In January 2004, 94.8 percent of Web surfers used Microsoft Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, according to the Web analytics research company OneStat.com. Not me, though. For many months Ive been using a Mozilla-based browser that cant seem to settle on a name: Phoenix, Firebird, now Firefox. Identity crisis notwithstanding, it rocks.
Trust me on this Im no knee-jerk open source bigot. During Mozillas long nuclear winter, I stuck with IE because I wasnt willing to live with compromises. Then the tables turned. Suddenly, IE was the compromise I could not live with. Bugs didnt get fixed. Standards support didnt improve. New features didnt appear. And the last vestige of cross-platform ambition evaporated when IE for the Mac was killed last year. The message is clear: Internet Explorer is dead in the water.
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