It’s not all about Internet Explorer any more. Yet, I am surprised at the number of web houses still coding specifically to IE. Much to my dismay, even my own company does it. Though we have a little bit of an excuse—our client only supports IE in their organization, and the app is internal—it still bothers me that we are abandoning everyone else.

New figures released a week ago place IE’s market share at 89%. That means more than 1 in 10 users are not using IE. (Read the Article) By coding specific to Microsoft, you are abandoning 11% of your potential users. That is astonishing and disturbing.

Pay particular attention to Firefox. Its user-base is growing exponentially, and doubling every 9 months. I’m a fan of the application. It is much easier to use than IE, and much more solid. I’ve converted all of my friends and almost all of my family. I even have my in-laws using Firefox. (Get Firefox)

As the IE behemoth continues to fall, you and your organization should be paying more and more attention to standards and multiple-browser testing. Check that your HTML is compliant, and test your sites in at least IE and Firefox, if not others. Don’t force your users to use a particular browser; chances are that if they can, they will just go somewhere else for their information.