I'm super pumped (not really)! Google has decided that designing for two browsers (three if you count Safari, which I don't) simply wasn't enough, so they're going to up the game and release their own browser. Factoring in the various versions of the dominant browsers, we already have Firefox 2, Firefox 3, Internet Explorer 6, Internet Explorer 7, and Internet Explorer 8, and none of them are anywhere near perfect, so yeah, why not go ahead and throw another turd in the bowl?!? Thanks, Google, for making life even harder for web app builders and web designers.
Sure, some of the announcement sounds cool, like a new super-fast JavaScript engine, but couldn't they build those things without building a brand new browser? Why not just contribute heavily to making Firefox 3 suck less?
Well, I keep my sanity by ignoring older versions.
IE and Firefox are both free. There’s no reason for someone to not upgrade to Firefox 3. IE 7 runs on WinXP just fine, so no reason for me to worry about IE 6. As long as IE 8 runs on Win XP as well, I’ll then quit caring about IE 7 once it’s released (I assume it does, but I’ve yet to bother with it or its betas or anything).
I can afford this luxury, because so far our apps are targeted to internal use for small to medium sized companies. If for some reason we had a client go apeshit over IE 6 support, then it’d be time to fire up a VM with it, and let them know they’ll be paying extra for that support – as opposed to getting a free download served through Windows Update (and I believe it’s as a security or critical patch at that).
There’s no reason for a company not to have those two upgraded, other than poor network management and/or outright laziness. And if they want to be lazy, that’s fine – but make them pay for your pain.
@Rob:
Agreed, there really is no reason for people not to be running the latest and greatest, but quite a lot of people are: http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/August/browser.php
As you can see, IE6 is still very close to IE7. They don’t break Firefox down into v2 vs. v3 for some reason, but I’d bet that the numbers are similar to the IE6 vs. IE7 breakdown.
If I was doing public-facing sites, and/or sites that were marketed to consumers, I could see myself caring about it.
Until then, I’m fine putting up a big "Your browser sucks/is out of date. Get a better one here". Of course, when you’re wanting traffic, that doesn’t work – it has to be easy for the consumer, or the consumer doesn’t buy your shit. Internal stuff can get around that usually.
Oh – here’s another "just because Google says something, lets all make retarded assumptions based on zero knowledge of anything, because we like flashy headlines even though our editorials have zero worthy content" post. I hate media.
http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=2481
(Okay, yes, Google has released a bulleted list of features, but that doesn’t mean shit.)
OMGZ: "Revolutionary use of tabs (the tabs will be at the top of the window rather than below the address bar)".
Tabs at the top of the window… yep, that’s certainly what I would (not) call revolutionary.