Posted by Diogenes on 01/09/08 08:00

Kind readers,

The first cut of this was originally posted in
comp.infosystems.www.authoring.stylesheets

I was dismissed as being off topic.

The reason for posting in 'stylesheets' was I felt
this group would be the most sensitive to the differences
between the browsers and what their respective audiences
were using.

So I repost again, this time with more specific information.
I may or may not have a point here, depending on how you read
this, and your general temperament.

================================================================

IE is losing market share because it is an inferior product. A number
of news articles (from google news) regarding the demise of the Netscape
browser cited FireFox as having 16% of market share.

I think that number is low. I provided a link to a site that more than
doubles that figure.

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

I'm not saying these numbers are the final authority. It's
just one sample.

I manage 2 sites, one personal, the other commercial. Both are low
traffic. Here are their numbers for Dec, produced by AWSTATS:

Personal Comm
FireFox (all versions) 57% 68.5%
IE 39.2 24.4
Others 2.9 6.9

Granted, this is a very small sample, a selective audience, yada,
yada, yada, but I trust these numbers.

I was wondering what other are experiencing on their 100K
visitors/month website.

I imagine that the FF usage in Europe is MUCH higher that 16%.

FWIW, another twist to all of this is that Microsoft is using the
demise of Netscape an an argument in court that an extension of its
'anti-trust oversight' should NOT be extended. The original reasons
for this oversight have disappeared (NS is gone).

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2008/01/03/microsoft_scoffs_antitrust_extention_seekers/

My recent experience in buying computers in the retail market in
Calgary, Canada, is that Microsoft Vista is the ONLY windows OS
on offer and IE is the only browser installed on these whiz bang
machines that do everything with almost everything pre-installed
(including stuff you don't want).

You have to pull strings to get XP, for instance, and download FF
yourself. Right? Please tell me I'm wrong.

It's not the Adam Smith 'invisible hand' that is guiding the market
here, it's the invisible hand of Bill Gates.

One last link, by John Dovorak, says it better than I ever can.

http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2704,2246368,00.asp


Cheers
-Dio

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