IE market share keeps slipping

With that free access to NetApps you only get the big picture. Try Irish StatCounter Global Stats to see the regional differences: The dominant browser in the Russian Federation is Opera, in Germany Firefox is the primary browser with a whopping 60% market share! Microsoft has their most loyal followers in China, where IE rules. If only they would become customers, too...

The plan was always to:
a) prevent anyone making money at it (which could be used to write actual resale-grade software), and,
b) entrench itself into IT departments where "real programmers" don't need keyboards, they wear two mice on their belts like John Wayne, and,
c) annoy [you] and make life generally irritating.

“a) prevent anyone making money at it ...”

Well, they failed then, because Firefox is bringing in a tidy income for the Mozilla Foundation. Not only that, but Microsoft have screwed themselves: they’re getting no income from Internet Explorer, hence they have no real competitive incentive to improve it in any important way. Which is why it lags further and further behind.

Most people I know tend to use FF spoofing as IE as MS has encouraged a lot of companies to say their site only works under IE when in fact its fine under FF spoofing.
How long before they introduce an 'I really am IE' active X component to ensure no sites adhere to any agreed standards?

I wouldn't say they make no money from IE, Windows and every Server edition, isn't Open Source is it?

People actually hand over money to MS for it. If they use IE or not is another story, but they in part payed for it with every copy of Windows.

I also doubt MS is going to stop releasing updates any time soon, so I guess it is still in development then!?

So let me get this straight basically they shall drop IE as being there development client of choice for all of there server sided applications they have and that are in development?
May I also note, that they make a tidy sum of money from those Server apps.

I doubt they shall jeopardize there Server application side of the business by letting Google etc determine how the client should act.

BTW, It's not all about just browsing the WWW on the Internet you know... Most corporations use a Browser for running apps from there own Intranet.
Open standards for browsing the WWW yes! there apps? I see no reason they should have to share that information.

When Microsoft introduced IE7, they made it so a user were required to authenticate their copy of Windows. Consumers whose windows which did not past the authentication could not install IE7, those consumers had to use an alternate in order to get the new features and an updated browser. These consumer who have switch, would now stay with their new alternative browser. These consumers are consumer who would probably not return to any Microsoft IE products. Microsoft have alienated these consumers.

And again the only way MS can compete is to make IE8 an mandatory Windows update AND make it your default browser without telling you.

The only reason I keep this OEM bios hacked Vista box around is to help my poor friends who got suckered into having it bundled with a new PC.

http://www.dailytech.com/IE+Tops+in+Enterprise+Browser+Use/article15014.htm
IE is the browser of choice in the enterprise. It works with the apps, it works with .NET Framework ASPX pages, and it can be managed extremely tightly with GPO. Firefox/Chrome/Opera just don't have the manageability that IE does in a domain based environment.

IE is a very good browser and they can starv other browsers if they change mentallity like they have now done for Windows7 i.e. listening to people. The most pinching problems i guess right now for IE are slugishness, time to opening its own saved MHT. saving reliably/instantly of MHT like Opera. telling which addons/tabs are making IE consume more ram. Ctrl-Tab should not be one directional only instead like Alt+Tab. publically know location where IE is saving URLs of currently opened windows/tabs.

IE7 has terrible UI (just think about reload/stop-button location). It may be popular among corporate IT-support, but not people using it. They are likely to use alternate browser at home.

...wait. After how many years FireFox is on the market, it isn't even 25% yet? Why?

Cookies rejection DOES NOT WORK in Internet Explorer. I set IE to refuse/block ALL cookies but yet Even with IE closed I go to PalTalk , a chat site and within minutes my Cookies folders fill up with tracking cookies! What good is setting NO COOKIES if it lets them in anyway ?

Is there a list of the sites net applications monitor?

If I want to read the The Inquirer I have it saved in my favorites as theinquirer. I just start typing thei and the listing appeared immediately in the past.

But with IE8 it takes several seconds for it to appear the first time I start IE8 after switching on my pc.

Is IE8 slow at favorite prompts for everyone else? Is there a setting for this such as "load favorites immediately"?

Back on topic, IE is ok.