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Apart from surveying each and every user, it is going to be a very
difficult statistic to produce accurately as there are so many
trade-offs and inconsistencies in the way the stats are gathered. I
have two XP systems. One is banned from using IE because I refuse to
clean it for spyware any more and so it is FireFox 100%. The other is
my laptop where I use FF for everything, unless some stupid site won't
load and I REALLY need to get on it. Then I still have IE around
(bleh). So at my place, is that a vote for IE and two for FF? I don't
think so.<br>
<br>
Browser emulation will hide the real browser as mentioned. What about
other Windows apps that use parts of IE to display web content? You
can't rely on downloads because no-one 'downloads' IE (on a Windows box
at least) and multiple downloads of FF by the one user (to upgrade or
distribute it) would also skew the stats. At best, you might be able
to say that of 100% of traffic on xyz server, a certain percentage is
definitely going to FF (for an example).<br>
<br>
On three out of four sites that I maintain, the amount of traffic
handled exclusively by FF is more than 50%. All of these sites are
techie orientated. I guess it *might* be safe to say that more than
50% of well-informed people are using FF or Mozilla, but already I am
*interpreting* my own stats. At a guess, I would say 30% of my clients
(including family and friends) i.e. the computers that I have direct
input in, run FireFox instead of IE.<br>
<br>
I would definitely disagree with the stat of 95% IE, just based on what
I see. I think of it like this: If I walk up to 100 computers at
random (across Perth) and check what browser is SET TO DEFAULT, I fully
expect there to be more than 5 PCs using something other than IE.
Expand this on a global scale and I still think 95% is unbelievable.<br>
<br>
- Jonathan<br>
<br>
Denis Brown wrote:
<blockquote
cite="mid6.2.1.2.2.20051216090622.047943f0@cyllene.uwa.edu.au"
type="cite">Many thanks for all the useful replies on this thread.
In answer to Bret's assumption that the manager provided a source,
well... no. I have since seen references to his 95% figure but it is
now well out of date according to various sources.
<br>
<br>
As respondents including Bret have said, the figures are distorted by
such things as browser emulation and caching as well as country
trends. Japan apparently has the highest declared usage of IE while
Germans seem to prefer other products, notably FireFox. I'm looking
just now at thecounter.com which shows IE6 at 84% in November this
year, FF at 8%
<br>
<br>
Thanks for all the good feedback!
<br>
Denis
<br>
</blockquote>
<br>
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Jonathan Young<br>
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