Your Internet Web Browser of Choice? (also Sept 2004 stats)

[尼古拉前执事]

Many people have a web browser preference, but it may not be accurately recorded in our stats, as they may be forced to use Microsoft's Internet Explorer at work or at a library, college, etc. when they access the site. Also some browsers pretend to be IE so that they work as they should on poorly-designed websites that were only made for IE. So first here are the browser stats from September and then I ask your preferences in browsers. If you currently do not have any of the non-IE browsers, I highly reccomend trying them out.

MS Internet Explorer 73 %
Mozilla 8 %
Unknown (Probably Firefox and Camino) 7 %
Safari 4 %
Netscape 2 %
Opera 1 %
Konqueror 1 %
Firebird 1 %
WebTV browser 1 %
iCab 1 %
OmniWeb, Lynx, Links, LibWWW and Others 1 %

[尼古拉前执事]

Of interest to some may also be that the top 3 version of MSIE are 6.0, 5.5 and 5.0.1 while in Netscape they are 7.1, 7.2 and 7.0.2. There are, however people using MSIE 3.- and Netscape 3.0 as well!

Since they are all based on the same engine, if we combine Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox/Firebird and Camino's percentages we get the users of the Gecko browser engine at 17%

If we do likewise with the Konqueror based Safari anf OmniWeb we get 6%

Probably also of note is the Operating System break down since only Windows XP users can use the latest version of MSIE:

GNU 1%
AmigaOS 1%
Web TV 1%
Linux 1%
Macintosh 5%
Unknown Unix 7%
Microsoft Windows 84%

Of the Windows users, almost half use Windows Xp, followed by Windows 98, Windows 2000, Windows Me, Windows NT, Windows CE, Windows 96 and Windows 2003 (beta version of Longhorn, to be released in 2006 or 2007). Of Macintosh users, almost 90% user Mac OS X while just over 10% user MacOS 9 or lower.

Funny joke on the letters after the Windows name:

CE + Me + NT = CEmeNT, the true Windows Experience (Experience is what XP supposedly stands for!)

[尼古拉前执事]

From http://www.switch2firefox.com

IE considered Harmful

Although Internet Explorer was one of the first HTML renderers to add support for CSS, they have not added any new support for CSS since 2001. While their support was comparable in 2001, other web browsers (such as Firefox and Opera) have been adding better support with fewer bugs. With Mozilla and Opera's support, designers will be able to code faster and easier. It will allow designers increasingly more stunning and dynamic layouts. But with Internet Explorer's current buggy incomplete support and no updates in years, this is a thorn in the side of webmasters. Do the web a favor and stop using IE.

Breath of Fresh air

We've been using Firebird on both Windows XP and Apple Computer's Mac OS X for a couple of weeks now. The more we use it, the more we like it, and the less we feel the need to launch Explorer.
Firebird is a breath of fresh air compared to Explorer. Tabbed browsing, popup blocking, and a search bar built-in will definite make Internet Explorer feel old.

“Light years ahead ”

When compared to browsers such as Internet Explorer, Firefox is light years ahead. Microsoft will need to do some serious footwork to catch up to the usability and functionality of this browser. Seriously. For instance, you can load extra functionality such as more precise ad blocking, mouse gestures, website registration bypassing, dictionary, user agent switching, complete page and listbox/textbox searching, text zooming, UI tweaks, and the list goes on. There are so many possibilities I can't go into them all here.

How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer.

I usually don't worry about PC viruses, but last week's Scob attack snapped me awake. Scob didn't get me, but it was enough to make me ditch Explorer in favor of the much less vulnerable Firefox browser.
The problem is that hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer. Many of them take advantage of Explorer's ActiveX system, which lets Web sites download and install software onto visitors' computers, sometimes without users' knowledge. ActiveX was meant to make it easy to add the latest interactive multimedia and other features to sites, but instead it's become a tool for sneaking spyware onto unsuspecting PCs. Firefox eschews ActiveX and other well-known infection paths. You can configure it to automatically download most files when you click on them, but not .exe files, which are runnable programs. I thought this was a bug before I realized Firefox was saving me from myself, since .exe files could be viruses or stealth installers.

"IE Too dangerous to keep using" - Eweek

"Internet Explorer Just too risky" - Business Week

"Replace and Disable IE Now" - Newsforge

"CERT Recommends Mozilla, Firefox" - Washington Post

"Mozilla feeds on Rivals Woes" - Wired

"Top Pick Browser" - Cnet.com

[尼古拉前执事]

FYI Firefox 1.0 came out today. It is ready for primetime and I highly reccomend it. You can download it at the following sites:

http://www.mozilla.org

http://www.firefox.com

http://www.getfirefox.com

http://www.switch2firefox.com

Or just click on the banner in my current signature.

[OrthodoxyOrDeath]

I started using Firefox today. It seems much "lighter", meaning faster. So far I like it because of that.

[gphadraig]

As a Mac user Safari 2 comes naturally and appears very stable and easy enough to use. Internet Explorer is a real pain somewhere I haven't seen in years, but that's another story...............

[尼古拉前执事]

I too am a Mac user. I was using Safari as my default until Camino 0.8 came out and then once Firefox 1.0 came out it became my default again. Newly released Thunderbird 1.0 has replaced Apple's Mail.app which replaced Microsoft's Entourage when Mail.app came out.

Any way here are browser stats from November 2004. So Far December is looking even better for Mozilla's Firefox!

MS Internet Explorer 78%
Firefox 9%
Safari 3%
Netscape 2%
Mozilla (Suite) 2%
Unknown 1% (Possibly Lynx & Links?)
Opera 1 %
Camino 1%
Firebird (Old Firefox) 1%
Konqueror 1%
Others 1% (iCab, OmniWeb, Curl, WebTV, LibWWW, etc.)

Operating System Popularity of Cafe visitors are as follows for November 2004:

Windows 87%
Macintosh 5%
Unknown 3 %
Linux 1 %
WebTV 1 %
Unknown Unix system 1 %
OpenBSD 1 %
FreeBSD 1 %

And the ever interesting country stats:
United States (.us)
Canada (.ca)
Unknown (.ip)
Australia (.au)
Great Britain (.gb)
European Union (.eu)
Netherlands (.nl)
South Korea (.kr)
New Zealand (.nz)
Ireland (.ir)
Argentina
Greece
Italy
France
Finland
Germany
Yugoslavia
Sweden
Russian Federation
China
Mexico
Romania
Brazil
Israel
Spain
Poland
Malaysia
Norway
Switzerland
Sudan
Bulgaria
Denmark
Croatia
Belgium
Japan
Bangladesh
Bosnia-Herzegovina
Kazakhstan
Chile
Estonia
Portugal
Philippines
Kyrgyzstan
India
Singapore
Hong Kong
Senegal
Taiwan
Austria
Libya
Nigeria
Kuwait
Puerto Rico