Only weeks ago StatCounter reported that Chrome pushed past Firefox to become the second most popular web browser after IE. A new StatCounter report says Chrome 15 has jumped into the number one spot, replacing IE8. This is the first time a non-Microsoft browser has led the list in StatCounter’s tracking.
WAT.
why are you wondering? it has 7 versions advantage. wait that IE gets so mature
/* just in case, it was sarcasm */
Old monopoly’s browser surpassed by new Monopoly’s browser. News at 11.
Chrome is the new IE6
Er, how?
-webkit extension … it is being used a lot especially on mobile phones.
Expect a lot of site not to look right in anything other than webkit based browsers.
Yeah, except they do and Chrome (and WebKit) is pretty damn standards compliant, as opposed to IE6. So basically, you’re just making stuff up to get some sort of “point” on an internet messageboard.
Way to go and miss the point of what I actually said.
I am not trying to make a point …
Look in firebug or chrome inspector yourself.
I a web dev and I regularly talk to mobile devs that say they use the webkit properties because it works on older mobile browsers as well as newer ones.
I am not the only one that has thought this
http://www.webdesignerdepot.com/2009/02/is-google-chrome-the-new-ie…
Quirks mode blog.
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/02/the_iphone_obse.htm…
cult of mac
http://www.cultofmac.com/29481/developer-mobile-safari-is-todays-ie…
But hey I am just trying to contrary according to you.
EDIT: Also almost forgot
http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2397158,00.asp
And
This is Opera saying this!
Edited 2011-12-16 13:53 UTC
Thank you. That’s better.
It was just an expansion of what I originally said. You could have done the googling yourself.
The first time I heard it, is when me and a friend was talking about how -webkit extensions are problem .. and my mate said “webkit is going to become IE6”.
Edited 2011-12-16 15:13 UTC
But webkit is open source, unlike IE6. If webkit become the de facto standard, so be it. There’s no vendor lock-in.
No, it’s bad to become de-facto standard, whether it’s open or not. Standards need to be standards (W3C), and not de-facto things. There are other browsers like Firefox mobile which are not Webkit based.
That’s beside the point. My point is that Webkit is nothing like IE6, because no vendor lock-in can result from it. An open de facto standard only fills the void until a proper open standard comes. In contrast, a closed de facto standard is usually a tool to block an open standard.
Webkit being the “defacto standard” would mean that nobody would ever dare to try to come up with a better HTML renderer for fear that it won’t work properly with Google’s services. Which means that everyone would use webkit, which A) causes stagnation, band B) makes it easier for malware writers. There shouldn’t be a “defacto standard” implementation, just REAL standards that MULTIPLE implementations can target, and those multiple implementations should work with Google’s services. If Google is preventing that, then that is wrong. And Google’s claims about “do no evil” don’t change that fact. Webkit being open source doesn’t change tht fact either.
Anyone can copy the way Webkit (or Chrome, for that matter) works, so Google has no reason to keep its services tied to Webkit or Chrome. So I don’t think Google is trying to keep anyone from coming up with a better browser; they are just leading the way.
That’s also what they are doing with Dart, while they also contribute to the Javascript standard, just in case.
I think that all this worrying about whether Google Chrome may become a threat to “the open web” are missing the point of what the open web is really about. It’s not about being able to use any website with any browser. That would be absurd, because some browsers may just be broken and unable to render websites properly. Also, the very concept of a web browser, as we know it, may become obsolete. That wouldn’t mean the web disappeared or stopped being “open”.
No, the open web means that the technology to render any web page properly (for instance, by building a web browser) is available for everyone to use, without having to ask for any vendor’s permission. If all web browsers end up being clones of Google Chrome, that may be undesirable, but it wouldn’t make the web any less open. It would just mean that the open standard which makes it open is not abstract enough.
On the other hand, if you could only use the web after buying some product from Microsoft or Apple (or Google), then indeed the open web would be dead. That’s what Microsoft tried to do with IE6.
At worst you can say that the Chrome extensions are the new Javascript and Chrome is the new Netscape Navigator (by going beyond proper standards in innovative ways, without blocking competition), but calling it “the new IE6” is mistaken and deeply unfair.
Did you read that Chrome works better with Google’s own services than say Firefox or Opera, these aren’t part of web kit they are part of Chrome.
Also using -webkit CSS extensions will mean that sites will never work right in other browsers without hacks … which isn’t a good place to be.
Yes, I did. I still don’t find anything remarkable about that. It’s only logical that Google would try new things first in its own browser. Why bother asking for everyone’s permission? But I don’t see why Google would want to (or be able to) block others from imitating Chrome.
Because they are on the WHATWG.
Because their services will run better on their browser which they collect stats with.
The problem with -webkit extensions is that some developers (especially Mac based ones) produce CSS that only works in WebKit browsers (just look at some featured sites on Smashing Magazine network).
It is also about lazy developers and there are loads of them. IE was quite strict and wouldn’t let you get away with sloppy markup and CSS.
e.g fb markup tags … if the namespace isn’t there and it is XHTML they won’t render (and they shouldn’t).
But instead of being praised everyone complained it didn’t render it like Firefox because Firefox would let you get away with some horrendous CSS and Markup … but hey lets blame IE because it is Microsoft and their browser was so successful for like 10 years they were the defacto standard, WebKit is becoming the defacto standard on mobile and desktop.
I am sure if Microsoft was doing the same IE cross platform and making sure Bing worked faster in IE than Chrome, many on here would be up in arms about it.
Anyone can fork Chrome out of whatever behavior they don’t like. Plus, it would backfire as bad press, which Google, being so big, fears the most. It doesn’t look like a business strategy anyone at Google would seriously propose. Again, there’s a simpler explanation for Google making changes without asking: it’s quicker and easier.
Okay, maybe some people complained about websites working in Firefox and not in IE, but most of the complaints, at least with IE6, at least MY complaints about IE6 anyway.. are the opposite. That is, websites working with IE but not with Firefox or any other browser, because IE breaks the standard in some way, or it goes beyond the standard in some way, which no other browser can imitate without Microsoft’s permission. ActiveX and later Silverlight come to mind.
It seems your complaint is about people unfairly criticizing Microsoft when they are too strict about standards. By all means, let IE become the standards watchdog, let those lazy web developers get a grip. A wish for the new year.
And how many of these forks are widely used? Not many.
IE6 was the most standard compliant browser at the time. Firefox until version 3-ish wasn’t even near standard compliance for things like inline-block etc.
You know what people liked? It was the speed, the tabs and the plugins, it wasn’t the standards compliance.
You know why? because nobody cars except Web developers nor should they.
There is more than one complaint and point. TBH I been doing web dev now for about 5 years and tbh I actually know wtf is going on and I gone past the IE hate because I was a bit new.
http://luke-robbins.co.uk/chrome-is-the-new-internet-explorer-6/
If you want to discuss further that is my personal website. And because I don’t think you are an arsehole, I will even give you my skype or gtalk if you ask nicely.
Fair enough. I think I made my case here, so I might as well go on pestering you on your blog, on Skype, what the heck, I’ll find your IP and show up for breakfast (LOL JK).
[q]But webkit is open source, unlike IE6. If webkit become the de facto standard, so be it. There’s no vendor lock-in./q]
I’ve seen articles about Google introducing native code compilation or something into Chrome (so games like Bastion can run in the browser), and the DART programming language. Is all this stuff open source as well?
Note: This is not a rhetorical question… I honestly don’t know.
You are right, and projects like jQuery Mobile try to address it.
The thing is, the -webkit extension is the PROPER way to target a browser and for a browser to add CSS extensions.
So, why is this Chrome or Google’s fault? Because everyone else was so damned slow to implement that people started adopting the only reasonable way to get the extensions to work?
I am well aware of this.
Which is exactly what happened with IE6 … There wasn’t any competitor that was as good at the time. So people just wrote for IE6. Which was my point all along
To target experimental and inâ€development standards, yes. They aren’t considered PROPER for production use. It’s kinda obvious that they aren’t standardised because they have the vendor prefix.
If they were just implementing HTML5 without quirks then I would agree.
Yet WebKit has awkward behaviours just like IE6 did, and just like Microsoft, Apple&Google have been creating, implementing and then publishing standards. That’s not how you make a good Web standard, it needs many eyes.
To implement… webkit originated standards? no.
This comment makes zero sense. IE6 was painful because of its HTML compliancy issues with the HTML rendering engine and IE specific extensions which are not an issue with Chrome. Web devs the world over are glad Chrome is gaining market share. Also the recent announcement from MS of them pushing newer IE revs to XP users will help to further eliminate IE6 users which is very good.
Edited 2011-12-16 11:39 UTC
IE6 was also more sane, more standards compliant than what it displaced. Web devs the world over, back then, were (IIRC) rather glad how IE6 gained market share from the old Netscape.
Google does push into Chrome things fairly unique, bound to remain so at least for some time (SPDY, NaCl – with the latter, Mozilla and Opera seem to not want to implement it; I doubt MS will do it; and even if Apple would, Safari just hovers at few %)
At least with Webkit, it might at worst settle on roughly “~one OSS engine shared and developed by everybody” which would still be a marked improvement.
One glance at the stats in question ( http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200807-201112 ) shows IE6 at 1.79% – it has been fairly irrelevant for quite some time.
And automatic updates shouldn’t change much with its (probably) main remaining stronghold, ~company PCs (but they also don’t matter that much with “outside world” websites)
Edited 2011-12-16 13:11 UTC
Nightly build of FF support SPDY, Opera plan to, but who care about Opera
Yeah that’s what “bound to remain so at least for some time” would mean… (alphas / plan to)
As for who cares about Opera – oh, I don’t know, perhaps just the majority of mobile browser users? ( http://gs.statcounter.com/#mobile_browser-ww-monthly-200807-201112 )
And with desktop Opera, perhaps Ukraine ( http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-UA-monthly-200807-201112 ); similarly Belarus, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan …most of CIS, basically; or Georgia. Also, to a lesser degree, few Central European and Baltic EU countries.
It not about standard’s compliance … it is about how people tend to abuse it.
http://www.osnews.com/thread?500302
Except it isn’t total shite.
IE6 was pretty good back in 2001 … today it is. But then again you hate anything made my Microsoft regardless of quality.
http://www.quirksmode.org/blog/archives/2010/02/the_iphone_obse.htm…
I’ll take the Author of Quirks mode blog opinion in higher regard than yours.
Edited 2011-12-16 13:35 UTC
Difference: Microsoft stopped developing IE after v6 was released. Google and a number of other companies are continuing to develop webkit continuously to add support for new standards, improve performance & security and speed. So, there is no chance for Chrome to become stagnant and hold back standards the way IE did.
In fact, this article is about Chrome 15, and Chrome 16 has already been released. Because of Chrome’s auto-update system, almost all installs of Chrome v15 would already have been upgraded.
IE6 & 7, on the other hand, are still common on the web several years after their successors have been released.
It is not about the “how good it is” … it is the fact that people will develop for WebKit and more specifically Chrome and not other browsers which will put Everything else at a disadvantage.
IE doesn’t do automatic updates like Chrome, so overall IE is still way ahead.
BECAUSE IE IS A SUPERIOR PRODUCT BECAUSE IT IS NOT OPEN SOURCE. IF CHROME WAS SO GOOD THEN WHY DIDN’T TORBALDS SELL IT??? IE IS COMMERCIAL QUALITY PRODUCT.
As a web dev, from the bottom of my heart i wanna say “FUCK YOU SIR!”
;D
EDIT: More mischievous winky face.
Edited 2011-12-16 08:44 UTC
I second your opionion
Lol, wow. People seriously lack a sense of humor. I think it was patently obvious that I was joking.
EDIT: Joking about the second part, that is. I stand by the point that I made in the first line.
Edited 2011-12-16 12:01 UTC
As you probably know by now, IE will start doing automatic updates very soon.
True, and then we might see IE9/IE8 take the top spot again. There will still be a split, however, because XP is only going up to IE8.
Also, I don’t know how many people still use IE6 or below, but they are going to be left out completely.
No, you’re confusing “lack a sense of humour” with “have a good sense of humour and that’s why they’re not particularly amused, not laughing” with you.
Yeah, I’m kind of a sucker for sarcasm/lampooning. Not everyone’s taste, I’ll admit.
See, that’s still not the same as good sarcasm/lampooning…
We hate patents
I guess, that is probably the main reason MS is thinking about make upgrade mandatory, i.e., it may make IE9 jump ahead of Chrome.
Anyway, with all problems IE6 have, I would not say that this is a bad thing. Home users don’t have a good reason to not upgrade. Corporate users that may need to keep IE6 on lingering systems because of very old applications may block it on WSUS.
Version 15 uh? In less than 2 years uh? Chrome’s versioning really does suck from a programmer’s POV. How long did it take FF to get from 0 to 4.0? How long did it take the same for any other browser? How many version numbers does it take before a product has a name change? Version 15…. it really is kinda silly now.
On the web, instead of checking the version number, you should verify if a particular feature is implemented and then use it.
Tools like Modernizr make this easy. Use that instead of tracking version numbers.
Also, for a browser like Google that upgrades installs almost invisibly, it’s makes sense to just test in the current version (and if necessary, one version back). If someone’s using Chrome, they are most likely using the latest version.
From a programmer’s point of view who also knows that this type of version numbering is a natural consequence of “multi-channel” development, this is easy and you don’t have to continously decide on what feature or fix would justify a .1 or .5, etc. or major version bump.
OMG… I’ve got the following things installed, version control be damned!
“less” version “444” a pager program similar to more
“libflickrnet2.1.5-cil” version “25277” Flickr.Net API Library
“libgudev-1.0-0” version “175” GObject-based wrapper library for libudev
“libudev0” version “175” libudev shared library
“xterm” version “276” X terminal emulator
So, these are all crap… because of the high version number. Ahh… ok, going to remove them now.
P.S. no not really going to remove them. You are a Dolt.
Thank you sir. I had never noticed that before. It is a great response to people who get all excited about escalating version numbers.
On my system, a fully up-to-date RHEL 6.1 system, I have “less” version “436”. So, that just shows how quickly this version number is escalating. I will remove it immediately. 🙂
I wasn’t referring to having to check the version number in anyway – I was merely referring to the version numbering they have in place is simply ridiculous given FF has been around for considerably longer than Chrome.
Increment updates usually go .1, .2, .3 etc… not in whole numbers.
A larger number doesn’t automatically mean something is better than something else – are job public that dense to fall for this dirty trick? Wait, don’t answer that – the answer is probably yes.
I am happy for them. I would use Chrome but they don’t have an extension to open tabs automatically from clicking links or the address bar. Wish Tab Mix Plus could work on Chrome
Since once again people are talking share, which is one of the best ways to lie by omission! CARD STACKING. Oy Gavalt…
1) Compare against IE8 while omitting IE9… since IE9 is the latests on Win7… Yeah… That’s makes sense.
2) Their charts are claiming a “decline” in IE use based in DAYS, which is NOT a sufficient time period to be making such claims…
3) Doesn’t state the size of the pool for those percentages… Meaning they could have just had a downswing in IE users over the weekend… Is that a normal trend? can’t tell the sample period is too small!
4) Only based on specific websites that use statcounter; I pull the values from Webalizer on my own server and I’ve got as many Opera users as I do FF or chrome, while still holding 80%+ IE — I don’t trust those numbers as a true indicator, why should I trust theirs either? It would be like trusting the stats from a web developer site like W3Schools, where the fact they even have IE visitors is shocking.
5) Once again if we look at the “decline” of IE on statscounter, they claim that from Jan 2011 to Nov 2011 IE (all versions) dropped from 46.00% to 40.68% — but what if we figure the actual numbner of people using the Internet in to the figure?
Back in January there were according to most stats around 1.9 billion people online — back in Feb there was a big deal made about it breaking 2 billion…
We don’t really have hard numbers for right now for penetration as that’s done infrequently, but assuming the 3% penetration growth per year trend continues (no reason for it not to at 31% last march), and given the current estimated world population of 7 billion, we come up with a ballpark guesstimate of around 2.32 billion people online. (and that’s a lowball number, realistically it’s probably closer to 2.4 billion)
46% of 1.9 is 874 million while 40% of 2.32 is 928 million, meaing that while IE dropped in share IT GAINED USERS!!! It saw more than 1% growth despite “losing” share; gaining 54 million users means they haven’t lost a blasted thing.
The numbers are BS when you get to Firefox too… According to statscounter from Jan 2011 to nov 2011 FF’s market share has dropped from 30.68% to 25.25% — 30.68% of 1.9 billion is 582.9 million, 25.25% of 2.32 billion is 585.8 million — Another GAIN in userbase!
DON’T LET PEOPLE USE PERCENTAGES TO LIE TO YOU!!!
If they omit “percentage of what” in hard numbers, automatically question ANY conclusions drawn as it means they most likely are using the old propaganda standby of card stacking to promote their own agenda. You change the size of the pool percentage becomes meaningless.
NOT to take away from Chrome’s thunderous market growth… going from 301 million users to 591 million users in less than a year is a damned impressive accomplishment… especially if nobody else has lost significant numbers of actual users!
Edited 2011-12-16 23:45 UTC
You’re pointing out that the overall user base for each browser has grown. The article was pointing out that Chrome’s market share has grown at the cost of IE’s market share.
These do not contradict.
How come Internet Explorer 10 works with Windows Seven, but not Vista? Aren’t they fundamentally the same operating system almost?
Google is the biggest marketing machine that has ever existed. Of course their browser’s user base grows faster.
Still, Chrome is still not on par with Firefox and Webkit is still far from matching Gecko’s features.
For instance, here is Webkit’s status on accessibility:
http://www.webkit.org/projects/accessibility/index.html
Everybody talks about web standards these days, but when will they start implementing desktop standards like AT-SPI?
I’m not sure if that’s strictly the case… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Major_religious_groups#Largest_religio…
Of course, those do use ads in Gmail, Google Adsense in general, nowadays – and, curiously, there’s also http://www.thechurchofgoogle.org/