the article has way too much hyperbole to take any of it seriously.
This statement is itself hyperbolic.
A lot of these advances are going to impact web applications. Sure if you're building a brochure site then you should probably stick to web technology circa 2000.
The article mentions 350MM chrome users, FF has about the same market share. That makes close of 3/4 of a billion web users who will automatically receive the updates that allow app developers to target these new features. That's a lot of potential customers.
Oh and for those who can't or don't know how to upgrade away from IE7-10 there's ChromeFrame. That covers the remaining portion of the web.
In other words... no, the article is not hyperbolic and feel free to take all of it seriously.
> Oh and for those who can't or don't know how to upgrade away from IE7-10 there's ChromeFrame. That covers the remaining portion of the web.
Most people who can't or don't know how to upgrade away from IE7-10 won't be able to manage installing a plugin either. That aside, I don't consider a beta plugin to be an acceptable answer to this question in any context.
As my original post said this all applies to webapplications. If you're building a consumer facing brochure site then you neither want nor need most of these new web features.
Have you actually used or tried to deploy ChromeFrame? Its plenty ready for prime time, and features:
1. A 60sec installation
2. No browser restart required
3. No admin rights necessary
4. IE6+
5. Autoupdate just like regular chrome
Even the most technophobic user can follow 2 links to be able to use an app they really want to use.
And remember this is all about applications, not your average brochure site.
What proportion of web applications are funded by large companies? Obviously in terms of actual users, there's always going to be far more consumers than corporate users, but in terms of dollars-per-user? Any large company will have a large number of internal, normally web based, tools for all sorts of things - training, asset management, expenses, travel booking - and the amount of money that the company will pay for these tools will always be higher on a per-user basis than either adverts or consumer payments would bring in. Certainly sites with almost no broad corporate use - social networks and the like - will have fairly insignificant IE use, but corporate facing web applications will see broad IE use.
ChromeFrame is great, but it is probably against the usage policies of a lot of companies. Even if it isn't, most people are fairly wary of installing something on their company machine. You'd need the IT department on side to get broad deployment.
> Have you actually used or tried to deploy ChromeFrame?
I'll admit, I haven't. That feature list is mighty impressive and all kinds of commendable.
That said, it still fundamentally is requiring people to install something on their machine. This is a difficult thing to do with the uneducated and often outright forbidden in the corporate world, so the two key demographics here are also the two least likely to use ChromeFrame.
This isn't 2005 anymore, IE is becoming rapidly less relevant as time goes on. Other desktop browsers have been gaining marketshare and the most popular mobile devices do not use IE. Currently, IE marketshare is on a half-life of about 3.5 years, in another few years IE may even become inconsequential. In the meantime I think IE has lost its ability to prevent advancement of web technology merely by lagging on adoption. Indeed, I think the opposite trend may become true, where IE's lack of features which all the "cool kids" are using on cutting edge sites will drive IE usage even farther down.
IE is so embedded in a lot of corporate machines that it will never simply go away. IE9 is good enough that in my experience even large users (like universities and large companies) are moving away from offering alternative browsers. Deploying only IE to thousands of machines is a lot easier than deploying Chrome or Firefox.
Consumer traffic may make the bulk of the web, but the actual financial contribution towards web development in terms of dollars-per-user is far, far greater for corporate traffic.
IE may be less relevant for consumer traffic, but it is just as relevant for corporate traffic. Given that corporate use is worth so much more financially, it won't go away. The IT department in a big company doesn't care what the cool kids are doing.
Certainly, and that will always block some web apps from adopting some new technologies. But is it going to block those new technologies from becoming fairly popular even if they are not universal? I highly doubt it.
You'd be surprised by how many people won't do that. In my opinion, it's your job as a designer / developer to make sure your product works for as many people as reasonably possible, and not expect users to jump through hoops (no matter how small) to use it.
I definitely agree (to a point...I don't test with IE6 or IE7 anymore unless budget and time is specifically allocated for them), but "make sure your product works for as many people as reasonably possible" is not to be confused with "make sure your product works the same for as many people as reasonably possible".
I'm happy to serve static images to older browsers with an unintrusive note telling them what they're missing and how they can get it.
"it's your job as a designer / developer to make sure your product works for as many people as reasonably possible, and not expect users to jump through hoops (no matter how small) to use it."
I totally disagree. Why it should be my job? Do you want to use my product? Then use the right environment where my product works as it should, otherwise GTFO.
I don't want my product be used by incompetent users. Its 2012, people ought to be educated about technology.
If people work it so there's graceful degradation then it'll transform plenty of things for a large segment of the internet using public. Disparity isn't great but if there's developers pushing features out for the other main browsers it'll hopefully light a fire under the IE team.
"This will transform absolutely nothing on the web for many years to come."
Yes, a better title would have been "5 APIs that will transform the Web in 2023" or maybe "5 APIs that will transform the Web in 2018" but that's not sexy enough.
However, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand just because the timeline is sensational. The web is mature and huge, so any real, meaningful technological change is going to take decades at this point. That's a good thing, IMHO: the "browser wars" didn't really help anyone, user or developer.
Mobile is eating the world, and a lot of people, myself included, are using online instead of native apps. I have already cursed the gods for the horrible input type support across many browsers.
I think "doesn't work in IE" could turn into a problem, if certain web services won't work on IE Mobile. It might be the best incentive Microsoft has ever had to make step it up.
IE should eventually support a lot of this also? IE10 has made some pretty big jumps. I guess they still haven't worked out having everyone on one version and automatically updating though.
I can understand people getting hyped up about cool new tech like this, but the article has way too much hyperbole to take any of it seriously.