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The Internet Internet Explorer Mozilla

Dutch Survey Shows IE Web Share Below 90% 428

Posted by timothy from the women-and-children-first-mind-your-step dept.
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."
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Dutch Survey Shows IE Web Share Below 90% More

Dutch Survey Shows IE Web Share Below 90%

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  • 0% IE, 100% Firefox (Score:4, Funny)

    by danormsby ( 529805 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:42AM (#10897021) Homepage
    0% IE, 100% Firefox on my desktop.

    58% of statistics are made up.

  • Fads. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by damu ( 575189 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:43AM (#10897022) Journal
    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.
    • Well, given that Microsoft has been very good at getting market share, I am sure they will soon have to revive the long lost IE development.

      • Re:Fads. (Score:3, Informative)

        by networkBoy ( 774728 )

        interestingly on my site the current stats are:
        Windows 25044 90.1 %
        Unknown 1378 4.9 %
        Macintosh 779 2.8 %
        Linux 572 2 %

        for the operating system BUT . . .

        MS Internet Explorer 15578 56 %
        FireFox 8152 29.3 %
        Mozilla 2265 8.1 %
        Netscape 685 2.4 %
        Opera 544 1.9 %
        Safari 471 1.6 %
        for the browsers. . .

        I've got to think that a lot of thise kiddie "hackers" are going ot be causing the same browers to be used by the rest of the household, so the demographic interested in hackin

    • Re:Fads. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by mordors9 ( 665662 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:02AM (#10897117)
      Since these statistical studies are only good at showing trends and not absolute numbers, it may be further out than that. I would note that MSIE is just under 90% and the other set of numbers show that windows usage is almost the same figure. This would seem to indicate that Windows people are still all using IE with very few exceptions (I know and those few are all on /.). That the growth in the alternate browsers is just due to the growth in Linux and MacOS.

      • Re:Fads. (Score:5, Informative)

        by rpjs ( 126615 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:20AM (#10897198)
        Doubt it. On the site I work on (major UK telco) most Mac users are using IE or Safari. Only 3.5% of all users are on non-Windows platforms, the vast majority being on MacOS, with Un*ces not even making 0.2%.

        We get our figures monthly so our most recent numbers are for October when we had 3.05% for all Gecko browsers, of whicb 3.5% were on Un*ces, 5% Macs, the rest 'doze. IE still scored at just over 95% of all users.

        I am looking forward to seeing November's figures to see if the Firefox 1.0 release has had an impact.

    • Re:Fads. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by instanto ( 513362 )
      We must also find out how these statistics are created. Could the IE numbers be even lower, due to some browsers have chosed to identify themselves as Internet Explorer and not Opera, for example.

      I believe the old opera versions were pre-configuerd to "identify as internet explorer 6.x" due to issues with a lot of (stupid) web sites 'requiring' IE.

    • Re:Fads. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by DenDave ( 700621 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:13AM (#10897164)
      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...

      • Re:Fads. (Score:3, Informative)

        by i8a4re ( 594587 )
        Well, I'm one of those 800-pound-microsoft-certified-gorillas you were talking about, and I know 4 others in my area. We all are running MS shops. We all have Firefox or Opera on every desktop and have removed the default IE icons. I have about 95% of my users using Firefox, and about 40% of them report they've switched to it at home as well. The other MS certified people I know are reporting slightly lower usage levels, but majority of their users are not using IE.

    • Re:Fads. (Score:5, Interesting)

      by rseuhs ( 322520 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:03AM (#10897483)
      Microsoft's problem is that the better they make IE, the more developers will leave the Windows-platform and move to the web.

      A web development means for MS:

      • Less customer lock-in (even when you code for IE only, Mozilla is likely going to work. And even if you use some IE-only hacks, it's a lot easier to replace those hacks than to completely rewrite a Win32-application)
      • Less revenue by forced upgrades. Even Windows 95 can run a webbrowser. So why buy a newer version of Windows? (That's the reason why MS is making IE7 Longhorn-only. However I think they are shooting themselves in the foot because most WinXP users will rather download Mozilla for free than upgrade to Longhorn.)
      • Less revenue by client operating systems. Not only Windows 95, but almost any OS can run a browser. Therefore web development is a big problem for MS.
      • Less revenue from development tools. If Microsoft loses a developer to the web, will he still need that MSDN-subscription?

      So Microsoft faces a dilemma. And they are losing no matter what they do.

  • What's the critical marketshare threshold... (Score:5, Funny)

    by yahyamf ( 751776 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:43AM (#10897023)
    ...required for /. to work properly in firefox?

    • Re:What's the critical marketshare threshold... (Score:5, Informative)

      by shufler ( 262955 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:58AM (#10897093) Homepage
      SlashFix Firefox Extension [hardgrok.org].
    • I personally blame Firefox for the errors.

      when they happen hit back then forward and suddenl it works, it can render the pages it just does it before it can get all the info it needs to do it properly.

      I imagine i is a rade off for browser speed.
    • That's part of the reason I gave up using Firefox (well, that and IE quit taking 30 seconds to start on my work PC (I think the network admin was playing a prank)), I got sick of rendering issues on so many pages, including /. and found that my trusty IE had no problem with em.

      • Re:What's the critical marketshare threshold... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Vegard ( 11855 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:17AM (#10897181)
        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. And not against the other browsers. The reason for this? IEs market share.

        By tolerating and giving in to this, using IE, you are part of the problem. *You*, and the millions others that tolerates this. Firefox works very well today. Some IE-specific pages not rendering quite as nice as in IE, is a *very* small price to pay, compared to the benefit there is in restoring the notion of designing browser-independent, STANDARD HTML.

        The reason we others like the fact that the share of people using Firefox grows, is *exactly* this. We like competition. We like standards. We like there being alternatives.

        And, some of us doesn't have the option of using IE at all, without switching operating system.
        • 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

        • Re:What's the critical marketshare threshold... (Score:5, Interesting)

          by Scarblac ( 122480 ) <slashdot@gerlich.nl> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:36AM (#10897290) Homepage

          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.


    • it's really quite simple

      http://slashdot.org/users.pl?op=edithome

      [x] Light (reduce the complexity of Slashdot's HTML for AvantGo, Lynx, or slow connections)

      • [x] Light (reduce the complexity of Slashdot's HTML for AvantGo, Lynx, or slow connections)

        If you really are going to use AvantGo (or Plucker) then consider using AvantSlash [fourteenminutes.com] instead which cleans up the articles and comments for browsing on mobile devices. It can also remove all the hyperlinks from external websites so that you can set your link depth high enough to get all the slashdot content and avoid 3/4's of the general internet.

        Of course, if Slashdot was re-written with valid XHTML and CSS [alistapart.com] then thi

    • http://www.hardgrok.org/slashfix/ [hardgrok.org]

      Installed it, now I never have a problem on /.

      If you don't want to install it, you can just do ctrl-,ctrl+ which shrinks and grows the font, which resizes the screen and fixes the display errors, too, but it's much easier to let slashfix do it for you.
    • Fixed in Mozilla 1.8a5 (out today) and will be fixed in Firefox 1.1 which is due in March.

  • Spread the word (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CAPSLOCK2000 ( 27149 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:43AM (#10897024) Homepage
    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.

  • I think I'm missing the point (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Tim C ( 15259 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:45AM (#10897029)
    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?
    • Market share actually has a bearing on many companies thinking. If you propose a soplution and they ask how many use it, and the response is 1% or 10%(though currently only 7%) there is a mental difference. A 1% means a marginal thing. a 10%+ means a viable alternative.

    • Re:I think I'm missing the point (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DigitumDei ( 578031 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:20AM (#10897632) Homepage Journal
      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.

  • 10% still looks too small (Score:5, Insightful)

    by linuxci ( 3530 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:46AM (#10897033)
    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.

    • Re:10% still looks too small (Score:4, Interesting)

      by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:52AM (#10897066)
      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.
      • And all except one can render W3C standard HTML.

        Anyone care to guess which one?
      • Yes, 90%+ market share despite poor products and competitors with excellent counter parts is a problem. If you count the US courts as a reliable source, then the cause has been from illegally leveraging the monopoly in the desktop markets to gain entrance into new markets. In that example it was to enter the web browser market and crush Netscape.

        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

    • Yes, 10% is low, but a damm good begining. Actually any single product does not have to have the 25% marketshare, only that IE has less than about 75%, be the others as many as they may. Basically that would force the webdesigners to aknowledge there is a sizable non-IE share.
    • As a web designer, I have to tell you that it's not easy to support all browsers equally. Granted getting the site to work in Mozilla is a given, but some of the mundane errors that crop up when trying to get them to work properly is extremely annoying, and half the time the errors make no sense at all.

      The real problem is supporting all the 'smaller' browsers too. Opera, Safari and IE 5.5 for the Mac (which some idiots still use...) all have their little chinks and quirks too that you have to take into ac

      • The real problem is supporting all the 'smaller' browsers too. Opera, Safari and IE 5.5 for the Mac (which some idiots still use...) all have their little chinks and quirks too that you have to take into account. Sometimes there's simply no time to get it all looking perfectly...

        You have a perfectly valid point. Here's what you can do when this situation arises: Submit a bug report, including the URL of a publicly accessible page that demonstrates the problem. The fact that there's an actual page that d

    • Re:10% still looks too small (Score:5, Informative)

      by jeffkjo1 ( 663413 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:09AM (#10897147) Homepage
      As a web designer, I have to tell you that it's not easy to support all browsers equally. Granted getting the site to work in Mozilla is a given, but some of the mundane errors that crop up when trying to get them to work properly is extremely annoying, and half the time the errors make no sense at all.

      I disagree. I've been designing websites for too many years, and the only time that it was truly difficult to design a website for multiple browsers was at the tail end of the browser wars when IE 4 and Netscape 4 were simultaneously introduced. Netscapes layer tags and IE's proprietary DHTML extensions were an absolute nightmare.

      IE still has some proprietary extensions of various different things left in it, but standards, by and large, are the same. Sure, my sites looks a little bit different in each browser, but none of the advanced functions fail to work. And really, it seems like other browsers are the ones doing things correctly, and it's IE that's breaking the code.
    • I disagree. There is a strong business case for even supporting as little as 2% of another browser market share, provided that it doesn't take exorbitant effort to do so. Look at this way: If I were running a store front and 10% of the people who walked past couldn't open my door because the door knob was proprietary, (yeah, bad analogy, but play along with me) I would be a fool to not look for ways to make my business accessible to the 10%.

      Many businesses fight tooth and nail to increase market share e
      • The only problem with that analogy is if it costs $100,000 to get a new door knob but that 10% of the market only brings in $50,000 in profit over the life of the new door knob. In that case, you're $50,000 in the hole if you go after that 10%.

        It's called diminishing returns and it shows up in a lot of places. You might also have heard it as the "last mile" problem. It costs more money to go after the uncaptured part of the market than the upcaptured part of the market will generate in profits. In whic
    • 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.

      Um, it's worth noting that roughly 80%+ of the internet population knows about nothing beyond e-mail and the web. To them, the web *is* the internet. Tucows? Downloading? Browsers? If it doesn't come with the computer, it doesn't exist.

      In fact, I think you would be shocked at the number of *webmasters* that have no clue whatsoever. It never ceases to amaze me to hear from people desi

  • How Long (Score:3, Interesting)

    by jellomizer ( 103300 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:46AM (#10897035)
    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.

    • Re:How Long (Score:3, Insightful)

      by jokumuu ( 831894 )
      I do not think there has been much WOW! feelings in web browsers for a long time. The browser is quite "mature technology" in it's current incarnation. I think that for the WOW! effect would require one to move away from the browser, into some other format.

      • Re:How Long (Score:3, Interesting)

        by FireFury03 ( 653718 )
        I would be inclined to say that the browser (or IE specifically) is only "mature" by the standards of the non-techy end-users.

        A mature technology would be one where the standards are well defined and followed quite well by all current software across all platforms - clearly not the case where IE is concerned.

        We're getting a long way there through Firefox, Opera, Safari, etc. but we've still got a way to go - there are useful features specified in the standards (e.g. parts of CSS2.1, etc) which are not yet
    • Not that I am defending IE (I use and like Firefox) but you've got your facts wrong.

      IE has popup blocking since XP SP2. Security setting have also been improved tremendously with SP2 (ActiveX controls and other IE annoyance won't install without jumping through some bigger hoops).
      • IE has popup blocking since XP SP2.

        What about those of us who are not running XP? Like myself at both home and work. Or my parents who are running 98? What about those people?

        What you're telling me is that to get the benefits of pop-up blocking in IE I have to go and buy a whole new operating system and quite possibly a new computer system to boot.

        Compare that to getting FireFox for FREE and which runs on ANY OS.

    • 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 window
    • 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. M

  • not bored (Score:2, Interesting)

    by TVC15 ( 518429 )
    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.

  • hijacking (Score:2, Interesting)

    by hostylocal ( 827126 )
    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 go
    • Well, one way would be to run a personal firewall and register that IE is not allowed to access internet.. though have not found a really good solution either.
      • I use ZoneAlarm Pro, and you can select whether a program is allowed to access the internet/act as a server/accept incoming connections etc..., and keep those settings for every time the program is run. Then every time a program wants to run IE, it will load up IE but it won't be able to connect to anything.

        I, however, set it to ask every time whether I want to allow IE to access the internet, since there are a few sites that I visit where it works better in IE than Firefox, especially a Java chess game o

    • Re:hijacking (Score:4, Informative)

      by value_added ( 719364 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:16AM (#10897589)
      "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"

      Firefox -> Tools -> Options -> Set Default Browser

      seems to work fine. You can google the newsgroups for additional info.

  • That's not all. (Score:5, Funny)

    by The-Bus ( 138060 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:49AM (#10897059)
    Google Zeitgeist [google.com] 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.

  • In other news.... (Score:5, Funny)

    by Viceice ( 462967 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:53AM (#10897071)
    Microsoft recommends Firefox [microsoft.com]

  • Last time I sponsored a cool browser, AOL slurped it up. I'm not doin that to the poor lil FireFox.

  • ...according to this article [nrg.co.il]:

    The company recently provided the press with a screenshot of MSN Search displayed on the open source browser...

    The photo credit says "(AP Photo/HO/Microsoft)", which menas it was distributed to AP by Microsoft.

    MS PR wigs are denying it, naturally...

  • Heise numbers published today (Score:3, Informative)

    by kris ( 824 ) <kris-slashdot@koehntopp.de> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:57AM (#10897089) Homepage
    Heise Newsticker [heise.de] is a major IT news site in germany. The linked article is in German, but you'll be able to read the stats.

  • I really hope these stats start to hosts ideas (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Cookeisparanoid ( 178680 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @07:57AM (#10897090) Homepage
    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).

  • MS: me too! (Score:4, Interesting)

    by v1x ( 528604 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:05AM (#10897127) Homepage
    Hardly a surprise considering that Microsoft showed off MSN search using FireFox! [ap.org] :D

  • schools? (Score:2, Interesting)

    by Legato895 ( 788993 )
    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.
    • There is supposed to be a site floating around which gives instructions on how to make Firefox look like IE. What does Fx look like at your school?

  • Cert-fi: Dump IE (Score:3, Informative)

    by villoks ( 27306 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:07AM (#10897139) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Some interesting (or not) stats. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Walkiry ( 698192 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:18AM (#10897186) Homepage
    I have a pretty small website myself, but if we compare the stats for November 2004:

    Top 15 of 50 Total User Agents
    # Hits User Agent
    1 14195 67.60% MSIE 6.0
    2 5089 24.23% Mozilla/5.0
    3 403 1.92% msnbot/0.3 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
    4 381 1.81% MSIE 5.0
    5 281 1.34% Opera 7.5
    6 109 0.52% MSIE 5.5
    7 89 0.42% Opera 7.2
    8 59 0.28% Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;)
    9 50 0.24% Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
    10 39 0.19% MSIE 5.1
    11 33 0.16% Netcraft Web Server Survey)"
    12 30 0.14% Yahoo-MMCrawler/3.x (mms dash mmcrawler dash support at yahoo dash inc dot com)
    13 26 0.12% Yahoo! Slurp
    14 25 0.12% Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/5.1.2600
    15&nbsp ; 20 0.10% BorderManager 3.0


    With the stats of December 2003:

    Top 15 of 36 Total User Agents
    # Hits User Agent
    1 13467 70.12% MSIE 6.0
    2 2661 13.86% Mozilla/5.0
    3 728 3.79% MSIE 5.5
    4 615 3.20% Opera 7.2
    5 521 2.71% MSIE 5.0
    6 154 0.80% )"
    7 145 0.75% Opera 7.1
    8 134 0.70% MSIE 5.2
    9 93 0.48% Konqueror/3.1
    10 77 0.40% MSIE 5.1
    11 58 0.30% Microsoft-WebDAV-MiniRedir/5.1.2600"
    12&nbs p; 52 0.27% Opera 6.0
    13 30 0.16% BorderManager 3.0
    14 28 0.15% Opera 7.0
    15 18 0.09% ia_archiver"


    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 :P )

  • mentioned on dutch radio news too (Score:3, Insightful)

    by rixdaffy ( 138224 ) * on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:23AM (#10897219) Homepage
    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 :)

  • On a less positive note... (Score:3, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:34AM (#10897286)
    Firefox.de in adware rumpus [theregister.co.uk]

    A Mozilia Europe dev slipped spy/adware into the official German build of Firefox!

    Great, where's that cluebat.

  • Web browsers? (Score:5, Funny)

    by bcmm ( 768152 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:36AM (#10897294)
    I don't understand all this hype about web browsers. They take too much of my system resources away from compiling the latest kernel release (I use Gentoo). I prefere to use telnet. I can do HTML rendering in my head (it's more standards compliant that way).
    telnet www.slashdot.org 80

  • redundant (Score:5, Funny)

    by corpsiclex ( 735510 ) <dark.logic@comcast.net> on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:44AM (#10897357) Homepage
    We've seen a few too many Firefox articles by now, but it is gaining a real presence in the market


    We know. The Other Articles told us.

  • Probably even less (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @08:46AM (#10897366)
    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.

    • Even less still (Score:5, Informative)

      by Epeeist ( 2682 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:27AM (#10897691) Homepage
      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.
  • 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 sha

  • Lack of innovation (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Jesus IS the Devil ( 317662 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:21AM (#10897634)
    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.

  • My rant (Score:3, Interesting)

    by slapout ( 93640 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @09:36AM (#10897777)
    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.)

    • Slashdot vs. Opera... (Score:3, Interesting)

      by hkmwbz ( 531650 )
      Slashdot seems to not like Opera. You can read my journal about the anti-Opera FUD on Slashdot [slashdot.org] for a specific example.

      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 c

      • Oh, to have mod points!

        I can't begin to state how much I agree with you. I switched to Opera in the 5.x days after my "don't use IE!" zealot flatmate convinced me to give it a whirl, and after running pretty much every browser I know of (IE, Nutscrape, FireFox and all it's forebears, Moz, Konq, etc etc) I still keep going back to Opera (and have two fully paid up licenses, one for Linux, one for windows).

        It's lean, fast, small and uber-configurable to a degree that FF and Moz aren't (either that or I'm mi

  • MSNBC and video (Score:3, Informative)

    by Camel Pilot ( 78781 ) on Tuesday November 23, 2004 @11:14AM (#10898897) Homepage Journal
    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.

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