'Net Features : browsers

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.

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.

Chrome Passes Safari; You Go Chrome

Pete Prestipino — Mon, 28 Jun 2010 13:52:00 GMT

Web analytics provider StatCounter is reporting that Google's Chrome browser has overtaken Apple's Safari in the US for the first time. Research is from the firm's StatCounter Global Stats report for the week beginning June 21.

Chrome with 8.97% took third place in the US browser market ahead of Safari with 8.88%. Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still dominates the US Internet browser market with 52%, followed by Firefox (28.5%).

“This is quite a coup for Google as they have gone from zero to almost 10% of the US market in under two years,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “There is a battle royal going on between Google and Apple in the internet browser space (Chrome v Safari) as well as in the mobile market (Android vs. iPhone)."

The data is based on an analysis of 3.6 billion page views (874 million from the US) for the week 21 to 27 June 2010 collected from the StatCounter network of over three million websites.

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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Cross-Browser Compatibility Testing Tool

Pete Prestipino — Thu, 25 Jun 2009 14:27:00 GMT

Web application "experience" management service provider Gomez, Inc., just introduced a free Web-based tool that automatically tests how Web sites look in four commonly-used combinations of browsers and operating systems. After entering a URL, the free Gomez tool returns screen captures of the Web page in each browser/OS combination, revealing content-rendering issues such as missing graphics, function buttons or text. The Gomez Cross-Browser Compatibility Test can be accessed at: http://instanttest.gomez.com

New popular Browsers like Firefox, Safari, Internet Explorer 8 and Google Chrome use a lot of client-side processing and have different ways of handling dynamic content such as JavaScript than their prior counterparts, increasing the risk of performance issues for Web pages and transactions. Testing Web application compatibility across every browser type, version and OS however can be time-consuming and expensive, but it's an increasingly important practice you must engage in. While few organizations have the infrastructure or resources to build and maintain their own testing environment, a free tool like that provided by Gomez’s will help identify content-rendering issues.

“Web pages can look and perform differently from one browser to another,” said Eric Schurr, Gomez’s SVP of Marketing. “In today’s economy, businesses can’t afford to risk losing even one customer or one dollar of revenue because their Web applications don’t work properly on a browser or mobile device. Gomez’s Cross-Browser Compatibility Test reduces this risk while also saving time and money.”

January '09 Browser Market Share

Pete Prestipino — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 02:50:00 GMT

NetApplications released browser market share numbers for January 2009. As you might expect, Internet Explorer still has a hefty lead with 67.55% total market share, followed by Firefox (21.53%), Safari (8.29%), Chrome (1.12%) and Opera (0.70%).

The real story in all this, as others have mentioned, is the substantial growth seen by Firefox over the past year and the general decline in usage of Internet Explorer. Back in March 2008, IE had a nearly 75% maket share while Firefox had nearly 18%. Compare that to the information presented above and you'll see the dramatic nature of the shift. While the September release of Google's Chrome has made a slight dent in the total browser share, Safari has grown nearly 70% since March 2008,

Google Chrome Market Share

Pete Prestipino — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 15:13:00 GMT

Analytics service Get Clicky is tracking the global market share of Chrome, Google's new browser. As of September 3rd, 2008 at 7:45 PST, the market share was 2.72052% among the services 45,000 websites GetClick monitors. Expect that number to fluctuate over the coming days and weeks. Chrome currently only works on Vista and XP, but as additional operating systems come on board, it will be increasingly important to test your site design in the Chrom browser.

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.