bc blog

New figures for 2008 are emerging that indicate the continued rise in popularity of the Mozilla open source browser, Firefox. The most recent figures available from W3Schools (stats available here) indicate that the grip Microsoft has held over the internet viewing community with its Internet Explorer browsers is steadily slipping.As at April 2008 the market share for internet Explorer had slipped to just over 50% with the majority of that drop being picked up by the steadily growing Firefox brand.

Seen here is a chart of the current figures relating to Internet Browser Usage worldwide.

Firefox has long been seen as an excellent alternative to the Internet Explorer browsers with its excellent compliance to web-based standards and the ability to use multiple plugins to enhance or customise a user’s web browsing experience. However the fact that Internet Explorer comes pre-installed with the Windows operating system has made it an easy choice for many people not overly concerned with what browser they use. A ‘word of mouth campaign’ however has driven the number of people making the change to the Firefox browser.

Recent numbers also indicate that there has been a rise in the use of the Mac browser, Safari. This is mostly due to a rise in the popularity of the Mac range of desktop and laptop computers, for which the safari browser comes pre-installed. Recently however Apple raised some controversy when it added the Safari browser to its automatic updates for Itunes and Quicktime. Mozilla boss John Lilly says Apple’s inclusion of the Safari browser in iTune’s update software is comparable to methods used to distribute malware, and undermines the trust between software producers and their customers. As a result of the update inclusions we can expect to see the Safari browser’s popularity rise sharply over the next few months as more data becomes available.

Internet Explorer 6 is still the browser of choice for most corporations and large networks due to its stability and proven track record, despite its poor compliance with accepted web standards and usability. This hold on the market share is slowly changing to the newer and more compliant Internet Explorer 7 browser. With the launch of Internet Explorer 8 later this year (currently in Beta testing) and the ceasing of Windows XP sales, more customers will be forced into Vista and its native Internet Explorer 7 browser.

Never has there been a better time for Firefox, amidst all the confusion, to step in and grab a large chunk of the market. Seen by many to be the best of a bad bunch, the Firefox browser has a strong community of developers constantly updating and innovating the browser to improve the way it displays our growing online content.

At Brighton Consulting we place great emphasis on the compliance of all our sites with the major 4 browsers for both Mac and PC as can be seen here in our web design terms and conditions. This was recently discussed by Anthony Voigt in his previous blog post on browser compatibility however it bears re-looking at in light of the newly released figures on browser trends. We are constantly evaluating these trends and should a new standard emerge we will add it to the list of platforms and browsers for which we optimise sites and applications. Generally, if a site is optimised to display correctly in both Firefox and Safari, it should render perfectly well in most other browsers, with only a few specific quirks emerging mainly through Internet Explorer.