The company isn’t saying when IE10 will ship, but if it sticks to its typical schedule it might be about a year away–which would be quick on the heels of IE9 by Microsoft standards.

Firefox 4′s success is evidence of the fact that consumers are still looking past Microsoft when it comes to browsers. According to NetApplications, Internet Explorer’s market share is now down to 57 percent. IE has been on a consistent decline for the past several years, and the upstart success of Chrome (which now has 11 percent of the market), and Firefox (at about 22 percent), show that consumers are ready for life post-Microsoft.

IE9 won’t turn Microsoft’s fortunes around in browsers, and neither Microsoft’s woes nor Mozilla’s alleged certain death have anything to do with Web app support (reading the Firefox roadmap answers that critique, which I covered here, and check out Jared’s story on the Mozilla Web Apps platform). The challenge is called tablets.

While some of us in the tech blogosphere have poked a little fun at Steve Jobs’ “post-PC” comments, he’s on to something. With tablets now a legitimate force, it is only a matter of time before these devices begin to affect market share. How else do you think Safari has been able to grow its market share so quickly? I highly doubt that many are downloading Safari for Windows, frankly.

These devices will help either Chrome (for Android devices) or Safari (for iOS). As people increase their web use through tablets, it will come at the further expense of Internet Explorer and even Firefox too. Microsoft has no real plans in tablets for at least another year, and that’s going to hurt.

It’s weird: In terms of durability and the sheer numbers of people who have used it, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 is one of the most successful software products of all time. But between its security holes and its poor compatibility with Web standards, it’s also one of the most headache-inducing applications ever–not just for the people who use it, but for those who build sites and strive to keep the Internet safe. And in early 2011–nearly a decade after IE 6 shipped with Windows XP–it’s a product from another era. Yet NetApplications says that 12 percent of Internet users worldwide are still running it.

These days, Microsoft has at least as much reason as anyone else to try and close the books officially on the IE 6 era: It doesn’t want to support it and would prefer that IE 6 holdouts upgrade to a newer Microsoft browser running on a newer Microsoft operating system. So the company has launched an Internet 6 Countdown site, with stats on IE6′s current usage and a stated mission of driving usage down to under 1 percent.

You Technologizer visitors are doing your part–over the past month, .8 percent of you have arrived via IE6. It’s been an atypical month here: Usually, Internet Explorer is the #2 browser after Firefox, but over the past 30 days it’s been #3, a couple of points behind Safari–and nearly tied with Chrome. It might be a statistical blip. But if it isn’t, and Chrome continues to surge, IE could fall to fourth place.

For you guys, the most interesting IE question isn’t when IE6 will drop off the map–it’s whether Internet Explorer 9 will get usage of Microsoft browsers growing again, particularly among Web-savvy sorts who also know all about Firefox, Chrome, Safari, and Opera. It’s easily the best new IE since the 1990s, so it has a shot at winning some IE expatriates back. Any thoughts from those of you who are using it (or tried it and went back to whatever you were running beforehand)?

The IE9 release candidate is essentially the full version of Microsoft’s new web browser. Bugs may be squashed between now and whenever Microsoft releases the final version, but all the features of IE9 are intact.  (Over at ZDNet, Ed Bott has the definitive walkthrough.) You can get the release candidate from Microsoft’s “Beauty of the Web” promotional site.

In general, I agree with Harry’s assessment that IE9 is Microsoft’s most refreshing web browser yet, even if that means looking a bit like other browsers. Although I haven’t done any fancy speed tests, I can’t think of any major reasons not to recommend IE9.

Except for one thing: A few months after Microsoft released the IE9 public beta, Google launched the Chrome Web Store, a marketplace for extensions and Chrome-optimized web apps. It’s the most significant new browser feature I’ve seen in years, in that it encourages users to customize their browsers and seek out new web-based services. Now that TweetDeck and Imo have become part of my pinned tab line-up, I can’t imagine using a browser without them.

Microsoft has embraced web apps somewhat in IE9 with the ability to pin websites to the Windows 7 taskbar, but once you’re in the browser, there’s no built-in discovery tool for useful web services, nor is there a home page from which to quickly launch them. Also, Internet Explorer’s extension library is overpopulated with feed readers and toolbars, and some of them won’t even work with IE9.

In a way, Internet Explorer is now more minimalist than Chrome, a browser that desperately wants to show you all the great things the Web has to offer. Who’d have thought it?

Here at Technologizer, Firefox maintains the #1 spot–in fact, Chrome is only the third-most popular browser. (Internet Explorer is #2.) But Chrome usages is increasing at a steady clip, and both Firefox and IE have lost users over the past year.

Here’s the current breakdown of browser usage among Technologizer users (this is based on the last month’s worth of visits to the site):

• Firefox: 32%
• Internet Explorer: 27%
• Chrome: 22%
• Safari: 16%
• Opera: 1%
• Other: 1%

Here’s where it stood a year ago:

• Firefox: 42%
• Internet Explorer: 31%
• Safari: 15%
• Chrome: 10%
• Opera: 1%
• Other: 1%

And a year before that, when Chrome was a few weeks old:

• Internet Explorer: 38%
• Firefox: 37%
• Safari: 16%
• Chrome: 6%
• Opera: 2%
• Other: 1%

Where will the breakdown stand a year from now, at least among Technologizer users? Chrome’s on a trajectory that could take it to the top. But predictions are dangerous, especially since the browsers that’ll be competing then will be quite different from today’s crop. Internet Explorer 9, still in beta, looks to be the first version of IE in eons that could be good enough to prompt some folks who abandoned IE ages ago to at least flirt with returning. And I really like the Firefox 4 beta–in fact, it’s my primary browser right now.

Of course, people who read sites such as TechCrunch and Technologizer are by definition more interested in technology than average folks. Among the populace at large, IE is still the most popular browser, Firefox is #2, and Chrome is still a pretty distant #3. Different research outfits report different numbers; here’s a handy-dandy chart I swiped from Wikipedia.

So what browser are you using, and why?

Finding the right one is sometimes just a matter of saying, “gawd, why can’t I…” and sticking it into a Google search field. So here are a few that I’ve found — and integrated into my browsers.

One thought, though, before you start. Adhere to the Bass International one at a time rule. It’s the best way to experiment when modifying your browser with add-ons or extensions. You know the reason: If your browser starts acting hinky, you’ll find the culprit pretty quickly with only one new add-on installed. Also, adding a bunch at a time has been known to cause sunspots and make people faint. No, seriously.

Okay, then, let’s get started with Firefox.

A New Annoyance: Local Shared Objects LSOs are tracking cookies created by Adobe Flash applications. They never expire and there’s no way for you to look at them as you might regular cookies. Even the Wall Street Journal has taken notice, saying some sites can stick over a hundred tracking components on your computer. I’ve got BetterPrivacy running in the background to dump these intrusive little buggers.

Take a Note! Every so often I’ll feel the need to scribble a note about a Web page I’ll revisit later. (No surprise that by the time I’m done for the day, I’ve forgotten about the site and never get back to it. But that’s another story.)

Web Notes is handy: Click its toolbar icon and a small Web Notes window appears on the Web page you’ve got open. The note you enter stays with the page, and the little window hangs around if you want it to. If you don’t put a note on the page you’re on, the note rolls up. Web Notes is less intuitive to use than I’d like, but easy enough once you get the knack.

A smarter note-taking tool, and the one I like best, is  Internote, which is still in beta at version 3.0beta2. Individual notes stick with the page, have changeable background and text colors, and are easily added or removed. I like the note management feature that lets me search through my notes and open the search result’s corresponding page. You can find product features and screen caps on the developer’s SourceForge page

Desktop Shortcut Remember how you have “Create Shortcut” on Internet Explorer’s right-click context menu? Now you’ve also got it in Firefox with deskCut. (Okay, I hear the IE crowd gloating; I agree, the Mozilla folks should have built it in, but they didn’t.)

Google--your way

100 Ways to Use Google There are a dozen or so Google spots I visit often — Accounts, Maps, Web History, and others — and Google Shortcuts gives me a handy way to stack my Google favs in a pull-down toolbar icon. There’s also a version for Chrome.

Back Up Firefox Xmarks syncs your favorites in the cloud (actually, on an Xmarks server) and lets you retrieve them from anywhere. So if you’re on the road, you’ll always have access to your favorites. (It’s also available for Internet Explorer.) While you’re adding add-ons, grab a copy of Firefox Environment Backup Extension to save a copy of your profile, extensions, themes, preferences, cookies, user names, and passwords.

Download and Run Remember the Internet Explorer Run option? Now that you’ve switched to Firefox, you’ll need OpenDownload to the same thing.

Send E-mail If you need to send the link for a page to a buddy, it should be a no-brainer in Firefox. Unfortunately, you’ll need Email This! to do it.

Free Internet Explorer Add-ons

I don’t know why, but developers aren’t nearly as interested in creating add-ons for Internet Explorer. It’s probably because they use IE only when they have to — or it could be that Internet Explorer 8 is notorious for becoming unstable when too many add-ons are installed.

If you have trouble with any Internet Explorer add-on, Microsoft has two spots to give you a helping hand. The first explains how browser add-ons can screw up your computing experience and gives you instructions for disabling them. Okay, no, the Microsoft folks don’t use my descriptive language, but that’s essentially what they’ve said. The other page supplies a more comprehensive FAQ about add-ons.

Back Up Internet Explorer BackRex Internet Explorer Backup does what Xmarks does (there’s an IE version), but backs up favorites locally, on your hard drive. BackRex also stores IE’s security zones, cookies, history, and any other customized settings. I’d use BackRex as well as Xmarks, just for the extra stuff it saves.

Nice Gesture Move your mouse this way and move back a page. Flick down and close a tab. Mouse Gestures are nothing new (except to IE) and can really speed things up when you navigate.

Max Out If you’re willing to give up on Internet Explorer, try Maxthon. It’s a browser that uses Internet Explorer’s core engine, but its feature set far surpasses IE and gets close to what Firefox offers.

That’s it. Really. I searched — lots — and couldn’t find any other cool tools. And I even looked on Microsoft’s Add-ons Gallery, an embarrassingly boring array of mostly toolbars and search engines. That’s too bad, too, because every time I use Internet Explorer, I can’t imagine why Microsoft would maintain its lameness.

If you find something cool for IE I promise to write about it.

[This post is excerpted from Steve's TechBite newsletter. If you liked it, head here to sign up--it's delivered on Wednesdays to your inbox, and it's free.]

Last week, Microsoft unveiled the first beta release of Internet Explorer 9, or IE9 for short. It’s easily the most impressive browser upgrade to hail from Redmond, Wash., since the original skirmishes with Netscape. And I don’t think it’s mere coincidence that it’s the first one the company has hatched since its scariest current competitor, Google, got into the browser business by launching Chrome two years ago this month.

Read the whole column here.