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Comments: 350 +- Technology: Firefox Passes IE6 In Browser Share on Wednesday November 04, @04:52AM
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by
kdawson
on Wednesday November 04, @04:52AM
from the die-already dept.
from the die-already dept.
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technology
Jared sends word of Ars Technica coverage of Net Applications' monthly browser share numbers. What's significant this time is that Firefox has finally passed IE6 in worldwide share. "Internet Explorer remains ahead of the rest of the competition, but since month after month it continues to lose ground to all other browsers, Firefox has now finally surpassed IE6, which is easily the most hated version of Microsoft's browser. ... In October, all browsers except for IE and Opera showed positive growth. Between October and September, Internet Explorer dropped a significant 1.07 percentage points (from 65.71 percent to 64.64 percent) and Firefox moved up a sizeable 0.32 percentage points (from 23.75 percent to 24.07 percent). ... Although IE's decline seems to be unceasing, the real shame is that the old versions have more share than the newer ones (we can only hope that as Windows 7 gains popularity, this trend will reverse)." Ars presents a graph with their own site's browser share picture, and as you might expect it's very different from the general population's.
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Submission: Browser stats: Firefox finally passes IE6 by Anonymous Coward
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StatCounter etc (Score:5, Interesting)
Just remember that StatCounter and other stat counting sites tend to be very US and English language generic - completely ignoring Russia and China and such.
What's interesting is that Opera actually has 40-60% marketshare in CIS countries [opera.com], better than both FF and IE (and not just a single version).
But good that people are finally starting to move off from IE6.
Antarctica! (Score:5, Interesting)
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Re:Antarctica! (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
No way. Real penguins use IceWeasel, of course!
Re:Antarctica! (Score:4, Insightful)
I just wondered why the Statcounter site showed without and images or stylesheets... Then I remembered that it was completely blocked in AdBlock. Because it's a nasty dirty disgusting privacy-raping piece of shit of a tracking site!
I would see their statistics as more than useless, as everyone with half a brain already blocks them and their nasty friends.
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Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
This article/summary/whatever seems much ado about nothing.
Saying that Firefox beat IE6 is like bragging Mac OS X surpassed Windows 98 in usage share. oooh.
Re:Antarctica! (Score:5, Funny)
And Firefox has a 100.0% share in Antarctica (maybe just 1 user?) http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-an-monthly-200902-200902-bar [statcounter.com]
Those damned penguins!
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
They might see Internet Explorer as "The Internet", but this is behavior that can easily be changed. My company actually had to block Google Chrome (not a decision I agree with, mind you) because too many people were installing it (somehow without knowing what they were doing) and then reporting problems with our Intranet*. When we asked what browser they were using, they wouldn't know but when pressed they would say "I'm using The Google Internet." Their view of IE as "The Internet" was easily changed t
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
The thing is, most Americans see Internet Explorer as 'The Internet'
Fixed that for you.
No my mum is an Australian and she is exactly the same. Fortunately she has three offspring to install software for her.
Parent
Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
True. And it generalizes. The general rule is, you're 'allowed' to say things about majority-groups who are in power, that you can't say about others.
So, if you're adult, male, white, middle-class, christian, heterosexual, well-educated, you're fair game.
Whereas if you're a lesbian, jewish, old, female from Ghana, you can hardly be *described* without it being perceived as racism.
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Funny)
You, sir, will be hearing from my lawyer about this outrage!
Sincerely,
Ms. Mwambala Gertrude "Army Boots" Goldstein
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
And I resent being called the cause of some other group's problems, simply because I look like someone who might have done something bad to their ancestors.
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:5, Insightful)
Okay,
Here's one. How would you explain the same exact situation in one place where it is seemingly blatantly by color of skin, where there is no significant differences in color of skin?
Poverty and slums and ghettos are fairly universal thoughout the world, and very rarely does it matter what color of skin one has, compared to others.
In Africa, there are whole regions where black on black power struggles occur, and the minority is not that significantly different than the majority.
The point I'm making, is that it isn't color of skin that is the cause, it is just something to distract from the REAL cause, man's inhumanity to man.
The worst propgators of this are not the white Anglo Christian heterosexual males (Most aren't Anglo btw), but the self hating race baiters like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, and Jeremiah Wright.
They do nothing to resolve the issue of man's inhumanity to man, and turn any dialogue into self fulfilling prophecies.
Whenever you have people pitting one group against another group, it is nothing short of hatred. PERIOD.
Yes, I've been to slums around the world. They are all around the world, and the only thing in common is that you have one group of people being pitted against another, without regard to individuality, and rarely does it have anything to do with "race".
Libertarians don't care about power, or authority, except for that of the individual. Power accumulated into groups is where the problems truly lie. The problem with people like yourself, is that they see power in terms of groups of people, and yet seek solutions by grouping people for power consolidation, which really is the problem in the first place.
True libertarians realize the catch22 nature of using groups to isolate individuals from the power of self.
THAT is why libertarianism is popular around here, as it is about liberty of all people, not just the groups you belong to.
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Informative)
As a white person, your parents, and their grandparents, and so on, haven't been subject to the legacy of US slavery and ongoing racism.
I'm part Irish. I'd like you to tell my grandparents that they - and their neighbors, the Italians - are part of a white, privileged, un-discriminated-against upper class.
Of course, you'd have to go to the Irish and Italian ghettos to find them.
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:4, Insightful)
I go a few steps further. IE skin, Adblock with all malware sites, silent upgrades. They won't notice the difference.
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:5, Informative)
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-eu-monthly-200902-200902-bar [statcounter.com]
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-na-monthly-200902-200902-bar [statcounter.com]
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Re:StatCounter etc (Score:5, Informative)
Hi,
I work at StatCounter and I would just like to point out that we have a very diverse sample size from around the world.
As per http://gs.statcounter.com/faq#sample-size [statcounter.com] for July 2009 here was the breakdown of our sample pageviews for the month.
* 1.3 billion United States
* 570 million Brazil
* 280 million Turkey
* 260 million Germany
* 250 million Thailand
* 240 million China
* 240 million United Kingdom
* 180 million Indonesia
* 160 million Canada
* 140 million India
* 109 million Russia
Parent
Hrmm (Score:5, Funny)
So when are they going to rip the skin off Firefox to show "Netscape Navigator - Double Ultimate Gold edition"?
This site best viewed with NOT ie6 (Score:5, Interesting)
I noticed many sites seem to have abandoned IE6 support completely. (Using ie 6 and 7 in virtualized XP for testing stuff)
This is how it should be. No CSS hacks, just IE6 users seeing the bugs that arise through their usage of the browser.
And for corporate users who HAVE to use ie6, for the nicest value of "they can fuck off"; they can fuck off.
IE6 no more (Score:3, Interesting)
Cure the pox. 'nuff said.
Re:IE6 no more (Score:5, Funny)
http://www.saveie6.com/ [saveie6.com]
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
I signed.
Net Applications? Slashdot! (Score:5, Interesting)
Looks like Firefox is dominating Ars. I'm more interested in slashdot browser share percentages, though.
Oh great and benevolent admins, please gift us with your knowledge!...
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have posted this [glitch.tl] on /. a few times in the past so...
$ grep -v 10.1.1. access_log.* | grep access_point_names | cut -d" " -f12- | grep Linux | wc -l
180
$ grep -v 10.1.1. access_log.* | grep access_point_names | cut -d" " -f12- | grep Windows | wc -l
331
$ grep -v 10.1.1. access_log.* | grep access_point_names | cut -d" " -f12- | grep Macintosh | wc -l
83
Hoping for Windows 7's success... (Score:5, Interesting)
What this article tells me is that a quarter of the internet users are still using a web browser that was released on August 27, 2001. From a peak market share of %95, it has only come down to %23 in eight years (and change). This survival is against massive "IE6 must die" campaigns, introduction of fairly decent, and standards compliant (comparatively) browsers such as Firefox, Chrome the ever improving Safari and the somehow still surviving gem named Opera.
I was hoping that the rise of social applications like Facebook, Youtube, Digg and popular business applications such as the ones made by 37signals would put an end, a final nail in the coffin if you like, to this monster from the digital stone age.
But obviously I was, surely together with a whole bunch of other fellow /.'ers, wrong. Obviously, the failure of adaptation of Vista played some role in this outcome. But seeing that building a better (faster, compliant, etc.) browser is not the answer, I'm now genuinely hoping that Windows 7 will massively succeed so that we can put an end to this abomination.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately many/most people do not use social networking sites, and if they do, they don't necessarily have friends who care about browser versions. Any IE6 must die campaign should be supported by the actual websites themselves, telling users they need to upgrade directly on the page.
What would be good is a small bit of script people can embed in their page, which tells IE 6 users to upgrade to something more recent by outputting a bar above the top of the page which tells them what to do. Kind of like
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Most modern operating systems also have a web browser, shipping without one is not a wise choice. As illustrated, it also allows third parties to rely on there already being a rendering engine for such things available (or I have even seen documention ship as html).
Interesting Results (Score:4, Interesting)
The Ars Technica stats broadly mirrors my own humble blog, I would guess that the techie crowd breaks down 5::2::2::1 Firefox::Safari::IE::Chrome across the board. If this assumption is true, I find it strange that Chrome is not as popular as Safari among the technical people whereas in the general stats they are almost neck-and-neck although less popular overall.
Personally I think that having 4 browsers with significant share (or 6 if you count IE6 and IE7 as separate, incompatible browsers) is very healthy. For a while it looked like it was going to be IE6 stamping on the face of the web forever, but now the population is fragmented web sites have to designed with proper standards in mind.
The numbers (Score:5, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The numbers (Score:5, Insightful)
What's most interesting about IE's market share is that version 6 (this oldest one indeed) is actually the most used version of Internet Explorer. Both version 7 (released 3 years ago) and version 8 (released about half a year ago) have not caught on enough to overtake IE6's position as the number one browser out there in sheer market share.
These figures are unlike all other browsers, where the more recent versions have way more market share than the older ones. The usage of Firefox 1 and 2 for example is virtually nothing, while 3.5 is the most popular version. So "all versions of Firefox" actually mean "mostly Firefox 3.5, a bit Firefox 3 and really nothing else", while "all of Internet Explorer" means "Mostly IE6, some IE7 and some IE8".
You are absolutely right that all versions combined, IE is still very dominant, but IE-users are way less inclined to upgrade to more recent versions. Just like Windows XP is still the most popular version of Windows. I wouldn't be surprised to see the same thing with Microsoft Office. Microsoft just doesn't seem to be able to sell their latest products anymore. This is why it quite significant that Firefox with it's latest product is able to have more market share than Microsoft with it's old version, because the old versions of Microsoft products are the relevant ones.
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Errr....people updating a free browser is news? (Score:5, Funny)
Next we'll be seeing the revelation that Linux has overtaken Windows 98. Or something.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
They will complain bitterly when a site doesn't work though.
I found a solution to that problem a couple of years back. When I first put OpenPisteMap [openpistemap.org] online, I got a lot of complaints from people that it didn't work in IE6. I don't have any Windows machines and I'm not about to buy and install Windows to test it in an 8 year old browser. So I added a note to the website that IE6 users see that basically says "I know it doesn't work in IE6 - if you can fix it, send me a patch". The complaints suddenly stopped. I didn't get sent any patches either, so I guess the
Problems are still corporate users and non-techies (Score:5, Insightful)
This is great, but IE6 is still going to stick around for years. The reasons - as have been widely discussed on these pages before - are:
Neither of these situations will change any time soon. Gradual adoption of Windows 7 will certainly help in the second case, but the first one is dependent entirely on enterprise-level IT departments creating lots of work (and therefore cost) for themselves when senior management can't see any tangible benefit... And how soon do you think that will happen?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Large corporate installations are highly change averse; but they also tend to be unsuppor
In other news (Score:4, Funny)
Film at 11.
Wildly different at work (Score:3, Informative)
Here are the stats for the company web site for the company I work for. It's a smallish Nordic company, and it's a safe bet that 95% of all visits are from other people at work. (I have no proof of that figure, obviously, but trust me when I say that looking at our site isn't something people do on their free time.)
MS Internet Explorer 2920837 96 %
Unknown 56869 1.8 %
Wget 32632 1 %
Firefox 18582 0.6 %
Safari 4934 0.1 %
Opera 2970 0 %
Mozilla 2532 0 %
LibWWW 148 0 %
Netscape 92 0 %
Nokia Browser (PDA/Phone browser) 12 0 %
Others 7 0 %
These figures are just incredibly different from those in TFA. Figures are page hits for the month of November, i.e. a little more than three days, but the percentages always look like this.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I'm pretty sure that our internal websites are almost 100% IE, but that's because using Sharepoint in anything but IE is a world of hurt.
Not that using Sharepoint from IE is exactly pleasant, but damn.
Not on my site (Score:4, Informative)
Firefox (all versions) 42.1%
IE (all versions) 40.1%
Safari 7.8%
Chrome 4.5%
Go firefox!
Some comparisons... (Score:5, Insightful)
All users of every version of FireFox taken together use more than one old version of IE.
IE6 (Score:5, Informative)
I decided to collect some stats for the trade services section of my companies website. Our typical customer is *not* technically minded in the least:
MSIE 8.0, 38.4%
MSIE 7.0, 33.8%
Firefox/3.5, 9.5%
MSIE 6.0, 9.1%
Chrome 9, 8.4%
Firefox/3.0, 3.0%
Safari 4, 1.5%
IE 6 is dropping fast, but a very poor showing for Opera and Safari. The OS stats are dominated by Windows XP (62%) and Vista (33%), with OS X and other flavours of Windows taking the remaining few percent. No Linux at all sadly.
Don't confuse "unpopular" with "unsupported" (Score:4, Insightful)
A company I worked for had similar similar browser-share for their major web applications, and it really had little to do with Opera and Safari being niche outcast browsers. It had a lot more to do with the site being so broken as to be unusable in Opera and Safari. People would go one or two pages in, realize there was a problem, and either switch to a different browser, or as the growing fear was, switch to a different company.
It stems from the complaint above that many large corporate IT departments don't want to switch from IE6. Well, guess what the in-house web developers code for first? IE6. Then they try to tweak the design to work passably in other browsers when they should be working the other way: create a standards-based layout, then tweak for the peccadillos of other browsers.
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Apparently your visitors are not mathematically minded either: Sum of those figures is 103.7% and that's without a line for "unknown"...
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Re:I 3 IE6. (Score:5, Funny)
Plus, running IE6 on my machine can provide for potentially interesting conversations if it ever comes up.
And I thought I was dull.
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Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Ditto here, and the corporate machines are under-specced for all the extra background junk they put on them. Being forced in to IE6 would be terrible if I didn't have a development machine with Linux on it, but I think Office 2003 (or OpenOffice on our dev machines) is preferable to 2007!
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IE 8 has already been released. Firefox has overtaken a browser that is 2 generation old.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
People are making comparisons to IE6 because its market share is still relevant and affects the state of the web as a whole. For example, developments like Google Wave simply aren't possible on IE6 (at least without the somewhat controversial Chrome Frame plugin), so IE6 is hindering the adoption of new technology. Additionally, IE6's endless list of quirks cause untold lost hours of devlopment time for web developers worldwide.
Once IE6 drops down to a negligible percentage it means that many developers can