I do a lot of web development so I have every high market share browser installed: IE 6 and 7, Firefox 2 (3 isn’t sanctioned by work yet), Safari, Chrome.
In my personal life, I use Firefox 2 (had a real bad experience with the 3 beta, and I can’t really see a reason to migrate now, I’m happy the way I am). I have a few Chrome webapp shortcuts set up on my start menu for Gmail and my blog (bypasses the authentication thanks to remembering the password and a persistent cookie, very very nice).
I also have a plugin in Firefox called IE Tab which lets me change the rendering engine for a tab. This lets me use IE without actually loading up the entire program. Very handy for checking how your web development code acts.
Agree with you 100% on IE. I wish more people knew how awful IE6 really was for us designers, but also for them in terms of vulnerabilities. IE7 is steps in the right direction but why would you bother using it when there are more attractive options available. I think if more people knew about Firefox’s abilities, especially with plugins, more would use it. Even nowadays I find it rare to see a mainstream website that doesn’t look right in Firefox, which was one problem back a few years ago. I love to recommend Firefox. Maybe we can think of good ways to get the word out about alternative browsers :)
I think the rendering issue, combined with the default installation of IE in Windows by Microsoft, was the biggest contributor to people using IE, and now it’s simply habit for them to keep using it. Now that both issues are somewhat less prevalent today, I think the only thing holding people back is fear of learning a new program. Firefox’s auto-migration of data is a great step in countering this, but maybe people don’t know that Firefox and other browsers offers this feature. I think what’s needed most for alternative browser adoption now is a PR campaign to show what the browsers offer… the problem with this is browsers are free and don’t really make money or gain anything for the developers beyond market share, so finding money for said campaign would be interesting. Mozilla could do it, and has done a good job at getting Firefox out there so far.
But then here’s Chrome, backed by Google, they sure have enough money for a PR campaign. And Google has a vested interest in increasing the market share and popularity of Chrome: their apps run great on it theoretically more people using Chrome means more people enjoying Google Apps on it, thus more people using the Apps, their Android phone OS probably runs it now or will in the future, both Chrome and Android are open source so popularity means more developers will work on it. They’re probably gathering data using the browser as well, and we know how much Google loves data. If anyone’s gonna do it, Google will. Right now I think they’re waiting: waiting to have the browser’s code stabilized by both in-house coders and open source contributions, waiting to see the result of their cellphone initiative, waiting to see how the adoption rate goes for Chrome and other browsers overall. I expect they’ll take action once they’ve strengthened their Apps offerings, one big PR campaign to tout all their products.
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