What's Happening in the Browser Space?

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"We need to stop problems when they are small"
-- Benjamin Netanyahu, referring to the Iranian nuclear effort


I thought it would be interesting to post some stats from google analytics on current browser usage. This info comes from our eggheadcafe.com site, which tends to attract a larger percentage of Microsoft devotees, so your mileage may vary.

First, a chart of major browser usage:



As can be seen above, Internet Explorer holds 74.06% of our visitor market, with Firefox at 23.05%. The version breakdown:

IE 6.0 - 76.84%
IE 7.0 - 22.68%


Firefox 2.0 - 46%
Firefox 1.508 - 31.65%
Firefox 1.507 - 13%

According to OneStat, the November 6 statistics:

The most popular browsers on the web are:



November 2006
1. Microsoft IE 85.24%
2. Mozilla Firefox 12.15%
3. Apple Safari 1.61%
4. Opera 0.69%
5. Netscape 0.11%

One of the things that irks me is that your typical Penguinista Anti-Microsoft Firefart afficionados are always pointing out that IE is full of security holes. Well, the Bugzilla database for Firefox developers currently has over 200 open entries, some of them marked "critical". If you were a hacker, would you go after the guys with 12 percent of the market, or the guys with 85%?

I think it will be interesting to see what happens as IE7 takes hold, as well as what happens when Vista gets into circulation.

There's one bright cloud on this horizon: If I code for IE and Firefox, I can be confident of reaching about 99% of our visitor market. Less is more!
Peter has been active on the C# and other MS newsgroups, has had samples at gotdotnet.com (now codegallery.com) that have been downloaded over 56,000 times, and has written numerous articles for eggheadcafe.com, for which he is a co-founder, and MSDNAA sites. He has also been a technical reviewer on books from Prentice Hall, Manning and other publishers. Peter was a Microsoft MVP for 10 years. Peter was born and raised in New York City, and after a stint as a jazz musician playing contrabass with the Robert Hunt Trio, migrated to sunny Florida, where he was hired as a rookie Financial Consultant at Merrill Lynch in Orlando, specializing in Corporate Services. It was at Merrill that Peter realized computers and technology were his forte. He spent his last few years at Merrill developing real – time computerized trading and and stock charting program using advanced technical analysis indicators, some of which are his own inventions. In 1997, he moved on to architect and serve as lead developer on a number of innovative web-based and middleware solutions for the healthcare and financial services industry.

Comments

  1. Anonymous10:14 AM

    This may change by a hair shortly. I tried starting up Firefox at work and now I get "Administrative policy does not allow usage of the following application." They've also blocked any sites that are labeled as Freeware. Can't even download WinZip.

    ReplyDelete
  2. peterbromberg10:46 AM

    Oh-boy. I once worked for an outfit like this. I was gone very soon.
    Freeware is bad. It will make you go blind and die young, you know.

    ReplyDelete
  3. mrmiracle2012x4:35 AM

    "Administrative policy does not allow" has nothing to do with firefoz, or other open source/free software, but your Windows Administrator's policy. They have a restrictive policy. I'm very fond of my freedom, and I would'nt work for a company who restricts my freedom.

    "Freeware is bad" is an overstated judgement. First, free software is different from freeware. It's more about freedom than free cost. Second, I know of noone who died young or gone blind because they used Linux or OpenOffice or Firefox.

    The fact that firefox is used at 25% clearly shows that it's gaining users. Just a few years ago, usage was less than %10.

    And about security... Number of bug reports do not indicate actual security risk. Actual security risk can only be calculated by actual security hazard realised over a period of time over say, 1000 users.

    Poll 1000 linux users versus 1000 Windows users, or 1000 firefox users vs 1000 IE users for actual problems of viruses, trojans etc over the last year, and it will be much more discriptive.

    I, for example am using Linux more than %80 of my working time for the past 3 years. I had no issues on Linux about viruses, worms, trojans etc.

    However, I remember the moment I installed Windows XP on my computer. I tried to install updates/upgrades from the internet, but could not. I called my cable internet provider for support. He told me my connection was fine, but there was a large outbound traffic, which slows down my connection. I told him that I'm not using any program to cause such traffic, and he said it must be a trojan infection, sending packages to who knows where...

    So, how did I correct it? Restarted using Knoppix, mounted my hard drive using Captive NTFS, downloaded a freeware personal firewall and a freeware personal antivirus program to my Windows hard drive. Then I disconnected my internet cable, restarted my computer, installed freeware firewall and antivirus, and then everything was fine.

    At least for me, and least for that instant, freeware and free software (Knoppix) saved me.

    I dare you to find just one example of an actual Linuz security problem, which could only be solved by using Windows! :P)

    If anything causes me to "go blind and die young" it is poorly written, unsecure software, like Windows or IE.

    ReplyDelete
  4. peterbromberg7:33 AM

    See what I mean? And we should get out of Iraq immediately too, right?

    ReplyDelete

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