So Long, Internet Explorer!

As Microsoft decides to ditch IE, will anyone actually miss it while Chrome is king?
Do you remember the first time you tentatively opened an internet browser? Chances are that it was Internet Explorer, and it probably took a lot longer to load than it would do today. The blue ‘e’ wrapped up in its golden ribbon has become synonymous with the internet and omnipresent in all of our computing activity.
But all good things have to come to an end.
Microsoft have announced that they will be sending Internet Explorer to the recycling bin when they launch the highly anticipated Windows 10, and while IE will still technically exist, the new browser is going to be the rigorous sounding ‘Project Spartan’. Is Microsoft abandoning a sinking ship by leaving IE behind? Most probably. In the battle of the browsers, Google Chrome overtook Internet Explorer to become the world’s most used browser last June, with 31.8% of browser usage being Chrome and 30.9% sticking with Internet Explorer. While this isn’t a huge margin, Chrome continues to get the edge on Internet Explorer as our digital age progresses.
So where did it all go wrong for Internet Explorer?
Born in 1997, the early versions of Internet Explorer were innovative, something which may be hard to believe for those among us who know IE as a clunky, slow browser and perhaps even a bit of a laughing stock (as illustrated by this Buzzfeed article). IE 3 was the first browser to implement Cascading Style Sheets (CSS), and IE 4 introduced Dynamic HTML, allowing websites to dynamically change their pages.
It was perhaps its early popularity which spelled Internet Explorer’s decline. Being a dominant browser in the early days of the internet made Microsoft a bit arrogant, and once it started to try to force users to adopt it out of ease, the citizens of the web started to lose interest.
It was IE6 which gave the world a real headache. Innovation with the use of CSS was IE 3’s USP, but IE 6 stumbled when it came to actually coping with designs any more complicated than a single column of plain text (which believe it or not most websites are). This made web design a huge problem for those websites requiring consistent design across browsers; IE 6 was the only browser to display content incorrectly. This problem, coupled  with IE’s irritating tendency to “encounter a problem” and “need to close” at regular intervals, meant that the world got tired of sending error reports to “tell Microsoft about this problem” only for the problem to reoccur moments later, and jumped ship for the brighter shores of Chrome and Firefox. There may have been a few desktops which looked like this…

(Image: Imgur.com)
Following the issues with IE 6 – during which time other browsers cropped up to provide shiny new greener pastures – fickle users fell out of love with Internet Explorer. Many commentators have highlighted the need for Microsoft to shake up its browser and ditch IE altogether, and it would seem they finally have their way.
So what can we hope to see from Project Spartan? With such animosity towards Internet Explorer, an entire rebrand and a focus on rebuilding the broken trust of the online community is key, but will Microsoft be up to the challenge? We can only wait and see…