Microsoft has put out a new advert for IE10 which, rather than offering to point out how superior a product it is, as is customary in the advertising world, ends with the conclusion that the browser simply “sucks... less” than it used to. TNW reports that this is one of a number of videos Microsoft has made highlighting negative views of the Internet Explorer browser. This is one of the better ones, it’s pretty funny.
Internet Explorer has a chequered history, early in the history of the popular internet Microsoft tried to re-invent (or extend MS style) web standards so that IE was necessary to view many popular pages. Then there were a lot of European legal issues with browser choice on new Windows installs. More recently my web designing friends all used to despair about making pages compatible with IE6 from which people seemed reluctant to upgrade or switch from. Around this time IE started getting left behind with modern features such as tabbed browsing. This is probably around the time that the “IE is only good for downloading other browsers” maxim (as shown in the video) became popular.
Current browser popularity stats from StatCounter.
Microsoft seems to have turned a corner since Internet Explorer 9 and the company has been developing the browser’s user friendliness, security and standards compliance so that it can compete better with new favourites Firefox and Chrome.
It’s funny to see Microsoft acknowledge an IE hater’s perception and work it into a humorous advert. Take a two minute break and have a watch of the video embedded above.
