IE’s dominance has been challenged lately, but it’s becoming increasingly clear that web developers are leading the charge away from the once king of browsers. Talk to any web developer and odds are they use Chrome or Firefox.

The trend  becomes even more obvious as more and more web dev tools are being launched with functional Chrome and Firefox support, but with IE support coming at a later date. Here’s what Matt Asay at The Register noticed about the trend:

The thought struck me when reading Jason Perlow’s review of the Socialfixer browser extension. In describing how to install Socialfixer, Perlow writes:

Go to the Socialfixer website and install it on your browser – they support Google Chrome, Firefox and Apple Safari. Unfortunately at this time Internet Explorer isn’t supported, but they’re working on it.

Just an isolated application that will eventually support IE, or a sign of bad things to come for Microsoft’s browser?

I suspect it’s the latter. First of all, the trend among web developers is clearly away from IE and toward open-source browsers. IE adoption is scraping a mere 16.3 per cent with the web developer crowd that w3schools.com tracks. Firefox (33.7 per cent) and Chrome (42.9 per cent) fare much better.

Matt has a theory that developers leaving IE can be tied back (in part) to Microsoft’s user base – which includes a lot of people who aren’t particularly dialed into the tech world. It’s kind of a self-fulfilling prophecy thing. Read about it in The Register >>>

But the fact remains that developers prefer alternate browsers and as they move away from IE it’s going to be harder and harder for the rest of the world to keep embracing their beloved IE7.