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Is Internet Explorer’s fate tied to Windows7?
Google Reader: Look up total subscribers of any blog
Chrome 4 beta released with bookmarks synchronization

Is Internet Explorer’s fate tied to Windows7?

Posted: 04 Nov 2009 05:55 PM PST

Over the past few months if you are following news about how Internet Explorer’s market share has been falling consistently to such an extent that some experts believe that the market share which is almost two-thirds will fall below half in the next 2 years. I want to share some trends and why I think Internet Explorer’s fate seems to be tied to Windows 7.

Image and stats taken from marketshare.hitslink.com

Browser_mktshare_oct

Market Share in October 2009

Internet Explorer has a market share of 64.64% which is still massive, but it has been falling over a percent every month for almost two years.
The market share loss is massive considering the the fact that almost two years ago IE had a market share over 78%.
This loss of market share is almost exclusively picked up by Firefox and more recently even Chrome has picked up the numbers.

Why Internet Explorer is losing the plot?

Looking at browser version’s market share, IE 6 is 23.30 % which is now smaller than Firefox’s 24.07%.
This is a ominous sign and shows how popularity of Internet Explorer is tied up with the Windows OS. IE 6 was a default browser with Windows XP. Windows Vista which did not go down well with consumers saw its pre-installed IE 7 version still having a share much less than IE 6.
If IE6 is more popular than the IE7 and IE8 at the moment, it looks like that people after using IE6 end up migrating to Firefox or Chrome. Obviously if a older version is more popular than the new one, we can safely say that Internet Explorer has got its newer versions completely wrong.

Why is Windows 7 sole hope for Internet Explorer?

One thing that holds out hope for Internet Explorer browser is how well received IE8 has been. Internet Explorer 8 when released back in April 09, has managed to catch up and consolidate. It seems to have done so at the expense of of IE7 but that still means people like using IE8.
Microsoft’s Windows 7 comes pre-installed with IE8 as its browser. If you notice the lackluster performance of Vista has hurt IE7, that means IE8’s numbers will be hugely reliant on how well received Windows 7 will be.
Windows 7 has had pretty good reviews and it might save Internet Explorer for the moment. But the heady days of having 80% of the market share with their browsers are probably a thing of the past for Internet Explorer.
When Google releases it thread-bare Chrome OS, it might push up the numbers for Chrome Browser. Because of the reliance of IE on Windows, Chrome OS will probably hurt Internet Explorer much more than Firefox.

Links: Browser Market Share | Browser Version Market Share

Google Reader: Look up total subscribers of any blog

Posted: 04 Nov 2009 02:53 AM PST

To subscribe to blogs I use Google Reader. It is a simple interface and has a decent system of organizing various blogs you are following into different folders. I felt what it lacks are details on how many people are following a particular blog using Google Reader. But I realized there is a trick to finding that information out. It is not really a feature within Google Reader but an inadvertent trick.

How to look up total subscribers on a particular Blog?

It is quite simple. Once you are logged into Google Reader, on the top left had corner you can see the ‘Add a subscription‘ button. Click on it and search for the blog you want to look up. It does not matter if you are already a subscriber as it will still show up in search results.

googlereader_trick1

The results will show up on the right side with links to relevant blogs that you can add. Next to the link displayed are the number of subscribers to the blog using Google Reader. (see image below)

googlereader_trick2

A few more functions and tips for using Google Reader

Another great way to sort out which blog you actually end up reading or skipping in Google Reader is the ‘Trends‘ link which is below the ‘Home‘ link. This shows up statistics which throw light on subscription trends and reading trends. This includes information like how many posts from a blog do we actually read.

googlereader_trick3

Also while using Google Reader another few handy tips are that while reading a post if you want to visit the original article at the blog’s website just press the ‘V’ key and a new tab is opened with the page where the article has been published originally. Also pressing the ‘T’ key you can toggle the article as unread or read.

Hope you find the tips useful and if you have anymore to share do write in your comments.

Link: Google Reader | Reader Keyboard Shortcuts

Chrome 4 beta released with bookmarks synchronization

Posted: 03 Nov 2009 10:49 PM PST

Over a month ago Google released a stable version of Chrome 3 which signaled that it was more confident about it’s browser’s ability to compete with others. A day ago it released Chrome 4 as a beta version and the big difference it claims in its blog is that its performance as a browser has improved over 30%. I downloaded the beta version and it has been working fine. I hardly noticed anything different.

With Chrome 3 stable version I did have a problem of the browser crashing after a few hours especially if I had a theme on it. Its only been a hour since I downloaded the beta version so can not say that issue has been addressed. One exciting feature it does have is having a real time synchronization of bookmarks on two or more computers with Chrome browser.

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Chrome Bookmark Sync

If you want to have the same bookmarks on Chrome browsers across 2 or more computers all of them need to have Chrome 4 beta installed on it.
Sign-in with Google account and then merge and sync the bookmarks from all the browsers. It happens real time if you are signed-in on all computers. That means if I add a bookmark it shows up on the other computer in real time. This technology is the same that is used for bundling Google Chat with Gmail.

chrome4_bookmarksync1

Google has recently incorporated Sidewiki into Chrome which was earlier available through Google toolbar. Bookmarks could be previously shared on other browsers using Google toolbar, but it looks like Google is going to incorporate all that you can do with the Google toolbar into its Chrome browser as a feature. If that’s the course it is taking and assuming Google gets it right, Chrome might become the dominant browser in a few years.

There are many third party softwares and tools bars which allow bookmarks to be synced with multiple computers for example Foxmarks extensions with Firefox but this is the first time I see it as a main feature of a browser. Some people might be uncomfortable with the idea of storing bookmarks on a server which happens in the case of Chrome.

If you want to download Chrome 4 beta visit their landing page. Do comment on the post to let me know your thoughts on Google Chrome 4 beta.