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IE doesn't have over 90% of the market. Currently the number is somewhere around 60-80% and falling. Still too much, but the situation is improving.

Source 1: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp/
Source 2: http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm/

Less than 65% of people using IE to access w3schools for the first time in over a year, and the same year seeing a doubling in Firefox use there. (Not that such stats are always accurate or even useful, but that could explain the upcoming beta...)

Well that is neither legal nor moral. I'd recomend that they learn HTML and CSS online instead.

Cost: none.

Well that is neither legal nor moral. I'd recomend that they learn HTML and CSS online instead.

Cost: none.

One of the nice things about ASP.NET is how they've really abstracted away HTML. Instead of manually outputting HTML elements such as anchors, buttons, input fields, you deal with things on a higher level. If you've done forms programming (.NET forms or VB forms), it almost feels like that.

For example, say you want to implement an HTML button that, when clicked, changes its text. The HTML button lives inside a form element, and with ASP and PHP you'd listen for a page request and generate HTML with the button but with its text changed. At a high level you basically have a printf "<button text='new text'> somewhere.

With ASP.NET you have a Button object and you create a handler for the button's click event that basically performs a button.Text = "new text". You don't output HTML anywhere from code; ASP.NET provides the code that transforms these objects into HTML that's compatible with the user's browser. Here's a sample that demonstrates this.

I highly recommend that you check out ASP.NET, to at least be aware of it. I believe there's also an OSS web platform that is similar; you might want to check that out as well.

Did you just pull that statistic out of your ass? According to this link, 98 only accounts for 5.1% of the market out there.

According to Dvorak, W3Schools == W3C.

What a tool.

Ok, so the whole article seemed to pivot around the notion that the biggest problem Microsoft has is that consumers are not upgrading their software fast enough to improve current market returns. Yes, "Many organisations are still using Office '97 - an 8 year old release - and see no compelling reason to upgrade."

Organizations are using Microsoft products, and are not switching (to other Microsoft products). Sounds like a net zero change in market share to me.

Yes, Linux is expected to close in on Windows in a couple of years. From a 90% dominance today, to a projected 58% dominence. Oh yeah, only if you count dominance on PDAs. You see, Microsoft has 48.1% of the PDA market in Q3 2004, with Palm at #2 at 29.8%, and is expected to decline.

In the browser usage stats, Microsoft is dropping, with a 64.9% share, compared to up and coming FireFox at 20%. The problem is, FireFox looks like it hasnt gained any share since it peaked in Nov 2004. That's the best I could find for FireFox, since other studies put Microsoft's Internet Explorer at around 92.9 % dominance worldwide. Its very hard to get any two companies to agree on stats, because they're both approaching the question with different agendas.

But desktops, well, the statistics for Microsoft and Linux are all over the place. Last spring, Microsoft had 93% of the worldwide desktop market in their corner, but was still fighting (in Jan 2004) the business side to upgrade to the latest and greatest MS products. Microsoft really starts to cry in the server market, where IBM via Linux are barrelling through to win. Except Microsoft still has 59% of the server market, 3:1 today and 2:1 on projected Linux share. This was one of the few business statistic sites that actually had hard numbers, and even there, desktop stats appear pretty stale.

In conclusion, from browsing through Google, people have been making these same claims on market share dominance since 2001, "Linux is the up and comer, watch out!" and noone seems to ever back up their sides with hard numbers... nothing that actually shows a survey on how Windows:Linux ratios that actually shows Linux having a chance... every year, "we're coming to get you, this year is our year!" Maybe its because for all the talk, Linux really is a niche market after all...

.NET has been around for a while, but it finally might be beginning to pick up. The w3schools stats for February* have included .NET as an OS platform, with a small, but rising share. Perhaps MS are looking for the same (initially slow) take up of IE6 or XP.



Of course, the real news is that Firefox has hit 20%, with other non-IE taking the total to over 25%. Yeah, I know, "lies, damn lies and statistics, and all that", but it should mean the end of IE only sites, when it can be shown that they are turning away 1 out every 4 site visitors.

Is Microsoft planning to port any software to linux now that Linux has exceeded Apple in marketshare?

I understand that Microsoft is a major sofware producer for Apple. Considering that OSX has so much in common architecturally (reduced development costs) with linux and the possibility of hitting a larger number users (3.2% vs. 2.9%), this would seem to make a lot of sense.

W2K and Win9x serviced very different markets, a great many markets. Successfully migrating a majority of all Windows users to the XP code base in three years looks pretty damn good from here. OS Platform Stats

"I want to download the Internet. Do I need a bigger hard disk?"

According to this article: http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,1759,1745930,00.as p and the related link http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp (scroll down for OS statistics), Mac growth is being outpaced by both Linux and Windows XP.

Looks like MacOS is going.... going.... almost gone.

Actually, I think you're completely wrong in your statement, "It isn't just a numbers game, either."

Fact of the matter is, it is a numbers game.

W3Schools.com reports that over 90% of the web browsing world is running one form of the Windows Operating System.

Spyware, Virii and other types of malicious (non-remote) applications ARE platform specific. I'm also willing to bet a shiny penny that over 99% of all Spyware and Virii in the world are written for x86 Windows Platforms.

"If you're going to blame the users and say it is all their fault for clicking on everything that pops up, you'd think the Mac crowd would be just filled with viruses and that Mac machines would be bogged down with useless junk because the users on those systems are far more likely to just click and agree with anything that pops up so that they can get on with what they were doing. Yet that isn't the case at all."

The last part of your statement is actually correct. Because only a small amount of the internet browsing population use a non-Windows platform, even a smaller percentage of that population will probably be susceptible to spyware and virii written for their non-Windows platform (we're talking a percent of a percent here, very very very small numbers).

It amuses me that people constantly use a car analogy when referring to windows. When in reality, this is not a good analogy at all. We have many servers that are running a base install of Windows 2000 server with no third party applications (except perhaps Microsoft SQL Server 2000 and some form of virus protection), and we have screen shots of our HEAVY USE (by internet users) servers having close to a 300+ days uptime, only being restarted to install critical updates.

If you wanted to use a car analogy (which I think is a poor analogy, any way you slice it), a more appropriate one (but by no means 100% accurate) would to be comparing windows to a stock Honda Civic (for example). Every application you install is an addition, or a mod to your vehicle. If you install a mod or an enhancement on your vehicle, and your vehicle becomes unstable, is it Honda's fault?

I completely agree that OSX, because of its smaller audience, and much smaller community of users who are deploying malicious applications for the platform, compared to Windows, is a better choice for the average home user.

But who's to say if OSX were as widely used as Windows for home users, just as many (if not more) malicious applications would be coded to target it?

Personaly I still use Mozilla because I've noticed sometimes when you bring up Firefox from the taskbar it takes 5-10 seconds before it becomes usable again. This was a problem back in 0.4/0.5 and still is a problem in 1.0. I don't think it's ever happened to me in Mozilla.

Hey look, w3schools teaches it for free too! And look, they're linking to another Sitepoint book...

working link:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp/

<![CDATA[
int matchwo(int a, int b) {
if (a < b && a < 0)
return 1;
else
return 0;
}
]]>

<![CDATA[
int matchwo(int a, int b) {
if (a < b && a < 0)
return 1;
else
return 0;
}
]]>

And now that Firefox has proven it's superiority to IE, why doesn't some one finish porting KHTML to windows so we have a second good reason against IE ?

Look what we've done with one single engine (20%).
Now imagine what could be done with another free and open engine like KHTML.

Let's hope : another 20% for KHTML, and IE sinking to a mere 45% against two such great competitors.

According to this, FF has still got a way to higher share than IE.

Figures I have seen on w3cshools show a falling usage rate for opera, from 2.3% to 1.9% - almost a 20% drop. If this is a trend is across the entire userbase, then might firefox end up killing opera rather than (as well as?) IE?

Show me the browser support for XSL?

• Overview
• Internet Explorer supports client-side XSLT
• Mozilla supports client-side XSLT

CSS is incredibly well documented, both officially and by its users.

Dealing with browser quirks takes nothing more than time and a little pit of patience. You have to set your goals of which browsers with which features, plan for graceful fallback, and test test test. Just like any trade with numerous and subtle exceptions, if you do it long enough it all becomes second nature and you find yourself writing CSS that not only validates, but looks right on every browser you desire.

CSS would be nowhere today if it had been an XML-based language. The spec is pretty well written and (numerous gotchas excepted) pretty well supprted, even by Microsoft.

Yes, this appears to be valid. I can't find the part of the actual spec, but w3schools' XHTML reference lists it as an acceptible attribute to <a>.

"rel" is short for "relationship" - it can contain values like "previous", "next", "contents", "index", etc.

Firefox/Mozilla usage shot from 8% to almost 20% in the last year. (source: http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp ). I guess he must be doing something right...

I will certainly vote for the standardization of the use of the acronym tag on Slashdot...

giandrea

You can remove IE - you just have to remove a few other components with it - like the rest of the OS. :)

For statistics, the w3schools browser statistics page is interesting. It's listings are month-by-month, not week-by-week, but still interesting. It's a technically-oriented, but otherwise non-partisan site.

Latest W3C stats:

Mac: 2.7%

Linux: 3.1%

Apple really needs this cheapo Mac to be a hit otherwise the Mac is going to go the way of the Amiga. I hope this new Macs quality is better than the eMac's lousy record.

Why is it that almost all of the web design "Best Practices" pages look like something written in 1996? How about clean, professional, shiny-new-looking design sites?

I found this site very informative when I was starting out, http://www.w3schools.com/default.asp. Everything from basic HTML (including XHTML, CSS and even learning TCP/IP) to XML, browser scripting, server scripting, .NET, multimedia and of course web building practices. There really is too much at this site to mention here. They also provide examples and self tests and have links to certifications in all areas they cover (for a small fee). Other than the certifications everything they offer that I have seen is totaly free.

HTML is a must. Learn it from the w3schools website - their tutorial rocks. Also check out XHTML, and see if you can conform to the standard in everything you write, whether it is required by your job or not. Standard conformity is a good way to save yourself when all the browsers in the world render differently.

CSS is good to know, BUT: most of the time, a company will have a CSS template that they use over all their web pages. Sometimes you'll just have to include this template in your HTML (a one tag thing), and sometimes you'll have to edit it a bit. If you ever have to make your own, a quick look at the above website will help you do it immediately (if you can already do HTML, CSS makes a lot of sense), although I wouldn't focus on it initially.

ASP (& VB), JSP (& Java), PHP (& Perl). Most companies are going to be tied to one of these three. The best thing to do is be a beginner at all of them - take a look at sample code from all six - and then become an expert on the job. My current employers (a university) are tied into Microsoft products, and politics (and other interesting financial things) keep them from changing. However much I would like them to move over to LAMP, I'm not going to sit and mope and lose my job. THUS, I code in ASP with Microsoft SQL-Server, and write VB programs for another section of my department. Be flexible. Don't assume you'll get to use your language of choice, wherever you work. Sometimes conditions prohibit it.

Learn SQL. Forget all this "learn MySQL" stuff. The connection to the database is generally something you'll write in 30 secs - with some template somewhere - and the SQL code to actually query and update that database is going to be the important, life-changing stuff. Learn SQL. On that note, if you're planning on being more of a back-end web developer (like me), learn database management. Learn how relational databases work. Learn how JOINs are your friend, and multiple relations (or tables) are a good thing. Ugly database code kills me.

And, to take a note from Joel yesterday, know how to communicate. Most web designers - the people who will be giving you changes that you absolutely must make or they'll die of horror at that color scheme - are art or design majors who have the elite thing going just like most of us programmers. Learn how to talk, how to listen, how to accept someone else's decisions when you don't have the power to make them - yet.

If you're planning on being back-end, there's a lot of other stuff you might need to know: how virtual directories work, how IIS sets up ASP applications, how Apache's configuration file works, how home directories are transferred over, how server scripting actually works, how to lock down a web server, etc. But if you have a good grasp on the above, and you stay flexible, you should be ok in the job market.

(That, and having all those acronyms on your resume will get people hooked if you can actually confirm your knowledge!)

Everything *ML-related you can learn from the W3C's Technical Reports. They also have a wide selection of examples/quick reference material in their tutorials.

I would advise not using JavaScript. Learn it all you want, but don't use it.

While we could have a PHP vs Perl flame war, I'd suggest you take your time and try them both. And for the heck of it, throw Python into the mix. Learn them all, learn their quirks, and decide for yourself which is better for the job.

Whenever you design a page, test it in lynx first. If it look good text-only, it will look good in anything (IE-related CSS hacks aside).

Ah, and pull random people from somewhere and have them test your sites. Don't help them navigate it; they'll let you know if it absolutely sucks or not. :)

It just depends where you get your stats from. w3schools has firefox at 17.5%, with Mozilla at 4.3%.

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp

Linux is the second most popular operating system (with 3.1% of the market), Mac (OS X + OS 9 + other versions of Mac OS) has about 2.7% of the market, looking at current easily googlable marketshare statistics.

XP was released in August 2001. It now has 60% of the entire PC market. Linux and the Mac are so far distant as to be scarcely visible at all. OS Platform Stats

I wouldn't be surprised to hear that XP owns 90% of the home PC market. When Longhorn goes gold it will become the standard install on every OEM system and for most buyers the upgrade will be automatic.

So long as they keep IE "good enough" for the majority of users, they won't get that many defections.

Someone better tell that to these guys. While it is only one data point, the few large sites that I have seen actual logs to show similar results (>1% / month defection rate).

- Tony

XP has 60% of the market, W2K 24%. OS Platform Statistics These stats are probably weighted somewhat against XP, but it scarcely matters. People have moved and are moving to XP in very significant numbers, at some point, you have to let go the idea that it is a "forced upgrade" and not a perfectly normal migration to a newer O/S.

The odds are getting pretty damn good that users have upgraded to XP. Talk to your cable guy.
W2K was never significant in the home, but, even among developers, XP has 60% of the market. OS Platform Statistics

Firefox is not only still increasing in usage, but has been accelerating this entire year.

See their statistics here.

They include the December statistics, and it has already increased more than in the past month, and it's still only 12th of December...

It's interesting to compare to the usage in e.g. January 2004.

Of course, W3Schools is a web site not really representing the Internet population at large, but it is a community that consists of a whole lot of web masters teaching themselves to code for the web we'll see tomorrow. I hope these are signs of what to come and we'll have less incompatible web sites in the future.

2004 has truly been a year the Mozilla Foundation has been doing great, and it will be very interesting to see what will happen in 2005!

A super versatile goodie.
Here's some explanation:

2D Web Graphics: SVG by I.Herman, W3C, Head of Offices.

Introduction to SVG

svgx.org

SVG.org

What is SVG

Yahoo svg-developers group

I feel bad for you that the people you work with are forcing you to support a five year old browser.

Really, it's an easy pitch. You show how many customers use Nutscrape 4.7x and demonstrate the amount of business they would lose if they didn't support it.

Take a look here

Nutscrape 4.xx usage acounts for 0.2% now.

Some banks still use Nutscrape 4.xx. Users who can't afford faster PC's use it. The former aren't allowed to surf much of anything. The latter don't have money for a pc. They probably don't have money for the product you're selling either.

Your higher-ups lack business sense.

25% market share is where everyone who counts will start taking Firefox seriously, I think a time will come in the near future when that will happen.

The total of Non-Microsoft browsers is already over 25%.. Mozilla - Firefox - grabbed away 1.1 points from Microsoft last month, and that was before the official release. Next month's numbers will be fun.

We've already got our network effect. Improvements in Firefox are accelerating if anything. The plugin scene is exploding. Everybody is already taking Firefox seriously, it only gets better from here.

XP has 60% of the market, up 16% from January. Linux has 3% of the market, up 0.4% since January.

The alternative browsers showed significant growth before the release of SP2, since then not much has changed. Browser and Platform Statistics

In the North American consumer market, Linux has no visibility whatever. Linux may be embedded in cell phones or devices like TiVO but only a Geek would know or care.

You've quoted your own link wrong. Between January and November 2004, Mozilla went from 8.2% to 18.6%. That's a jump of over 10 points. Most of that came from IE, which went from a combined IE5/6 total of 84.1% to 74.1% in the same period.

Market share varies around is 3%-4% and
wtf is Netcraft anyway?
are they some Linux FUDers?

are they like the ones that coined the "Linux faster than Windows - then think again" - campaign?
(which by the way was challenged and stopped by the advertisement commision in UK)

And what are you doing here anyway?
There is a difference between a nerd and brainless simpletons like you.

(X)HTML offers the <acronym> tag. In Gecko-based browsers, when you hover your mouse over such a tag, a box pops up with the expanded definition.

Slashdot, however, doesn't support it in comments.

Strength defined as a 2% market share that has shown no significant growth since mid-summer of last year.
Browser Stats

I'd like to see proof that home and small business users are migrating to Firefox. IE6's market share seems to have stabilized Since the release of SP2. Browser Statistics

Since when is Firefox only 6% of the marker??

Well, according to the browser statistics, it should be somewhere around September last year.