Firefox v. Internet Explorer
February 20th, 2007I’ve been watching Firefox creep up on IE for a long time, but today:
I’ve had a theory that people who read blogs are outliers. I wonder what other personal sites are seeing. I’m sure that business-centric sites follow the larger trends that get reported in trade mags and by analysts. o
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February 21st, 2007 at 8:44 am
I think the discrepancies in the total numbers (Firefox is still at a much lower penetration rate, but growing, fast, for the internet community at large) further illustrates the gap between those of us who operate our lives within the sphere of the internet as opposed to those out there that view it as just another appliance, e.g. their TV or refrigerator.
I start talking about RSS feeds, Firefox extensions, et al, and my brother (who is only 3 years my senior and a sharp cookie at that) starts looking at me like I’m from another planet. Sometimes I feel very insulated.
February 21st, 2007 at 10:59 am
From my standpoint, I switched to FF because as the ‘creator’ of my own site, I know how IE screws things up with its proprietary crap. It’s not that I like FF better - in fact, I stopped using 1.5 for a long time because of the huge memory leaks I experienced - and I like IE7 much more than 6, but until IE stops breaking every time I imbed a Youtube video on my site (among other things), FF it is.
What I’m saying is that most bloggers would experience first-hand the poor performance of IE in relation to site design, and that would cause the switch. A lot of the general Internet public (some of my friends, for example) plow away with IE, blissfully unaware that I can’t use things on my site because they wouldn’t be able to view it.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:18 am
My site breaks down like this:
FF 44%
IE 33%
Safari 20%
Opera 2%
Camino 1%
Keep in mind… VERY low sample rate. :-] My mom is probably most of that IE traffic, trolling for grandkid pics.
February 21st, 2007 at 11:41 am
On my site, a retail site, my recent browser activity was:
47.00% IE 6.0
27.00% IE 7.0
19.00% Firefox 2.0.0
3.00% Netscape7.2
2.00% Safari 1.2
1.00% Mozilla 4.0
1.00% Firefox 1.5.0
I think a lot of my customers shop from work which accounts for the large amount of IE users.
February 21st, 2007 at 1:16 pm
My stats look a lot like southerngirl’s:
413 visits so far this month (387 from US and Canada):
IE 70.94%
Firefox 19.13%
Safari 6.05%
Netscape 3.39%
Konqueror 0.24%
Mozilla 0.24%
According to Google Analytics, 20 of those visits were direct, 298 were organic. May be a small sample, but seems to represent the more largely reported stats.
I enjoy your blog, Jon. But as always, I stop over at Dooce before knocking on your door. *smile*
February 21st, 2007 at 1:17 pm
Yikes. Forgot to mention…
I don’t have a business-centric blog.
I write about cleansing/fasting (according to the book The Master Cleanser, authored by Stanley Burroughs). Except I don’t just report the facts… I cover the crappy part of the experience from frazzled nerves to strange happenings on the toilet. hehe
February 21st, 2007 at 2:44 pm
Yeah, my site is about 49% to 43% in favor of IE. Depends on your audience I guess. My work site is about 80% IE and somewhere around 17% for Firefox.
February 21st, 2007 at 2:56 pm
For the Shalvis abode:
Firefox 88%
Safari 12%
The Safari usage is the kids. I use only FF.
February 22nd, 2007 at 6:27 am
Normally, this is something that I would check religiously, being something of an Apple fanboy and all that, but I hadn’t yet.
My blog’s only been active since December, and my browser percentages look something like this. Well, not something like, exactly like.
Mozilla 30% (of that, Firefox is 57%; Mozilla 6 is 41 %)
IE 26% (of that, IE 6 is 51%; 7 is 24%)
Safari 23%
NetNewsWire 10% (RSS)
Shrook 7.4%
Konqueror 1.2%
Camino .0.9%
Opera 0.69%
I averaged about 200 visitors per day in January, increasing to almost 350 per day in February.
February 22nd, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Fan site, music/entertainment related, about 15000 unique visitors per month:
MS Internet Explorer 83.1 %
Firefox 9.8 %
Safari 3.5 %
Unknown 1.7 %
Mozilla 0.5 %
Netscape 0.4 %
Opera 0.3 %
NetShow Player (media player) 0 %
Camino 0 %
Phoenix 0 %
Others 0 %
Sigh.
Primary reason I switched to Firefox (and Netscape) years ago: security, and general annoyance at IE’s blatant disregard for RFCs. Second reason: tabbed browsing.
February 22nd, 2007 at 11:03 pm
Thanks for sharing everybody.
February 23rd, 2007 at 5:22 am
I only wish Fx would just hurry up and overtake IE, I’m sick of having to carve up my CSS just cos IE can’t handle floats, or position: relative, or min-height, or whatever else of the million and one things IE still can’t cope with.
Apologies for the rant
February 23rd, 2007 at 4:52 pm
You prompted me to check my own blog stats; sure enough:
Firefox 41.1%
IE 29.7%
Mozilla 20.9%
Safari 2.8%
etc. Interesting!