Impact of Microsoft IE7 browser
Microsoft Internet Explorer had lost me more than 2 years ago (or whenever the FireFox browser first came out)… but today, I upgraded my MSIE 6.xx browser to the new IE 7.
You might ask, Why bother with Microsoft IE 7 if we’re perfectly happy with Mozilla FireFox?
The first reason is the same one you should have if you don’t have it already: To see how our/your websites look like in the new browser and review any visual oddities that may need some HTML code adjustments just in case IE7 becomes the world browser standard.
I’m excited about IE7 for quite a few reasons, none of which have to do with me switching back to IE instead of FireFox (because that ain’t gonna happen just yet).
1) First, did you notice that IE7 looks nearly identical to FireFox? This is a good thing because it means the IE7 dev team was probably using FireFox when they developed their version of it. (Shhh, it’ll be our little secret.)
2) I expect IE7 to give Microsoft’s LIVE and/or MSN portal an off-the-scale boost in traffic (look at the charts for the past year) because it’ll be the default search engine in IE7. Yes, I already changed my IE7 to Google for the default SE (duh :-) and added Yahoo and a few others to it, but I’m not confident the masses will care to improve the quality of their IE7 browser to include a better quality search engine (Sorry MSFT). This will give Microsoft’s search engine a rise in query volume by critical masses who will default with it…and thus, elevate their importance.
I have not seen Googles marketing yet to help educate IE7 users to add them to the search defaults, but I’ve seen Yahoo doing a lot of direct-to-member marketing to convert to a Yahoo branded IE7.
3) EzineArticles expert author Matt Ambrose summed up my feelings on the gigantinormic impact (that’s a word I just made up) of how IE7 is going to move RSS forward into the mainstream. Read Matt’s article: Internet Explorer 7 = RSS Consumption Explosion
Our tens of thousands of EzineArticles RSS feeds are single handedly responsible for MILLIONS of page views of annual traffic already… and the best part: The traffic is HIGHLY pre-qualified! Read this paragraph a few times and then go make sure you have your own RSS feeds available on your site. This is huge people! :-)
Out of 10, I give the new Microsoft Internet Explorer version 7 a score of 7 out of 10 stars… and I think they might actually have a shot at stopping some of the massive user erosion that has gone to FireFox, Opera and other browsers.
To help you on your IE7 education, check out Joseph M. Pisano’s article on “IE7, Quick Guide to What’s New With Internet Explorer 7 and Handy Shortcuts”
Browser Useage By Users/Surfers of EzineArticles.com:
For the month of November so far, the users of EzineArticles.com are using the following browsers:
74.5% MS IE
14.5% FireFox
3.1% to Safari
.7% to Netscape
…and .5% to Opera.
Of the 74.5% that are surfing EzineArticles with MS IE, 7.2% of them are ALREADY using version 7! 65.7% are using MSIE 6.0, .3% are using MSIE 5.01, .2% are using MSIE 5.0, and the rest are somewhere in between.
What’s your take on the new MS IE 7?
Thanks Chris,
I never thought I would give up Mozilla, but I’ll check this out.
Cynthia
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