Web Browser Usage

Before you decide what kind of code you are going to use when making your webpages, you have to decide: "What's the purpose of this site?" and "What kind of people will my visitors be?" The purpose gives your target group. Middle of January 2008 Matt Cutts published his blog website's statistics for 2007. Of his users both Internet Explorer and Firefox showed almost equal percentages - each one slightly below 50%.

Browser usage in % of new visitors. Don Pedro's Shipping Job Directory Browser versions: 2006 2007 2008 2009 Internet Explorer Firefox NetScape Opera Others 81.5 % 11.6 % 5.9 % -         1.0 % 64.8 % 14.9 % 13.3 % 1.4 % 5.6 % 59.4 % 18.0 % 16.6 % 1.5 % 4.6 % 41.4 % 29.6 % 20.3 % 2.8 % 5.9 %

Because I moved the website to a new location and new domain in April, the numbers for 2007 cover only July to December. I moved it from US to Europe, so the sudden difference in percentages reflects the different market shares for each web browser on the two continents. The downward trend for Internet Explorer does, however, continue still in 2009.

In January 2008 Internet Explorer 6 was 50% and Explorer 7 29% of Explorer total usage. In November the two versions had equal market shares of 38% each. This trend has continued and in May - June 2009 IE 7 showed only 33% against IE 7 with 40. At the beginning of 2009 Microsoft released the new web browser IE 8. This can be made to behave same as IE 7 and probably in such cases also reports itself as 7. Because IE 8 hasn't showed up in statistics at all.

AOL informed that as of February 01, 2008, all further development and technical support ( including safety patches ) for Netscape web browser was ended. This should of course mean that number of Netscape users shouldn't have increased any more. But it also means old users will continue using Netscape browsers for several years to come. There are still (2009 ) some pretty old Netscape versions in use. And contrary to everything, Netscape's market share has continued slowly going up.

Browser use by webmasters and designers July 2006 Firefox, Mozilla, or Safari browsers 53% Internet Explorer 6 browser   29% Internet Explorer 5 browser   3% Others, each 1% or less

The tables show two things: web browser statistics are website specific and different professionals do use different web browsers.

Some free website data collectors did not yet in 2007 recognize Firefox web browser and others took it as a Netscape 7 browser. The above numbers for Firefox are estimated from several different data sources and are believed to be close to real.

On Oct. 19, 2007, two days short of one year after the release of Internet Explorer 7 and Windows Vista, IE 7 was used by only about 7% and Windows Vista by only about 5% of my visitors to "donpedroshipping" website. Compared with the spreading of IE 6 and Windows XP the latest Windows programs have spread extremely slowly. At about same time in October 2007 Microsoft announced:

"Latest update to Internet Explorer 7 will drop the Windows validation tool and allow people running pirated copies of Windows XP to get the Explorer 7 up-date".

This change produced an immediate effect. Just in October only a lot of Internet Explorer 6 users changed over to Internet Explorer 7. Total web browser use for my site (www.donpedroshipping.co.uk) in October: IE 6 showed 53.3% while IE 7 had a 26% share of IE users. The total share for all IE users stayed about the same as before the change.

During year 2007 Firefox web browser increased their market share in Europe from about 20% to close to 30%. My guess is a large part of the new IE 7 users are from Asia and other developing countries.

The most widely used web browser is Internet Explorer 6 (2008). When you look at web browser statistics, keep in your mind that most "spamming spiders" identify themselves as IE. Sometimes "Opera" also identifies itself as IE. This leads to the numbers for IE being over estimated ( exaggerated ) in all statistics.

If you want to test IE 8 and "play around with it", please remember it's still only first β ( beta ) version. Note: Version 8 overwrites any version of IE 6 or 7 that you have previously installed. To overcome this, you would have to download Microsoft's virtual PC and then the virtual version of IE 8 - a total of almost 500 MB !

Although the web developer support in IE 8 has increased strongly compared with earlier versions that will not decide if users change over to version 8 or not. What will finally decide the actual use by the general / average internet user ( the great majority ) is "What good has version 8 to offer the user compared with earlier versions?".

What are Browser Standards ?

Do you wonder why there has to be standards? Every industry sector needs standards to follow so that different parts fit together. If you, for instance, buy a electrical plug or a power cable for your computer monitor, you would want the plugs to fit into the sockets when you get home, wouldn't you? The standards assure the parts will fit because they are manufactured according to standard specifications.

The Internet standards are defined, developed, and renewed by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C), including standards for web browser manufacturers. The big problem has been ( and still is ) Microsoft, who consistently lags behind other browsers in implementing the current standard specifications for Internet web browsers. Especially implementation of CSS ( Cascading Style Sheets ).

Internet Explorer 7 was released on Oct. 18, 2006. It's said to be slightly more W3C standards compliant than Internet Explorer 6. You can find details on IE 6 bugs fixed in IE 7 at Microsoft's Developers Network. See also Don Pedro's Browser Vulnerabilities for viruses.

A beta version (β 1) of Internet Explorer 8 was released in March 2008. This new version among other developments supports CSS tables-based lay-out. See Sitepoint article standards support in Internet Explorer 8 beta 1.

Microsoft Firefox 2007 Professional is a joke! Whoever made that site sure had great fun, while doing it.

Web Browser Differences

Keep in your mind that those different internet web browser versions offer different possibilities for the users and different restrictions for the designer. Please try to imagine a line from "0" (zero) to the left and 10 to the right:
0 <^{_______________________________}> 10

• At Level 1, quite well to the left on our imaginary line, we would find for instance Netscape (NS) 4: no JavaScript, no CSS
  
• At Level 2, roughly in the middle of the line, there would be Explorer ( IE ) 5 and 6, have JavaScript but limited CSS. With IE 6 the result depends on what kind of Doctype you use; "lose" or "strict"
  
• At Level 3, which I would put somewhere around number 8, we wound find high level browsers like IE 7, Mozilla Firefox, Opera, and Safari web browsers - in this order going towards right to number 9.

Calling "Firefox" a high level web browser doesn't mean it's better than, for instance, IE 6 or 7 in everything. It is different for sure. Firefox was first released in Nov. 2004, one year later (Nov. 2005) there were over 100 million users. By September 2006 almost 12 % of UK Internet users were using Firefox web browser.

If you check your new pages both in Internet Explorer 6 and "Firefox" web browsers ( + IE 7 ) and they show up the same in both, then those same pages should show up reasonably well also in other web browsers, shouldn't they? If the pages display differently, change your code, please. Not a single visitor will be so keen on admiring your pages that he/she would change browser just because of you only.