Web Developers Rejoice: Internet Explorer Falls below 60%

By Ethan Lee on May 4, 2010

With only a handful of odd exceptions, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been the bane of web site developers since, well, forever.

The web browser has always seemed to be behind the times in adopting new standards, leading web site builders to under develop sites to comply with IE’s standards.

Recent statistics releases by NetApplications shows Internet Explorer’s market share down to 59.95%.
Microsoft’s browser is still leaps-and-bounds ahead of all other browsers, with Firefox taking the number two slot with 24.59% of the market.

The downhill trend for IE is promising.

Even better news is the dwindling number of installations of Internet Explorer 6, which lacks support for a popular image format, PNG, and has significant problems with CSS and security.

The drop in IE 6 installations came after YouTube cut support for the antiquated browser earlier this year.

Despite the slow death of IE 6, current versions of Internet Explorer are not without their own quarks.

With introduction of Google’s Chrome and a growing and loyal Firefox community, Internet Explorer will eventually be on par with other browsers . . . we hope.