Slashdot Mirror
Dutch Survey Shows IE Web Share Below 90%
happycorp writes "We've seen a few too many Firefox articles by now, but
it is gaining a real presence in the market:
Onestat
reports that IE's share is down to 88.9% marketshare,
with the combined Mozilla browsers above 7%.
While we saw this trend much earlier in particular communities
such as
w3schools
this is the first time IE has dropped below 90% in a general survey.
Also interesting, the w3schools page shows a steady parallel
increase in both Linux and Mac OS global marketshare
over the last 18 months."
..have ditched IE after discovering The Unbelievable Slashdot Extension Tools
Ok. Thats the last time I peddle my shoddy wares. I swear...
58% of statistics are made up.
Omnis amans amens
The real numbers and the true impact of Firefox will only mean something after 6-12 months after all the press dies down. Another thing is that MS is really has not doing anything yet, anything publicly, so assuming there will be a responce from MS then we will see how FF withstands on MS's direct line of sight.
Useless sig.
...required for /. to work properly in firefox?
Now tell this to everyone who wants to hear it. Firefox had a great start, and was covered in most newspapers. Let's make sure this story (IE's marketshare rapidly declining) gets heared aswell. Humans are herd animals. If everyone seems to be doing something, they will follow.
After 1.0, Mozilla foundation announces the upcoming "Firefox 10%".
Why is this significant? Because it appears to corroborate earlier reports?
What is there here to discuss? We all know that Firefox, Mozilla, Opera etc are (currently) better bets for surfing than IE, saying it yet again won't change anything. It won't convince anyone to switch, it won't convince any company to support a wider range of browsers. It's the very definition of preaching to the choir, in fact.
How about spending a little less time talking about how great the alternative browsers are, and how much better it would be if more sites supported them properly, and a little more time actually working towards that?
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Woo & yay! reply #4 Its hard to think of something witty to say in such little timespan, but maybe MS will maybe release IE7 within our lifetimes, and maybe... just maybe... make it so that it actually works!
10% still looks to small to some narrow minded web designers that think that people who don't use IE are idiots or a geek.
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. It's having a knock on effect at work here, I installed 1.0 on all the machines here and simply said "use Firefox as your web browser as it will lower the number of virus problems that we have", most people are now using it and some people have even installed it in their homes (most people here are not technical).
People need to spread the word, alternatives are good if Firefox gets at least 25% and the others also have sizable market shares (e.g. Opera above 5%) then this will be good for us all.
The real question is if this term is long term. Right now IE is really loosing its share because it really sucks a lot. But when/if longhorn comes out with the new version of IE hopefully they would fix the major issues such as popup blocking control, Better support for the standards, and stronger security settings. Microsoft isn't dumb and they know more then what there people in marketing let on. Sure people are switching to other browsers right now. But if the next version of IE with there copy of windows gets updated. Will they switch back if they get all they wanted. A lot of people especially on windows systems switch to FireFox because it sucks less then IE. FireFox isn't a WOW this is the most amazing thing I have ever seen browser it is just well it is good enough without the popups and spyware loading every day. Most users don't use the tab browsing even after I show it to them they still open an other window, usually and rendering speed is usually a null point to them just as long as it is in the same range. An extra 1/2 second loading a site like Slashdot will not make a difference, just as long as everything shows up they are happy.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
i'll get bored of "IE losing marketshare" stories when i stop hearing people say "IE is the standard so we only need to test our websites against it". banking/utilitiy sites especially.
i work for a small company heading up their i.t dept. and i make sure that all the pc's that i support use firefox. trouble is, they are all windows xp machines (through necessity - if i had my way it would be otherwise dammit!!) and windows keeps on launching ie in a number of nefarious ways such as links embedded in outlook and sent via msn messenger. unless someone can suggest a quick fix (other than the obvious 'ditch windows' response - i would be interested) it's going to stay that way as i haven't got the time to visit all of our pcs and hack at them for an hour or so. but, back to my point, surely this sort of thing has an impact on stats?
Google Zeitgeist shows Firefox the #10 search in October in Germany.
Sadly, using that above piece of evidence, Firefox is still not as popular a web browser as (apparently) Christina Aguilera.
Small potatoes make the steak look bigger.
Microsoft recommends Firefox
Sometimes I wish I was a plumber, then I'd know how to deal with other people's shit.
Last time I sponsored a cool browser, AOL slurped it up. I'm not doin that to the poor lil FireFox.
Arachninecronymphocranialpheliaphobiacs Anonymous
...according to this article:
MS PR wigs are denying it, naturally...
If your comment title says 'Re: Foo', I'm not likely to read it.
Heise Newsticker is a major IT news site in germany. The linked article is in German, but you'll be able to read the stats.
Only this morning I attempted to log onto the UK national lottery site only to find it tell me I needed a supported browser.
I complained in vain to their customer service people just got back a standard we only support IE ignoring all my privacy / security / platfrom worries (im a Mac user).
A CD ripping guide for CDex I wrote gets its major share of hits from Firefox, Mozilla and Opera.
:-)
This may be because IE cannot display the page -- XHTML 1.1 should be served as "application/xml+xhtml" , which IE barfs at. Could I be arsed to write a browser detection script? Could I, punk?
This appears to be yet another company selling web stats culled from httpd logs. This is snake oil.
There are so many different factors that commonly occur that can bias statistics of this kind that they are so unreliable as to be useless. Things like caching, search bots, disabled users, corporate firewalls, CERT recommendations, user-agent spoofing, browser bugs and so on.
That's simply the HTTP side of things. What about the normal statistic fallacies - the article title itself hints at one glaring one: "Dutch survey shows..." you mean to tell me that there's no significant variation between Dutch users, and, say, Japanese users?
I am a web developer, and I'd love to see a sharp drop in Internet Explorer use because if it went away my job would be so much easier. But I want to see it from a study that isn't so fundamentally flawed.
As long as Windows keeps being shipped with IE onboard, there will be a huge market share of IE. The great thing is that on *nix boxes IE share is 0%.
Personally I am aware of the threats associated with using IE, I still use it everyday, mainly because of my bank webpage not working properly with Firefox. I never got any spyware nor had any problems what so ever. I also like to stick with what's default, it's a nuisance to install Firefox every time I install windows if there's a working browser ready. Also when I'm using some other computer somewhere chances that there will be a firefox installed already are slim to none. I won't install firefox just to perform one task.
So the reality is that as long as Windows rules, so will IE.
It is unfair competition IMHO.
IE users have no desire for tabs.
...
There will be patent issues with Linux.
Microsoft is about innovation.
There will be patent issues with Mozilla.
Microsoft is about innovation.
There will be patent
That's it, you're getting sleepy, very sleepy...
Quick somebody at Mozilla.org patent tabbed browsing! I know tabs were in Hypercard in 1940 or so, but they didn't use it for browsing the web and USPTO doesn't look at the real world, just what's been patented.
sigs, as if you care.
Hardly a surprise considering that Microsoft showed off MSN search using FireFox! :D
my school just finally took ie off of all of our computers, both mac and pc. im wondering if this will make a difference, as most people used it just because thats what they were familiar with. i don't see any reason to even touch that app.
This is not so surprising and the trend is most likely going to accelerate thanks to the security worries. For example Cert-fi has send today out the warning that people should cease to use IE until the Iframe-bug is corrected.
Another very visible trend has been lately the success of Apple. Especially he laptops are currently very competitive and at least in my research unit nobody buys anything else if there's just enough budjet.
With rising market share, not only can you be cool, but you'll have good company.
:-)
Just buy a mac
With the stats of December 2003:
We can see some interesting trends, namely the little change for IE 6.0 but the interesting increase of Mozilla. So is Firefox eating away at IE or rather taking the small marketshare of people who already look for alternatives to IE? (Yeah, I know, this is so little data it's not representative of anything, just a curiosity
---- Take the Space Quiz!
The same is being attempted in the EU by leveraging the desktop monopoly to force WMP's file format into the audio/video streaming market, probably with a goal to go after HDTV in general.
Firefox is good in that it brings up a little public awareness about good products. Also, it's not too far a lead for the rare curious individual to then find out how MSIE got so much market share and what it takes to get rid of MSIE and make the computer secure. With a little digging, they can easily find out about more good products to replace the shoddy MS ones.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I'm just wondering how come the OS stat shows windows having "only" 90% marketshare (actually 89.7 but I'm giving ME 0.3% and thus don't need to round up).
s _200411. htmlm l concurs with 92% windows users.
Isn't that a pretty good argument for making java app's rather then binary packages for X platform? If ca. 10% of all internet users does not use windows and almost any platform has java.
Also it begs the question how many of those 90% windows users are actually other OS users with an incorrect agent string (ie how valid is the data these stats are collected from).
Saying this I'm aware that the w3schools users does not represent the generel public - however considering the fact that both linux and Mac OS has both gained approx 1% during the period definitely begs the question.
The university of wollongong's site stats show a similar picture: 92,85% windows users total.
http://staff.uow.edu.au/web/browsers/stat
http://www.radok.com/internet-statistics.ht
Exactly.
The original issue is the non-valid HTML 3.2 Final code that is generated by the Slashdot templates. This is compounded by a bug in the Gecko engine which hiccups when reading this invalid code and causes various elements to be placed on the page improperly.
The workaround is to reflow the page by changing the font size. There are various extensions available which can force a reflow when Slashdot is loaded.
And for everyone curious as to why the fix is not available in Firefox 1.0: the fix is too invasive and too dangerous for Aviary builds, so it was deliberately left out. Firefox 1.1, however, will be cut from the current trunk and will thus not experience the bug.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618
It was even mentioned on dutch radio news, as it is reported through the central press agency (ANP)... it's weird to hear about "the firefox internet browser" on my radio :)
In a bit less than 2 years linux went from 2.2% to 3.1, mac went from 1.8 to 2.7... that's less than a percent each.
XP went from 29.1 to 59.1.
I'm all for Linux, but the mutual increase of Linux and Mac wasn't really worth mentioning.
-- Cobron
Imagine Longhorn ships in, what, late 2006. Five years since winXP shipped, and possible if they strip down the product.
Now imagine that comes with a new browser. The takeup of that browser will be limited to those who pay for the upgrade, and those buy new PCs. Even if pent up demand is massive, it will take a long time for the longhorn use base to be bigger than the XP installed base, which will have had five years to grow.
Unless MS brings out Ie7 for XP, all those WinXP users are targets for upgrade. MS want them to pay $/£/euro and upgrade to Longhorn. we want them to keep their valuable currencies and get firefox. we have the time and cost advantages.
MS have to focus on XP. You can seem them doing this, as the latest beta of the Avalon/XAML framework does run on XPSp2. but it isnt a web browser, not as we know it. A potential successor to DHTML apps maybe, but unless MS can convince all web site developers to abandon DHTML and adopt XAML, who cares?
That 00.1% is within the margin of error.
Get Lindsey Lohan to release a single about Firefox, while dancing in a bikini....
A Mozilia Europe dev slipped spy/adware into the official German build of Firefox!
Great, where's that cluebat.
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
We know. The Other Articles told us.
eBayDig 1s a typo saerch engien
Remember, Opera identifies as IE6 by default, so IE6 is probably under 80%, and Opera probably has another 1%. Other browsers like Konqueror and Safari don't by default but they can, and Proximitron users can change their UserAgent header as well. And most of the time, they probably pretend to be IE. I would bet IE6 has 2% less than what they think.
In the days when I used Opera (I use Safari now, which doesn't exist), there were options for getting it to identify itself as Netscape or IE (for recalcitrant sites that only accept IE). This might skew the statistics slightly, depending on how many Opera users use this setting.
I’m old enough to remember 16K of memory being described as “whopping”
Microsoft developed IE as a direct response to Netscape (and the Internet). Netscape's CEO (Barksdale? or Andreessen?) was warbling about making Ihe internet the personal computer, with Netscape becoming the gui interface. Given the big booming unknown that was the Internet, Gates decided that he had to dominate the Internet and cut the legs out from under Netscape. The lynchpin of that strategy was putting out a competing web browser, and distributing it for free. Obviously, in order to take market share, M$ had to keep pumping out improvements into IE. Fast forward to 2004. Netscape is long dead. The Internet is not the desktop computer OS of the general public. The M$ OS still dominate the desktop market. The dire necessity to keep improving IE is long gone, as is its ability to leverage advantage on the Internet battlefield is minimal at this point. Firefox succeeding, having a variety of webbrowsers to utilize may be of significant impact for users, but I don't see why Microsoft would care enough to plow more money into the product.
There is no America. There is no democracy. There is only IBM and AT&T and DuPont, Dow, General Electric, and Exxon
...is force microsoft to actually patch most of the stupid holes in IE (the ones that even the stupidest of the stupid spyware prevention programs knows how to patch). once this is done, people will no longer bother again to install, reinstall and maintain a "Mozilla Firefox" on their new Windows YP Ultra-Professional Home Edition II SP5 ("now with 5GB worth of drivers!")
IE and Office will only fall when Windows falls, OR when a REAL alternative shows up -- one that actually lets you get rid of IE and/or Office _completely_ (that is, a perfect clone). And since the Mozilla browsers will always refuse to emulate all of IE's "nonstandard" features, "Mozilla Firefox" and all the browser alternatives combined will never beat IE in usage while Windows is still standing.
so you want to beat IE, and Office, and Microsoft? maybe you should start by supporting a project like XPde.
Instead of fighting all the carefully laid down UI metaphors that microsoft has developed throughout the years (and installed on the minds of the users), why not hijack them?
microsoft always stole other people's code and ideas. this is what can kill them too. once they are dead, we will finally be free to dictate our own bad metaphors upon users.
Mozilla developers have proposed a "simple" solution to make more sites compatible with Firefox: ask the website admins to edit their code accordingly. In fact, most webmasters will reply "Grow up, buddy!" or won't reply at all. An easier solution is to make Firefox compatible with those sites. How come IE can display virtually any site and Firefox cannot? After three months with Firefox I switched back to IE -- sites such as www.deep-shadows.com, or www.asrock.com, just won't open smoothly in Firefox. Yes, I like Firefox (when it works) and I agree that some should grow up. :)
It was pointed out on slashdot once before (I really am not planning on finding out when, sorry) That once Microsoft disbands a software team, it is nearly impossible for them to reassemble it:
Since they have many projects at a time, when a project is finished (like IE was several years ago,) they re-assign all but a couple of the developers, who may end up in 5 different new projects. Once they start working there, it would be disruptive to those projects to take key developers out. Furthermore, it's been years since these people looked at their own code on IE. It will take them months to re-acquaint themselves with it.
It siomply is near-impossible for Microsoft to do this without deciding to do a new version of IE, which would require a major commitment and a big push. They need to feel pretty threatened first, and firefox isn't there quite yet.
I'm a concientious
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=1695 29&sid=92e157632d1adc672e5f63301bdaf8ec
Have fun !
The problem is that web applications tend to rely on IE-specific features such as the MSHTML Edit area component or other ActiveX controls. Until a viable alternative shows up product vendors will design their corporate applications for IE for the foreseavle future.
An organiszation likely uses IE for more things than providing web surfing for their employees. How many large-scale web-based ERP and CRM-systems run on Firefox? Not many I can tell you.
Standards Schmandards
I use Firefox BECAUSE it has a smaller market-share.
I feel safer that way; most of the blackhats are writing exploits for I.E., so I shy away from I.E. and recommend same to everyone in my circle.
When Firefox will achieve a dominant market-share, I'll switch to a different browser.
I don't know the meaning of the word 'don't' - J
Has anyone noticed that there's been a serious lack of browser innovations since the death of Netscape? I remember how during the good old days of the browser wars both camps would come out with new features and nifty ideas all the time.
With Netscape's passing, all M$ has been doing is sitting around on their fat a$$es and doing NOTHING. Not even fixing bugs that have been out for months!
Hopefully with the rise in popularity of Firefox, competition will heat up again, which ultimately leads to better products for consumers.
One downside though, is that during the "innovation" periods, competing browsers hijack standards so much (especially M$) that most websites break upon rendering, and required lots of ridiculous re-work.
eTrade SUCKS
Plus all the people who change their UserAgent setting so that it works with the stupid browser sniffer that their bank/pr0n site uses and will only let them in if they are using Exploder.
In this situation complain to the management, not the the techies. Point out that they are losing over 10% of their prospective customers.
Because IE only sites tend to have lower accessiblity than properly designed sites it may also be worth mentioning that they do not comply with the Disability Discrimination Act (in the UK) or Section 508 (in the US).
Finally, point them to the CERT and SANS Institute reports and let them know that you are following their guidance and using a more secure browser. This is of advantage to both the supplier and you as a customer.
Don't rant on about M$ monopolies, or W3C compliance.
I have done this with a number of sites and it does have an effect.
Once they have a browser neutral site then you don't need your browser to advertise itself as something it isn't. As a result, alternative browser share will increase, if only by a small amount.
I don't understand why there's not more support on Slashdot for Opera. It's been fighting IE for years. (And Firefox now incorporates many of its ideas). An arguement I hear against free software is that there's no one to hold responible if something goes wrong. Well, Opera is not free, so there is someone to hold responible.
Despite what some people may think, it's possible to have more than one browers installed at a time. I have Opera and Firefox both on my machine. I'm checking out Firefox but I find myself switching back to Opera often.
I'm not anti-Firefox. I just don't understand why it gets all the attention.
And a related question: How can I find information on how to program a Firefox extention. I can't seem to find any links about coding one from the Firefox website. (And google didn't help either.)
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
So now this poster is being insightful because of feeling weird when firefox was mentioned on the radio? WTF mods???
You'd think that slashdot crew don't uses IE, but surveys in the past has show the contrary.
Besides, slashdot is now frequently cited as sources of news in multiple IT news sites around the world.
So why not putting a Firefox ad in the top of the page? I bet there're a lot of users who look at slashdot from a IE browser just because there was a link in other news site or because they're working or because they like lokking to slashdot. One would think that so many Firefox topics showld have convinced to many but...why not a firefox ad in the front page and in each one of the articles?
or about 1 Firefox for every 5 MSIE. Other browsers weren't considered, but their total is not much of a factor, so you could say, 20%. A year ago is was 99%, where the 1% were all Linux-based. These 20% are mostly Windows-based Firefoxes. I am, after all, a wild and crazy guy.
It's strange, though. Closed-source companies like Nintendo and id Software get plenty of coverage, and are almost worshipped by large parts of the Slashdot crowd, it seems.
So I can't imagine why Slashdot would ignore Opera. So, it's closed-source, but it is also "the third browser", and has been around since the days of Mosaic. And as I said, Slashdot generates a lot of hype for other closed-source companies, including Apple.
Clever signature text goes here.
Yeah, buddy... *you* go ahead and run your financial software seamlessly over the internet. Just give me a call when your internet goes down, or the application fails, and you need someone to design a *real* application, that you own, that works in-house, that has no dependencies on external services.
Integration is great for some things, but it will never encompass everything.
The Counter says IE has 91% market share:
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2004/November/br owser.php
what makes you think there are no FF ads on /.?
(In fact, you are already commenting on today's FF ad! yeah!)
With IE market share around 90% we are entering a long-awaited period of relief from total M$ market domination. 10% non-IE is enough for web developers to be able to remind PHBs that their shiny IE-only ecommerce site is now losing them 10% of potential customers. Web developers are now in a position to generate a great deal of business by contacting the owners of such sites and recommending an "upgrade"
This is a secondary aspect of web browser usage. The deciding factor for the long-term success of any browser is how well it renders web pages and, ultimately, how it supports web standards.
There are so many web standards zealots proselytising the advantage of CSS positioning over layout tables but I contend that the reason standards adoption has been so slow is that CSS can be used to create very complicated combinations of inheritance, floating and sizing which make nested tables look like child's play. Consequently, I think browser manufacturers have found the CSS spec very difficult to implement properly. Rendering a nested table or two was never half so difficult as rendering a complex CSS layout.
Maybe now msnbc.com will not require IE to view video. If you click on a video link on msnbc (and probably msn but i never go there) the very first requirement is to download and install IE.
I make it point to periodically send their customer support an email requesting that they adhere to standards and not require a specific web browser to view video. I encourage others to do the same.
One time I told them I tried to follow their recommendations by the "IE thing" just would not run on my lunix machine.
The point is not how much market share Firefox or Mozilla have by themselves. The point is that 11% of users are not using IE so that must surely make the owners of IE-only ecommerce sites think again.
I do not believe that.
I can't, for the life of me, understand why Firefox doesn't have a Quick Launch option on Windows as does Mozilla. Mozilla boots just as quickly as IE6 on my XP box with Quick Launch enabled.
First the browser, next up... the desktop. So long Bill, its been a long strange trip. Hope MS has some other business models in the wings lest they follow Apple down the long slow downward spiral of O/S irrelevance...
While I was around for MS-Dos, the whole Windows gaining momentum thing happened mostly during the 8 years I was in the nav so I missed "the great homogenization." It was old news when I bobbed to the surface in 1996...
I remember running OS/9 on my Radio Shack TRS-80 CoCo in the mid-late 80's & Coherent on my clone in the '88-'91 time frame. Neither of them was quite there but then everything changed - I remember distinctly the feeling I had while I was lying reading in a barracks room on the Portsmouth Shipyard in '91 holding a Dr. Dobb's journal and spotted a small classified ad for Slackware Linux from Walnut Creek. While I knew it was significant ... based on how far OS/9 and Coherent got I never would have predicted it would grow to the point where it would displace MS. Truly anything's possible.
It certainly feels like the glory days of choice reminiscent of the TRS-DOS/LDOS/New-Dos/DosPlus/etc era have returned. Can anybody offer up who the new equivalent of "Captain 80 Micro" is?
Yes, we will quite likely be using word processors over the (inter|intra)net in some years. But we won't be doing so over HTML, because it's simply not up to the task.
Well, if you are using a word processor HTML is quite up to the task as a document format. For the user-interface however, I agree--HTML+CSS+Javascript is cumbersome (although it is possible to do). XUL really is cool and has a huge head start on XAML. What is critical though is that XUL applications become much more commonplace on the Windows desktop before Longhorn reaches wide release. Microsoft would then lose its leverage.
One thing I have my doubt about is that we will be using word processors and other apps solely over the internet/network any time soon. The integration will probably be seamless and local and network functionality will be based on common standards, but we've got a ways to go before wired and wireless internet is reliable and trustworthy enough to forego any and all software capable of connectionless operation.
My personal view is that the more distributed the system is the better. I am not comfortable with ISPs and software companies turning into ASPs with gigantic data centres serving whole cities/regions/nations. The impact of such a centre succumbing to disaster or even losing connectivity would be too great. Although the risk could probably be made sufficiently small some day, end usersstill have to clear that psycological barrier of losing at least some control over one's own data and applications (I know that I have my reservations--it would simply make draconian DRM technology that much easier).
What I'd like to see is a simplified, standardised version of the setup in my home:
Broadband connectivity provided with a static IP/server connections permitted and no other frills (other than perhaps security-related packet filtering)--no free mail addresses, space on some distant web server, etc. It would be a utility just like the heating bill. Every home would have a server of sorts that would provide the actual internet services (email, web server, net-aware applications...). It would probably run Linux but no one would notice or care because it would be like the Linksys router you can buy now--a little fanless box with nothing but a power connector, ethernet and WiFi. It would require less maintenance than your furnace.
Clients would be cheap--probably wireless and mostly portable--and might also run Linux off compact-flash (again nobody would really care about that any more than they care about who wrote the firmware for their microwave today). Applications and data storage would be on the home server beyond the desktop environment. Basics like what is provided by Office would be commodity apps installed on the home server appliance by default. Users could purchase or otherwise obtain programs like they order books from amazon and installs and upgrades would be invisible to the user. Furthermore, the clients would be capable of limited local storage and application functionality when not connected to the home LAN.
I know that the telephone and power grids rely on central coordination, etc and that computing services could run that way, but with the latter you are dealing with personalised setups and data to a much larger extent. Furthermore traditional utilities are moving toward more distributed systems as well (deregulated electrical industry that permits industrial customers to employ co-generation--and eventually maybe residential and/or farmers could do the same with fuel cell technology--and in phones VoIP is growing). The advantage is that smaller/simpler systems are generally more reliable so if end users are disconnected from "the grid" (power grid, the 'net, etc) they can still function independently for some time. Also, in the less-likely event that the home network goes down it won't create a huge disruption.
I hope that this becomes the trend--unfortunately there will be resistance from established monopolistic players. It
According to our stats we've had 36,000 unique visitors this month. Here are the browser stats:
IE..........83%
Mozilla..........9.4 %
Safari..........4 %
Netscape..........2.7 %
Unknown..........0.4 %
Opera..........0.2 %
Konqueror..........0 %
Firebird..........0 %
WebTV..........0 %
The 0% hits were down in the hundreds and must have rounded down to 0.
I am the webmaster for a medium sized university (10,000+ students). In the past year we average 393,036.42 hits a day and around 14,841.48 unique sessions a day. While not much compared to other sites, it still gives a good idea of browser popularity. Plus, the majority of our users aren't nerds.
Here are our browser stats since January...
As you can see... IE still has 92.75% of our users held hostage.
Is there anyone here tonight by the name of Hugh G. Rection? -Moe
Microsoft knows as well as anyone that users don't "choose" IE - they've been getting it for the last 7 years as the default browser on their machinces. Ever since the death of Netscape, anytime someone actively makes a choice about a web browser, it's for something other than IE. People may have made the choice to switch to IE back at the tail end of the browser wars (I did), but MS hasn't given us a single reason to switch to IE since they stagnated at IE6 in 2001...
In fact, the "factors that led [me] to choose IE in the first place" where that is was faster, slimmer than communicator, and seemed to be more of a standard than Netscape was (back in 1998). Now if I take those same factors into account, Firefox is slimmer, less cluttered, works faster, and is far, far more standards-compliant than IE6
The fact that MS is getting defensive about their numbers seems to indicate that they might actually be worried again (like they were about Netscape and the Web becoming the dominant application platform, instead of Windows).
While we saw this trend much earlier in particular communities such as w3schools
W3schools is a lousy representation of the global browser market share. Why? they cater to web developers who are obviously going to care what browser they're using day to day, and web developers will be the only ones showing up there.
Don't get me wrong, I love W3Schools - they're an invaluable resource. However, one should not see their statistics as a reliable cross-section of the general web population.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
Mozilla will get greater market share than what it has now if it starts supporting Dynamic Fonts. Lot of indian websites are using Dynamic Fonts to render their pages due to issues with regular font support. We browse lot of indian newspaper websites daily and we could read only if our browser supports Dynamic Fonts. Newspapers are not going to change its current process as IE users have no issues and they constitute 90% more of the hots. Once again we have lot of population and we could change the statistics if Mozilla starts supporting Dynamic Fonts
My website right now shows about 65% IE, because I get a lot of hits from slashdotters.
But if you look at the details of the logs, the percentage is much lower.
It seems that many of the worms that hit my site report themselves as being IE.
I don't know if any of these surveys differentiate between legitimate browser hits and worms, but I bet they don't.
Atleast Slashdot renders ok using MSIE.
telnet to port 80.
What is slashdot?
For some reason that reminds me of the Eye of Sauron. If it focuses on you, you're toast.
Go Frodo! Err, Firefox that is. Kill the mean Microsoft before it knows you're there!
Most reasons have been mentioned such as 1) no one's paying for a browser anymore, 2) no one likes adware, and 3) this is an OSS place.
In addition, you answered your own question. So 4), people want something to beat MS and throw their support behind it. Opera's been around forever, and has never mounted any contest against MS. Firefox just hit 1.0, and it's stealing share from MS. Ergo, /. likes firefox, not opera.
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I've been using FireFox since 0.8 and I'll never go back to IE...its a distant memory now, popups etc... I never get popups anymore, and tabbed browsing is simply a must. Glory be to Firefox!
Learn to know, the dark side of the force, and you will achieve a power greater than any Jedi...the power to save your w
And if it had such massive geek appeal, it wouldn't be getting slammed on /. as you claim. You may be a geek, you may like it massively, but that's not massive geek appeal. As for Opera being more than a browser...OK. I don't want my browser to do other things. That's bloat, and why I don't just use Mozilla.
Don't kid yourself with your lame open-source fantasies. People even pay money for Linux distributions, even though they can be downloaded for free. Why? Convenience. Opera offers a convenient way to install a smaller download than Firefox, with all features available right away. I'm not going to waste my time with crappy extensions and building my own browser when Opera has already done it for me.
For what it's worth, I don't give a shit about OSS, but /. as a whole does, and that's what we're talking about. However... 1. Most people on /. *don't* pay for linux, and those who do so do it for donation purposes, not convenience. 2. Firefox really is a lot easier to install than a linux distro, the comparison is completely ludicrous. 3. A smaller download? I suppose, for those who lack any form of broadband access. And how much smaller? I can't imagine anyone really used that as their reason for choosing Opera. Straw-grasping here.
Slashdot has ads..
True. But for whatever reason, people don't see it as the same. Adware has a bad name. Web ads don't. Hard to fight perception.
I've already mentioned several closed-source companies that are hyped on Slashdot. And Opera is available for Linux, too.
Few. And as others already pointed out to you, it's generally companies that either 1) donate to open source, or 2) actively fight MS. Opera does neither, so the OSS freaks here don't get behind it.
There is nothing logical about Firefox stealing market share from IE, therefore Slashdot must ignore Opera, or spread anti-Opera FUD.
As for the logic, by extension Firefox would get a lot less attention if it weren't stealing marketshare. Regarding Nintendo, it's never been the sort of "evil empire" MS is. I've seen little discussion of Nintendo on this board. This is an anti-MS zone, first and foremost. That defines everything about /., and that is not arguable. Also, I've never seen anti-Opera FUD here. I've seen people say they don't want to use Opera because of various features, but that's not the same thing. Second, which is it - FUD or ignoring? Contradicting yourself here. Third, it's not why slashdot should ignore Opera - it's more of why should we pay attention? Opera has been operating forever on more or less the same small market share. For various reasons, people don't like it, or don't like it enough to pay for it. You may disagree, but you can't argue with taste. As such, there's little reason to discuss a small product making no impact produced by a company whose values are against those of a large portion of the community. I have nothing, in general, against Opera. I just have no burning desire to use it. I'd say your biggest problem isn't FUD, it's apathy.
Why does Slashdot spread FUD about Opera? It's an all-round "nice player" and has stayed that way for nearly ten years.
As I said, it's not FUD. I'd like examples of some campaign executed to actually spread either F, U, or D. I've not seen it. You probably do get people telling you to go away when you go into Opera evangelism mode, which shouldn't be surprising. As for the "nice player" point, you answered your own question again. Nice players don't get press. Opera needs to do something new to get news coverage. That's why they call it "NEWs."
Bottom line: The Opera browser is a product sold for a fee in a market dominated by products sold for free. It is closed source. It is adware. It is
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