Browser Usage Stats (One Firefox to rule them all ;-))

[vogella]

Hi,

this stat is interesting, seems like Firefox 3.5 is now the most used
browser.

http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-weekly-200827-200951

Best regards, Lars

[Joe Sondow]

That's one way to look at it. Here's another.

Of the traffic measured by statcounter.com, about 30% consists of
Firefox versions (22% + 8%) and about 56% consists of IE versions (21%
+ 20% + 14%). Since most sites probably don't use statcounter.com,
these numbers are pretty arbitrary. However, a 2-to-1 win for IE over
Firefox is what I've seen in other recent comparisons as well. That's
why I still run Selenium tests on a Windows box, for the sake of
native IE testing.

There's certainly some progress for Firefox in growing their slice of
the pie recently. It's no longer enough to target IE alone if you need
90% perceived correctness in your web site. My hunch is that this
trend is partly due to gradual cultural changes towards a more
computer-savvy population. The effect may plateau when the remaining
IE users are the ones who will never care about any of the reasons to
switch from Windows or from IE.

Cheers,
Joe Sondow

[Robert Casto]

Well, there are a lot of people out there of the older generation who use a browse and see the one already installed on their desktop and use it. You have to make a special effort to download and use Firefox. For those with little computer knowledge, they will use what is already installed. Until Firefox can get the manufacturers to install their browser as well, it will always be this way. Because of Windows OS licensing, IE will always be installed and setup as the default.

Seems like FF is not going to win unless they can get equal footing on the desktop to begin with.

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[Fabrizio Giudici]

Joe Sondow wrote:
> That's one way to look at it. Here's another.
>
> Of the traffic measured by statcounter.com, about 30% consists of
> Firefox versions (22% + 8%) and about 56% consists of IE versions (21%
> + 20% + 14%)

Right. If you look at the StatCounter graph, there's a combobox menu at
the bottom left; if you select "Browser" instead of "Browser version"
you'll see the graphs for IE and Firefox, not considering their version.
The numbers are more or less as you said. The trend is a decline, but
not exceptional, for IE and a slight increase for FireFox - the curious
part is that IE is declining a bit more than FireFox is increasing.

It's more interesting to look at data filtered for area. in Europe,
actually FireFox is at a close call to IE, in North America IE still
leads with no doubts and in Asia FireFox is hardly relevant. In Europe
things are very different by country. In Italy IE is above 80%, while in
Germany FireFox has got twice as many hits as IE, and increasing the gap.

At least for StatCounter data...

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[jmcecil]

I'm not sure how much I agree with this. I work with a large number
of developers and IT people. There is a VERY large age spread.
Everything from young people in their 20's getting their first job, to
people that have retired and are working again. There isn't a big
difference in browser usage across that spread. The vast majority
just don't care. The browser that is there does everything they want/
need it to do. This does support the concept that being pre-installed
and default is a HUGE factor though.

Our company pushed IE8 to us a long time ago and I see very, very few
people use tabs or the favorites bar, let alone the advanced things
you can do with those like sets and dropdowns. I've made several
attempts to show people the tabs and how they work, but there is no
interest "it's just a stupid browser". Keep in mind that these are
programmers (c, java, psql etc..), router/firewall techns and network
administrators. A few are Linux nuts. But, even there the only
reason they use Firefox is because everything MS = Evil.

My opinion is that the vast majority of internet users don't need/care
about the differences because in their usage, there really isn't
much. Although, I prefer Chrome for general browsing, I use Firefox
because of a few add-ons like Greasemonkey or Firebugs. However, I
still use IE at work because it just doesn't make that much
difference. In other words, the things that make FF a better browser
are only important to .00001 % of the user space.

A few side notes....One common thread for me when I show FF to folks
is that (like almost all things Linux) it's UGLY. It's almost always
the first comment. Even skinned it is not very attractive.

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[Joe Sondow]

Try the Antarctica data for the StatCounter graph. Of the antarctic
researchers who use statcounter-measured sites, about 7 use Firefox, 2
use IE, and 1 uses Opera. Because there are 10 people in the sample :P

But seriously, I celebrate the decline of IE 6 more than the rise of
any winner in the overall browser battle. The main reason browser
usage interests me is that I look forward to the day when my pages
behave similarly in all my users' browsers without the need to find
and test solutions for each browser. That happy day has not yet
arrived, but it looks like a future possibility.

[Robert Casto]

At the very least I'm hoping for adequate rending and execution of JavaScript such that everything actually works and doesn't look stupid. I develop on Firefox and test on Opera, Safari, and IE. Opera and Safari are usually fine without changes. IE requires herculean feats of coding and testing to make things work properly. 70% of my users are IE though but I can't bring myself to develop in IE. I much prefer FF. Perhaps hoping for the day when Microsoft gets it right is a fools hope?

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[Jack]

Amen to that. IE6 is just evil. Horrible evil.

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

People get extremely fired up about switching browsers the very moment
a site they like a lot starts failing.

For example, google has been warning IE6 users for a while now when
they hit youtube.com. Now, I'm going to guess that what youtube.com is
going to end up doing is start losing features for IE6 users, but the
only feature anyone cares about (watching the videos), will continue
to work in IE6 for years to come, so, that is not actually going to be
a catalyst.

Nevertheless, with the precipitous drop-off of IE6 especially amongst
the early adopter and tipping-point-inducing crowd (that is, people
who spend enough time on the internet that they will actively get more
people involved and possibly preach the benefits of your site), these
notions I'm hearing in this thread (you NEED to continue to fully
support IE6, and we'll never get rid of it!) just aren't universal.
And once the web *DEVELOPERS* hate IE6 enough, IE6's life as a browser
ends. No matter how indifferent the masses are.

I expect more and more sites to break in more and more horrible ways
over time. You already see this; there are lots of sites that don't
work all that well in IE6.

You can add to this mix that the IT world is very driven by a top-down
approach. Your average computer illiterate knows at least 1 person in
their circle of friends that is computer literate. That person is
going to ram a modern browser down the throat of their illiterate
friends the moment they start calling with 'this site doesn't work on
my machine, I don't know what to do!' - even if the problem isn't
actually the browser, just because their computer literate friend
doesn't use IE6, and IE6 is _EXTREMELY_ in accessible. Only the webdev
diehards have taken the trouble of jumping through the enormous hoops
to have IE6 runnable on their machine (e.g. involving virtualbox and
an XP image). Debugging friends is extremely aggravating, and the
first thing you want to do is eliminate variables and make sure you
have a simile of
their environment.

Thus, the browser preferences of the top X% of the IT world is the
only relevant factor of browser life. How big X is is debatable, but
unlikely to be all that relevant; IE hate is spread far and wide,
undoubtedly bigger than X if not now then soon.

There are a few people in the supposed top X% class that still stick
to IE6. Primarily this is the crowd that's being echoed here; the
users don't give a toss, IE6 has already been vetted, I know how to
support it, so screw it. I don't see how this is going to last. Even
if they are idiots who don't know how to use a browser properly and
thus stick themselves to IE6 as well (if they don't, change is
inevitable), the complaints of users that certain sites aren't working
very well inexorably push IE6 even out, there.

Personal advice: Do NOT jump through too many hoops supporting IE6.
Just tell IE6 users to upgrade. Especially when you start work on a
new project; by the time you go live, saying that will be quite
acceptable, even in the most die hard enterprisey environment.

[Joe Sondow]

According to an August 2009 survey of digg.com users, the majority of
IE 6 users are the victims of slow-changing corporate environments. It
is impossible for these users to get access to any browser except
their antiquated copy of IE 6. This too will pass. It just takes
time.
http://about.digg.com/blog/much-ado-about-ie6

By the way, getting IE 6, 7, and 8 all running on a single Windows
machine is no longer difficult. Internet Explorer Collection solved
the problem with a plain installer that just works.
http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/Internet-Explorer-Collection.shtml

[Reinier Zwitserloot]

The key term there was "windows machine".

An enormous percentage of web developers don't work on a windows
machine for their day to day stuff.

On Dec 29, 10:44 am, Joe Sondow <joeson...@gmail.com> wrote:
> According to an August 2009 survey of digg.com users, the majority of
> IE 6 users are the victims of slow-changing corporate environments. It
> is impossible for these users to get access to any browser except
> their antiquated copy of IE 6. This too will pass. It just takes

> time.http://about.digg.com/blog/much-ado-about-ie6

>
> By the way, getting IE 6, 7, and 8 all running on a single Windows
> machine is no longer difficult. Internet Explorer Collection solved

> the problem with a plain installer that just works.http://www.softpedia.com/get/Internet/Browsers/Internet-Explorer-Coll...