Although Microsoft recently touted the 100 millionth installation of Internet Explorer 7, Web measurement firms said that the new browser is simply being swapped out for older editions and hasn’t had an impact on Firefox’s continued climb. “[As of] January 8th, we had the 100 millionth IE7 installation,” said Tony Chor, an IE group program manager, in an entry on the team’s blog. “Even more important than installations is usage. According to WebSideStory (the company we use to measure browser usage), as of this week, over 25% of all visitors to sites in the U.S. were using IE7, making IE7 the second most used browser after IE6.” While Microsoft had the WebSideStory numbers correct, it didn’t tell the whole story, says Geoff Johnston, an analyst with the Web metrics company. “[The growth of IE 7] seems to be exclusively at the expense of IE 6,” says Johnston.
How? I don’t personally know any home users who are using it, and it’s explcitly banned from our corporate LAN until the IT folks can do more formal testing so not all companies are leaping on the IE7 bandwagon either.
Is this a download count thing again? 🙂
When repairing computers, I always install IE7, then install Firefox and set it as their default browser. Because the IE engine is used in multiple products, having the more secure IE7 engine on the machine is essentially a necesary security tactic as important as any other security update. But Firefox is a better browser, and when the IE7 exploits do start coming in, my customers will still be okay.
The only way I can think that they would have reached 100 million so quickly would be via “Automatic Updates”.
Same as you, I don’t know anyone who is actually using IE7, yet.
Most likely, it’s getting updated and being counted as such, but people are sticking with their current Firefox,Mozilla,Opera,etc. browser.
The only way I can think that they would have reached 100 million so quickly would be via “Automatic Updates”.
I agree with you. I also believe that MS are not above pumping up this figure in order to make IE7 look more popular that it really is, in order to create a marketing buzz around it.
I personally think it’s beyond that. IE may have the power of the automatic update at its disposal, but Firefox has the popular momentum (and more extensions that you’d ever wish for).
All people I know now use IE7. I find it pretty sad that it’s still losing ground, as IE7 is a pretty neat browser. It’s my default browser now. I used to have Firefox as default.
honest question: what stuff in ie7 do you like better than in firefox?
im asking because whenever i have to use a windows machine, the first thing i do is download firefox as ie7 just feels alien to me (my prefered browsers are konqueror/safari btw.)
IE7’s release pretty much made FireFox’s installation unnecessary. Every feature that made FF’s edge was added to IE7. The only thing I miss is the RSS folder drop down from the FavLink folder. And Konq’s cookie handling.
A part from Digg’s notorious JavaScript abuse, I have never seen a problem from a web page using IE7.
RE: IE7’s release pretty much made FireFox’s installation unnecessary. Every feature that made FF’s edge was added to IE7.
Extensions? Adblock? TrackMeNot? BugMeNot? Gmail manager?
Those are the killer features that won’t make me switch to <insert_ms_browser_here>
I don’t see a lot of FREE extensions for IE7
A bit OT: http://www.ie7.com (lol)
Edited 2007-01-18 18:38
I agree, except IE7 has something that FF doesn’t.
hint: ActiveX
I agree, except IE7 has something that FF doesn’t.
hint: ActiveX
That is one of my favorite parts about firefox, its missing ActiveXploit
You guys don’t seem too bright , Mozilla Firefox Uses Activex , it can update itself when you do other stuff using activex controls, what it doesnt have is Overactive Desktop. I myself removed IE and the iecore=mshtml.dll and use K-meleon browser , now that browser is a Lightweight firefox without its Activex and humongos size, last i checked firefox.exe took 6 mb , while k-meleon.exe 250 kb and since its developed on embedded systems it runs faster, is more customizable and dont eat much memory at all. You guys need to read up on IE.
Remember win95 and nt4 were without overactive desktop for awhile , it was introduced in win98
http://toastytech.com/evil/setup.html
You guys don’t seem too bright , Mozilla Firefox Uses Activex , it can update itself when you do other stuff using activex controls, what it doesnt have is Overactive Desktop
If you want to use ActiveX in Firefox you can read about it here: http://firefox.phpmagazine.net/2005/11/activex_in_firefoxthe_mozill…
Firefox in stock form does not support activex.
You guys need to read up on IE.
I don’t need to read up on any of it, I used to develop IE plugins and have used Gecko in an embedded project to avoid IE plugins from hosing an application that needed to display HTML.
All ActiveDesktop was/is, is IE explosed via a COM interface to the explorer shell. Its still in Windows XP but its disabled by default.
It first shipped with IE4, in fact when I was running NT4 the only way to get the quicklaunch bar was to install IE4’s Shell Extensions onto NT4 giving you the quicklaunch and ActiveDesktop.
Nice joke, but think about the mammoth amounts of badly coded bespoke software used in corporate environments that _does_ use ActiveX.
so its definately not activex firefox uses when it downloads a new version without user even knowing and restarts itself? K-meleon does not use activex , Firefox uses activex period.
so its definately not activex firefox uses when it downloads a new version without user even knowing and restarts itself?
Exactly. While an ActiveX control could be used to download updates, Firefox doesn’t use such component for doing the job: it’s directly coded in the interface (instead of being an embedded object). Furthermore, Firefox doesn’t support ActiveX controls.
By the way, you can disable the automatic updates if you don’t like them.
Still i dont like that autoupdate feature , cause the browser is slow and i dont really like using ,it when it becomes slower for each release. Isnt software supposed to get better and faster at new releases?
yes it is insecure which is why it should stay within the intranet and not get out on the web
that’s true. firefox isn’t compatible with insecure and poorly designed websites.
It’s not compatible with insecure websites? Wow.
I agree, except FF has something that IE7 doesn’t.
hint: XML Namespace
“Every feature that made FF’s edge was added to IE7.”
SVG support without plugins, CSS support beyond the year 2003, a JavaScript implementation that isn’t doggily slow or incorrect?
IE7 isn’t even on par with betas of Firefox 1.0
How?
Automatic Updates.
I guess my big question is, to what end? What is the purpose of Microsoft’s announcement? Web development has been more standardized that ever before, what good does it do Microsoft to even care to say how much IE7 has been adopted? I could see if these were Vista numbers, MS Office numbers or something, but IE7? Is Microsoft really in such bad shape they need any sort of headline?
…I would switch to IE7 immediately.
But it’s no big deal nobody switches from Firefox. IE7 has _nothing_ to provide against FF.
I don’t think the MS folks expect to get back market share themselves. That will be their next step.
I can’t imagine how anyone can go back to a web full of annoying ads after spending time with firefox and adblock+. I don’t see how Microsoft can counter this killer feature
I don’t see how Microsoft can counter this killer feature
I can.
They just bundle IE with Windows and make it uninstallable.
Oh…wait.
Edited 2007-01-19 01:31
They just bundle IE with Windows and make it uninstallable.
Heh, I think you meant that they “DON’T make it uninstallable” – double negatives are tricky sometimes
luckily for us we still use win2k. the head man hear was in aww of IE7 and was intent on switching to it on release day. luckily for the small IT department here its non win2k compliant. thank you MS for saving me one major headache.
headache indeed. while I was running XP I decided to try it out. well, functionally it’s an improvement on ie6 sure. security wise, maybe there too. but otherwise it’s a pain. crashes are somewhat frequent, and worst of all, I found that after installing it, windows update was extremely sllooowwww, pretty much all the time. even wiping out the db didn’t help.
going back to 2k, I’m happy to see I don’t have the “option” of installing it anyway…
No surprise that 100 million have downloaded IE 7 – it’s part of windows update! It shows up as a high-priority update and so It’s pretty nearly an automatic download on ever windows xp/2003 machine anyway.
But it appears that has already been mentioned here
I downloaded it on several of my machines simply to get the “least insecure version of IE” onto those machines while I continue to use Firefox exclusively.
Most people don’t care, they just see “new version” and assume they should get it.
The pure fact that IE7 and Firefox seemingly are “tied” in the eyes of most folk ( while Firefox is light-years ahead, still ) poses a threat against those users seeing an advantage by switching to Firefox, and thus little reason to continue learning it after having it installed.
The interface does nothing to broadcast the application’s flexibility, and nothing to flaunt the powerful extensions catalog. A more pro-active approach in getting new Firefox users comfortable with Firefox quickly and painlessly, while helping them customize their browsing experience like it ain’t nobody’s business.
A first-run Demo / Wizard with as little text on the screen as possible ( consider words as expensive to the user, cut them down to as few as possible to get the widest audience ( which I do not do with my comments, obviously 🙂 ). The demo should be good enough to allow the user to install add-ons, without even having much of a clue. A mozilla.org selected set of must-have general-purpose add-ons will be given a spot in the Demo/Wizard which will explain as simply as possible the advantages of including “Internet Ad Blocking ( by Whoever )”.
I think it would do wonders…
/me thinks of the coding work involved… eh, if I get around to it.
–The loon
It’s funny seeing the claim of 100 million “installs”. I had a call from a one of my relatives complaining that “a virus has made the internet go wrong”. Of course all that had happened was that IE had been updated and the new UI had made him panic.
He was happy enough with it once I’d tweaked the UI to match IE6, the main thing that had freaked him out was the hidden menu bar. I’ve tried to get him to switch to Firefox or Opera in the past, but he’s used to IE and isn’t willing to try anything else.
He definitely hadn’t installed IE7 intentionally. I’m sure the same is true for the many of those 100 million. It’s not hard maintaining a dominant position when your product is bundled with the OS and updated without some users even knowing what’s happened.
this is a good thing for webdev that IE7 only replaces IE6 and doesn’t play on Firefox ground.
IE7 is the worst browser I ever used. With only 5-10 open tabs is frozing my PC. Im using freqvently Firefox with 30-40 open tabs and Opera with more than 100 without werry much performance penalty, but IE7 is sloooowwwwiiiiinnnnggggg considerably my machine with less than 10 open tabs!!! I maked the mistake to instal this sh*t of browser named IE7! But when I will do a fresh and clean install of windos I will dont install IE7 anymore! As a recomandation, use Opera or Firefox and you will give a MUCH BETTER EXPERIENCE. IE7 REALLY sucs. I think IE is used only beacouse the people are used to use this browser.
“I think IE is used only beacouse the people are used to use this browser”
As my sister said, when I proposed installing Firefox on her new laptop:
“But… everyone uses this [IE]… so it can’t be bad, can it?”
Unfortunately, I didn’t go into the argument at the time. It’s her laptop, she decides what to do with it. I just hope IE doesn’t blow up on her sometime…
than IE 6 at least.
Forgetting the browser portion for a minute. The render engine is at least better at displaying pages with CSS better. I’ve even got it to somewhat work with CSS menus.
As for me I’m sticking with Firefox, but as time goes along I will replace IE 6 with 7 on my work machines. On the plus side have had to fix less problems with my web pages when using IE 7 to test compatibility. Although I think it’s still a long ways off from being as standard compliant as Firefox and Opera. I do think the Microsoft will bring IE, at some point in the future, up to par with Firefox and other browsers as far as web standards are concerned.
“””Maybe Microsoft’s met its match with Firefox. Maybe it just can’t compete against open-source and the whole world [as developers].”””
that is an UNDERSTATMENT!
actually…. Microsoft CAN NOT compete UNLESS they play dirty! when it come down to the free market… MS always looses! i bet 9 out of 10 IE 7 users STILL do not realize they could switch to Firefox….
just think… if MS did’nt push the DL though the system update… only a handful of people would go get it them selves!
If 9 of 10 users didnt know of it, how come some researches say gecko is 25% of browsershare? Because people with firefox surf more? Maybe but unlikely. I could agree on something like 2/3 dont know of firefox. But 9/10 is a bit steep, dont you think?