3 ms·

I really feel the battle is being fought on the wrong field. While it's great and nice to have more release dates and new features as an assortment of letters a

I really feel the battle is being fought on the wrong field. While it's great and nice to have more release dates and new features as an assortment of letters and numbers that the majority of the population has never heard of, past the initial adoption, browsers are very much a marketing problem. If you ask the average surfer how excited he/she is about WebM, WebRTC, WebGL, XAML, WPF, etc in a new browser you'll probably get blank stare, a dropped jaw, and at best, a response of "how fast is it?" Chrome has begun to set a precedence for being fast and uncluttered, which is why the majority of people have probably switched. I ran/run a fairly large project serving primarily the 17-22 demographic, and in the course of a year from January 2009 to 2010, Chrome useage on my forums had increased from just under 5% to a stunning 29%. Realistically, the IE brand is already damaged. If MSFT really wants to compete with Firefox and Chrome, their best bet is to create another browser for the new-adopters market.

quanticle 15y ago
If you ask the average surfer how excited he/she is about WebM, WebRTC, WebGL, XAML, WPF, etc in a new browser you'll probably get blank stare, a dropped jaw, and at best, a response of "how fast is it?" That's true, but it doesn't matter. When sites start using these advanced features, and the Chrome user shows the Firefox user, "But look what my browser can do!" that will drive adoption of Chrome. EDIT: Also, XAML and WPF aren't web technologies. They're Microsoft technologies that are intended for the desktop. Put simply XAML is the UI layout language used by WPF and WPF is the .Net replacement for WinForms.
- Shenglong 15y ago
  You might be right, but consider the adoption timeline for major technologies. It isn't sudden, and I really can't think of a big visual change, other than Flash. I remember when Flash 4 was new, and I was making Geocities websites with frames on Netscape. Most widespread technologies will be adapted by browsers before the masses use it - it's inevitable. I don't think feature-innovation is a KSF for browsers. It's actually interesting. I asked a few friends about this, and while all of my consultant/banker/business friends agreed with me, 3/5 of my engineering friends talked about features.

quanticle 15y ago

If you ask the average surfer how excited he/she is about WebM, WebRTC, WebGL, XAML, WPF, etc in a new browser you'll probably get blank stare, a dropped jaw, and at best, a response of "how fast is it?" That's true, but it doesn't matter. When sites start using these advanced features, and the Chrome user shows the Firefox user, "But look what my browser can do!" that will drive adoption of Chrome. EDIT: Also, XAML and WPF aren't web technologies. They're Microsoft technologies that are intended for the desktop. Put simply XAML is the UI layout language used by WPF and WPF is the .Net replacement for WinForms.

Shenglong 15y ago
You might be right, but consider the adoption timeline for major technologies. It isn't sudden, and I really can't think of a big visual change, other than Flash. I remember when Flash 4 was new, and I was making Geocities websites with frames on Netscape. Most widespread technologies will be adapted by browsers before the masses use it - it's inevitable. I don't think feature-innovation is a KSF for browsers. It's actually interesting. I asked a few friends about this, and while all of my consultant/banker/business friends agreed with me, 3/5 of my engineering friends talked about features.