The fact that this is a sort of reply means that you should probably read the original post first, if the thought of doing so makes you cringe then don’t do it; it’s that simple.

The main point of his article is summed up here anyway, so don’t fret to much. Roger says that if Internet Explorer improves their standards support people will stop using Firefox and slink back to IE7, thus the Firefox invasion will cease and IE will be lord of the browser market once more, bringing with it all the problems that this does. I won’t go into these here as they are covered in Rogers article and the ongoing comments . I think that Roger has missed out some important points here and that when we take these extra points into consideration the argument becomes flawed.

Firstly the simple (or rather complicated) act of IE improving its standards support (and doing so as an act of priority) will bring standards into the main stream even more and can surely only help to widen the adoption of standards on the internet as a whole; this is a good thing. Firefox has still not broken into the mainstream and your average joebloggs dad is still blissfully unaware of anything browsery and thinks that the internet and the blue e are one and the same. Thus if IE starts talking standards they will have a far bigger and more respected audience among non geeky web users

If this means that people download and start using IE7 then so they should, Firefox should have more than just standards support (which isn’t perfect in itself anyway) to set it apart as an viable and interesting choice to users. Firefox is more than just IE with standards support it just needs to focus on its other qualities more. I think its an insult to Firefox and Mozilla to suggest that their browser can only stand up because IE is so crap.

While at the moment it might be true that using IE6 on windows is a dangerous thing and akin to putting up a sign directing spy ware to your computer, this will surely change as the main focus of IE7 is security and I am sure that Microsoft don’t want there Operating systems loaded with crap any more than you or I do.

Competition creates innovation and while what Microsoft are doing may not be innovative it should and hopefully will force Firefox to innovate even more and release an even better browser. Thus Microsoft releasing a better browser will hopefully be a good thing and help to squeeze just that little bit more out of alternative browser makers.

From Firefox’s point of view the release of IE7 is a bit premature however and it perhaps would have been better if they could have just acquired a few more points of market share from Microsoft to ensure a proper slice of the action.

What do you lot think eh?