Not to be overly negative but if I had to guess the extensions system will be hobbled and sub-par. This is just based on my years of experience with IE and other MS products.
If it had an extension that could give me the hours of my life back that I have spent trying to support their awful browsers that would be great though.
I remember the IE panel of this year /BUILD, they said they were considering adopting Webkit for future IE. Even if that wasn't true, time had really changed.
If IE gets rebranded, I hope they change their dev strategy or at least open source Trident. I can't stand waiting around for Microsoft to implement/fix something. If Microsoft could open up its engine, IE would become the most progressive browser in the world.
I for one would love to dig into Trident and get my hands dirty.
MS IE11 is a pretty decent browser. Has auto-updating, and supports many web standards correctly. It's not perfect, or even better than other browsers, but it's a beginning. Now we just need Microsoft to sunset everything before IE11, and save the web development world $Billions.
Is there a reason any other devs want it to be relevant??
On the consumer side, IE is great(ish) with low power usage, good font rendering, tie-in with other MS services, native features, etc.
For developers, um no, I can attest to absolutely detesting IE in every way. Its web dev tools are slow and clunky, they are getting beat over the head in features by Chrome, Firefox and even Safari, IE11 just got prefetch and pre rendering, something the other browsers have had for years; IE looks like it will always be playing catch up. Good thing they put an auto updater in their browser, but has there been any significant upgrades to IE's feature set in the past year (implementing features over a time other than every year is important as well)?
The worst part is that Microsoft always gives the previous version a reason to exist and be a pain. With Google and Firefox, the auto updater takes care of itself. With IE11, it has just gotten an auto updater and there's no telling if Microsoft will pull an IE10/Windows 8 and stop updating IE for Windows 8.1. Already I can envision in a year or two at work we'll have to support IE10 at the least, even though it should be dead. The fact that Microsoft skipped Windows 8 (which you cannot upgrade Windows 8.1 if you have the Enterprise or education edition) really burned me. At least Apple always updates its browser one version back if you don't decide to upgrade OS X.
The data from the links above is pulled in from Google‘s ChromeStatus site.
Also IE is updated regularly now. Feature updates are often included in patch Tuesday updates, such as big upgrades to WebGL and WebDriver support. As features are implemented (see in development in the links above) they're evaluated to see if they will be included in IE11 updates.
Yes definitely. Outside the fickle world of consumer internet usage, tech media and devices/appliances (basically leaving businesses at all levels), it's #1 and shows no sign of slowing down.
99.5% of our web hits are IE7-11 (financial sector). The other 0.5% is our dev team's Firefox instances.
Would that be in part due to Citrix? I know of several cases where friends in that sector are forced to use Citrix and the only approved browser to access intranet sites in that setup is IE...
Unfortunately yes, but one of our enterprise clients has just mandated Chrome only for all their internal apps(their new head of IT really gets it). Another one of our enterprise clients has just allowed all users to run Chrome and/or FF alongside IE. So while it is still around it is losing ground IMHO.
The consumer market is a totally different game though, IE is being crushed in that market. I have made several consumer facing apps in recent years that do not support IE at all, users can still log in but a warning notice is shown informing them it is not tested in IE and they need to upgrade to a "standards compliant browser".
> one of our enterprise clients has just mandated Chrome only for all their internal apps(their new head of IT really gets it).
I'm sorry but no, he doesn't get it. Mandating a browser is just another stupid policy - either write web apps or don't but claiming to get it when it's just another lock in is a silly move.
They have the one killer feature that Enterprise loves more than any other: glacially slow change. Last I heard, IE8 lives until 2016, which is amazing (although not necessarily in a good way :)
Extensions would be great, way better than the clunky dll addon system. I really think they eventually have to rebrand (and I hope they do) IE because of the notoriety it has gotten. Like something on the lines of Cortana.... that would be wonderful.
http://status.modern.ie/?iestatuses=notplanned,underconsider...
If it had an extension that could give me the hours of my life back that I have spent trying to support their awful browsers that would be great though.
I for one would love to dig into Trident and get my hands dirty.
Sorry to say, yes.
On the consumer side, IE is great(ish) with low power usage, good font rendering, tie-in with other MS services, native features, etc.
For developers, um no, I can attest to absolutely detesting IE in every way. Its web dev tools are slow and clunky, they are getting beat over the head in features by Chrome, Firefox and even Safari, IE11 just got prefetch and pre rendering, something the other browsers have had for years; IE looks like it will always be playing catch up. Good thing they put an auto updater in their browser, but has there been any significant upgrades to IE's feature set in the past year (implementing features over a time other than every year is important as well)?
The worst part is that Microsoft always gives the previous version a reason to exist and be a pain. With Google and Firefox, the auto updater takes care of itself. With IE11, it has just gotten an auto updater and there's no telling if Microsoft will pull an IE10/Windows 8 and stop updating IE for Windows 8.1. Already I can envision in a year or two at work we'll have to support IE10 at the least, even though it should be dead. The fact that Microsoft skipped Windows 8 (which you cannot upgrade Windows 8.1 if you have the Enterprise or education edition) really burned me. At least Apple always updates its browser one version back if you don't decide to upgrade OS X.
Actually, Safari still doesn’t support either, and Firefox doesn’t support prerender. See http://status.modern.ie/prerenderattribute?term=pre and http://status.modern.ie/prefetchattribute?term=pre
The data from the links above is pulled in from Google‘s ChromeStatus site.
Also IE is updated regularly now. Feature updates are often included in patch Tuesday updates, such as big upgrades to WebGL and WebDriver support. As features are implemented (see in development in the links above) they're evaluated to see if they will be included in IE11 updates.
99.5% of our web hits are IE7-11 (financial sector). The other 0.5% is our dev team's Firefox instances.
I don't know if I would agree with that.
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-yearly-2010-2013
The consumer market is a totally different game though, IE is being crushed in that market. I have made several consumer facing apps in recent years that do not support IE at all, users can still log in but a warning notice is shown informing them it is not tested in IE and they need to upgrade to a "standards compliant browser".
I'm sorry but no, he doesn't get it. Mandating a browser is just another stupid policy - either write web apps or don't but claiming to get it when it's just another lock in is a silly move.