Firefox usage at 28%
Blimey. According to Wired’s report on a “well-regarded as being accurate” XiTi survey, IE usage in Europe is at 66%, with Firefox second at 28%. Safari and Opera are both under a twentieth of the browsing population. Interesting stats, although all browser statistics are unreliable. I occasionally forget to stick my head out of the overheated greenhouse that is the web hacker community; looks like in the real world, Firefox is doing pretty well! Good work the FF team.
Firefox has already grabed 34% of market share here in Poland so you old Europeans have some catching up to do ;) Cheers!
9 hours later
What you are missing is that you are reading results of a company that is making money with their results. They don’t tell very much about how they conducted their studies really so one has to assume an insane error margin. At best their statistics seem shaky. Very pretty with a lot of colors and pictures for people who can’t interpret hard facts, and lack of hard facts. Less than 10% is more likely than 28% to be honest.
16 hours later
I know that the results can vary, and it does depend on the site, I find more techy sites get more FF and opera visitors.
The fairest set of figures that I can get my hands on(of sites that I am involved in) are from my parents business site, which has nothing at all to do with computers at all(They are an Artisan Ice Cream maker), and the figures break down like this:
IE 60%
FF 20%
Safari 10%
Opera 6%
Others 4%
The 20% FF usage is very good, considering that it is a non tech site.
I think that something that Firefox does not have is something similar to roaming profiles, which a lot of people use. At college, I can sit down at any machine, and the desktop I use is *my* desktop, with IE having bookmarks, history etc from previous usage. This is really useful, although it may be in Firefox and I just havn’t noticed, although it may the that you can do this in IE as it is so integrated.
18 hours later
mattj: roaming profiles are handled by Windows. If you configure Firefox to store its data in your Windows profile then it should appear on every computer you log into (although Firefox itself won’t be installed on those computers).
19 hours later
i think these numbers are wrong i and eveyone i know in the linux and Windows Comu use Firefox i know alot of people i just feel they are asking the wrong people or asking at the wrong time as you have to remeber ever XP and Vista pc as a no option browser you have IE and thats it yes you can install FF but still if your a live user you still get your emails in IE unless you go to them via FF manualy and other service that are supported by Microsoft don’t call default browser the call the main exe for IE
I think Firefox is more used these days then IE for the geeks of the trade but for a home user that only knows that a computer can type and email then IE is the only one they know of i am at this time using FF and i also use
Maxthon 2 for most IE jobs if i want to us something thats not FF as FF dose have some down falls within its rendering engin what IE dose not.
Like anything tho IE as not changed its browser in the ways as FF, FF change all the time to better them selfs but from IE 4 i have not seem much change but in style its self and some other majer bug fix’s the idea is still amost
the same thing.
7 days later
Would be nice if it didn’t crash soooooooo much when using Firebug etc. I’ve actually switched back to IE just so I can check my Gmail account.
7 days later
Bart, i get a problem like that if i have the 2 open seems since my Updates Firefox will now crash
if IE is open i think something is a miss here with MS and FF i don’t think MS want people to us it at all. :(
7 days later
These numbers seem wrong to me too, but as everyone else as already said it will depend on where you look and sample your data from. We monitor visitors to our clients sites and see the following trend: B2C site (UK focus) IE is about 78%
but B2B sites (UK focus) IE is more like 89%.
Why can’t people in the web industry get over the fact that to most users which browser you use is just a NON-ISSUE. You buy a PC it comes with WINDOWS, you open the browser and you browse the web… That happens to be IE so what - it works well enough…
3 weeks later
Hey Ed | N3W
A would a agree about IE working but it dose there is
way to many loop holes in IE wat will never be fixed i will
give IE one thing the rendering Engin is better the firefox
in someways but Firefox as alot better out come if you ask me.
There sould be a option to download when ever browser
you want to used on install a built like a linux lirb but on windows i think it would work to MS’s advantige (Spelt Wrong please forgive.)
Rex
4 weeks later