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Firefox Passes IE6 In Browser Share

Posted by kdawson on from the die-already dept.

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.

21 of 350 comments (clear)

  1. StatCounter etc by sopssa · · 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, better than both FF and IE (and not just a single version).

    But good that people are finally starting to move off from IE6.

    1. Re:StatCounter etc by shadowknot · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I don't like to feed trolls normally but I do wonder that if T. Rolland McFlamebait over here had posted something akin to "The thing is, most Chinese see Internet Explorer as 'The Internet'" people would find it less acceptable. It seems, at least to me and maybe I _am_ biased, that it's often fine to beat-up on Americans or use the convenient stereotype without the racist connotations that would be associated were you talking about another culture or people.

    2. Re:StatCounter etc by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Sorry, Italy here, and most of my lusers at work can't grasp the difference between internet and internet explorer. most of them will mix the browser and the net "my internet is broken and the like).

      The similarity in the name and my fellow Italians ignorance in english don't help either.

    3. Re:StatCounter etc by realityimpaired · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Then you can't really blame that on your parents' ignorance, can you? You admit that you didn't bother to explain it.

      I've been blessed... both of my parents have held jobs as computer programmers in the past. But for some things, I still have to explain to my mother when I want her to change something she's doing. She's smart enough to listen to her daughter, but it still took many years for her to clue in that I know more about computers than my father. In the past when I needed her to change something, I would explain it to my dad who would explain it to her... somehow, it held more weight for her that way than if it came straight from me.

      But the thing is... people will be resistant to change for change's sake. If you want them to start doing something differently, you have to explain to them why what they've been doing in the past isn't working, or is doing things wrongly. If, as far as they can see, it's been working just fine for them, then they won't see a reason to change. Incidentally, that's probably why you still see so many damned SUV's on the highways in North America.

      But if you were to make a simple security change, like requiring TLS on your mail server, you would have to explain to your users why you needed it. That, of course, will mean explaining why you need them to switch to Thunderbird for mail (MS Outlook and Outlook Express won't permanently accept self-signed SSL certificates, assuming you don't have the resources to buy a certificate from an organization like VeriSign), why using encryption on e-mail is good for the privacy of their mail, why requiring encrypted passwords will allow you to help maintain security on the mail server, etc. etc.. If you don't explain this to your users, then they're going to feel like you're just broadsiding them with sweeping changes, and they're going to complain bitterly and resist it in every way possible.

    4. Re:StatCounter etc by Yaotzin · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Obviously there is a lack of car analogies in the communication between you and your parents. Try telling them that the internet is like a road and browsers are like cars. All cars (browsers) can use the road (internet), but some are faster (Opera), some have better handling (Firefox?), and some browsers are like a '93 Ford Taurus with rust for an engine (IE6).

      --
      Error: No error occurred
  2. Antarctica! by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And Firefox has a 100.0% share in Antarctica (maybe just 1 user?) http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-an-monthly-200902-200902-bar

    --
    Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
  3. This site best viewed with NOT ie6 by sakdoctor · · 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.

  4. Net Applications? Slashdot! by BikeHelmet · · Score: 4, 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!...

    1. Re:Net Applications? Slashdot! by MichaelSmith · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I have posted this 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

      --
      http://michaelsmith.id.au
  5. Hoping for Windows 7's success... by stressclq · · 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.

    1. Re:Hoping for Windows 7's success... by nmg196 · · Score: 2, 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 the bar that appears on YouTube if you look at it in IE 6. I've found one or two such scripts on the net but I won't use any which don't endorse IE 8 as an acceptable upgrade to IE 6 as I believe it's a worthy replacement and users should have a choice of ALL major browsers when prompted to upgrade. Many sites are simply trying to force users to upgrade to Firefox or Opera. Many users will not do this just because both of those browsers have stupid names (who the hell thought "Opera" was a good name for a modern web browser? Firefox isn't much better and my parents think it sounds like a children's toy and refuse to click the icon).

    2. Re:Hoping for Windows 7's success... by TropicalCoder · · Score: 1, Interesting

      I'm now genuinely hoping that Windows 7 will massively succeed so that we can put an end to this abomination.

      It was Microsoft created the very browser you call "this monster from the digital stone age" in the first place but you want to see Microsoft's Windows 7 massively succeed??? That doesn't make any sense at all to me. Microsoft deliberately ignored standards with IE 6 as a ploy to hijack the internet and promote their monopoly. Now you are wishing that very same monopoly massive success - ...and getting modded up for promoting Microsoft! What is wrong with this picture? Why would anybody mod you up for that? Massive adoption of Windows 7 will only further empower and embolden Microsoft to pull more tricks like destroying the ISO to push through their proprietary MSOOXML standard or planting bugs in Firefox.

      "I'm now genuinely hoping that Windows 7 will massively fail so that we can put an end to this abomination" - there - corrected it for you.

  6. IE6 no more by AliasMarlowe · · Score: 2, Interesting

    http://www.ie6nomore.com/
    Cure the pox. 'nuff said.

    --
    Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
  7. Ie6 is the new amish by Ryunosuke · · Score: 2, Interesting

    My job uses WinXp Pro, Ie6, and Office 2003. AND we use an app called QAD in a dos box. It's nice to be in a minority, So I can feel special.

    1. Re:Ie6 is the new amish by IBBoard · · Score: 2, 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!

  8. Interesting Results by AndrewStephens · · Score: 3, 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.

    --
    sheep.horse - does not contain information on sheep or horses.
  9. Re:The numbers by ErroneousBee · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Or looking at it another way, Microsoft appears to be unable to convert its existing userbase to new customers, even for its free offerings.

    --
    **TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
  10. Re:Errr....people updating a free browser is news? by FireFury03 · · Score: 2, 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 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 IE6 complainers decided that supporting a crappy outdated browser wasn't worth their time either...

    --
    http://blog.nexusuk.org
  11. netbooks by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Too bad Firefox is too slow and bloated to use on a netbook. I had to switch to IE for netbook use. Firefox is slow as hell and then it will freeze or crash if you try to do anything demanding like watch youtube or visit google finance. Then when you restart it the thing that says "Oops! Looks like Firefox crashed!" made it freeze up! Useless! I used to believe the hype and think Firefox was better than IE now I see it's bloated crap and IE is the one that's actually fast and light.

  12. Re:Why does anyone care? by DaveV1.0 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    IE 8 has already been released. Firefox has overtaken a browser that is 2 generation old.

    --
    There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
  13. Re:The numbers by dingen · · Score: 2, Interesting

    A much heard argument for not upgrading IE6 to something more up to date is the fact a lot of legacy intranet applications don't seem to work with anything else than IE6. I wonder if this will prevent businesses from adopting Windows 7 as well, as IE6 is not available for that platform.

    --
    Pretty good is actually pretty bad.