IE6 Gets Its Coat? What Are Your Stats?

Posted on Thursday, February 21st, 2008

As the dust takes a long time to settle after the recent discussions over the version targeting in Internet Explorer 8 we seem to be living in the future. Tim at CSS Karma made an interesting observation over the market share IE6 and 7 have at the moment.

IE7 Surges Forward

His stats from the North Carolina State University Blackboard login page show that IE7 has taken over as the dominant browser from IE6. Up until now I had assumed that the two were fighting it out quite evenly, but here was some evidence that IE7 is finally starting to win. I checked my stats and the recent trend showed that IE7 was also in the lead.

Maybe this is due to Microsoft opening IE7 up to all Windows users (i.e. including those who didn’t pay for it, if you know what I mean) by removing the Windows Genuine Advantage check back in October last year. Maybe the recent second round of automatic updates pushing IE7 out again are helping (though it’s interesting to note that Microsoft still feel like they have to provide escape mechanisms for those who insist on sticking with IE6, another argument for version targeting perhaps).

Lies, Damn Lies and Statistics

Of course, Tim’s stats come mainly from young, tech savvy students and mine are most likely interested in web development and this skews the figures somewhat. Plus, the only browser usage stats that matter to your site are the ones for your users. But I’m interested anyway, so what are the trends on your site/blog? Have you seen IE7 taking a larger slice of the pie? Is IE6 still holding strong? Is Firefox beating both of them (it is here)? Drop me a comment and let’s see if this trend is for real.

If you enjoyed this post, why not subscribe to Unintentionally Blank

Posted in Browsers | Trackback | Leave a comment


Comments

  1. 1February 22nd, 2008 at 4:02 pm

    Tim Says:

    Not that I really trust w3schools (for no valid reason, just that they’re web tutorials site still using a table-base layout), but they have this:
    IE6: 32%
    IE7: 21%
    FF: 34%
    Safari: 1.9%

    So, they have Firefox technically winning.
    from:http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp


  2. 2March 5th, 2008 at 10:51 am

    Si Says:

    FWIW: I look after a UK Local Government website, so I believe our stat’s to be pretty representative of true browser market share. Here’s the breakdown (by session for last month):

    Internet Explorer 5,797 86.37%
    Firefox 719 10.71%
    Opera 26 0.39%
    Mozilla 24 0.36%
    Camino 5 0.07%
    Netscape 2 0.03%
    Konqueror 2 0.03%
    Mozilla Compatible 1 0.01%

    ====

    Internet Explorer 5,797 100.00%
    7.0 3,150 54.34%
    6.0 2,616 45.13%
    5.5 23 0.40%
    5.01 3 0.05%
    5.17 2 0.03%
    5.0 2 0.03%
    5.23 1 0.02%

    ===

    Firefox 719 100.00%
    2.0.0.12 641 89.15%
    2.0.0.11 18 2.50%
    2.0.0.6 10 1.39%
    1.5.0.12 8 1.11%
    2.0.0.8 6 0.83%
    2.0 5 0.70%
    2.0.0.3 5 0.70%
    2.0.0.9 5 0.70%
    1.0.7 4 0.56%
    3.0 3 0.42%

    So, in short, IE still has 86% share, with FF at nearly 11%. IE7 - with 54% - has overtaken IE6 - which has 45%.

    No real surprises there then!

    Hope that’s useful.

    Cheers,
    Si


  3. 3March 6th, 2008 at 8:54 am

    Phil Says:

    Thanks Tim, I had a look at W3Schools myself and I’m surprised that IE6 is still in the lead. Amongst developers who would be visiting the site I would imagine a higher uptake of IE7 (and of course Firefox in the lead!).

    Thanks too, Si, those stats are interesting as well. Not only at the top, where IE clearly has a massive lead, but at the bottom, where there is no sign of Safari. It is nice again to see IE7 starting to exert dominance over IE6 as well.


Leave a Comment