Reader Comments

It is pretty amazing that Firefox grabed that market share. It's also amazing that Safari has less than 2% of the market. The way Mac zealots talk it sounds has if they are taking over the computer industry. Refreshes: 150 This site is all screwy.

Lies, damn lies, and statistics: -----begin quoted text---- http://www.techweb.com/wire/security/193104314 "For the third consecutive month, Mozilla Corp.'s Firefox has posted a half a percentage point or more gain in market share, a Web metrics company said Wednesday. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Internet Explorer's still-commanding lead has slipped slightly. Firefox accounted for 12.5 percent of September's global browser market, said Aliso Viejo, Calif.'s Net Applications. That's an increase from August's 11.8 percent, which was up from the 11.3 percent in July. Internet Explorer's share slipped to 82.1 percent in September, down from August's 83 percent. Also making gains was Apple Computer's Safari browser, which by the end of September was up from 3.2 percent to 3.5 percent. Safari's September numbers were its highest since April." -----end quoted text----- I guess it's easy to cheerlead for Microsoft when you cherry-pick your stories. The fact is, Firefox is doing well, and IE is stagnant at best.

Lotsa, this being the interweb and all, it's easy enough to find the statistics somewhere that say whatever you want. So if someone can go find me the stats that say Opera (my favourite alternate browser) is doing well then that'd be nice. And slightly offtopic, but... The roadblock ad that shows up when you come via wininformant.com just wouldn't go away today. Had to go and find a Thurrot article on the front page of windowsitpro.com... Anyone else had that problem?

lotsa - and who's to say that you didn't cherry pick your stats? like benn said above, you can find and twist stats to present anything that you want to hear. benn, I have the same problem as you with the ad. This url lets you in past the ads - http://www.windowsitpro.com/departments/departmentid/832/WinInfo.html --tayme

"And slightly offtopic, but... The roadblock ad that shows up when you come via wininformant.com just wouldn't go away today. Had to go and find a Thurrot article on the front page of windowsitpro.com... Anyone else had that problem?" Yes, I linked in from the headline of winsupersite.com (about helfway down on the right)

"And slightly offtopic, but... The roadblock ad that shows up when you come via wininformant.com just wouldn't go away today. Had to go and find a Thurrot article on the front page of windowsitpro.com... Anyone else had that problem?" Me too.

"I guess it's easy to cheerlead for Microsoft when you cherry-pick your stories. The fact is, Firefox is doing well, and IE is stagnant at best." OK, its safe to say that the degree of precision in any web stat gathering is over 5% error. You've got to account that you are doing time slices across a volitle sample, and the fact that some people use multiple browsers, etc ad infinum. So why do you bicker and claim the thrust of web applications with discrepancies less than 1%? Calling Thurrott a liar b/c his numbers are ~1% different than yours makes as much since as him making 'news' about a 1/2% change in IE's dominance. --- Now for some fun. "Firefox accounted for 12.5 percent of September's global browser market, said Aliso Viejo, Calif.'s Net Applications. That's an increase from August's 11.8 percent" Now from YOUR statement, "The fact is, Firefox is doing well, and IE is stagnant at best." From this you again make the Apple (tm) Remark: 1% changes mean that the market leader is dying. Now I challenge you in a hypothetical. Take the following hypothetical statement, "After a well recieved holiday release, Zune remains in well supply at retailers globally. Marketshare figures from Q2 2007 show that Zune's presence increased from 5.3% to 5.6%, its highest insurgency since release." Would you say the iPod is dying??

I have used Firefox ever since it was called Phoenix, I've loved it from day 1, and even with IE 7's new features (some are quite good) I don't see myself going back.

+1 for not going back to IE. I simply don't trust MS to build a simple, reliable product anymore. Only use their software when no viable alternative exists.

I'll give IE7 a shot. I've been on firefox solid for over a year, rarely needing IE6 except for activex here and there, and windows update, back before it was microsoft update. But I've had a few complaints with Firefox, 1 being its obviously slower and uses more resources than IE (leaving Firefox up after 20 or so tabs have came and gone leaves a 150MB footprint that never shrinks). 2 being a somewhat flakey support for Adobe 7 pro. It doesn't give me much trouble with my FF 1.5 on the desktop, but for some reason FF 1.5 absolutely refuses to open PDF files on my laptop. Not sure why, but its odd. IE7 is just like IE6 in terms of speed, but it has an excellent adoption of CSS2, on par or even above FF's support. However I do not like the way they do RSS support in IE7, so that may keep me on the FF camp for a bit longer. I've grown to love RSS, so much faster than actually visiting news sites. Also there seems to be a rather rigorus standard for RSS in IE7, if a site doesn't have fully structured DTDs, then IE7 won't display its feed. DTD files are fairly archaic and only required in the earliest days of XML, they stay on the standards books as a best practice, but most of the sites I use RSS with don't seem to have them, so its a bit of a downer. All in all though, IE7 is a good showing from the MS camp. In terms of quality it gives the Mozzila ferrit a run for its money, which is alot more than can be said for the inbred monkey which is IE6. W3C Reviewer: "What whitepapers did you refer to when you designed this browser?" IE6 Leadteam Manager: "Um, we... we printed the code on white paper... that is to say I think we did." W3C: "I see. What degree of CSS support?" IE6: "It knows OF css :)" W3C: "This is a bit concerning. What do you think the adoption rate will be?" IE6: "Given current numbers of prior versions, 96% globally." W3C: "Oh crap." IE6: "Yep. We'll fix it in 5 years though ;)"

Wait a second, Paul. "Firefox is the number one browser in countries such as Germany, Australia, and Italy, where it commands between 21.6 and 33.4 percent of the market." You're saying Firefox is #1 with between 1/5 and 1/3 of the market? Who's the remaining 2/3 to 4/5 of the market? I bet you're lumping all Firefox versions into one, and separating the IE versions out (counting 7 vs 6 vs 5.5 vs 5 as separate), otherwise there's no way that 21% of the market constitutes #1. There's not that many alternative browsers.

"Calling Thurrott a liar" I never called Thurrott a liar. I did reference a well-known quote about lying with statistics, but I didn't say Thurrott was (or is) one. He spins like a top, but he rarely flat-out lies. "From this you again make the Apple (tm) Remark: 1% changes mean that the market leader is dying." No, I didn't. I said IE was stagnant. That's far from "dying". I stand behind that statement--IE is losing market share to Firefox and others. Simple fact. And I never mentioned "Apple" in my remarks. "Would you say the iPod is dying??" Since I never said anything of the sort about IE, I fail to understand the relevance of your question (or the two question marks, for that matter). The fact is, Paul chose this report rather than the one released yesterday that was less flattering to Microsoft. Interesting choice. But it WAS a choice.

ars technica: http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20061010-7949.html "New browser usage statistics are out for September, and they're showing some interesting changes in browser market share. Internet Explorer, which has been the market share king for many years now, has been falling steadily since the launch of Firefox 1.0 and has now reached its lowest point in over two years at 82.10 percent. Firefox, on the other hand, has been growing steadily, reaching 12.46 percent market share. Safari holds its third place spot, but sees increasing numbers as well at 3.53 percent." Chart: http://media.arstechnica.com/staff.media/browsershare2.png

Don't worry so much about security risks with IE7. This is not going to be a repeat of IE6. Remember, IE7 is taking us back to the days prior to "IE4 with Active Desktop support" (remember those days? - I do!). Internet Explorer is no longer just a copy of Windows Explorer (ie. the Windows Shell) with a web toolbar, it's now a separate entity within Windows and runs in it's own process, so many of these exploits where someone can get total access to your system thru IE are not likely going to be in existance. Also, don't forget that IE7 is going to be made a critical update so you'll be getting it with Automatic Updates. Might as well try it out...Better yet, why not try the current beta out and if you don't like something, tell Microsft about it! Remember back when HTML-based customization for folder views was put into Windows Explorer? I suggested that it'd be nice if images could be inserted in the background of the window for that specific folder, and guess what? It's now a standard feature.

Yeah, saying that IE had a 1/2% gain is a bit like saying Mac is taking over on their miniscule "gains". @ will84: that is quite possibly the funniest thing I've read in quite a while. --- Image refreshes: 3 Is it that hard to write one of these image text validation dohickeys? If it's written properly, no refreshes are required.

this is really not a surprise. IE7 will most likely keep gaining market share unless firefox really does something innovative. I don't know if their plan of hoping IE will just go away will ever work. I mean tabbed browsing can only get you so far ....

"I never called Thurrott a liar. I did reference a well-known quote about lying with statistics, but I didn't say Thurrott was (or is) one." Oh comeon, at least own what you say. Why would you mention that if you didn't want that libelous link between the quote and Thurrott. Don't try and be cute and say things of this nature, then back off and go "I didn't SAY that tee hee hee." "No, I didn't. I said IE was stagnant. That's far from "dying"." When you've lost your argument, revert to semantics. You can always nitpick words, its what keeps people from answering real questions, the foundation of politics. "The fact is, Paul chose this report rather than the one released yesterday that was less flattering to Microsoft." And you're implication is that he did so knowinglingly. People pull reports like this out their wazoo all the time. Thats why I put zero stock in all of them. How many active users are there on the internet? If you give an exact number, you know what I call you? A pretentious idiot. Millions is the best decent estimate anyone can give, these site trackers use their selected site counters at selected times of the day on selected demographics on selected days on selected pages. And you think you can give me a picture of the whole internet? I personally don't care if they say IE has 85% or 58% or 8.5% or 5.8% but you seem to care if it says firefox has 11.5% or 12.46%, how rediculous is that??? I refer you again to the term 'margin of error'

Don't worry so much about security risks with IE7. This is not going to be a repeat of IE6. Remember, IE7 is taking us back to the days prior to "IE4 with Active Desktop support" (remember those days? - I do!). Internet Explorer is no longer just a copy of Windows Explorer (ie. the Windows Shell) with a web toolbar, it's now a separate entity within Windows and runs in it's own process, so many of these exploits where someone can get total access to your system thru IE are not likely going to be in existance. Also, don't forget that IE7 is going to be made a critical update so you'll be getting it with Automatic Updates. Might as well try it out...Better yet, why not try the current beta out and if you don't like something, tell Microsft about it! Remember back when HTML-based customization for folder views was put into Windows Explorer? I suggested that it'd be nice if images could be inserted in the background of the window for that specific folder, and guess what? It's now a standard feature.

These stats are only according to OneStat and its "web metrics" and contradict everyone else's usage stats. lotsamystuff posted the bigger story that was all over the web yesterday (including Slashdot, of course), which was that IE has actually dropped to its lowest market share in years. Personally, I find IE7's interface too terrible to deal with on a regular basis. It's like they threw toolbar buttons on a dartboard and made the result into IE7. Because they jammed a toolbar onto the tab bar, you actually get less room for tabs. Talk about bizarre interface design decisions, but this is coming from the company that gave us Luna and Aero. :-)

@Waethorn: "Don't worry so much about security risks with IE7. This is not going to be a repeat of IE6." No offense, but we've been hearing this for every single Microsoft software release of the last five years. We've been told not to worry because every release is "the most secure yet." The fact is, there will be vulnerabilities, and people should always take precautions when using Microsoft Internet Explorer. It's just not a secure browser, and there's no reason people should suddenly turn around and start trusting it now when Firefox provides the better browsing experience anyway as well as adhering to web standards. When do you think we'll be seeing XForms support in IE? Never. Firefox already has an official plug-in. "Remember back when HTML-based customization for folder views was put into Windows Explorer? I suggested that it'd be nice if images could be inserted in the background of the window for that specific folder, and guess what? It's now a standard feature." Ala Mac OS over a decade ago. :-) As for the image validation thing, WindowsITPro has always been a pretty crappy site. It's written in ColdFusion and runs on a Windows server, which is why it's often so slow to load (for me, anyway).

IE7 will only gain marketshare through attrition: 1. People getting it as part of Vista OEM preinstalls (i.e. "The Internet" is teh big blue E" 2. XP People getting it as an automatic Critical Update because mere mortals don't even know of the existence of an IE7 blocking tool. let alone how to use it. So I expect IE7 marketshare to have a sudden "jump" but not at the expense of Mozilla, but rather, at the expense of IE6.

"It's written in ColdFusion and runs on a Windows server, which is why it's often so slow to load (for me, anyway)." Thats a tad slanderous heh. Or it would be if the computing market wasn't so lax about things of that nature. And do you REALLY want to walk down that road again? Or do we need to show you again the Apple servers that are running IIS5.0?

@will84: "Thats a tad slanderous heh. Or it would be if the computing market wasn't so lax about things of that nature." It's not slander. In my experience, ColdFusion is slow. "And do you REALLY want to walk down that road again? Or do we need to show you again the Apple servers that are running IIS5.0?" What road? The one where Apache has twice the market share of IIS? I think the "IIS on Apple" thing you're referring to was the New Zealand store back in 2004 which was run by a local distributor named Renaissance, who said they had no problem moving to PHP. Do we really want to bring up Hotmail running on BSD, or Microsoft using the Linux-powered Akamai caching service for its downloads? Apache and Mac OS X Server have plenty of endorsement from the likes of, oh, the U.S. army who runs their website on it. Imagine how many attacks they see a month!

"It's not slander. In my experience, ColdFusion is slow." Yes but in an unfounded manner you are attributing that to your performance problems. I believe a netcraft sniff someone posted recently shows one of the www.apple.xx domains running IIS. Considering MS doesn't make a caching service of their own... so what if they use someone elses? Every web server under the MS cloud is IIS. IIS is big, Apache is big. Xserve or w/e Apple's webserver is called, is nothing. "Apache and Mac OS X Server have plenty of endorsement from the likes of, oh, the U.S. army who runs their website on it. Imagine how many attacks they see a month!" I already showed you the netbeui results. The army's propaganda page runs OSX, their secure site runs IIS. I'm not posting it again just because you are ignorant.

"And you're [sic] implication is that he did so knowinglingly [sic]." Well of course he did it "knowingly". To suggest otherwise is to suggest he doesn't know what he's posting. The story I quoted was all over the web the day before Mr. Thurrott posted his missive. He chose to ignore it, and could only have done so willingly, because you couldn't miss that story. It was everywhere. I strongly suspect he covered the story in the way he did in order to support his pro-Microsoft worldview. That's his editorial option as the writer of this page...but it WAS an option. That's all I'm saying.

I've been trying out IE7 along with Vista x64 (although still not seeing the point in the x64 version of it :|) and it seems pretty good this far (and I'm comparing it with it's older brother only). If I compare it with FF... it doesn't stand a chance! :| CSS support is still not good enough... I'm a webdeveloper/designer and I was just designing a new template for my blog this last week, and validating it with XHTML 1.1: Beautiful (my opinion, of course) on FF (2.0 RC2 here)... weird on IE7... "where-is-my-design?" on IE6- ... @will84 About the FF resources... Try upgrading to FF2.0 as it already includes a fix to optimize resources on minimize instead of close OR try adding "config.trim_on_minimize" and setting it to "true" (as a bolean value) by typing "about:config" on your address bar). But as far as I can tell, MS is at least, making a "decent" effort into supporting W3C whitepapers on XHTML and CSS... not too bad ;) Way to go MS :) ~Levi F. PS: I'm an OSX, Linux and Windows user... I'm not a die-hard evangelist of neither: all of them have their purpose and market share (different ones on my opinion at this point, although they overlap in a few areas... :))

"The story I quoted was all over the web the day before Mr. Thurrott posted his missive. He chose to ignore it, and could only have done so willingly, because you couldn't miss that story. It was everywhere." I'm glad you know what is going on in others' heads. I missed the story you spoke of, maybe not everyone ventures the same areas as you. Alas, I must contest to your conspiracy! It is true, we must become ignorant when people speak of the 0.5% dip... "About the FF resources... Try upgrading to FF2.0 as it already includes a fix to optimize resources on minimize instead of close OR try adding "config.trim_on_minimize" and setting it to "true" (as a bolean value) by typing "about:config" on your address bar)." I still havn't fiddled with the config, didn't know it was open to do that in the ole FF. But my problem mainly seems to be, if I right-click my bookmarks folder and it opens say 20 windows, FF sucks up say 120MB of system memory. Now given that we live in a high-bandwidth world where companies use ads all over the place, I can respect that it takes that much to hold all that. But when I close all those tabs except for one, the memory size retains about 70% of the resources. On a system w/ a gig of memory, its not that noticable in terms of performance, but when I bring up the task manager and see Firefox standing alone with its six figure usage... it irks me heh. "Yar, I be Outlook 2007 Beta! And I'm proud to not have the biggest footprint in all the land!" Any problems I've had with FF have all been minor, and of course it still looks like a saint compared to IE6. It's a bit ironic, but doing some ASP work a while back, I spent along time trying to get our intranet converted to the ferrit. But I didn't really have a leg to stand on... hard to get people to convert away from an MS product (IE) to ease your development on another (asp).