It’s official. According to the IE Dev Blog at MSDN, MSIE8 will be the direct upgrade path via Windows Update in the third week of April. [here]

I discussed the slow decrease in MSIE6 browser share earlier today, but it is not occurring fast enough for my liking. It is a browser from what seems like a generation ago.

To give you some idea of why MSIE6 should gently euthanized, when it was a shiny new browser:

• Facebook, MySpace, GMail, and YouTube did not exist
• You could count the number of bloggers (remember them?) on one hand
• UserLand was the primary blogging tool. Or a text editor.
• Scoble didn’t work for Microsoft
• Excite and AltaVista were still viable search engines

Is it too early to write a redirect rule to direct MSIE6 users to a page telling them to upgrade to view content?

[Image courtesy of CreativeBits]

Using the visitor trending data collected and shared by StatCounter, I have undertaken a general analysis of browser distribution by global region. These metrics are collected using the embedded tags that StatCounter customers embed on their site to collect visitor metrics for their own use.

US data shows that MSIE 7.0 is in a dominant position, with Firefox 3.0 in the 25% range of market share. This trend extends into the North American data, which is heavily influenced by the US trend.

MSIE 8.0, still reports a lower distribution than Firefox 2.0. This data is most likely based on the usage of MSIE 8.0 RC1 version, as MSIE 8.0 was only released in GA last week. It is highly probable that these stats will change in the very near future with the release of MSIE 8.0 to Windows Update.

In the EU, where fear and loathing of Microsoft runs deep and true, Firefox 3.0 is approaching parity with MSIE 7.0. Also, the perennially favoured native son Opera makes a very strong showing with their 9.6 release.

Asia is a Web designers nightmare, with MSIE 6.0 continuing to be the most reported browser. This is concerning, not simply for design reasons, but for web compliance reasons. Effectively Asia has throttled Web development to an old warhorse, but to such a degree that there must be some overriding advantage to using this browser.

As an example, the statistical comparison of four Asia nations is broken out below. We’ll start with Japan where MSIE 7.0 has a clear lead in the statistics.

However, when China (People’s Republic), India, and South Korea are added into the analysis, the pull towards MSIE 6.0 is massive.

This trend needs to be studied in greater detail in order to understand why MSIE 6.0 is so popular. Is it because of licensing? Continued use of Windows 2000? Compromised computers? The data doesn’t provide any clear or compelling reason for this trend.

Moving to Oceania shows a return to the trend of MSIE 7.0 being the predominant browser with Firefox in second place, with these two browsers showing a substantial lead over the remaining field.

South America sees MSIE 7.0 as having the largest market share, followed by MSIE 6.0 and Firefox 3.0. Effectively there are no other browsers with substantial market share at present.

These statistics show that the three most dominant browser platforms by market share are the two MSIE platforms followed by Firefox 3.0. This is likely to change with the MSIE 8.0 GA last week and its predicted release to the masses via Windows Update in the near future.

However, the release of MSIE 8.0 may not be as exponential as is predicted. Corporate IT policies, which have been slow to embrace MSIE 7.0, are likely not going to make a giant leap to MSIE 8.0 overnight. Adoption among the general population will also depend on the ability of existing Web applications to adapt to a more standards-compliant browser platform.

Noticeably absent from most of these statistics is Safari in a position to challenge the three leading browsers. This indicates that even hardcore Mac users continue to use Firefox as their primary Web application and browsing platform. StatCounter backs this up by indicating that within their data, 8.36% of visitors from the USA were on Macs, while 3.15% of visitors used Safari.

Trends to watch in the near future:

• New browser releases (Firefox 3.1, Safari 4.0) and their effect on browser distribution
• Uptake of MSIE 8.0 once it is released via Windows Update
• Browser distribution is Asia

About four years ago, I published/posted a number of indices related to GrabPERF data. This is a re-launch of that, starting with the GrabPERF Search Performance Index.

The methodology of the Search Performance Index is straightforward: A number of key search providers are selected and HTTP GET requests are sent that directly pull the results page of a query page that is searching for ‘New York’.

This is a simple process and one that is a close approximation of the actual search process that hundreds of millions of people perform every day.

alias                       Response Time  Success  Attempts  Success Rate
--------------------------  -------------  -------  --------  ------------
SEARCH - Google Blogsearch      0.2822545    27242     27244       99.9927
SEARCH - Google                 0.3151932    27228     27247       99.9303
SEARCH - Live (Microsoft)       0.3840097    27245     27246       99.9963
SEARCH - Indeed                 0.4112960    27240     27241       99.9963
SEARCH - Yahoo                  0.4574381    24175     24175      100.0000
SEARCH - Altavista              0.4592764    23922     23922      100.0000
SEARCH - Cuil                   0.6757475    23963     23967       99.9833
SEARCH - AOL                    0.7822945    23913     23913      100.0000
SEARCH - Ask                    0.9025220    24157     24163       99.9752
SEARCH - Technorati             0.9053472    27219     27234       99.9449
SEARCH - Amazon                 1.3251402    27245     27251       99.9780
SEARCH - Baidu                  1.7409345    23777     23799       99.9076
SEARCH - Blogdigger             1.8960633    25106     26354       95.2645
SEARCH - BlogLines              2.0238809    27233     27248       99.9450
SEARCH - IceRocket              2.1233684    24147     24177       99.8759
SEARCH - Blogpulse              2.4144131    27019     27247       99.1632

As can be seen in the data, there is a substantial degree of difference in the response time results, but the big three search providers (Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft Live) were in the top five. As well, all but three of the providers (Blogdigger, IceRocket and Blogpulse) had success rates (availability) of 99.9% or higher.

I don’t expect to see much in the way of change in these results, but I will post them for comparison each week.

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.

Tomorrow morning, at 09:00 PDT, Microsoft unleashes IE 8.0 on an unsuspecting Internet.

By 12:00 PDT, the number of Web sites having to put up IE 7.0 only stickers will be in the millions.

I haven’t done a lot of testing of the new monster (I mainly use Firefox on Mac OS 10.5.6), but it doesn’t seem any weirder than any of the other Microsoft browsers I have used.

Under the hood, it does amp up the number of connections that are used to download objects, but if your infrastructure is prepared, it should be no big deal.

The big concern lies in the rendering. If those users who can upgrade to the new browser (anyone not limited to IE 6 by a corporate IT policy written on parchment) do find there are problems, will they blame the site or the browser?

Have you tested your site to ensure that it actually works with IE 8? Or will you get burned?

What is the greatest benefit you see to your visitors having IE 8 instead of IE 6 or 7?

Is this a good thing?