In the previous installment in this series, I looked at the browser share in North America. Across the water in Europe, the browser distribution metrics show the unique flavor that this continent brings to this fluid arena.

In Europe, MSIE7 and Firefox 3 are effectively tied for the lead as the most dominant browser, followed distantly by MSIE6. As in North America, MSIE8 has substantially increased it’s market share since its March 19 2009 release, but it has not caught up to Europe’s favorite son, Opera 9.6.

What is clear is that MSIE8’s gain is MSIE7’s loss. Comparing March 1-19 with April 1-19, the shift away from MSIE7 is almost equal to the shift to MSIE8, meaning that people that are upgrading to MSIE8 in Europe are doing so, in the most part, directly from MSIE7.

There is little or no change to the MSIE6 install base, indicating that this is an entrenched population, likely in large corporations or government agencies.

Like in North America, the big factor to watch is how quickly the MSIE6 population decreases. Europe already has an entrenched population of alternative browser users, mostly with Firefox 3. When Opera 10 and Firefox 3.1 are released, it is likely that these people will move directly to these browsers.

What remains to be seen is how the strong anti-Microsoft sentiment in Europe affects the adoption of MSIE8.

Here’s what the difference between the companies boils down to: Microsoft is focusing on today’s Web, and the rivals are focusing on tomorrow’s.

Stephen Shankland via Browser war centers on once-obscure JavaScript

This sums up many of the comments that I have made about browsers over the months [see Does the browser really matter?]. The browser is not a passive browser any more. It is a Web application portal/container. With MSIE8, Microsoft has not made the leap into the future web.

It has produced more of the same, and will likely continue to see its percentage of the market drop, at least until Windows 7 rolls with MSIE8 installed as the base browser.

My final comment is that Windows 7 may not be enough to save Microsoft entirely due to the economic downturn and its effect on the upgrade process within households and corporations.

Here are the browser stats for Newest Industry as of March 14 2009. Not a large amount of traffic, but it is indicative of what most folks with technical content on their blogs likely see.

What did surprise me was the number of people who are still using MSIE 6.0. I am not sure what is continuing to perpetuate the presence of this percentage of people on this antiquated browser, other than large corporations running this by mandate of the IT department.

I think that with the release of all the new browsers this year, support for MSIE 6.0 should simply cease. I will gladly install a javascript library that will kill pages for MSIE 6.0 visitors, announcing that the Internet is no longer available to them.

The intertubes of the Web are abuzz with talk of the new, open-source Google Chrome browser [two articles here and here]. I will not presume to wade into the debate of whether it is necessary, or what strategic business goals Google has set that rely on having its own browser. I will limit my comments to the area of Web performance.

Open-Source Browser: Ours or Theirs?

When I read that Google Chrome was an open-source browser, the first thought was: is it theirs or a re-branded Firefox? No one knows at this point, but that will have a direct effect on how the browser performs, and how extensible it will be.

HTTP Standards

Unlike other standards, HTTP standards set out how a browser uses the underlying TCP stack. MSIE6/7 have very broken implementations, and MSIE8 is building on those by increasing the number of connections per host to 6, up from 2 set out in RFC 2616.

Firefox can be configured to mangle this as well, but by default it plays by the standard, adding the option of HTTP pipelining into its mix of persistent HTTP connections.

It will be VERY interesting to see how Google Chrome comes configured out of the box, and how much control users have over the HTTP behaviour of this new browser.

(X)HTML/CSS/JS Standards

This area is a mess. No browser implements this standards in a way that is completely consistent with the written text, and page designers have to use a variety of page testing products (such as BrowserCam) prior to release to ensure that their design is somewhat presentable in all browsers on all platforms.

The rendering of Javascript will be crucial in this new browser, as so much of the new Web is built on applications that are almost completely Javascript-driven.

I am sure that there will be sites that will be completely mangled by the new browser, but, knowing Google, we will be getting a 2.0 release, the 1.0 release being used within Google for a while now to test it under real-world conditions.

Caching

As a few sites in the world do use cache-control headers properly, it will be interesting to see how a browser created by one of the major ad-serving and search providers on the Web tracks page objects. Will it follow explicit/implicit caching rules? Or will it impose a heavy penalty on bandwidth by downloading objects more frequently than other production browsers do?

Proxies, and the Debacle of the Google Web Accelerator

Back in 2005, Google launched a badly designed and gighly flawed product called the Google Web Accelerator. This product proxied Web traffic through the Google network and allowed the company to develop a pattern of user browsing habits and search selections that would allow them to better target their ad products.

I have a great fear that this will be an integrated part of the Google browser project. If it is, it should be a configurable option, not an out-of-the box standard.

I am sure that there will be a few performance conversations that occur around the Google Chrome browser in the weeks ahead. I look forward to hearing what the community has to say about this new addition to the browser wars.

As the Web moves toward the delivery of services, I have been ruminating on the continuing importance of browsers.

Scoble writes:

Oh, well, back to my RSS news aggregator. That’s where I spend 90% of my Internet time now anyway. Are you still using a Web browser? Good. I’ve been telling audiences that those of you still using Web browsers are wasting your time. I think that Opera might be more concerned by that.

I agree. I use Firefox to handle large applications, such as my employers interface, and my blog editor, but beyond that, it has become less and less important in my everyday online life.

This is the trend. HTTP and HTTPS will be the vehicles to deliver this data. Web servers will become more and more important, but as transformation and application servers for back-end data, not as presentation and image servers.

This is a long-term trend. But it also explains things like the decline of Slashdot. Although they have had an RSS feed for a long time, their bleeding-edge readers found that Slashdot was no longer bleeding-edge. Information is flowing faster and in a more personalized manner through aggregator, desktop and online.

I agree with Scoble (something that happens infrequently): the browser war may be irrelevant. The Web Application era has begun.

Read mere from Dan Gillmor here.

If either of the parties is interested, I can scrub the rust off the Steel Cage I have in the basement, a leftover from the old Browser Wars era.

Looks like Firefox could become the genesis of the private-label browser, unencumbered by nasty platform/OS/Service Pack limitations. [here -- courtesy of the XSLT:General blog]

I believe strenously that Microsoft has committed a serious error in limiting the upcoming MSIE 7 update to Windows XP SP2 machines. It will not drive the large corporate IT departments who still use Windows 2000 to upgrade. It will increase resentment towards the company, which will be actively commented on in places (such as here).

I use Windows XP SP2. But as you see from the sub-title of this blog, the next computer I will buy for myself is going to be a Macintosh Powerbook. And I will run Safari, Firefox, Camino, and (very, very occasionally) fire up some 6 year-old, badly maintained version of MSIE for MacOSX.

When I use Windows, I will use MSIE to compare the look and feel of the pages I build. And nothing more.

If Microsoft wanted this new browser to be a true update, and not simply an addition to their program of forced obsolescence, they would have made it free of OS restrictions. What Microsoft has said is that if you don’t run Windows XP SP2, your browsing experience will be sub-optimal, less secure, and unsupported.

Web designers, this means that you will have to have yet another platform to test your Web designs, as MSIE 5.5, 6.0, and 7.0 will all interpret CSS, CSS2 and other design features differently.

So, what is the big deal about MSEI 7.0? It shows the Web community that Microsoft has still not learned the lesson that Firefox is teaching: be everywhere. Microsoft, the OS is not the platform of the future; the browser is the platform of the future. And a browser that can run anywhere, anytime, in any language, on any hardware, will win.

Ok, in a weird little way, the subtext of the browser wars has started to re-surface in the blogosphere. Everyone is getting into the browser distribution mix.

Including me.

Check out the Browser Percentage Stats for this blog and for the GrabPERF Server.

Thanks to Tim Bray for re-starting this mess.