There was time when Microsoft Internet explorer used to rule the internet browser market share. But ever since the birth of Mozilla FireFox in late 2004, that success story is slowly fading away.
Microsoft Internet explorer used to rule the browser market with over 90% market share under its belt, but in past 4/5 years, alternate browsers like Mozilla FireFox, Opera, Apple Safari and off course the Google chrome has not only hampered IE but rather threatening to push IE from its dominant position.
There has been a lot of argument about the reason as why once popular Internet Explorer has been losing the battle, couple of the most prominent point would be,
- Security
- Speed and performance
However unknown to many, one of the major factor for IE to lose ground is the fact of Microsoft’s approach toward backward compatibility and platform compatibility. Microsoft recently launched the IE10 platform preview and announced that it would only support Windows 7, leaving out WinXP / Server 2k3 / WinVista. If we compare this with competitors,
- MS never supported Linux for IE
- Apple OS X was supported till IE5, but support was dropped from IE6
- Windows XP / Server 2003 / Server 2003 R2 support was dropped from IE9
- Windows XP / Server 2003 / Vista support will be dropped from IE10
Making IE10 a Windows 7 only browser.
Where as,
- Mozilla FireFox continues to support any Windows OS later to Windows XP, having support for Apple OS X along with Linux.
- Google Chrome follows the same foot step as FireFox, supporting any Windows OS later than Windows XP along with Apple OS X and Linux.
- Opera too understand this factor and their latest offering also supports any Windows OS later than Windows XP along with Apple OS X and Linux.
No wonder why Mozilla developers called Microsoft Internet Explorer not a modern browser.