Internet Explorer 8 Turns 3 Years Old, Still Going Strong
Microsoft's Internet Explorer just turned three years old.
Released on March 19, 2009, it has turned into the browser that is largely ignored by its developer. According to StatCounter, IE8 holds almost 17 percent of market share, only second to Chrome 17 with 27.12 percent. IE8 still has the lead over IE9 (14 percent), which was released a little over a year ago and is only available for Windows Vista SP2, and Windows 7.
IE8 is likely to turn into another IE6 problem even as Microsoft is updating IE8 with a silent update feature around the world. IE8 has no hardware acceleration or HTML5 capabilities and therefore not important to Microsoft from platform point of view. In its browser reports, Microsoft only refers to IE9 as its browser and will only talk about the success it has under Windows 7.
What has made IE8 a fascinating browser from a statistics point of view is the fact that Microsoft has cut off its users from an upgrade path. Those who still use Windows XP will need to upgrade to Chrome or Firefox (or Opera or Safari) to enjoy HTML5 features. It almost seems as if IE8 has been accepted by Microsoft as a painful, but decisive cut that transitions its users to an HTML5-only user base for Windows 7 and Windows 8 applications.
According to its own website, IE6 is still at about 7.1 percent market share globally. IE was released in 2001 and replaced with IE7 in 2006. IE8 has been replaced in March of 2011 by IE9. How long will IE8 be with us until its market share becomes insignificant?
Get Tom's Hardware's best news and in-depth reviews, straight to your inbox.
Douglas Perry was a freelance writer for Tom's Hardware covering semiconductors, storage technology, quantum computing, and processor power delivery. He has authored several books and is currently an editor for The Oregonian/OregonLive.
-
obsama1 Whenever I help people with their computers, if they have IE8, I always update them to IE9, or if they have XP, I tell them to download Chrome. IE8 has THE worst HTML5 scores I've ever seen.Reply -
captaincharisma jryan388only ie option for xp users... and u do need ie every once in a while.Reply
browsers have extensions to have IE tabs and opera has a way to view pages as IE so no ones has any use for IE now other than windows XP users because it the only way to use windows update
-
DEVILVSANGEL00 I have to admit i use IE 8 still with all the updates installed, as soon as i tryed IE 9 i totally hated it and hate how they changed it all, the layout of IE 8 was the best out of all of the IE series and they changed it around so much it was annoying, in this case just because IE 9 was newer dosent mean that it was better except for the html 5 support thats it. i also use chrome as my back up for html 5,Reply
if microsoft included html 5 support for its IE 8 i think alot of people would of stuck with it over IE 9.
same goes for when direct x 10 was released and they forced people to upgrade from xp because they wanted to get people to buy their newer so called improved operating system aka vista.
typical microsoft i say -
A Bad Day "An browser is a browser! There's no difference between IE8 and Chrome 17 or FF10!"Reply
-My dad's belief for all software, except for XP and Vista. -
LuckyDucky7 And if Firefox or Chrome had real enterprise features, such as the ability to lock down the browser using Group Policy, they'd be replacing IE 8 in more than just personal usage.Reply
But as it stands right now, I can't/won't use anything but IE, because with it I can stop lusers from installing toolbars and other crap, and make sure that the traffic goes through the content filter (and that they can't change that address), and that the homepage stays locked to Google and doesn't change to that default MSN garbage.
I want to be able to switch the browsers because Firefox/Chrome is so much better, but right now that's just too much work, so we stay on IE 8.