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."
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.
Actually 10% should be were all the major browsers should actually be. There is IE, Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Koncor (sp?), Opera, and others. In a good world the major players should have 10-20% of the market share and that is about it. Microsoft with its 90%+ marketshare with there products is a fluke in the system and shouldn't be.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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).
Hardly a surprise considering that Microsoft showed off MSN search using FireFox! :D
Well actually I think that since a large portion of PC's are in Offices, you will see a change when employers start getting rid of their 800-pund-microsoft-certified-gorilla IT services... in my experience they don't want to hear of anything but IE because "our dotnet infrastructure requires it" or "our vendor contract doesn't allow it" or "quit wasting my time you drone".....
Otherwise this would be one more statistic right ehre and now...
-if at first you don't succeed, stay the heck away from paragliding.
I sadly can't claim the same. I'm about 8% IE, 93% FireFox. (Used MS Calculator to check my numbers, there.) I never open IE on purpose, but sometimes it still magically launches for the express purpose of updating me to the latest spyware. I mean - I have to manually click Run... and type in 'iexplore' to get the thing open, but some spyware isn't as lazy as you'd think.
The reason so many pages works so well in IE and not in others, is *not* that IE works better. It's just that people design and test against IE.
That's only one half of the story. The other half is that IE has really error tolerant code - it can render very badly formed HTML. So people who write bad HTML and then test with IE will never know, but their sites will fail in most other browsers.
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
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.
I had a similar issue about a month ago. I do most of my day to day banking online. My bank has, for over two years, never had an issue with Mozilla or FireFox. One Friday I tried to access my accounts and the normal login was redirected to a "Your browser is not secure, please use IE" page. I wrote a lengthy email to the admin in charge of the site (they did provide an email address on the page). I explained my concerns with security in IE and ended the email explaining that although I had been their customer for 7 years, I would take my business elsewhere before using IE for banking. The following Monday morning I was able to access my accounts with Mozilla and I recieved an aplogetic email from the admin to boot.
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.
A web development means for MS:
So Microsoft faces a dilemma. And they are losing no matter what they do.
You simply cannot get accurate statistics from observing HTTP traffic
How come? I would have thought that a large enough sample would provide useful information, albeit not perfect information.
Surely it depends what statistics you're gathering? Clearly we can't draw conclusions about precise market share, but surely trends might be identified? For example, current surveys hint at a trend away from Internet Explorer; should we disregard this as a statistical hiccup?
NB. I'm not trolling, or even particularly disagreeing, but I would like more evidence/citations to support your viewpoint.
This is where the serious fun begins.
I know a few web devs and they all test their web pages with IE and not much else. When told that this is bad, their answer is simply that 95% (some say 98%) of users use IE so there is no need to test the web pages with multiple browsers. I bet they use the same excuse to their PHB's.
Publish these reports enough, and the PHB's will hear about it. They will wander in an ask the web dev whether the company site works fine with firefox, and real soon you'll find those devs putting in the extra time to make sure the site works with browsers other than IE.
The more that firefox's growing market share is publicised, the more sites will begin to support it properly, not the other way around.
East Coast Brewers
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
After rereading my letter, I think it may have been a bit harsh (and I sound a bit zealotous). Also, to answer a later post, it is a small hometown bank that uses a third party for online banking. Lastly, when I did call their tech support line, while they could offer no good advice, did mention that I was not the first caller regarding the matter.
To whom it may concern;
For the last two years I have been using my XXXXX account to do online bill paying. I have never had a problem using Mozilla as my browser of choice, and in fact I bank at several sites using Mozilla. I do not and will not use Internet Exporer browser to access these sites due to the numerous security issues surrounding this browser. In fact, the Department of Homeland Security has recommended *not* using Internet Explorer (you can find many references if you do a search on google.com). As such, you must realize my concern.
Upon realizing what was happening, I contacted XXXXX who gave me a toll free number to the technical support people for the XXXXX service. Their immediate (canned) response was that they only support Netscape and Internet Explorer. Netscape is compiled from the same code as Mozilla and as such is exactly the same browser as Mozilla -- except that Netscape has advertisements. Even after explaining my concerns, the only answer from them was that Internet Explorer is the recommended browser and that Netscape (same thing as Mozilla mind you) should work.
I am not an uninformed consumer. I am a Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer and Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator. I think I know what I am talking about with regard to Microsoft's Internet Explorer. You can also follow these links for more information.
1). "The U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team (US-CERT) is warning Web surfers to stop using Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser." http://www.internetnews.com/security/article.php/3 374931
2.) "...the usually staid U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, published a warning strongly suggesting that users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer should switch to another Web browser, due to "significant vulnerabilities" in technologies included in IE. " http://www.wired.com/news/infostructure/0,1377,640 65,00.html?tw=wn_story_page_prev2
Now, you can imagine my dismay when this morning I could no longer access the BillPay section of the XXXXXX site. This was due to a redirect to another page based on my browser (Mozilla). In other words, the web developers of this site have looked at my browser, determined that it was not an Internet Explorer browser, and then rejected my access to the site based on the fact that I was not using an insecure browser (Internet Explorer).
Upon realizing what was happening, I contacted XXXXX who gave me a toll free number to the technical support people for the XXXXX service. Their immediate (canned) response was that they only support Netscape and Internet Explorer. Netscape is compiled from the same code as Mozilla and as such is exactly the same browser as Mozilla -- except that Netscape has advertisements. Even after explaining my concerns, the only answer from them was that Internet Explorer is the recommended browser and that Netscape (same thing as Mozilla mind you) should work.
I would not be so upset by this if there were actually something wrong with the Mozilla browser; however that is not what was stopping me from accessing the site. The fact that this site first checks to see what browser I am using and then rejects access after determining that I am using a browser that they do not like. There is absolutely no technical merit in this decision. Not to mention, the fact that it was implemented with no notice of their intent to do so. Mozilla was fine yesterday, it is not today. This is unacceptable.
After hearing such a canned answer (the operator admitted that she had received several calls today concerning Mozilla bro
Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart he dreams himself your master.