 5% less users than Fire Fox. In fact, in looking through FireFox's history, it's done nothing but grown in popularity, except during the release of Google Chrome (which I've not heard great things about, but with a name like Google backing it, I'm sure it will come around soon enough).


There have been two guiding factors behind Internet Explorer's success:
1) It comes pre-installed on your computer.
2) Because it was the leading browser, all developers code for Internet Explorer.

Having it pre-installed on my computer and not having to go download yet another piece of software was what primarily attracted me to Internet Explorer, but I noticed on my new computer at work that it now came both equipped with both IE and FireFox. This could be related to FireFox's recent success in over taking the leading browser spot. It's also got the underdog spirit with it. You'll find a lot of people in the IT industry that claim FireFox is superior simply because it's not made by MicroSoft (whether or not FF > IE). When I meet an IT guy who starts bashing MicroSoft, it's always a turn off, but then again this is probably all better saved for another blog.

Despite having FireFox already installed on my new work computer, I've continued to use IE since it was the leading web browser. In my web development work, it's imperative to write sites for the end user, and while I want to make sure people using FireFox is covered, Internet Explorer was always the highest priority, as it had over 18% more users last year.

But now everything has been changed. With FireFox now being the most common used browser on the market, I'm now getting used to using it for everything. I've noticed that they have improved a lot since their former versions. It doesn't seem to have an issue with javascript anymore. It also tends to load a lot faster initially, but then when I attempt to go to the first site of my session, it takes a little longer than IE. And of course, I've been to several sites where the CSS doesn't quite work all the way; Internet Explorer and FireFox sometimes have different terms for style sheets and some developers don't check their sites with both browsers.

It will be interesting to see what happens with the Google Chrome browser. They talked a big game while it was in production, but it's not had the successful launch it planned for. But, I've rarely come across a piece of Google technology, that in time didn't impress me.