Microsoft Wants You To Rethink Internet Explorer
Internet Explorer has long suffered from the bad reputation it inflicted upon itself, and Microsoft is painfully aware of this. Ever since IE9, though, it’s been a pretty good browser and the latest versions have embraced open web standards, added a very fast JavaScript engine and new features like touch support. Still, even for Microsoft, IE remains the “browser you love(d) to hate.”
Over the last year or so – and especially in the lead-up to the launch of IE11 – Microsoft partnered with a number of organizations and developers ranging from Red Bull to Atari and GlacierWorks to showcase what a modern browser can do, and today it’s launching Rethink IE to aggregate all of this content and to start a new conversation around IE.
IE, Capriotti stressed, had a pretty good year, and last November, it saw its highest market share since 2012, with quite a few Chrome and Firefox users moving (back) to IE. “We want you to rethink what IE has become,” he noted, and for Microsoft, that specifically means IE on a tablet like the Surface. In Capriotti’s view, Chrome and Safari were developed for desktops and ported to mobile without fully taking advantage of the new platform. He believes that by designing the Metro version of IE from the ground up, Microsoft is a step ahead of its competitors. “If you look at Chrome on a tablet,” he said, “it looks like on the desktop.”
He also believes that now that load times and fast rendering engines are standard, the ability to build new experiences on a browser with the help of touch and other new technologies will be what sets browsers apart (while still maintaining support for open web standards, of course).