Like the historical Internet Explorer 6 funeral, it seems like Internet Explorer 8 (IE8) is the next version to go “out of style” and “out of support”. First, jQuery, a popular JavaScript framework announced that version 2.0 will ship without support (by default) older IE browsers (6,7,8). Google has announced recently that Google Docs will soon no longer support IE8. If like in baseball, three strikes and you’re out, One more strike and IE8 certainly is out. As previously discussed in the article Webkit Will Rule the World, anybody who is still using Windows XP (which is a substantial percentage) is stuck having to either purchase an upgrade to Windows Vista, Windows 7, or Windows 8 and/or switch to another browser such as Firefox or Google Chrome. Also, the additional cost to develop new forward-looking adaptive and responsive web 3.0 content for these non-HTML5 compliant browsers continues to be a burden for young companies and existing companies, Google at the head of the pack, wanting to eagerly launch their new products. For once, it seems like Google is actually helping Microsoft to bury their past. With Windows 8, Microsoft is betting it all on convincing it users to quickly adapt to the new Metro interface, which completely strays from the classic start button paradigm that millions (and millions) of users are too accustomed to, and instead introduces more app-like experience with panels in basic colors, the 3D glow and bubble style borders are going out of style.
