The World?s most popular browser, Internet Explorer (IE), has just got an update. IE8 runs faster than previous versions, boasts better standards compliance, and serves up some nifty features like tab grouping, Web accelerators, and Web slices. This is the latest volley in the browser market, already buzzing with action from Google Chrome and Firefox, which has been swiping chunks of marketshare.
Decibel levels are already high as Google has updated Chrome to boost speed almost simultaneously with the launch of IE8. Claims and counterclaims of faster speed and better security are doing rounds. Microsoft?s tests show IE8 to be one of the fastest browsers in the world, beating other?s page load time on almost 50% of the top-25 comscore Websites. Google?s Chrome promises to load pages faster and more securely. It also includes a new engine for loading interactive JavaScript code, called V8 designed to run the next generation of Web applications. Almost all the major players are working overtime to tout such user reviews, white papers and lab tests to establish the superiority of browsers.
When Microsoft posted the new browser for download, its marketshare bumped and averaged 1.63% for the day?a 21% increase over March?s daily average of 1.35%, according to reports from Web measurement company Net Applications. However, another report from InformationWeek now says that IE8 seems to be losing marketshare and many have reverted back to IE7, even though the browser has been on the market for less than a week.
Clearly, this is an exciting time for Web browsers. Google fired the first salvo with its much touted but little adopted Chrome but is adding fire with its new update, that boosts speed, at almost the same time as IE8 launch. Firefox, championed by the open source community, seems to be IE?s biggest competitor and many of IE?s new features seem to have been built to take on Firefox. Introduced in 2004, Firefox has gained impressive marketshare and popularised features like tab browsing?that lets you quickly click back to several open Webpages. Firefox now commands 22% global marketshare. Though Microsoft has lost a lot of market to Firefox, it still retains whopping 68% marketshare. Its marketshare stood at 74.9% a year earlier. With Opera and Safari on the landscape, the market is promising a lot of action.
Competition has reignited innovation in the browser market, which had come to a standstill after Microsoft had started bundling IE with Windows operating system. European Union has charged Microsoft with abusing its dominant market position by bundling its Internet Explorer Web browser with its Windows personal computer operating system.
Google earlier invested a lot of effort into Firefox that rose to become the Web?s second most popular browser. Microsoft?s new browser adds colour-coded related tabs, Accelerators add-ons, search and site suggestions, toolbar favourites, Web slice bookmarking and inPrivate surfing. ?The new version of Internet Explorer is based on user feedback on how people use browsers. For instance, we are introducing Web slices because for every 20 clicks that a user makes, 19 are seen to be associated with navigation,? says Ramesh Gopalakrishna, Director?Windows Client Business Group, Microsoft India. Web slices let users add buttons to their favourites bar and provide little snippets of Web content when they click them. Instead of going to a high-traffic Website, the latest updates could flow to users.
In India, Microsoft has partnered with 12 Websites, including Bharatmatrimony, Games2win, Naukri, Rediff, Wedunia and Zapak. Sify has added three Web slices and seems to be excited about the potential. Sify Technologies head (portals and consumer marketing) Venkat Rao Mallineni, compared his news, finance and movies Web slice to widgets on Google platform. ?IE8 offers choice of personalisation. You could compare it to the personalisation DTH offered on TV platform, a big leap from cable operators,? he explains.
Similarly, accelerators?another big-ticket addition in the new browser?make repetitive tasks one-click behaviour. Accelerators can perform specific action on any text selected in a webpage without having to leave the page and manually navigate to a different site. For instance, you could translate the text to a different language, post it on a blog or email it or even locate it on a map if it?s a place.
Inprivate browsing introduces a cache and history on-off switch, while related tabs are colour coded and reorganised. Most reviews are also crediting it to be more compatible with industrywide Web standards.
Gopalakrishna seems excited about the enterprises, where Internet Explorer is more popular. ?Browser with a tighter control over corporate environment will work better in an enterprise. While enterprises can build accelerators over Internet, CIOs are sure to like our group policy feature,? he says. While Microsoft has been ceding marketshare for some time, the company is hoping to regain some ground with the new IE8, which the company claims offers improved security, easier to use design and speed improvements over previous versions.
As reviewers and analysts wonder if IE8?the biggest overhaul of the Internet Explorer?can help Microsoft reclaim parts of Web it has lost, action is moving beyond desktop and laptop computers. Opera, Apple?s Safari and potentially Chrome could stake out potentially huge new turf for browsers on computing devices like mobile phones, cars and video gaming consoles.
And this could grow bigger as market expands and fragments into different form factors and flavours. ?We expect immense potential from these as they become mobile widgets as they reach a much wider userbase,? says Venkat Rao of Sify. He expects market to explode once these are available on other devices.