'Net Features : IE

Browsers: Chrome Rules, IE Steady, Firefox Falls

Pete Prestipino — Sat, 11 Aug 2012 19:30:00 GMT

According to recently released data from traffic measurement service provider StatCounter, the Chrome browser now accounts for more than one-third of the browser market worldwide.

Statcounter is reporting Chrome's global market share to be 33.8 percent, up from 32.8 percent fin June and from 22.1 percent July 2011.

Despite Chrome's continued rise, IE remains strong with a 32 percent share of the browser market. Firefox however didn't fare so well in July. The browser is losing ground and now accounts for 23.7 percent. Apple's Safari browser came in fourth with 7.1 percent global market share.

What purpose does this information serve? Designers and developers in particular pay close attention to these types of reports as it enables them to understand global browser usage so design changes can be prioritized. For example, reading this data, a designer might opt to fix bugs in Chrome first, then IE and Firefox.

Why Did Web Builder Wix Drop IE8 Support?

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 09 May 2012 22:30:00 GMT

In what I consider a rather bold move, HTML5 Web publishing platform Wix announced that it will no longer support Internet Explorer 8, citing a general lack of support for its emerging HTML5 product.

While IE commands approximately 20-percent share of the browser market globally (according to StatCounter), Wix analyzed its 20 million-strong userbase and found that only 12 percent were using IE8. Couple that metric with IE8's widely known inability to handle HTML5's interactive elements, and the decision was likely not a difficult one to make for Wix.

But how do Wix clients feel about the decision?

Apparently, 89 percent of Wix users support the addition of HTML5 features to the website builder over the continued support of IE8. Enough said.

"By freeing the Wix platform from the constraints IE8 places on its users, Wix will continue to lead the advancement of HTML5 Web design features that aren't supported by outdated browsers today," says Avishai Abrahami, Wix CEO and Co-founder. "The Wix user demands more variety and a consistent stream of new features which will benefit their website in the long run. Advanced HTML5 Web design and IE8 support cannot co-exist."

Chrome Gains Ground in Browser Wars

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 06 Jul 2011 14:45:00 GMT

Google Chrome surpassed 20% of the global internet browser market during the month of June 2011 according to Internet statistics firm StatCounter.

Chrome took 20.7% of the global market, up from 2.8% in June 2009. Microsoft's Internet Explorer has fallen from 59% to 44% globally and Firefox dropped slightly from 30% to 28%.

"It is a superb achievement by Google to go from under 3% two years ago to over 20% today," commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. "While Google has been highly effective in getting Chrome downloaded the real test is actual browser usage which our stats measure."

StatCounter Global Stats are based on aggregate data collected on a sample exceeding 15 billion page views per month (4 billion from the US) from the StatCounter network of more than three million websites.

The Browser Wars Get Bloody

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 17:30:00 GMT

The reason that it is important to pay attention to browser usage amoung Internet users is that it ultimately influences how Web professionals design and develop their Web properties. For the first time that I can remember, one of the old standby's is on the ropes.

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer (IE) browser has fallen below 50% of the worldwide market for the first time according to StatCounter. The company’s research arm, StatCounter Global Stats finds that Microsoft IE fell to 49.87% in September followed by Firefox with 31.5%. Google’s Chrome continues to increase market share at an impressive rate and has more than tripled from 3.69% in September 2009 to 11.54% in September this year.

“This is certainly a milestone in the Internet browser wars,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Just two years ago IE dominated the worldwide market with 67%.” Cullen added that Microsoft’s agreement with European Commission competition authorities to offer EU users a choice and menu of browsers from March may have tipped IE below 50% globally.

In Europe, IE market share has fallen to 40.26% in September this year from 46.44% in September last year. In North America IE is still above 50% at 52.3% followed by Firefox at 27.21% and Chrome at 9.87%. The rise of Google Chrome in North America has also been impressive and in June it overtook Safari for the first time.

25 Must-Have IE Add-ons for Web Professionals

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 23 Feb 2010 20:35:00 GMT

One of the most popular weblog posts from last week was 23 Chrome Extensions for Web professionals. The reason we created that article (besides the fact that we're slightly obsessed with all things Google these days) is that we noticed that Chrome usage was increasing on our site and on others. But what about Internet Explorer? Are there add-ons for IE that will benefit Web professionals? Absolutely, and you can bet your browser on that. Here are a few of our favorite IE browser add-ons perfect for any Web professional.

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Blogging: The real-time Web is all the rage, and there is no shortage of add-ons to assist Web professionals in finding out about the latest trends. OneRiot offers two excellent add-ons. Realtime Web Search from OneRiot offers results for news, blogs, videos and the Most Shared Today add-on offers those items with the greatest amount of distribution.Very much in line with the add-ons from OneRiot is Zemanta for IE. The add-on suggests tags, links, photos and related articles in real time as you type. If you already know what you're going to be writing about, then there are several IE add-ons that you will find useful. There are IE add-ons for Blogger, LiveJournal, and even Windows Live Spaces.

Search Engine Optimization: Quite surprisingly to me, WM did not find many valuable add-ons for the SEOs. Twingly Blog Links could prove useful, however, as it lets users find blogs linking to the page being viewed.

Social Sharing/Bookmarking: There are a few strong social sharing add-ons for IE. Based on ratings, Shareaholic and Add to Any seem to be the most popular, and provide access to a number of social destinations. There are a few standalone sharing add-ons. Blinklist, Furl and Simpy to name just two. The Digg Accelerator is one that has already made its way into our IE installations as have the Share on Facebook, Delicious and Stumbleupon add-ons.

URL Shorteners: IE has loads of add-ons for those that need to shorten long URLs, to.ly, FLQ, TinyURL, bit.ly and tr.im for example.

Total Randomness: We'd be negligent if we didn't mention IE7pro, an add-on from Daniel Fang that features tabbed browsing enhancement, ad block, and user scripts. Another noteworthy add-on for Internet Explorer is Xmarks which syncs and backs up bookmarks favorites. Lightshot is another rather valuable add-on we've come across for taking and sharing screenshots.

The Most Popular Browser... in the World?

Pete Prestipino — Fri, 05 Feb 2010 19:00:00 GMT

NetMarketShare, which monitors market share and usage of major Web browsers, has released their January 2010 report.

They report reveals that IE (holds a solid 62.12% of all browser usage) followed by Firefox (24.13%), Chrome (5.22%), Safari (4.53%) and Opera ((2.38%). Do note that all versions of browsers are included in NetMarketShare’s report.

Google’s Chrome Browser gained 0.6% of global usage share in January at the expense of both IE and Firefox, which both lost share during the last month. Our own anaytics reveal that Chrome is the only one of the browsers listed to have gained significant share. Chrom usage on our own site is up to just over 8%.

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Browser Usage Market Share - Firefox 3

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 13:40:00 GMT

Net Applications Global Internet Usage Market Share study (say that ten times fast) tracked the release of the Firefox 3 release by the hour and monitored the well-promoted (yet poorly executed in my opinion due to downtime) Mozilla Download day and the results that followed in relation to usage market share for browsers. Net Applications states that Firefox made some "excellent gains in usage market share the last 2 months, which would imply a spoke in new users of FF3". See the chart below.

Easy Testing with IE View Lite

Administrator — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 22:54:00 GMT

It's a mantra repeated often by any good website owner - testing, testing, testing. Your site is only as good as it performs for the user. If your website performs poorly, visitors leave and often never come back. Testing can be time-consuming and sometimes costly. But one of the easiest tests is making sure your site performs well in both Firefox and Internet Explorer. A handy Firefox add-on delivers a quick diagnosis that can be used every time a page changes or is updated, or a new site is launched. With the IE View Lite add-on for Firefox, you can simply right-click any webpage and open that page in Internet Explorer to make sure it is rendering correctly (see image below).

This was brought to my attention when I was recently told that some images I was using on Consumer Corner were not rendering properly with Internet Explorer. Now I can quickly check, every time, to make sure the page is consistent. It's an easy test for a common problem.