OT: Web Browser Market Share

[lost_cause]

You can clear just the enco cookies to get it to work when enco gets confused.

Years ago I explained to them that their web site does not clear the search cookie if what you search for breaks their server.

Dan

yeah, but that's just one example that comes to mind, cause it always does it. there are a lot of sites that view poorly in one browser or another. i find it easier to have all three. i'm not one of those fanboys who makes it a point of pride to talk about how they never use certain products. i use whatever works while jumping through the least hoops.

[Evan]

That used to be the case, but hasn't been true for quite some time.

It won't display Sun Media web pages correctly and that is a major Canadian news provider.

[dp]

One thing I find annoying about web browser differences is how they render so differently the same page. Compare this page http://ohs63.com/ClassmatePix/page1.html in IE, FF, and others.

My wife is Nancy on page 2. This is one of the sites we've created this year as time permits.

[beanbag]

I am surprised at the number of chrome users. I tried it a few months back, and my impression was that it could not do as many things as firefox, such as "turn off stupid message pop-ups after you download something". Plus Firefox has more extensions and plugins. I temporarily used Chrome because FF became too much of a memory hog, but now I have 8G RAM and FF8 seems to be better.

Why do people like Chrome over FF?

[aboard_epsilon]

Ive got IE9 on windows 7...and as far as i can tel,l its more or less exactly the same as the latest firefox ..

either MS have copied all ..or the other way around ..or MS forms all bbrowsers into its own thing in windows 7

Ive no idea

i know one thing ...becuse ieSpell not working properly ..im going to have to go with firefox.

all the best.markj

[kendall]

I am surprised at the number of chrome users. I tried it a few months back, and my impression was that it could not do as many things as firefox, such as "turn off stupid message pop-ups after you download something". Plus Firefox has more extensions and plugins. I temporarily used Chrome because FF became too much of a memory hog, but now I have 8G RAM and FF8 seems to be better.

Why do people like Chrome over FF?

I can't figure that out either, chrome seems to want to do too many things for me, when all I want or need it to do is open up the page, show me what's on it, and allow me to interact with it when needed.

Most switch because:
1) They want a feature IE does not have
2) They find that security holes in IE are the #1 way viruses spread.
3) They don't like the IE look and feel
4) They just don't like MS

If you are not aware of security issues, and have never used another browser, then IE will win by default.

Dan

number 2 and 3 for me, primarily 3 though, I don't care for the look and feel of IE. What bugs me, is that most of the competitors (chrome/firefox/opera) seem to be trying to get closer to the look and feel of IE. If I want the look and feel of IE, why bother downloading and installing another browser?
I prefer seamonkey primarily because it is different than IE in look and feel, but since it's based on firefox, it is also starting to feel more like IE.
If it keeps up, browser selection will be based solely on which skin and logo you prefer

Also, some browsers (used to?) allow changing the ID strings, Opera for example could be configured to identify itself as IE because of several websites that wouldn't render correctly if the browser wasn't identified as the latest IE. So, going by browser ID is not going to be accurate.

Regardless of my preference for seamonkey's look and feel, I do have IE9 and Chrome installed. IE because some sites are designed for IE and don't work correctly with anything else. Chrome simply because I have a Gmail account, and for some reason, logging into anything google wants to associate the last email you used with that account, so chrome is used for anything owned or operated by google.

[danlb]

One thing I find annoying about web browser differences is how they render so differently the same page. Compare this page http://ohs63.com/ClassmatePix/page1.html in IE, FF, and others.

My wife is Nancy on page 2. This is one of the sites we've created this year as time permits.

That was actually one of the original philosophies behind HTML and web browsers. The markup language was to present information, but it was up to the browser to display that information in the best way for the device on which it was displayed.

Only in later years did they come up with the idea that they would try to dictate the look on the user's screen/monitor/cellphone/printer/teletype

Obviously a site would be unreadable on my phone if it was forced to use the same resolution as my 24 inch monitor, and would be a pain to scroll around in too.

Dan

[lazlo]

I temporarily used Chrome because FF became too much of a memory hog, but now I have 8G RAM and FF8 seems to be better.

That's when I switched over to Chrome -- when FireFox started getting *really* bloated and very crashy.

Like iOS versus Android, almost all the plug-in developers now write plug-ins for both platforms. I have FF installed, but rarely use it.

[dp]

Obviously a site would be unreadable on my phone if it was forced to use the same resolution as my 24 inch monitor, and would be a pain to scroll around in too.

Dan

It is very difficult to make effective multi-modal web sites. The mobile pages are so very different from full screen browser pages because images essential to the message don't scale well. It takes two development teams where I work to get it done right, and the marketing teams are in endless loops trying to present the message well in both mobile and desktop environments. Our advertisers provide dynamic content that also has to be mobile-aware and they're not always up to that job.

Mobile devices are the fastest growing segment of our demographic and we can correlate traffic peaks with commute times in the timezones across the US. Our traffic charts are reminiscent of the Earth shadow clocks you see on the Internet. http://www.mapmaker.com/Sun%20Clock/Sun%20Clock%207.htm