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Asa Dotzler

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Apr 7, 2009, 7:08:12 PM4/7/09
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Here's an interesting set of numbers (based on Net Applications' market
share report)

54% of Safari users are on the most used version of Safari which is 3.2
68% of IE users are on the most used version of IE which is 7
90% of Firefox users are on the most used version of Firefox which is 3

This changes over time, but there's some patterns under the numbers.

Safari is quite fragmented across versions and always has been.
Transition times are long and many don't upgrade.
IE is split between two or three versions and that ain't changing any
time soon and has yet to demonstrate any complete or nearly complete
transition.
Firefox users are overwhelmingly on the same version and with much
shorter transition times.

I think that there's something in there about being a good web citizen
and working hard to keep users all on the latest version of your
software that's worth amplifying.

It's not simply a matter of scale because Safari is a lot smaller than
us and is much more fragmented at any given time while IE is a lot
larger than us and more fragmented at any given time.

- A

David E. Ross

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Apr 8, 2009, 2:14:27 AM4/8/09
to

W3Schools reports that Gecko browsers now (in March 2009) surpass all
versions of IE. While the stats from W3Schools are often criticized as
non-representative of a global market because of their narrow,
specialized audience (mostly Web masters and would-be Web masters), the
stats reflect my recent survey of "hits" on my own Web pages, which are
quite eclectic. My own stats show IE at ~50% of the market versus Gecko
at ~40%. These stats indicate that IE is not at all "a lot larger than
us".

For details, see my <http://www.rossde.com/internet/browsers.html>. Not
shown there is the difference I found between Gecko 1.8.x (at 12%) and
1.9.x (at 88%), the latter being very near your 90% for Firefox 3 (which
uses Gecko 1.9.x).

--
David E. Ross
<http://www.rossde.com/>

Go to Mozdev at <http://www.mozdev.org/> for quick access to
extensions for Firefox, Thunderbird, SeaMonkey, and other
Mozilla-related applications. You can access Mozdev much
more quickly than you can Mozilla Add-Ons.

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