This week Microsoft announced the first public beta of its new web browser, Internet Explorer 9 (also referred to as IE9).  It's will be months yet before the browser reaches the hands of the general public in final release form, but this beta gives those of us in the industry a preview of what we can expect when that happens.

The challenge for Microsoft 

Generally, media reception of IE9 has been extremely positive with many reviews citing faster performance, a slimmed down innovative interface and greater standards support are among its key achievements.  Finally it seems that Microsoft is trying to get back into the game by providing a browser that is competitive with the competition on all levels, narrowing or closing the gap and in some cases out-doing the likes of Firefox, Chrome and Safari which themselves continue to nibble at IE's overall market share.

The hope for Microsoft is that by providing a fully modern, standards compliant browser with a useful and enjoyable browsing experience, they can can stem the tide of users moving away from current versions of IE towards the other more advanced alternatives.  In recent years Microsoft has struggled to keep up with the competition but with IE9 it is hoping to not only draw level, but surpass them.  By all accounts it looks like they are well on their way to achieving this goal.

The problem

But for all the industry optimism and media hype surrounding IE9 there is a problem, a problem which bugged IE8 and IE7 before it.  That problem is IE6.  IE6 has been around for a very long time and remains a sharp and painful thorn in every web developer's side, and whilst it retains large market share (currently hovering stubbornly at around 19%) it will continue to hamper the overall adoption of new web standards like HTML5 and CSS3.

For this reason, better standards compliance and performance, whilst useful for end users and a good long-term step forward, do not provide a massive short-term improvement for web developers who will carry on developing for the lowest common denominator (IE6).  Of course, it is great news that Microsoft is improving their offering and giving users an obvious path to upgrade, but industry talk of a HTML5 revolution is premature and naive whilst non-HTML 5 capable browsers (in this case every previous version of IE) still continue to dominate market share.

How did we get here? 

So given the advantages of newer versions of IE and alternative browsers such as firefox and Chrome, why does IE6 continue to hold such a large market share?  The answer lies in the corporate market.  In this case Microsoft's market strategy of 'locking-in' users to their software through proprietary extensions to common standards has had a profoundly negative effect.  Many companies have used IE6's features and extensions to build intranet and corporate applications which simply do not work on other standards compliant browsers, including Microsofts more recent versions of IE.  

Because of this, corporate customers are unwilling or unable to upgrade their corporate-wide browser installation to a more modern alternative.  Whilst these applications exist and are not upgraded to work with standards compliant browsers, IE6 will continue to be used extensively.

The future

Assuming IE6 does one day eventually disappear, does this mean we'll face the same issues with IE7 and 8?  Probably not, IE7 and 8 are different enough from IE6 that the same sorts of browser specific applications have not been widely developed for them.  Also, at the time IE7 was released, the browser market was a very different place from the IE6 glory days, Firefox had already gained a substantial foot hold and IE7 was Microsoft's response to wide-spread criticism at the lack of innovation and standards compliance in IE6.  Given these points, it seems fairly clear that once IE6 disappears, the brakes will be taken off and users will tend to move quickly to IE9 or other modern alternatives, how many users remain with Microsoft and IE at that point is a question for another blog post!

In the end

IE9 is an exciting development, as is the push towards HTML5 and CSS3 web standards, but until IE6 is finally buried, there is little point in developers diving headlong down this route unless they are willing to sacrifice anywhere up to 60% of their potential traffic. Developers wishing to adopt HTML5 and CSS3 features in their sites and applications should assess their potential audiences carefully and make an informed decision, case-by-case, based on that assessment.