I can't remember if it was up this thread or on another I said it, but I don't think IE will drop below 2/3 of the market. It's got the two most important bundles for the market: Windows, and AOL. And obviously IE isn't going to stop being bundled in Windows, and AOL never seemed to even seriously contemplate unbundling IE even after they bought Netscape (always wondered if MS paid them off somewhere in that). As long as IE keeps those bundles they will have the majority of the market, but if the other third of the market coalesces around 1 browser (which ever, doesn't matter) the industry will start having to do dual support again. Which from where I sit sucks, I hate having to test things twice, I don't like having to test our server on 2K and 2K3, and I don't want to have to start testing our web client on IE and something else. Of course if the other third of the market get spread out between 3 or more browsers coding will be able to stay IE-centric. Which, of course, was the whole goal, to functionally replace the W3C standard with a standard owned by MS, there are few things in this world Bill Gates hates more than popular standards controlled by somebody else.
Good point.
As long as IE keeps those bundles they will have the majority of the market, but if the other third of the market coalesces around 1 browser (which ever, doesn't matter) the industry will start having to do dual support again
Very true! If the market demands it - businesses will do it.
Which, of course, was the whole goal, to functionally replace the W3C standard with a standard owned by MS, there are few things in this world Bill Gates hates more than popular standards controlled by somebody else.
Right on.