IE Picks Up Market Share as Version 7.0 Looms

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.

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anonymous October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

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.

lotsamystuff October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

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?

Benn21uk October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

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

tayme October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

"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)

tdonahue_nj October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

"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.

shark47 October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

"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.


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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??

will84 October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

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.

bonchsucks October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

+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.

bmnbmn October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )

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 ;)"

will84 October 11, 2006 (Article Rating: )