Something seems to have changed in the last few hours, and I think I like it.

Max is on the job.

For about a day, my browser opened the index (Lyrics & Knowledge) page just fine, but nearly all the individual pages showed attempts to reload "something else" at about 2 or 3 second intervals, and it was a "locked loop" that didn't quit. The status bar showed it running through links to geocities, FaceBook, and a bunch of others, but they flipped past so fast I couldn't get good idents.

Earlier today I was seeing the same sort of looping, but it appeared that the 'cat was mostly trying to reload the same thread about every 3 or 4 seconds. (You wouldn't notice what was happening if you didn't have a Status Bar turned on; but it made everything very slow and erratic.)

It now looks just fine (to me) - at least on this thread, althoug the tab icon is still winking at me, indicating "activity" that's puzzling.

This is NOT JUST A MUDCAT THING although at other sites that are experiencing problems it may not be quite as obvious.

At W3C most recent (March 2011) statistics for Web Browsers:
1 Internet Explorer 8 25.96%
2 Firefox 3.6 23.46%
3 Chrome 10 11.28%
4 Internet Explorer 7 9.07%
5 Safari 5 5.15%
6 Firefox 4 3.47%
7 Chrome 9 3.43%
8 Internet Explorer 6 3.23%
9 Firefox 3.5 2.07%
10 Opera 11 1.23%

This appears to be a mid-month report, and end of month reports show a very substantial growth in IE9 share.

Combined percentage of users for IE, including all versions, were reported in "end-of-month" stats for March 2011 showed IE at about 39%, although some surveys continue to show it above 50%. IE5 is still in fairly widespread use, not included in the W4C report, although that version is mostly "outside the civilized world" in "underdeveloped countries and maybe Australia.

(I'm sure I saved the links to several recent reports, but haven't found them where my current brain thinks yesterday's brain would have put them.)

In all likelihood, IE9 can be blamed for the flurry of recent annoyances. IE9 is the first version from the most widely used "browser family" to attempt to move fully into HTML5, and a whole bunch of site operators are trying to "catch up and be compliant."

A month ago, Firefox was reportedly losing users - mostly to IE, but their losses were nearly all to IE6. IE6 is the last version that was really compatible with WinXP. IE7 apparently works pretty well and has features that some like, and IE8 can be used but with "difficulties" on XP.

IE9 CANNOT be installed on any Windows earlier than Vista and Win7, but the Microsoft deluge of advertising has encourage those who can to all move to IE9, and lots of people are doing it.

(People here have been reporting problems with other browsers that may be the result of incorporating more HTML5 features in the new ones(?), although I can't be sure since few report details of how they fixed them.)

Those who have their own websites, and perhaps even those with "pages" on sites like FaceBook etc., may find it necessary to update their postings, to accomodate HTML5, as the "new features" become more widely used.

Even though HTML5 is not a standard as yet, it is creeping onto the web and all indications are that its penetration well rapidly become more invasive.

The "best feature" that I see claimed is that HTML5 can eliminate the need for FLASH, which IMO is a VGT (very good thing); but I'm probably a little biased.

John