… What struck me watching these (WebKit) demos is that you could build a really slick web app UI using stuff like the canvas tag, SVG, and advanced CSS. Yes, none of this stuff works in IE, and IE still has massive market share — but not among the sort of people who adopt hip new web apps. The combined market share for, say, Firefox 3 and Safari 3 is larger than the overall market share for Mac OS X. Plenty of developers write desktop software that only works on the Mac — why aren’t more people writing apps web apps that only work in truly modern web browsers? The first one to do it is going to be a sensation.
I didn’t have a sense for how far behind IE lags, historically and today, until I saw this compatibility table (via Toby Jungen),
Calculation of support of currently displayed feature lists
Internet Explorer Firefox Safari Chrome Opera Far Past 6.0: 4% 2.0: 34% 3.1: 43% 0.2: 54% 9.0: 35% Past 7.0: 12% 2.0: 34% 3.1: 43% 0.2: 54% 9.0: 35% Present 8.0: 29% 3.0: 48% 3.2: 67% 1.0: 54% 9.6: 58% Near Future (2009) 8.0: 29% 3.5: 78% 4.0: 88% 2.0: 84% 10.0: 63% Future (2010 or later) 9.0: 29% 4.0: 86% 4.*: 88% 2.0: 84% 10.*: 72%