Browser stats

[Tannin]

We hear a lot of hype about browsers and PR stuff about how the average user is turning away from Internet Explorer. Often, you tend to discount that as probably just spin.

But it's real. Here are the browser stats from redhill.net.au for the current month:

* Internet Explore 59%
* Firefox 27.1%
* Opera 4.5%
* Mozilla 4.4%
* Safari 1.2%
* Netscape 1% (all versions - including a 2.0!)
* TelePort Pro 0.6%
* Unknown 0.5%
* Konqueror 0.4%
* Galeon 0.2%
* Others 0.5%

Interesting numbers, and taken straight from the server logs so we know that they are accurate. Also, the site has high enough traffic (typically around 10,000 individual visits a month) to swamp any percentage-distorting by one or two people visiting lots of pages using a particular browser.

In short, yes Virginia, Internet Explorer really is on the way out.

 

[LOST6200]

IE is on the way out? Isn't it still built into Windows?

 

[Mercutio]

Yes, but more people are smart enough (or have pissed off their IT guy enough) not to click on it.

 

[LOST6200]

(or have pissed off their IT guy enough)

I guess it depends on the situation. It is not possible to install or execute any unapproved software on any of our systems at work. Not only would the IT people be pissed off, they could have your ass for trying to hack the system.

 

[Tea]

You need a new IT department.

 

[LOST6200]

Maybe so, but it won't happen anytime soon. There are too many offices all over the world, dozens of different languages, cultures etc. FF 4.0 would probably be out by the time everyone could agreee on making a change.

 

[Handruin]

Here is our trends starting back from Jan 2005 to now:

Jan:
MS Internet Explorer 48.3 %
Firefox 36.6 %
Opera 4.2 %
Mozilla 4.1 %
Unknown 3.4 %
Netscape 1.5 %
Safari 0.5 %
MultiZilla 0.4 %
Firebird (Old Firefox) 0.4 %
Konqueror 0 %

======

Feb:
MS Internet Explorer 51.6 %
Firefox 34.5 %
Opera 6.2 %
Mozilla 3.6 %
Netscape 1.7 %
Safari 0.6 %
MultiZilla 0.5 %
Firebird (Old Firefox) 0.4 %
Unknown 0.2 %
Konqueror 0.1 %

======

Mar:
MS Internet Explorer 50.9 %
Firefox 37 %
Opera 4.7 %
Mozilla 2.9 %
Unknown 1.6 %
Netscape 1.4 %
Safari 0.5 %
MultiZilla 0.3 %
Firebird (Old Firefox) 0.1 %
Konqueror 0.1 %

======

Apr:
MS Internet Explorer 47.4 %
Firefox 40.7 %
Opera 4.9 %
Mozilla 3.9 %
Netscape 1.4 %
MultiZilla 0.5 %
Safari 0.4 %
Unknown 0.2 %
Konqueror 0.1 %
LibWWW 0 %

======

May:
MS Internet Explorer 44.4 %
Firefox 37.6 %
Opera 9.7 %
Mozilla 3.6 %
Unknown 1.8 %
Netscape 1.4 %
Safari 0.6 %
MultiZilla 0.5 %
Konqueror 0.1 %
Firebird (Old Firefox) 0 %

======

Jun:
MS Internet Explorer 47.1 %
Firefox 37.6 %
Opera 8.7 %
Mozilla 3.1 %
Netscape 1.9 %
Safari 0.6 %
MultiZilla 0.5 %
Konqueror 0.1 %
Unknown 0.1 %
Galeon 0 %

======

 

[sechs]

How are your servers determining the client?

I've set my useragent string to make it look like I'm using Netscape 7.1 on Windows 2003, despite the fact that I'm using Firefox 1.04 on Windows XP. I know other folks who spoof their Mozilla/Firefox useragent to IE to force sites to work.

 

[mubs]

Continuing Sechs' comments, see Firefox figures skewed, says Opera chief at The Inquirer.

As usual, the brief article is somewhat incoherent, but is the basic premise sound?

 

[Tannin]

It's not what you know, but who you know.

Which is, of course, why I hang out here.

 

[Mercutio]

Continuing Sechs' comments, see Firefox figures skewed, says Opera chief at The Inquirer.

As usual, the brief article is somewhat incoherent, but is the basic premise sound?

The Opera guy is just bitchy because his browser - which defaults to IDing itself as IE, doesn't show up in statistics. I suspect Opera is fairly irrelevant anyway. The thing about Moz prefetch is... developers have to mark links as prefetchable. I don't know how many do that.

 

[Santilli]

WOW!! You guys recorded the few times I logged in off my mac Lombard, running Jaguar. Cool

Yes, though you never answered the real advantages of Firefox, over IE, you have convinced me to set Firefox as default browser, and even teach SO what button to hit to get internet access.

s

 

[mubs]

Thanks for the clarification, Mercutio.

 

[Mercutio]

You need a new IT department.

It's not that simple.
A lot of ignorant morons only know how to use Microsoft's tools for developing web sites. In particular, a lot of intranet applications actually DO use ActiveX controls for something more legitimate than installing spyware.
Ideally a web page should be browser-neutral (or close to it), but most companies have a policy like "We only develop and test with IE/ActiveX/ASP on the server because we KNOW it will work for what we want to do, and we don't want to deal with the support issues of it not working on anything else."
Ergo, other stuff is discouraged/banned.
The truth is, there aren't many good reasons to display active content that requires local processing on a client PC, so ActiveX is kind of a stupid technology. Almost everything you could ever want to do in terms of interactivity can be handled with PHP or VBScript or, worst case, Java.
But for some reason, ActiveX is still being used.

Is there a web developer here who is willing to defend it?

 

[blakerwry]

I hate Active-X from a client and webmaster perspective, but if you need complex processing and have limited server potential (or your application makes it unrealistic to build such a powerful back end) it makes sense to go to some form of client end processing and Active-X is the only widely supported technology other than Java applets. It's a toss up between java and Active-X depending on what you know and what clients you have to work with.

 

[sechs]

Is it really a toss between something that nearly everyone has and something that only have the people have?

 

[Tannin]

* Internet Explore 59%
* Firefox 27.1%
* Opera 4.5%
* Mozilla 4.4%
* Safari 1.2%
* Netscape 1% (all versions - including a 2.0!)
* TelePort Pro 0.6%
* Unknown 0.5%
* Konqueror 0.4%
* Galeon 0.2%
* Others 0.5%

Current month: (September)

Internet Explorer 49.5%
Firefox 36.7 %
Opera 4.7 %
Mozilla 3.3 %
Unknown 1.8 %
Safari 1.4 %
Netscape 0.9 %
Konqueror 0.4 %

Might be an odd month, and it will be wise to wait till the month is complete rather than half over, but that's the first time I've ever seen IE slip under 50%.