Glue, the popular Firefox extension that lets users discuss content all over the web, is releasing a version of its add-on, built for Internet Explorer, today. This is a big step for Glue for a couple of reasons. The first and most obvious reason is that being compatible with IE expands Glue's potential audience significantly. Net Applications reports that IE currently holds 65.5% of the browser market to Firefox's 22.51%. Being able to reach 88% of the internet browsing population should increase their registered user base of 130,000 significantly.
The other reason why this release is significant is the sheer accomplishment of developing a good, functional IE add-on like this. It took the people at AdaptiveBlue four months of work to bring Glue to Internet Explorer. Instead of taking the cheap way out, they reworked the code for Glue so that 90% of it is the common core that can work on any platform, with the additional 10% being platform specific code. This not only means that the add-on works consistently across both IE and Firefox, but that it will be much easier to develop for other browsers, such as Chrome and Safari, in the future.
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