Browser market share and other user info

[Red]

Im pretty interested in seeing some reliable data on browser market
share. It has no effect on how I design my pages, but its useful stuff
to know.

I've found many sites that publish this, but the data varies widely.
For example I've recetntly seen firefox having anywhere from between 13
and 39%. Im guessing that a lot of sites that publish these figures use
their own server logs, so may already be biased to one type of browser
(a web design orientated site may show higher firefox figures than say a
site like zdnet.)

Ive also seen a site in the past which gives data on user screen
resolutions, colours etc, but for the life of me I cant remember it.

Anyone point me in the right direction?

Thanks,

Red.

 

[dorayme]

Im pretty interested in seeing some reliable data on browser market
share. It has no effect on how I design my pages, but its useful stuff
to know.

How, quite, is it useful then?

 

[Red]

How, quite, is it useful then?

In particular for explaining to people how important it is to design the
site so it looks the same no matter what browser the end user has.

Very useful for poaching new clients who have existing sites that, at
best look mediocre in IE, but totally suck in FF. They dont really care
until you back it up with evidence that they are loosing one in ten
customers because their site looks like complete crap in FF.

You would be suprised of how many 'professional' web designers don't
even check their pages through FF, or even validate come to mention it.
Oh, and yes, I am being sarcastic.

Red.

 

[dorayme]

In particular for explaining to people how important it is to design the
site so it looks the same no matter what browser the end user has.

Perhaps you can say this, it will raise their expectations of you
rather... Perpas it is not that important, perhaps better that
the site looks fine and is as useful in most browsers rather
than the same in look.

Very useful for poaching new clients who have existing sites that, at
best look mediocre in IE, but totally suck in FF. They dont really care
until you back it up with evidence that they are loosing one in ten
customers because their site looks like complete crap in FF.

Good point!

In that case, tell them over 10% and the figure is moving...

Many would be suprised how many 'professional' web designers don't
even check their pages through FF, or even validate come to mention it.

I am sure you are right about this...

 

[John]

Hi

Look at www.onestat.com for statistics.

I program for IE6+ and FF. Nothing more.

Regards

John

 

[J.O. Aho]

Im pretty interested in seeing some reliable data on browser market
share. It has no effect on how I design my pages, but its useful stuff
to know.

I've found many sites that publish this, but the data varies widely. For
example I've recetntly seen firefox having anywhere from between 13 and
39%. Im guessing that a lot of sites that publish these figures use
their own server logs, so may already be biased to one type of browser
(a web design orientated site may show higher firefox figures than say a
site like zdnet.)

Usually they have a number of sites logs to check which browsers been used,
but then the result depends much on which sites they use, say a company that
has www.microsoft.com, support.microsoft.com as the main sites would get a
really high value on MSIE, while if another company had www.mozilla.org and
mozdev.org as the main sites would get a high result on gecko based browsers.

There aren't any good way to measure which browser is the most used or how
large share it has, logfiles has the disadvantage that those who often visits
the sites generates a lot of hits for their browser, while people who does
visit less those sites will generate a low amount of hits for their browser.
The same for cookies and as people are extremely careful with allowing 3rd
party cookies, those market shares based on such methods are quite lousy.

If you manage to design your site so it looks nice in MSIE a Gecko based
browser and a khtml based browser, then you will cover a good part of the most
common browser out there. There will always be some browsers that won't work well.

 

[=?ISO-8859-1?Q?G=E9rard_Talbot?=]

Red wrote :

Im pretty interested in seeing some reliable data on browser market
share.

How much reliable is "reliable" when roughly 1 billion PCs surf on the web?

It has no effect on how I design my pages, but its useful stuff
to know.

If it has no effect on your design, then why would it matter? In the
end, in last instance, what really matters is that all your webpages use
valid markup code, valid CSS code, try to be accessible, try to conform
to standardized/official W3C specs, gets content updated, etc.

I've found many sites that publish this, but the data varies widely. For
example I've recetntly seen firefox having anywhere from between 13 and
39%.

It's perfectly reasonable, expectable for a site who offers a Firefox
extension to have more Firefox visitors than normal. E.g.:

Im guessing that a lot of sites that publish these figures use
their own server logs, so may already be biased to one type of browser
(a web design orientated site may show higher firefox figures than say a
site like zdnet.)

I am not sure I understand the relationship you establish between biased
and server logs. [Addendum: ok, I think I do now..]

Here are my site's stats:

http://www.gtalbot.org/Varia/BrowserStats.html

and some others:

Monthly stats from the counter.com:
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/

w3schools.com:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Firefox marketshare:
http://ff.asbjorn.it/pages/msgraph.php

Browser trend (market share):
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/

WebDevout stats:
http://www.webdevout.net/visitor-stats#versions

XiTi (European stats; excellent and reliable):
http://www.xitimonitor.com/en-us/technicals/firefox-november-2006/index-1-2-3-68.html
(Firefox crosses the 23% frontier in Europe)

Food for thought:
Why web usage statistics are (worse than) meaningless
On interpreting access statistics
http://www.goldmark.org/netrants/webstats/

Gérard