Firefox beating the IE away
Published by on August 16th, 2005
It seems the balance of power is swinging… at least around here.
Slowly but surely, Internet Explorer (IE) is forcibly releasing its stranglehold on the web browser space. Developing for the web has switched focus from creating an IE compatible site then hacking to make it work on other browsers, to developing to international web standards and hacking it to work on IE. And with the reported lack of full standard compliance coming in IE7, things are unlikely to change.
The damage to IE’s position is primarily coming from Firefox. Rapidly becoming a favorite tool for the developer due to a number of useful additions, Firefox’s stability, security and adherence to web standards is thrusting it right up in the front line against IE; or more accurately, beyond it.
We know that Microsoft will always quote that IE has the majority browser share by being installed on the majority of PC systems globally. That cannot be disputed as it comes as standard install for most Windows systems. However, surely a more accurate figure of browser share focuses on what web surfers are actually using.
In the handful of personal websites I run or am involved with, I have noticed a distinct shift in browser share of visiting surfers. During the first quarter of 2005, and prior, IE formed a solid and consistent 45-50% of browsers hitting my sites. Since that time, there has been a significant shift with Firefox gradually eating into IE’s dominance. Here are some very recent figures.
britcaster.com: IE 41% Firefox: 46% Safari: 11%
neildixon.com: IE: 38% Firefox: 42% Safari 18%
regularjen.com: IE: 20% Firefox: 43% Safari: 33% (Jen’s Safari numbers are somewhat weighted by the popular Mac-specific articles on her site).
There are plenty of other stats across the net which appear to contradict these numbers, and I would accept that the nature of the site and the demographics of the visitors it attracts would certainly weight them. For example, a technology or web development resource site might have a higher Firefox count. However, britcaster.com is related to podcasting, and this site itself has no real focus and attracts a very broad range of visitors. But the trends are interesting nonetheless: Firefox is still gaining ground.
If anyone else has stats to support or contradict this, I would be very interested to know.
Technorati Tags: britcaster, browser wars, firefox
2 Responses to “Firefox beating the IE away”
August 16th, 2005 at 9:47 am
Interesting stats indeed. I watch my site pretty closely for the browser share since I write CSS/XHTML code for both platforms now. I’ve been watching my IE numbers decrease steadily over the past year… it’s a positive step for the user and the developer, however, each browser is still flawed in it’s recognition of W3C standards in some way.
Though I believe Safari is still the only one of the herd that passes the Acid2 compliance test, it is still not a perfect renderer as long as the other browsers continue to lag in adoption. Firefox is close, but bless it’s well-intentioned heart, it has some major bugs in the way it deals with certain styles.
IE is just hopeless. IE 7 has already been publicised as not adhering to CSS 2 or 3 standards (some yes, for CSS 2, 2.1, but not all), and will clearly not strive to meet the Acid2 challenge either. (Shoot, the Beta of IE 7 doesn’t fix any CSS at all!)
Users are bound to benefit from a more secure and stable browser, whether it’s Firefox, Safari, or the upcoming IE 7. Web devs are still going to struggle even as the tide shifts more users to Firefox, but the best remedy and tool for the coder will still be a medicine cabinet full of Aspirin.
August 16th, 2005 at 11:20 am
Beer too. Beer helps you see the issue more clearly.
Okay, so I just fuck around and fix it the following day with a headache to boot. But at least standards-compliance is the hip thing to be now, even MS acknowledges that. Good times!