Please excuse the sarcastic title, but it was intended to illustrate a point - nobody loves IE. Yes, many use it - although the majority of them are either forced to by system restrictions (in workplaces for example) or simple aren't bothered enough to switch to an alternative. Apathy and lack of alternatives are hardly a confidence boost for a company, even if it does yield almost two-thirds market share (as IE currently holds). However, does this necessarily mean that IE will always be unpopular (with vocal tech-savvy critics) and lagging behind in performance tests?
Of course it doesn't - MS is a very rich and pretty clever company, and if the recent announcements on IE9 are anything to go by, it is indeed possible that IE could once more become a market-leader in the true sense of the word (i.e. not just because it has the most users, but also because it can be said, in some ways, to be 'the best'). For a full write up of the proposed innovations for version #9 see this handy summary from Guardian tech, but suffice to say changes like html5 compatibility have come as an interesting surprise for many.
At this stage we have very little to go on, and it is impossible to predict if the unimaginable scenario of Chrome and Firefox users, for example, switching back to IE will materialise. Much depends on the development of the competitors, though it must be said that with the new 'browser ballot screen' we could see the rather novel situation arising in a few years wherein IE is well down on its market share, but well up on its technical performance etc. How ironic if just as IE becomes more innovative than ever before it also loses its market dominance?
We shall see - it's very early days yet, and what we can say with some certainty is that IE continues to lag behind its competitors at the moment in technical performance (check for example this recent test of Java competence of rival browsers on Techcrunch: no surprise IE is well last). However, amidst all the anti-IE fervour that sometimes fills the blogosphere, it's worth noting that there's no reason why IE could not one day be a genuinely excellent browser. IE9 could be the one, we shall wait and see...
Dejan Levi
