Browser trends

[DJ Craig]

When I looked in my Google Analytics stats for my site, I was pleased
by this trend in the browsers:

Nov13-26 Mar12-25
IE 82.62% 75.31%
Firefox 12.66% 20.25%
Safari 2.79% 1.98%
Netscape 0.64% 1.23%
Opera 0.86% 0.49%

More FF less IE! but I only get a few hundred visitors on my site
every two weeks and it might be a badly skewed population sample. I
was wondering if other people are seeing the same trends in browser
usage?

 

[Nik Coughlin]

When I looked in my Google Analytics stats for my site, I was pleased
by this trend in the browsers:

Nov13-26 Mar12-25
IE 82.62% 75.31%
Firefox 12.66% 20.25%
Safari 2.79% 1.98%
Netscape 0.64% 1.23%
Opera 0.86% 0.49%

More FF less IE! but I only get a few hundred visitors on my site
every two weeks and it might be a badly skewed population sample. I
was wondering if other people are seeing the same trends in browser
usage?

Mine is even more dramatic This is from my main domain, and I know that
these statistics are badly skewed due to the nature of the site (but trend
is still interesting):

~60,000 visitors, November 2005 vs March 2006
Firefox 23.3 % 55.6 %
IE 67.8 % 29.0 %
Mozilla 0.9 % 7.9 %
Safari 3.0 % 2.8 %
Opera 2.0 % 1.8 %
Unknown 1.6 % 1.0 %
Netscape 0.3 % 0.7 %
Konqueror 0.1 % 0.1 %
MultiZilla - 0.1 %
Camino 0.2 % 0.1 %
Others 0.1 % 0.2 %

 

[Leonard Blaisdell]

Mine is even more dramatic This is from my main domain, and I know that
these statistics are badly skewed due to the nature of the site (but trend
is still interesting):
Opera 2.0 % 1.8 %

Although you both said your stats were skewed, I find the Opera stats
interesting. They went free-unbannered a couple of months before your
first columns. I'd have expected Opera's usage to increase.
I'm a Safari (leaning toward Camino) user myself, but I do have Opera
installed, and it works fine.

leo

 

[Joel Shepherd]

I find the Opera stats
interesting. They went free-unbannered a couple of months before your
first columns. I'd have expected Opera's usage to increase.

Opera, by default, identifies itself as IE. Stats reporting Opera usage
aren't especially reliable (which applies to browser usage stats in
general).

 

[Leonard Blaisdell]

Opera, by default, identifies itself as IE. Stats reporting Opera usage
aren't especially reliable (which applies to browser usage stats in
general).

Oh, I agree! Nevertheless, I don't understand why the stats went down in
both cases. I agree that two servers can't indicate much either.
Especially two servers whose owners post to ah or ciwbm.
My reading of knowledgeable posts seems to indicate that stats are
completely useless. I don't think they are *completely* useless.
Especially with dramatic trends. The trend for Opera wasn't dramatic.
But both posters servers or virtual servers should attract more Opera
savvy users than generic sites would.

leo

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, Leonard Blaisdell quothed:

Oh, I agree! Nevertheless, I don't understand why the stats went down in
both cases. I agree that two servers can't indicate much either.
Especially two servers whose owners post to ah or ciwbm.
My reading of knowledgeable posts seems to indicate that stats are
completely useless. I don't think they are *completely* useless.
Especially with dramatic trends. The trend for Opera wasn't dramatic.
But both posters servers or virtual servers should attract more Opera
savvy users than generic sites would.

There's always the possibility that more people don't like Opera now.

 

[Toby Inkster]

When I looked in my Google Analytics stats for my site, I was pleased
by this trend in the browsers

Mine are quite bizarre:

Nov 2005
IE = 35.4%
Fx = 12.5%
Op = 9.45%
Sf = 1.48%
Ns = 0.318%

Mar 2006 (so far)
IE = 41.5%
Fx = 23.5%
Op = 6.32%
Sf = 2.84%
Ns = 0.342%

Where are all the other hits? November the percentages total to only about
60%. I'm guessing I was hit by several search engine crawlers that month.

I too get the drop in Opera usage, which is very odd. It is possible that
once Opera went free, there was a spike in people using it, which is what
we're seeing in November, but that then levelled off after Christmas when
a bunch of people would have got new computers and perhaps forgot to copy
Opera from their old one.

I've not done the calculations on my own logs, but that theory would
result in Opera percentages moving a bit like this:

N(Op)
| _.----.._
| _./ `-.
| / \
| .' `-..______________
| /
| /
|...-
|_____Oct___Nov___Dec___Jan___Feb___Mar____


Ending up at a higher percentage than before it went free, but only after
a peak. Does anyone have their statistics to hand to confirm/deny this?

 

[Leonard Blaisdell]

There's always the possibility that more people don't like Opera now.

Blasphemy! I have it, covet it and aspire to use it. Perhaps tomorrow.
Opera even works very well on a Mac. But... So do a bunch of other
excellent browsers. I can't use IE other than IE5Mac though :>( or :>)

leo

 

[Neredbojias]

With neither quill nor qualm, Leonard Blaisdell quothed:

Blasphemy! I have it, covet it and aspire to use it. Perhaps tomorrow.
Opera even works very well on a Mac. But... So do a bunch of other
excellent browsers. I can't use IE other than IE5Mac though :>( or :>)

I've had some trouble with Opera, notably in the mechanics of rendering.
Sometimes it's like a robot that needs oil or a fine watch with a gear
tooth missing here and there.

 

[Dylan Parry]

Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", Toby Inkster
finally proclaimed:

I too get the drop in Opera usage, which is very odd. It is possible that
once Opera went free, there was a spike in people using it, which is what
we're seeing in November, but that then levelled off after Christmas when
a bunch of people would have got new computers and perhaps forgot to copy
Opera from their old one.

I'd say it was more likely that people thought they would give Opera a
try when it went free, and half those who tried it decided they liked it
better than their previous browser, but the other half decided the
opposite, so went back to using IE/FF/et al. In other words, you can't
please all of the people all of the time.

 

[Carolyn Marenger]

When I looked in my Google Analytics stats for my site, I was pleased
by this trend in the browsers:

Nov13-26 Mar12-25
IE 82.62% 75.31%
Firefox 12.66% 20.25%
Safari 2.79% 1.98%
Netscape 0.64% 1.23%
Opera 0.86% 0.49%

More FF less IE! but I only get a few hundred visitors on my site
every two weeks and it might be a badly skewed population sample. I
was wondering if other people are seeing the same trends in browser
usage?

Take that with a grain of salt. How many of the IE browsers hitting your
site are actually other browsers reporting as IE? There are times when I
need to convince a server that I am running IE in order to access certain
areas - usually work related. I have been tempted to have my browser
report IE all the time, just to save me from those annoying "IE only"
messages. I stick to being honest, knowing if I want the situation to
change, people need to see non-IE browsers in their stats logs.

So again the question, how many browsers are inaccurately reporting
themselves to be IE, or Navigator, or some other one?

Carolyn

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed Dylan Parry

Pondering the eternal question of "Hobnobs or Rich Tea?", Toby Inkster
finally proclaimed:


I'd say it was more likely that people thought they would give Opera a
try when it went free, and half those who tried it decided they liked
it better than their previous browser, but the other half decided the
opposite, so went back to using IE/FF/et al. In other words, you can't
please all of the people all of the time.

It seems to me one of the versions of Opera (maybe 7 dot something) did not
have a way to list which tabs were open, and that could/can be daunting
when you have 10 or so tabs open at once.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Adrienne Boswell wrote:

It seems to me one of the versions of Opera (maybe 7 dot something) did not
have a way to list which tabs were open, and that could/can be daunting
when you have 10 or so tabs open at once.

Opera is okay, but what frustrates me when using it that you cannot drag
and drop links. Didn't realize how often I drag to the desktop or to a
new tab and -- OH! that's right this is Opera!

 

[Adrienne Boswell]

Adrienne Boswell wrote:


Opera is okay, but what frustrates me when using it that you cannot
drag and drop links. Didn't realize how often I drag to the desktop or
to a new tab and -- OH! that's right this is Opera!

You can drag tabs as much as you want. I don't ever drag anything to the
desktop (there's already too much clutter I haven't cleaned up), so I
didn't know about the inability to drag to desktup.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Gazing into my crystal ball I observed "Jonathan N. Little"

You can drag tabs as much as you want. I don't ever drag anything to the
desktop (there's already too much clutter I haven't cleaned up), so I
didn't know about the inability to drag to desktup.

You can drag to rearrange to order of the tabs but your cannot drag a
link to a tab to open that url in that tab...a Google and eBay friendly
process. I only drag stuff to the desktop for currently working
project...very temporary then like one should do in reality as
virtually, clear of the desktop...

 

[Blinky the Shark]

It seems to me one of the versions of Opera (maybe 7 dot something) did
not have a way to list which tabs were open, and that could/can be
daunting when you have 10 or so tabs open at once.

Opera natively lets you stack tabs vertically on either side of your
viewport. I love that. I can have 30 or so tabs visible, and they only
take up horizontal space (the width of which you can configure), which
isn't usually all needed for viewing the page anyway.

 

[Jose]

You can drag to rearrange to order of the tabs but your cannot drag a link to a tab to open that url in that tab...a Google and eBay friendly process.

Can't you trick-click?

Jose

 

[Blinky the Shark]

Opera is okay, but what frustrates me when using it that you cannot drag
and drop links. Didn't realize how often I drag to the desktop or to a new
tab and -- OH! that's right this is Opera!

Must be a version issue.

<clickety click>

I can do both (drag link to tab and desktop) with Opera here:

Opera 8.51/WinXP
Opera 8.51/Win2000
Opera 8.51/Win98SE
Opera 8.51/Mandriva Linux
Opera 8.51/SUSE Linux

 

[Blinky the Shark]

You can drag tabs as much as you want. I don't ever drag anything to the
desktop (there's already too much clutter I haven't cleaned up), so I
didn't know about the inability to drag to desktup.

Neither did I. And I just dragged links to the desktop (and the tab
bar) from Opera's address bar in five Opera/OS combinations.

Like you, I'd never drag a link to the desktop in Real Life, though.

 

[Jonathan N. Little]

Must be a version issue.

<clickety click>

I can do both (drag link to tab and desktop) with Opera here:

Opera 8.51/WinXP
Opera 8.51/Win2000
Opera 8.51/Win98SE
Opera 8.51/Mandriva Linux
Opera 8.51/SUSE Linux

Yes seems to be, I have two versions 7.54 and 8.51.