Two somewhat related news items of note…

Netscape, which basically is now Firefox with a different skin, is finally getting its techno-plug pulled by AOL:

While internal groups within AOL have invested a great deal of time and energy in attempting to revive Netscape Navigator, these efforts have not been successful in gaining market share from Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Digi-economic Darwinism at work, this. I don’t know any designer/developer after 2000 that even bothered with coding for Netscape’s parameters (remember all those “IE recommended” disclaimers on splash pages?), so this is just closing up the moneyhole for AOL. Nothing truly consequential, but it’s nice to know this bridge can finally be burned.

Relatedly, the much more stable IE7 has recently gained some market share in the browser battle, finally surpassing the CSS-suckified IE6. You can check that link, but I’m not so sure it’s a permalink, so here’s a screenshot.

This is good news for developers, since IE6 has many compliance issues than need workarounds and cost many hours per project when coming up with the fixes. I’ve experienced this firsthand many times. Let’s hope this trend continues.