OT: Web Browser Market Share

[lazlo]

The question of what web browser to use comes up from time to time. Internet Explorer seems to be leveling off at 53% marketshare, and Chrome is on-track to overtake Firefox as number 2, with around 20% marketshare each, although most of IE's losses seem to be going to Chrome:

http://arstechnica.com/business/news...rs-firefox.ars

"Internet Explorer's desktop market share, which has been in a near-constant free-fall since 2003, held steady in November. Meanwhile, Chrome has moved to within striking distance of Firefox, with Mozilla's browser likely to lose its second place spot within the next few months."

[Evan]

This is what I get on my server. Most of the hits are from this board so it is a cross section of the users here.



The "other" is search engine bots.

[lazlo]

This is what I get on my server. Most of the hits are from this board so it is a cross section of the users here.

Well, it's a random sampling of forum readers Evan, but not necessarily a cross-section of the forum readers. I've never been to your web page...

I know you link the images in your posts off your home sever for some reason, but that's *totally* random, since a great deal of the hits would depend on how often people open your flame-war threads

[Evan]

It counts hits to pictures posted here. BTW, Chrome shows up as Netscape compatible

[lazlo]

BTW, Chrome shows up as Netscape compatible

Right, but the $USER_AGENT string is uniquely identifiable.

So Chrome shows up as:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/535.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/18.6.872.0 Safari/535.2 UNTRUSTED/1.0 3gpp-gba UNTRUSTED/1.0

Internet Explorer 9 shows up as:

Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; MSIE 9.0; Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; Trident/5.0)

Opera 8.5 on Mac OS X 10.4 shows up as:

Opera 8.5 on Mac OS X 10.4Opera/8.5 (Macintosh; PPC Mac OS X; U; en)

I use Iron (a Chrome variant) which shows up as:

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64) AppleWebKit/535.2 (KHTML, like Gecko) Iron/15.0.900.1 Chrome/15.0.900.1 Safari/535.2

[aostling]

This is what I get on my server. Most of the hits are from this board so it is a cross section of the users here.

Isn't Mozilla the same browser as Firefox?

[justanengineer]

I didnt realize Netscape was still around. Havent heard that term since the early 90s.

[Lew Hartswick]

I use "Sea Monkey" which is also a Mozilla product, because it very
closely resembles my old favorite "Netscape".
...lew...

[lazlo]

Isn't Mozilla the same browser as Firefox?

It's an archaic compatibility indicator -- that indicates that the browser is compatible with the Mozilla rendering engine, not that it's derived from Mozilla in anyway.
"In modern browsers, this is only used for historical reasons. It has no real meaning anymore"

You can go here to see what user_agent string your browser is returning. You can also easily change it to anything you want, but a lot of sites use the $USER_AGENT string to determine how to render the page:

http://www.useragentstring.com/

[oldtiffie]

I've used MS Internet Explorer (IE) since it first came out. I upgrade and update it as new versions of it (IE) are issued by MS. I have IE7 on my XP computer and IE8 on my W7 computer.

I am used to and comfortable with IE as it does all I want and does it well. I cannot see any rerason for me to change.

I am not at all surprised the its support/users is flattening out as from some discussions its seemed that it demise was immenent (for quite while).

I have no need for other browsers (that I am aware of) and can see that others prefer and do very well with other browsers.

I use MS "Windows Live" for my email. I changed from Outlook Express (OE) - part of IE - about a year or so ago when MS gave notice that it would no longer support OE. I was very satisfied with OE and am very satisfied with Windows Live for email.

I am not and never will be a "power user" (don't want to be either).