Microsoft have gone and released IE 8 (19/03/08) and with it finally gained ground on being a ’standards conformant’ web browser. This is excellent for the average user and long overdue. In fact it should in time make our lives as web developers easy simply because cross browser checking should be less demanding – will we ever be able to test in one browser?But then I was left thinking about how quickly this would be adopted particular within the elearning industry and I realised it may cause an interesting issue:Our user base has 2 principal operating systems
- Windows XP / Vista
- Windows 2000
The vast majority fall into the Windows XP group and therefore have the ability (from the manufactuer not necessarily company IT) to update. It is not unreasonable to assume the Microsfot update tool will push this out shortly. So everyone currently on IE7.0 moves on to IE8.0 probably within 6-12 months. But hang on a moment what about all those people on Windows 2000. There is no IE7.0 for them and certainly therefore no IE8.0.
Consequence: IE 6.0 is actually the last option here without an operating system upgrade which lets face it is unlikely if the machine has been around this long.So it therefore becomes conceivable that we’ll be left supporting IE6.0, 7.0 & 8.0 in the very near future, with decreasing attention given to IE 7.0.
And the proof…
http://ajaxian.com/archives/ie8-vs-ie6-rise-of-the-new-machine
