Internet Explorer Security concerns
23/01/2010
January 2010 has shown another major security issue with the Internet Explorer browser and many countries such as France have advised people against using this browser.
The UK government has not followed suit, no doubt partly because many large business and government organisations are still stuck using IE6.
Most people will be well advised to switch away from Internet Explorer and use alternative free browsers such as Firefox or Chrome, and this is easy for most businesses. But this is a difficult decision for web design companies who traditionally test all websites in a large number of browsers.
Cornish WebServices currently test all websites in IE6, IE7, IE8, Firefox, Opera, Chrome and Safari, and are aware of several local government or education establishment which are still using IE6. This currently adds significant cost to some website development work as IE6 is not at all complaint with the web standards, and requires different style sheets or code to give a modern website design.
How are browser trends changing? This varies quite significantly between different market segments, but in general the large increases in market share seen before by Firefox have halted. Chrome is gaining market share, especially as this is now being actively promoted by Google.
It will be interesting to see how the latest Internet Explorer security scare changes the market share of the main browsers, and also if there is a difference between French and UK markets corresponding to the different advice from their governments.
