The saddest news this month was the IE9 announcement. Microsoft came out of the closet and announced that IE9 would support standards. Whoo-hoo! Except…
This great new Microsoft browser will only be available for Non-Windows XP users. So the largest install base, the customers that are still running IE6, will continue to run IE6 because they can’t update to IE9. In my mind there is no hope for standards in IE. Here’s why. Most users will stick with what they have, XP. They will stick with it until they can’t get support, a year or two from now, and they have a major OS failure. In the meantime, IE9 will come out and the largest audience on the web, XP users, won’t be able to use HTML5, or CSS3, forcing most companies to ignore these new standards, and continue building to support IE6+.
Microsoft has an opportunity to release a browser that would bring them up to speed with the rest of the browser world, drag the XP users into web 3.0, and finally allow developers to have a more level playing field. Instead they are going to relegate standards to the fringe group of early adopters, continuing their trend of innovation at the expense of the industry, and the users, just to sell copies of Windows. They did it with Halo 2 and Vista, couldn’t play unless you upgraded… I’m not surprised, but I am sickened.