Browser competition is a good thing. If Microsoft released the fastest standards compliant browser and became the industry leader (from a standars perspective) tomorrow I would be happy. I don't care what OS you run on your computer or which browser you choose. All I care about is my bits are displayed as intended and I find that IE makes that task significantly harder to accomplish. If my life could be made easier by a new MS browser, and other's browsing experiences improved, I'm all for it.

Not sure why I got bumped to -4, did we suddenly fall in love with IE?

I'm also not sure how you fit "browser competition is a good thing" and microsoft in the same sentence. I still have scars from IE5-7, and currently collecting new ones from IE8, which is less prone to screwing up, but also more subtile when it does (intermittent white page due to js bugs? lovely..).

As far as I am concerned I stand by what I wrote: I wish it would just go away (pipe dream) and I'm not interested in the slightest in what new bugs and misfeatures they introduce this time. I'll have to deal with them soon enough anyways, unless someone finds a way to trigger a force-install of chrome frame without user interaction...

(I'll take a gecko-frame or even opera-frame as well, if those exist - none of them have ever given me nearly the misery of trident)

Sure. But there's a much simpler and more foolproof way to get your bits displayed properly to everyone who buys a new windows machine (which of course are just about the only non-developers who will get ie9):

Scrap IE, start shipping windows with Opera, Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. Let the crappy existing versions die off slowly and focus on improving the mediocre operating system rather than reinventing the wheel with a consistently inferior and uncooperative browser.

I think Windows 7 is a pretty solid offering.

> (which of course are just about the only non-developers who will get ie9):

Why so?

Historical evidence. Firstly, IE users are less likely to care enough to upgrade a browser, for the same reason they didn't care enough to look for a better one. Namely, it doesn't really matter to them and they're unaware of why it should. Secondly, Microsoft is a lot less pushy about software updates than other browser vendors.

IE7 came out 4 years ago (and then IE8 two years later), but despite what an enormous improvement it was to IE6, we're only now seeing IE6 finally start to fade away. IE6 usage didn't drop below half of all IE usage until around June 2009. By comparison, Firefox 3 had more than double the usage of FF2 within 3 months of its debut. Chrome shows even better (in fact, absurdly fast) adoption rates.

All this source StatCounter: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200807...

Add in corporations hesitant to update IE in the workplace, and you've got the IE stick-around-forever problem.

Since those not using Chrome probably don't know about it, it's worth noting that Chrome updates itself whenever you start it. That explains the absurdly fast adoption rate of new versions.

But that still doesn't provide evidence that people buying a new computer are the only non-developers who will get IE9. You need to demonstrate that upgrades from IE6 to 7/8 are non-existent.

In fact, I'd say the fact that IE7 has dropped below IE8 is evidence that people on IE do upgrade, and that the people on IE6 are only on it because they need it.

I'm counting on common sense interpretations here. Obviously it's not the case that there are NO EXAMPLES of 7->8 upgrades. I'm suggesting that it's very much an exception rather than a rule. I don't have the energy to dig up the stats demonstrating a correlation between purchases of new computers and browser version market share. It's probably there, maybe it isn't. Whether that's the cause is immaterial though because the point remains: new IE versions tend to be adopted very slowly.

And I would point out the enthusiastic reception of Win7 (comes with IE8) compared to the chilly reception of Vista (came with IE7) as evidence that browser adoption is correlated with sales of new computers (or more specifically, new OS's. Keep in mind a lot of Vista machines were sold with downgrade packs).

And yes, Chrome auto-updates. That's part of my point about Microsoft being less pushy with their updates than other vendors.

> I'm suggesting that it's very much an exception rather than a rule.

I think the opposite is true. I don't have hard data to back up my thoughts, but the fact that IE8 is above IE7 seems suggestive.

> I don't have the energy to dig up the stats demonstrating a correlation between purchases of new computers and browser version market share. It's probably there, maybe it isn't.

So you're retracting your statement, then? I'm asking because you seemed to lack any sort of doubt when you made it, going to the length of using of course.

> Whether that's the cause is immaterial though because the point remains: new IE versions tend to be adopted very slowly.

I agree (relative to other browsers at least), but this is certainly not what you stated in your original post.