SitePoint Podcast #18: Internet Explorer 8 … Percent?

By | June 26, 2009 | Podcast

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Episode 18 of The SitePoint Podcast is now available! This week your hosts are Patrick O’Keefe (@ifroggy), Stephan Segraves (@ssegraves), Brad Williams (@williamsba) and Kevin Yank (@sentience).

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Episode Summary

Here are the topics covered in this episode:

Opera Announces Opera Unite

Listener Question: Ow.ly vs the DiggBar

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 8 Ad Campaigns

Only 8% of New Yorkers Know What a Browser Is

Thanks for listening! Feel free to let us know how we’re doing, or to continue the discussion, using the comments field below.

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Kevin Yank

Kevin began developing for the Web in 1995 and is a highly respected technical author. He wrote Build your own Database Driven Website using PHP and MySQL, a practical step-by-step guide published by SitePoint, and he's co-author of the SitePoint Tech Times, a bi-weekly newsletter for technically-minded web developers. Kev believes that any good webmaster should have seen at least one episode of MacGyver.

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{ 8 comments }

iFroggy July 1, 2009 at 9:15 am

Hello RockyShark,

Thanks for the reply.

I know that Stephan uses (and connects to the internet) from a Windows PC at least part of the time, not that that matters. Regardless – even though I’m fairly sure he’s already done so many, many times, Stephan doesn’t need to say something nice about Microsoft to demonstrate that he isn’t inordinately biased.

Thanks,

Patrick

RockyShark July 1, 2009 at 7:46 am

Hey Patrick

Totally agree with your first comment – no argument there.

And I’m sorry for the confusion – that was never meant to be a personal attack on Stephan – my point was more this: If Microsoft are running a campaign to get people to use IE8, that’s hardly a reason to switch OS. So Mac users are not part of the target audience. As such, it really doesn’t matter what they think. They can love it or hate it, it doesn’t mater as they can’t use the product.

Does it matter if I like or dislike ads for hair care products? No. I ain’t got no hair! Sure, I may have an opinion, but it’s not particularly relevant. So there would be no point in a podcast about the hair care industry asking me.

So we’ll have to agree to disagree on that one.

(For the record – I “swing both ways” – my laptop is a MacBook and I have a PC running Vista on my desktop. I don’t use IE as my primary browser.)

You’re absolutely right – I don’t know any of you & don’t pretend to. Comments are only based on what’s said in 40 minute recordings every couple of weeks. If you say Stephan has a balanced view of Microsoft then of course I have to believe you. Looking forward to hearing Stephan say something nice about them then, eh? :)

iFroggy July 1, 2009 at 1:02 am

Hello RockyShark,

Thanks for the comment. We’re glad that you liked the podcast. Browsers aren’t World War III – they aren’t that important. We talk about them because they are relevant to web developers, but on the whole, they aren’t something to get riled up about and I think it’s important to approach the discussion in that manner. Our comments were no more strange than anyone else’s.

I was the one who quoted the 8% statistic, going from http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=0. I don’t know what the Windows only numbers are (have to be a subscriber to access that), but that is a good point and could be a possibility.

I think you are being unfair to Stephan. You can’t know him by listening to a few podcasts. I know Stephan, we’ve been friends for like 7 or 8 years, long this podcast. You may be right that he’s not the target of their marketing, but it is not appropriate to suggest, and you are incorrect when you say, that he’ll dislike everything Microsoft does, because he uses Mac products. And, for the sake of the podcast, what he thinks matters as much as what any of us think.

Thanks,

Patrick

RockyShark June 30, 2009 at 10:41 pm

A couple of strange comments here about Browsers.

Someone mentioned that Safari had about 8% and Chrome 1%. Microsoft though will only be pitching any marketing at Windows users – Mac users can’t download IE8. (Well, they can download it it I guess. Using it is a different story!) You’ll probably find that among Windows users, Chrome has much higher usage than Safari. I would guess that Opera has more users that Safari on Windows for that matter.

And the whole discussion about the $10,000 thing? Again, it doesn’t matter what Stephan thinks. He’s not part of Microsoft’s target audience. Of course he’s going to hate anything they do, he’s an Apple fan. But surely MS are not pitching this campaign at Mac users, are they?

Gotta say I’m with Patrick on this one. Apple can run the “I’m a Mac, I’m a PC” ads and that’s okay. MS run a campaign that takes a bit of a jab at Apple and it’s frowned upon for some reason.

If it gets people to upgrade – then I’m all for it. The more people that install IE8, the fewer running older versions. Surely that *has* to be a good thing, right?

Okay – got a bit more of a rant to come – nearly done…

Kevin got upset that the original contest had the clues only visible in IE8!? Well, that’s the browser they are trying to promote, yeah? It’s hardly breaking the web! It’s no more breaking the web than using rounded corners in Safari and Firefox and giving IE square corners. Does any company “break” their industry by asking you to use their product in exchange for a chance to win a prize they they are providing? Sheesh!

*Gets off soapbox.*

Good podcast fellas. I feel much better now…

iFroggy June 29, 2009 at 4:15 am

Sorry, Wardrop, it’s actually a custom track, made for the podcast. Glad that you like it, though. :) Thanks for listening.

Patrick

Wardrop June 27, 2009 at 9:59 am

Can someone tell me the name of the little outro track, or where I can get?

Kevin Yank June 26, 2009 at 1:41 pm

Good catch, redbud! I’ve fixed the transcript. It was accidentally encoded as UTF-16 instead of UTF-8.

redbud June 26, 2009 at 11:09 am

Has anyone reported issues viewing the transcript?

I tried to view the transcript, but it came up with lots of strange characters. I’m using Firefox 3.0.11 under Vista.

Tried to view it in Opera 9.63 – it displayed the transcript, but with some odd characters in the beginning, and very few line breaks.

To view the transcript in Opera, I need to scroll at least 11 times horizontally across the screen.

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