browser trend

i've read lots about the new browser war, with firefox taking iexplorer's market share.


lots say it's about geekyness of firefox, even more say it's about security, tabbed browsing, following the all-mighty open-standards and not bowing your god-given free will to "the ev1l micro$oft". whatever.


i think it's a trend in user expectancies: iexplorer is a good broswer; it won the last browser war because it was better, pushing all other browsers below 90% of the browser marketshare.

but that was five years ago.



what is happening now is evolution in the user expectancies; it's not about security; if you are like me, you have access to some computer and use it to connect through some line from home; you don't care about someone really hijacking your computer because you have a dynamic ip (maybe it's just an excuse, but i'm not looking over security patches every day); and if you care, you get some patch or continuous patching service just to forget about it. becuase you actually want to not have the problem in the first place.

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so, let me tell you about the user expectancy: it started with wanting to look for quality:

and users needed it in a search engine, and we got google for that (and lots of others i haven't used in years)

and users needed some good public storage, which now are provided through public services (gmail is not really public but getting there); they give you 1Gb storage or more; it's evolving fast towards a "storage space is not a problem" mind-set;

users also need access to information; if you know where to look that in no longer a problem either;



so, how does this apply to browsers? it's evolving towards customizable user experience. which iexplorer does not offer.

and now, we have alternatives, like firefox and opera;



I'm not talking about tabbed browsing; that is only part of it; and not talking about skins; that is only part of it also;

i'm talking about the user having the chioce:

• of not needing to look at the flashy banner to read the news (provided with a customizable ad blocker)


• and not needing to see sites in dark text over dark background (provided by custom css settings)


• and getting the news in a menu in the bookmarks (provided by integrated css reading)


• and ultimately the ability to extract the information separately, and presenting it to the user the way he wants it

ofcourse business owners will protest to that:
they can no longer display banners as nobody will see them;
they can no longer put tracking scripts because you filter them out;
they can no longer force customer lock-in because you can modify it dynamically;

so what's left is quality; and to offer that they need more effort; which takes more money, whick decreases profit;

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so, no, it's not that firefox is a better, sexyer, first-to-save-the-world browser; far from it; actually it has his share of security problems.



i mean, ask 100 firefox users what features they use within firefox, and the 80-20 rule applies perfectly; each uses something else, in a different way;



it's that firefox is more of a platform (ok, subset of the mozilla platform), while iexplorer is a browser; a good browser, but just a browser none-the-less. and the difference is huge.



it's that you can add a new module to firefox by scripting; and that if you cannot find your needed option in Tools->Options, you can always get an extension to it that puts your option there, in 15 seconds, a firefox restart, and a trip to the bathroom.



since i use ms office for exactly that reason (it being a platform and being able to add scripting to it and being able to create an outlook macro in a snap), it amazes me that ms does not see it.

maybe they do, i don't know.


actually, iexplorer is also a platform, but much harder to use, and not by the casual user; so, until they make it easy to customize (that is: either make a comunity out of it, or provide something symilar to ms plus / windows toys for iexplorer), they are losing the browser (as in platform) war; because they are not participating to the war at all.


that was my2c on the new browser war.