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Accurate Browser Statistics?
zyl0x asks: "A co-worker of mine has been made responsible for a large web application for our software product, and he was having a hard time deciding what functionality to implement, and whether or not to sacrifice functionality for a larger user base. With Walmart's harsh stand on browser compatibility, we got to thinking, exactly how many users would we be alienating by using some IE-only functionality on our website? We tried crawling the internet to get some current, accurate browser usage statistics, but we could only find stats for specific websites. I thought I'd try sending Google a request, since we imagine they'd have the lowest-common-denominator in terms of types of users, but I received an email from their press department telling me that they 'don't make that kind of information available.' Where can one get a current, accurate, and un-biased measurement of browser usage? Is it even possible?"
Take it from a site that hosts 6000+ webcomics, so you get a good sense of what's being used out there.
On average from CG, from the top of my head (not accurate!!!):
* Firefox/IE are major contenders -- ether one or the other flops back and forth the lead.
* Safari rounds out the third
* Konqueror, Opera, Netscape 4, and web spiders scrape out the distant rest.
What I would do is follow Google Mail's lead: Make a javascript version and a non-js version, and if there's a browser not on the tested whilelist, go non-js.
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# Canmephians for a better Linux Kernel
$Stalag99{"URL"}="http://stalag99.net";
Browser marketshare varies widely according to audience.
I'll second this. I do a little work on a Web based interface to a security product for very, very large network operators who can afford to shell out the big bucks. A major portion of our interface was nonfunctional in IE for about a year and a half before anyone noticed because all our customers use Firefox or Safari or Opera or Lynx. If you're actually trying to find information that is practical for your application you need to look at your market segment and similar sites.
Also, any site that already restricts browser access is going to have skewed results, because the potential audience using other browsers has either cloaked their browser to look like the supported one, or has gone somewhere else.
Yeah, IE only sites skew numbers because people fake it or go elsewhere. Likewise, sites that are defaults for a browser (like Google for Firefox or MSN for IE) will have results skewed towards that specific browser, so Google's numbers would not have been all that useful to you. Look for a Web site that targets the same demographic, but does not have any of these factors to muddle the numbers.
I'd also like to echo other people here in voicing another argument against IE specific Web services. No one knows what the market share in five years is going to look like, and ripping out your working solution because IE is down to 50% would be a horrible snafu. Further, as more and more devices start to provide Web browsing capabilities, like phones, PDAs, PVRs, and televisions, standards become more and more important. Your company itself could standardize on Linux from some vendor in the next 5 years. It doesn't hurt to be a little forward thinking and keep your tools flexible. There just isn't much you could not implement to be cross-platform if you have a competent developer, and if you don't you're likely to have all sorts of other problems as well.
I manage dozens of websites reaching multiple demographics (i.e., business, home users, education, medical, engineering, agri-business, sporting goods). Our sites see roughly 1,000,000 unique visitors each week.
Removing bots out of the stats, on average, I see:
If your site is geared towards highly technical people, expect to see double the FireFox & Linux traffic. If the site is geared towards the average home user, you might only be pissing off 10-12% of your potential customer base by having IE only components. I can't imagine many businesses surviving very long by pisssing off 1 out of every 9 customers ... oh, wait, Microsoft ... forget I said that.
For a snapshot of the web population at large, check this site:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/
Their stats are updated regularly, they've got a reasonable level of detail, and lots of pretty graphs.
However, as others have pointed out, you need to be worrying about your particular audience more than anything else. A site like the one I've just given isn't all that useful unless you've got a really huge web site. So here's a three step plan for YOUR web site:
1) At first, design it to work smoothly with as many browsers as you possibly can.
2) Build up a profile on the types of users who visit your site. There are lots of programs that can help you do this. Google Analytics does a decent job, and it's free of charge. Another one is Mint, which some people swear by (it costs $30 USD). There are lots of others out there, of varying quality and abilities. Take your pick.
3) Once you've got a profile built up, tune your web site to suit the abilities of the browsers that most of YOUR particular users favor. You might discover that only 0.002% of your visitors are using Safari, meaning perfect compatibility with Safari is not a major concern for you. Or you might discover that the Opera users of the world swarm your web site like ants swarm spilled sugar, in which case Opera becomes a priority for you.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
Here's the percentages for the site I work on. I can't reveal specific numbers, but we get many millions of unique visitors per day. As many other posters have mentioned, the answer of what to support greatly depends on who your audience is and what you're trying to achieve. Our audience is over 99% from the US, and represents a more average (read: less tech savvy) cross section of internet users, specifically, those that would buy shoes and apparel online. Your potential customer profile is likely much different, but here's the top 10 browsers/platform combonations we saw last week:
44.93% - Internet Explorer 6.0 Windows XP
26.48% - Internet Explorer 7.0 Windows XP
5.26% - Firefox 2.0 Windows XP
4.90% - Firefox 1.5 Windows XP
3.98% - Internet Explorer 6.0 Windows 2000
2.29% - Safari 419 Macintosh PPC
1.82% - Safari 419 Macintosh Intel
1.39% - Internet Explorer 6.0 Windows 98
0.92% - Safari 312 Macintosh PPC
0.52% - Firefox 1.0 Windows XP
We do our best to support normal operation on all of these platforms (and several others) because at our volume alienating even a fraction of a percent costs real money. And also in our case it's not hard to make things work cross browser because we use simple HTML and minimal javascript.
You ask what you lose by adding some IE only features. The equally important question is what you gain. Are the IE only features you're considering going to increase the value of your application enough to make up for what is lost in potential users? Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. In general I think people overestimate how much fancy features are going to improve usefulness, so be honest with yourself there. Good luck figuring out where to draw the line.
Cheers.