Netscape browsers have continued to lose market share at a steady clip, falling to a new low of 3.4 percent as of this week, according to new figures. A year ago, Netscape’s market share stood at 13 percent, but fell steeply to 7 percent by March, as IE 6 gained popularity. IE has now reached 96 percent market penetration, according to StatMarket, up from 87 percent a year ago. Mozilla gained some market share when it finally reached a 1.0 release earlier this year, but browsers such as Mozilla and Opera still only accounted for less than 1 percent of the market, StatMarket said.Our take: Despite… accusations that I do not like Mozilla (which are not true – Mozilla is the only open source project that I have an account to submit bugs and help out), I asked my husband last night to install it and try it out. He did so, but he was not able to get some shortcuts to work the way he wanted to (eg. the way IE works). He got into help, and then he turned to me and said: “so, where is the help ‘for IE users’ helping you to migrate to Mozilla?”
So, where is it? IE6 has a Help item called “For Netscape users”. JBQ stopped using it after that, as he did not want to go through the whole help to just learn to use a browser. He knows how to use a browser. He only needed the “diff”.
Mozilla is close enough. But little things like this, widget speed problem for me and usability for others (mainly for Windows IE users, who are the important share of the market) can still drive a person on to not use Mozilla.
And yes, I love Mozilla’s tab browsing and fast HTML engine, Gecko. These are features that make Mozilla a very good product. But other things, are just not right yet.
//Microsoft 95.97%
Netscape 3.39%
Other .64% //
So…Nautilis, Konqueror, HotJava, Amaya, Chimera, Opera (if not set to mimic IE), iCab, OmniWeb, et. al …
and all other browsers added together… don’t even make up *one percent* of all browsers being used?
I find that hard to believe…
These figures are meaningless. Everyone spoofs as IE.
>>These figures are meaningless. Everyone spoofs as IE.<<
If not Netscape!
[i]don’t even make up *one percent*[/i ]
Identifying as IE might make the results non reliable but the error margin might not be larger than 3 % (empirically ?).
>I find that hard to believe…
I don’t. Even on OSNews, the LARGE majority of people are surfing with IE. A lot of people favor and like Linux, but most of them are browsing mostly from work or from their main OS, which in most of the cases, is, Windows.
These metrics always are totally biased. Not only do they ignore “spoofing” but they usually calculate numbers off some totally “neutral” site like Microsoft.com. Since AOL has recently moved over to Mozilla, I expect that even poor statisticians will be able to pick this up by next year, unless they are totally on Redmond’s payroll.
BTW: Mozilla is the best browser BY FAR, IMHO. Can you block pop-ups with one-click with IE? No. Do tabbed browsing? No. Sure, it launches slow, but after it is up, it is as fast as I have seen in a browser.
@Eugenia: It would be interesting, how many percent surf to OSNEWS with IE, Mozilla, Opera etc. and how many of them use Win/Linux ….. Can you give us numbers?
> These figures are meaningless. Everyone spoofs as IE.
IMO it is very sad that this is necessary. Too many websites simply won’t deal with you without spoofing. Luckily this isn’t needed for OSNews, but who would bother turning the spoofing off for these websites only?
The statistics are IMO only a good but rough indicator of the monopolistic power Microsoft has within the webbrowser market.
>Can you give us numbers?
Yes, but the web site that has our numbers is currently down. It was up 20 mins ago… 😮
I will let you know when it is up again.
Mike,
Off topic, but what’s up Amiga.org?
I am not arguing whether the figures are biased, but it is true that many people are using IE by default on their work computer…
Now, is Mozilla the best browser ? I don’t know about that. I like Opera a lot and have been told that Galeon was definitely worth it, though i have not given it a shot yet. I am not convinced that having everything (browsing, mail, irc, ftp, …) in one is a great idea…
Eugenia > I would be interested to get the osnews figures, too
Our other stats site is down, so these are the stats from Webalizer, as runs on this server. These are the stats since last night 12 AM, I think:
http://www.osnews.com/img/1629/browsers.png
Most of these are IE.
> http://www.osnews.com/img/1629/browsers.png
Opera is not in this top 30, but Konqueror is #13??? I really cann’t believe this…. ?!?
Well, if 99% people leaving Opera’s default string as is (which they do – defaults matter), it will show as IE.
I have said that in the past: Opera AG should stop doing this, identifying them as IE. Yes, it is better for the user’s surfing, but it kills THEIR stats and their business deals in the long run. They could have both if they wanted. They could identify as IE, and then add a “opera” at the end of the string.
> Can you give us numbers?
The numbers would be greatly misleading. For instance almost all OSNews visitors using the three main Amiga browsers AWeb, Voyager and IBrowse are all counted as running Mozilla, Netscape or IE.
The few AmigaOS users who turned the spoofing off are counted as using Amiga Voyager on top of the *Photon* OS (QNX GUI system!)? Some of the IBrowse people who disabled webbrowser spoofing show up as using Windows PCs. The most widely used Amiga browser (included with AmigaOS 3.5, AmigaOS 3.9, AmigaOS XL) AWeb can´t be found within the statistics at all!
The numbers are very misleading indeed!
> Well, if 99% people leaving Opera’s default string as is
Yes this would be possible.
I think the WWW-World would be a better place for alternative browsers if there would be no possibility to identify the browser ;-)…
Thanks for your always fast response Eugenia!!!
>The numbers are very misleading indeed!
Sure they might be, but I do not expect more than 20 people per day to browser with Amiga.
Even BeOS (which none of its browser identifies as IE) does not yield more than 60-80 entries per day.
BTW, the fact that the numbers of IE going UP, is the important issue here. Not if Opera spoofs as IE. Why?
Because IE’s numbers go up _anyway_.
Mozilla and Netscape 6/7 are identifying as themselves. However, IE is *still* going up. And that’s the point of their research.
I do not believe that Mozilla/NS 6/7 has captivated the markets or even their interest. And this is an issue.
> Off topic, but what’s up Amiga.org?
Yes it is very unfortunate, especially considering the huige amounts of effort which Amiga users are putting into the website. The website has been down for a week now.
Anyway this is from Wayne Hunt (Amiga.org webmaster):
Not our fault this time guys. According to the ISP, someone severed the T1 with a backhoe (tractor blade) sometime monday morning. Due to the time it takes for the west coast to wake up, they were unaware of it until what I consider to be mid-afternoon (east coast). From what I understand, they are working on it, but whether “working on it” includes the weekend, I have no idea. We should be back soon. Hopefully.
Wayne
“I have said that in the past: Opera AG should stop doing this, identifying them as IE. Yes, it is better for the user’s surfing, but it kills THEIR stats and their business deals in the long run. They could have both if they wanted. They could identify as IE, and then add a “opera” at the end of the string.”
I’m not sure if I accidentally tweaked it or what, but under File->Quick Preferences, “Identify as Opera” is checked. I’m running version 6.05 on Windows. Maybe in newer versions they are identifying themselves?
I do not believe that Mozilla/NS 6/7 has captivated the markets or even their interest. And this is an issue.
Yes, I agree. Many people that I know tried Netscape 6.0 and found it to be so buggy that it was a joke. No one could possibly have used it in a productive environment. I tried it and it crashed about 15-20 times during the net install and then about every two or three pages once it was installed. While recent versions are much better, I wonder if people are reluctant to try the newer versions because of their previous experiences?
I beleave this is complete nonsense.
Where did they get stats? Google zeitgeist shows something completely different! And what useragents did they check for?
I posted a couple of comments in their talkback and now each time I try to connect to ZDnet I’m getting connection refused while my friend is able to load ZDnet fine! Cnet also refuses me. Other websites work fine!
It is StatMarket that did the research, the biggest stat company worldwide, not ZDNews.
I usually run Linux as my main desktop, but I also have a win2k box and and XP box (the xp box being my wifes) I just installed Mozilla 1.1 on all of them and it is running GREAT on all of them…even the old, slow, dual pII 300…and it has a problem with it’s agp port i believe
I installed Opera 6.05 yesterday. The default Id is still MSIE 5.0
> Sure they might be, but I do not expect more than 20
> people per day to browser with Amiga.
I do believe there are alot more than that. Anyway, the statistics of Amiga.org show similar figures because of spoofing as well. But webbrowser polls have shown that the actual number of people using Amiga browsers is much larger than the statistics show.
> Even BeOS (which none of its browser identifies as IE)
> does not yield more than 60-80 entries per day.
Even today there are more PD and commercial software developments for the Amiga as compared to BeOS software developments. Also there are roughly 3 times as many websites covering Amiga topics as compared to BeOS ones. This makes me believe that people shouldn’t underestimate the amount of Amiga classics still in use today. (even for webbrowsing)
Also there still are groups of people who still are using Amigas as their sole computers (although mainly Germany, Poland and other small non English languaged countries). BeOS users are more likely to use IE or Mozilla as they mostly already have Windows or Linux installed on the same box.
I do agree however that currently BeOS/AmigaOS/QNX RTP/etc browsers play an insignificant role within the global desktop browser market.
I am surprised that nobody jumped at the fact that according to Startmarket, IE market share is superior to the total market share of all the OS IE could run on !
To get such figures, there should not be a single Windows/Mac user in the world using anything else than IE !! Come on let’s get serious, this study is a joke and its purpose it to attract people to the Statmarkets ecommerce site.
Browser stats:
http://66.181.171.71/2/42699/400/?date=0
OS stats:
http://66.181.171.71/2/42699/400/?sub_page=9&date=0
BTW, this is not as accurate as webalizer at some places. The stupid IE sometimes does not load the Counted icon because of a bug in its cache.
I read the report, I wish they would have went into more detail where they got their numbers from. You also have to take into account that every new machine that is bought from a major vendor, usually includes a Windows os, and the default web browser, IE. Is it possible that within a year, that a lot of new users bought machines to get online? The average user probably won’t have a real reason to try another web browser anyway. Just remember: There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics
.
i’ve read from multiple moz articles/interviews etc that moz doesnt care about the end user of their browser. the browser itself is just a demonstration of the technology they have made for projects.
good examples would be galeon and komodo. if <insert corporation> made a galeon type browser (i.e. kick ass) on the win32 api then it *may* get over 3%
but joe user is most likely never even heard of moz, or opera for that matter. windows, er, IE has this market until theres a reason to compete in this market (i dont know why there would be at this time..)
But ZDnet did refuse me! (It seems they removed the block.) And it is still stupid they just got the info of StatMarket without explaining how they got it.
Btw. is there any reason to use IE? I’m using a sort of final version of Netscape 7.0 that was on the ftp for a short moment. The last time I tried IE 6.0 it ran extremely slow on my pc 1ghz, 128mb. I don’t understand why so many people are still using a browser that is about a year old.
My website has some special enhancements ( http://www.bayerwerke.com/Windows/Windows.htm ) specifically aimed at giving users browsing with Internet Explorer while using a computer that has restriced access to many of it’s features, for example at a library of cybercafe. The links provided can unrestrict such access. Despite this, IE only manages 61%. The full statistics are as follows;
1% Opera 6.01
27% Netscape 5
1% Opera 6.02
2% Opera 6.05
1% Netscape 4.79
61% MSIE 4
1% Netscape 4.7
2% Konqueror 5
1% Netscape 4.73
Additionally, I have tested my Motorola StarTac telephone against WebTrends which records the visit as IE 5.
“These figures are meaningless. Everyone spoofs as IE.”
Personally, I don’t know of any browsers that spoof as IE. However, I know of several that spoof as Netscape, including Opera by default.
The stats for my site aren’t quite as dismal. I show IE has having 89% and Netscape as having 8%.
> Statistics never lie?
If only that was true.
Linux.com poll (2002)=>
My primary home operating system is:
1) Amiga 32% (3527 votes)
2) MacOS 22% (2486 votes)
3) BeOS 15% (1689 votes)
http://linux.com/pollBooth.pl?qid=248§ion=index&aid=5
“Personally, I don’t know of any browsers that spoof as IE. However, I know of several that spoof as Netscape, including Opera by default”
Oops… Other posters are right. I checked my new version of Opera and it does spoof as IE. It used to spoof as Netscape by default.
Anyway, just some comments on other browsers.
Mozilla has potential, but I really wish they would fix the annoying Java intergration bugs. I’ve filed bug reports about it on Bugzilla.
Opera is nice, but seems to have some problems rendering png images correctly, either that or it doesn’t render background colors correctly. I designed a set of png icons for a Web site where the background of the icon was the same color as the intended page background color (to make up for the fact that most browsers don’t support png transparency). Worked great in IE and Netscape. But in Opera, the image background was clearly visable because the color wasn’t rendered correctly.
As an Opera userr, I have to spoof to get good compatibility, so I have it spoofing as NETSCAPE 4.78
This way I can use most if not all sites ( including hotmail ) but I dont give recognition to a MS Browser
I recommend everyone do likewise.
>>So…Nautilis, Konqueror, HotJava, Amaya, Chimera, Opera (if not set to mimic IE), iCab, OmniWeb, et. al …
and all other browsers added together… don’t even make up *one percent* of all browsers being used? <<
Well if you take opera out of that. I belive those browsers are mac and X specific, I have no clue what Amay or Hotjava is. The total market possable there for the OS is 4-5% at best, with Mac 3-4% , linux .5% and who knows how muc FBSD and such. Most users of things that run X will run Mozilla and most mac users probably use IE, so it wouldn’t be surprising at all if aside from Opera in there it was below 1%
Opera should show itself to be Opera but as pointed out there are reasons for their doing. I agree with the one person who said it would be nice if web pages couldn’t tell what your browser is. Then companies would make their sites universal, One would hope. or better have Browser makers stick to the standards. No IE specific sites. A smart company would try to make their sites work with all browsers in reason, make them work with IE , Netscape/mozilla and Opera, But in the end there will probably always be reasons they don’t. when it comes to websites the customer seams not to be always right.
“to make up for the fact that most browsers don’t support png transparency”
Actually, most do. At least Mozilla and Konqueror, don’t know about Opera. I have to say that I’m really pissed that MS doesn’t support them as of now and I will most probably use them soon. If my users complain about that, I will tell them that they should complain at Microsoft. PNG transparency is just too damn usefull to let it go just because MS doesn’t care about it (don’t tell me it would be too difficult for them
). I hope that the next release of IE will set this straight at least.
I designed a set of png icons for a Web site where the background of the icon was the same color as the intended page background color (to make up for the fact that most browsers don’t support png transparency). Worked great in IE and Netscape.
I don’t agree: IE doesn’t render well png. My site (http://korbinus.fr.st) uses png with using the same background color as the web page. If you go there with IE, you’ll see the png background while you don’t with Mozilla.
“PNG transparency is just too damn usefull to let it go just because MS doesn’t care about it (don’t tell me it would be too difficult for them
). I hope that the next release of IE will set this straight at least.”
Microsoft has actually been one of the biggest supporters of PNG, so I’m sure they will have the support and I’m sure Microsoft does care about it. After all, I’m sure Microsoft doesn’t like paying Unisys for a stupid patent anymore than any other software vendor does. Microsoft probably would like to see GIF just go away as much as the next software company.
“I don’t agree: IE doesn’t render well png. My site (http://korbinus.fr.st) uses png with using the same background color as the web page.”
Hmm… I checked out your site in IE 6 and i can’t see the PNG background. They seem to render fine in IE 6.
BTW… Off topic message for OS News management… What’s up with bringing the annoying popup adds back? You said you removed them after a survey said users didn’t like them.
Honestely, if IE was available on all platforms, other browsers would be dead, because of IE’s speed of getting the job done (compared to Mozilla) and the technology that it supports. eg. ActiveX, VBScript … which Mozilla or Opera just don’t.
Hmm… I checked out your site in IE 6 and i can’t see the PNG background. They seem to render fine in IE 6.
Well, I usually see the PNG backgrounds in both IE 5 and 6, and this makes me worrying a bit about my design. But if you don’t, then I shouldn’t 🙂
Did you check also with the Orange Mozilla theme?
“Honestely, if IE was available on all platforms, other browsers would be dead, because of IE’s speed of getting the job done (compared to Mozilla) and the technology that it supports. eg. ActiveX, VBScript … which Mozilla or Opera just don’t.”
Well, I disagree. Primarily because IE is available on the only two platforms that really matter, which of course is Windows and Macintosh. Other platforms are pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the browser market since they are mostly relegated to servers.
As far as VBScript, How many people actually use it? Not many that I know of. In fact, I can’t think of any Web sites I visit that use it.
“Did you check also with the Orange Mozilla theme?”
Yep. Even in the orange Mozilla theme I can’t see the png background.
> Honestely, if IE was available on all platforms, other
> browsers would be dead
I don’t think so. IE is far too bloated to be considered for embedded devices and i.e. relatively low powered classic 68k Amigas. Amiga browsers are much smaller and more efficiently written. Sadly Microsoft can dictate introducing any new standards and mainly therefor alternative webbrowsers currently lag behind the monopolist. This while alternative webbrowser developers do everything in their power to stay compatible (even by spoofing).
Luckily it is relatively easy for embedded browsers to migrate to desktop systems and therefor IMO there is still hope for a competitive desktop browser market in the near future.
“Honestely, if IE was available on all platforms, other browsers would be dead, because of IE’s speed of getting the job done (compared to Mozilla) and the technology that it supports. eg. ActiveX, VBScript … which Mozilla or Opera just don’t.”
By “technology” I almost have to assume you mean “security holes”. ActiveX, VB Script etc. is a mess security wise…
There is something weird happening with PNG and Opera. From my home PC, Opera renders PNG perfectly. At work, I get the Quicktime Icon briefly (plugin), then an almost perfect PNG pops up, but with a catch – when I hit + to zoom in, the PNG image shrinks, and vice versa (with – it zooms). I dont get this behaviour at home, so it must be a pluggin setting (or registering PNG pluggins from Quicktime within Opera).
Weird.
“By “technology” I almost have to assume you mean “security holes”. ActiveX, VB Script etc. is a mess security wise…”
This isn’t entirely fair. You have to remember that some of these security issues come from the fact that originally, ActiveX and VB Script were far more capable than Java since they could actually read and write from the hard disk. Originally, browser JVMs generally didn’t allow this. However, many of them do now, and as such, Java now has some of the same security issues.
Considering that Netscape 6.0 was based on Mozilla M18, and 6.2 is based on Mozilla 0.9.4, I am not surprised that Netscape got very bad karma during these releases (I mean, I still just can’t understand why they released 6.0 with Mozilla being at that state).
I will really worry when Netscape’s share goes even lower after 7.0 and the Gecko-based AOL are released.
Let’s stop fighting the inevitable! Everybody else is doing it! MS is so great, secure, featurefull and bug free, not to mention intuitive. I don’t need freedom when I can have defacto standards, no matter how flawed! I trust Microsoft not to take advantage of me. If they offered it, I’d let them store all my data too, at microsoft.com. According to the EULA they already own all my data anyways.
Microsoft only has all our best interests at heart. They really are looking out for the interests of end users, protecting us from even thinking about inappropriate use of content. I can’t wait until all their DRM technologies are ready. I really think you should have to buy a separate copy of all your music and videos and digital books for every player or reader you own. It’s only fair.
I also think we should support extension of copyright laws too, so that copyright holders can make money off their work forever, and it never passes into the public domain. It might hurt our culture, but who am I to stand in the way of Disney’s profits. I know they ripped off their most famous work from others, including everything from Steamboat Willy to The Brothers Grimm, but after all, it’s not like the Brothers Grimm are making any money off their stories anymore. Why shouldn’t Disney instead, to the exclusion of everyone else? Microsoft agrees, and they’re helping make it possible.
While I’m at it, I think the government should review all our correspondence. After all, I wouldn’t want to accidentally think contentious thoughts. After all shouldn’t corporate and government policy be the same, and aren’t they more important than personal freedom?
Oh, and I buy all my clothes at the Gap, too.
MrCranky
“Many people that I know tried Netscape 6.0 and found it to be so buggy that it was a joke. No one could possibly have used it in a productive environment. I tried it and it crashed about 15-20 times during the net install and then about every two or three pages once it was installed. While recent versions are much better, I wonder if people are reluctant to try the newer versions because of their previous experiences?”
——————————————————–
Absolutely correct. It was inferior to it’s predecessors, and frankly everything else in the world. Open source is just a license for sabatuers and cranks with odd ideas to bugger-up things with their malice and odd notions. Netscape can’t even render pages that work under DOS browsers like Arachne or GEOS/New Deal, the oldest, lamest browser of them all. I’m designing my pages under Netscape now. If it works under THAT piece of crap it will work on anything.
Opera = Capitalist browser
IE = Fascist browser
Open Source = Socialist browser
It’s fairly clear which politics are effective and which are not.
</obviousflamebait>
After looking at the stats for osnews.com I can see that Gecko based browsers account for 15%.
offcouse this is not as good as IE share, but still much larger than the ~1 %
It’s possible. The way how to do it is just sucking:
<DIV STYLE=”width:400; height:300;
filter:progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.AlphaImageLoader
(src=’pics/png-pic.png’, sizingMethod=’image’)”>
</DIV>
IE sucks. Everybody whi says that IE is a very good browser has now idea of reality.
KAMiKAZOW is right, IE’s support of PNG files sucks! That is another reason why I don’t use it, other than it’s slow rendering!
That is only true for the Mac version of IE. Not the Windows one.
In any event, this kind of FuD will only mean that the users will loose at the end…
For instance, i prefer the whole UI and speed of Mozilla, but i’ve to agree that the object model of IE is much more advanced.
Simple things like finding the cursor position within a textarea or get and replace the current selected text is very complex to near impossible in Mozilla… Not to mention the capability to show the content of one as text or html…
But alas… we have to wait for another round of javascript standards…
Cheers…
HotJava – Web browser made by SUN 100% in java…
Amaya – Web browser made by the W2C consortion as a show off the standards… (at least is downloadable from it’s site)
Both are more or less defunct [i think development stoped for both…] and are used mostly for testing purposes… (i guess… wandering what people do with those browsers…)
Cheers…
You are wrong when you are saying that no browser under BeOS spoofs as IE, and that Mozilla doesn’t spoof as IE either. Sure it doesn’t do it by default, but it’s easy to change, most of my friends have done it, and so have I, because I can’t do banking without it.
Also, as Opera spoofs by default, couldn’t the stats saying that IE goes up also say that Opera goes up? cause if I look around here in Sweden (which though is known to be more acceptive about alternatives than the US) a lot of Netscape users are switching to Opera.
I’m not saying that all of it is Opera, but I know that Opera is in fact growing a lot these days, at least around here.
>>That is only true for the Mac version of IE. Not the Windows one.<<
That’s because the Mac version is an afterthought to the Windows version… the only decent software MacBU has written for Mac OS is Office v. X (well except for Entourage needs some fixing, it’s unstable at the moment)!
Here are the numbers from my personal website which is not a website dealing with computers as subject matter.
 MSIE 5  55.59% Â
Netscape 4Â 18.53%Â Â
MSIE 6Â 16.60%Â Â
Netscape 6Â 4.63%Â Â
MSIE 4Â 1.93%Â Â
Netscape 3Â 1.15%Â Â
AOL 4Â 0.77%Â Â
MSIE 3Â 0.38%
Granted my site is a small unknown site but my numbers reflect the users visiting my site and Netscape users are actually gaining from about 20% of the total last year to 24.32% this year.
Thankfully 1 in 4 people out there know what Anti-Trust Monopolists means. Â
Hi,
I don’t know how actual it is, but I found following site interesting.
http://www.richinstyle.com
http://www.richinstyle.com/bugs/table.html
It shows bugs of various browsers in regards to css. Well – the question is, who defines them? W3C? Is the definition clear enough?
Although Mozilla is being regarded being one of the most standard compliant browsers, I can still find pages, where e.g. javascript menus either don’t work ( http://www.dpreview.com ), or are slow. Is that because Mozilla is flawed, or just the site uses non compliant js code optimized especially to IE?
-pekr-
To the person who made the GEOS browser comment…
What version were you trying? Yes, the original version crashed pretty easily. The more recent versions (GlobalPC, New Deal Office 2000, Breadbox Ensemble) are pretty decent. Tends to render HTML faster and better than Netscape 4.x, and rarely crashes. Lack of Javascript is the only real problem with it.
I completely agree to this point, and then I had a contrary comment.
BTW: Mozilla is the best browser BY FAR, IMHO. Can you block pop-ups with one-click with IE? No. Do tabbed browsing? No. Sure, it launches slow, but after it is up, it is as fast as I have seen in a browser.
Mozilla is slow starting up on Windows, but on my Linux machines, it’s just as fast as IE is on Windows.
I don’t. Even on OSNews, the LARGE majority of people are surfing with IE. A lot of people favor and like Linux, but most of them are browsing mostly from work or from their main OS, which in most of the cases, is, Windows.
I’ll have to quit frequenting OSNews on my only Windows machine; the one at work (of course I do use Opera set to identify itself as such, so at least I’m not helping IE’s numbers).
Just out of curiosity, do your numbers match those stated in the article?
Tom Barta: BTW: Mozilla is the best browser BY FAR, IMHO. Can you block pop-ups with one-click with IE? No. Do tabbed browsing? No. Sure, it launches slow, but after it is up, it is as fast as I have seen in a browser.
You probably won’t see any of these features on IE
1) The same reason why Netscape won’t have the pop up ad blocker, Microsoft also makes money from pop-up ads (think MSN). Plus, think of the backslash by web developers if Microsoft, the dominant force, have this feature.
2) As Microsoft is trying to make developers to move from MDI to SDI, it can’t do MDI on IE. It would be shooting it’s own foot.
Mike Bouma: The statistics are IMO only a good but rough indicator of the monopolistic power Microsoft has within the webbrowser market.
They are acting like an dominant player. With 4% of the web browsing world either using IE or spoofing as IE, they can’t be considered monopolisitic.
Bernhard: Opera is not in this top 30, but Konqueror is #13??? I really cann’t believe this…. ?!?
Opera by default spoofs as IE. One mine, it is spoofing as IE still, cause I’m surfing Zaurus’s website which blocks Opera.
Bard C.: I couldn’t reproduce your “slow widgets” problem? […]
Well, most people can’t tell the difference between 60Hz and 80Hz refresh, i don’t expect many to notice it. I notice it on my 1.1GHz Pentium III laptop, but none of my brother notice.
Simba: Personally, I don’t know of any browsers that spoof as IE. However, I know of several that spoof as Netscape, including Opera by default.
Actually, IIRC, in version 5.x, Opera spoofed as Netscape. But in Opera 6, by default, it seems to spoof as IE on Windows NT.
Simba: Opera is nice, but seems to have some problems rendering png images correctly, either that or it doesn’t render background colors correctly.[…]
This is because of the rendering engine. I can’t wait for 7.0. Opera has a lot of problems with transperancy, especially transperant DOM object.
~seedy~: As an Opera userr, I have to spoof to get good compatibility, so I have it spoofing as NETSCAPE 4.78
This way I can use most if not all sites ( including hotmail ) but I dont give recognition to a MS Browser
I find this rather inconviniet. Some sites block Mozilla/Netscape 5.0 and above, some block 4.78 and below. So for convinience sake, I use IE spoofing.
Brad: Well if you take opera out of that. I belive those browsers are mac and X specific, I have no clue what Amay or Hotjava is.
HotJava was Sun’s dead Java-based browser. I liked the UI, but never liked the speed. Amaya is a standards compliant open source browser by W3C. Oh, Nautilus, isn’t OS X specific.
I designed a set of png icons for a Web site where the background of the icon was the same color as the intended page background color (to make up for the fact that most browsers don’t support png transparency). Worked great in IE and Netscape.
There is an hack, if you have a server. It would serve PNGs with transperancy in tact. A lot of sites does this.
I can’t find the URL though.
Simba: Other platforms are pretty much irrelevant when it comes to the browser market since they are mostly relegated to servers.
They better make an version for Linux because Linux is getting more and more revelant in Asian and South American countries.
Mike Bourma: Amiga browsers are much smaller and more efficiently written. Sadly Microsoft can dictate introducing any new standards and mainly therefor alternative webbrowsers currently lag behind the monopolist.
Actually, Microsoft have an impressive amount of standards compliance, and before Mozilla, it was the top. Sadly, the web developers stop using standard HTML and used HTML that takes advantage of IE’s forgiving spirit. This was also the case when netscape was dominant.
ActiveX can be replicated perfectly, therefore there is such products like CodeWeaver’s Cross Over Plugins. But there is only a handful of sites that use ActiveX only stuff.
Opera = Capitalist browser
IE = Fascist browser
Both IE and Opera are capitalistic browsers. IE makes it’s money indirectly. In two ways
– It normally redirect the pages to MSN for search. Plus for a lot of machines (from teir two OEMs and below) to MSN.com.
– The sale of VS (which enables developers to use IE’s APIs) and Frontpage (which makes websites that are made for IE).
Henrik: After looking at the stats for osnews.com I can see that Gecko based browsers account for 15%.
OSNews is a geeksite, not a Avergae Joe portal. if you tell me that Yahoo! recieve 15% from Gecko-based browsers, I would say “wow”.
CattBeMac: That’s because the Mac version is an afterthought to the Windows version… the only decent software MacBU has written for Mac OS is Office v. X
I agree. I have tried IE for Mac, WMP for Mac, and Office for Mac. Only Office is as good or better than the Windows version. But there’s no suprise, IE and WMP is built into Windows, it is hard to port. So hard that WMP is a mostly Java app.
Camel: Mozilla is slow starting up on Windows, but on my Linux machines, it’s just as fast as IE is on Windows.
I would disagree, I find loading Mozilla faster (w/o QuickLaunch) on Windows than Linux. Everything else, it is relatively the same. Prolly it has to load GTK+ too….
Camel: Just out of curiosity, do your numbers match those stated in the article?
You could see for yourself – it doesn’t.
In 6 months I have not found a single website that blocked Netscape 4.x browsers or Operas imitation thereof.. not one
Even MSN hosted sites and Hotmail through MSN messenger work perfectly with them. So don’t give me that crap. 🙂
2) As Microsoft is trying to make developers to move from MDI to SDI, it can’t do MDI on IE. It would be
shooting it’s own foot.
The tabbed interface isn’t really MDI in that sense. An MDI is mostly defined as “windows inside a window”. Sure, one might argue that tabbed interfaces serves multiple documents in one window and is therefore an MDI, but it’s not if you go by the general defenition.
Both IE and Opera are capitalistic browsers.
While I agree that MS makes money indirectly with IE, I’d have to disagree that Opera is a capitalistic company. Since when is commersial the same as capitalistic?
>> The statistics are IMO only a good but rough indicator
>> of the monopolistic power Microsoft has within the
>> webbrowser market.
> They are acting like an dominant player. With 4% of the
> web browsing world either using IE or spoofing as IE,
> they can’t be considered monopolisitic.
4%? (You probably meant to say 94%?) If that was true then you would be right. However the real figure within the desktop browser market is more likely to be around 90%.
If IE does not conform to an internationally agreed upon standard, the standard will simply not become a standard. If Microsoft decides to add non-standard additions the non-standard additions will become the standard. So they do have a monopoly.
Note that being a monopoly by itself can’t be considered illegal. However using an established monopoly such as the Microsoft operating system monopoly for monopolizing different markets like:
the browser market (i.e. integrating the Internet Explorer web browser into the Windows to eliminate competition from Netscape), the software development market (i.e. integrating Media Player, Office suite market), hardware market with the xBox)
and using its market power to form anticompetitive agreements with producers of related goods (i.e. using their power to stop PC manufacturers from supporting BeOS, penalizing Gateway for making new Amiga computers) can easily be considered illegal.
The sad part of the story is that Microsoft holds an important economic monopoly within the US IT sector. Therefor the US is unlikely to take proper actions against this proven abusive monopolist.
“Both IE and Opera are capitalistic browsers. IE makes it’s money
indirectly. In two ways ”
It is also sold directly as part of the Windows OS on any standard
computer.
As a private Linux user (galeon rocks !) but as professionnal Win user I never realised I wad helping IE stats to grow… Thanks to Eugenia’s comment about people who must use IE at work I decided to change things in my everyday’s life. Mozilla is now installed on my pro win2000 box ! Less IE clicks on osnews (and everywhere else) from now
P.S.: I have no problems with slow menus or things like that… My box was re-re-re-re-[…]installed last week.
I used Netscape, IE, and Opera. Netscape definitely sucks, it is buggy, and so buggy that actually I would call it a crap. The version 4.x is the one I was using mainly because the 6.x version was totally unusable. The 4.x is way behind IE 6.0
Opera is good, but it doesn’t support everything, like DOM and so on. It is pretty fast, but there is this ad issue.
Overall Internet Explorer is the best one. Thanks to Microsoft we enjoy the Internet much better.
The web is a fundemental issue, and look at the companies which made investments into this sector. Opera, Netscape and Microsoft. Microsoft is the only titan in this sector. Where is Sun, IBM, Oracle. Nobody is there, and that’s why we have the best browser from Microsoft now. They have enough resources to make any product the best one in its own sector, and they did this without gaining anything.
Netscape is not successful because of its own faults. People accuse Microsoft for their own faults.
Recently in C|Net, Intel was accusing Microsoft XP for its own failure in wireless equipment. The reason is weird. It is because Windows XP made it very easy for a regular user to install any wireless equipment, making other companies enter to the market, which made Intel’s profit shrink and so unprofitable for Intel. This is the monopoly we are talking about.
> Netscape definitely sucks, it is buggy, and so buggy
> that actually I would call it a crap. The version 4.x is
> the one I was using mainly because the 6.x version was
> totally unusable. The 4.x is way behind IE 6.0
I think you fail to see what really happened. At the time when Netscape was still a healthy developed browser there was a competitive webbrowser market. By bundling IE and *even* integrating the browser into the dominant operating system, Microsoft killed this competitive market.
When companies are starting to give away hard worked for technologies for free it is obvious there’s something wrong within their market segment (i.e. BeOS, Netscape/Mozilla, StarOffice/OpenOffice.org). IMO Microsoft killed a viable market for Netscape and also to some extend for Opera (which still has some embedded potential). If the developers of alternative webbrowsers were able to make more money from their efforts they would have had the oppertunity to put much more effort into keeping their browsers up-to-date and bug free.
In the end the consumer is the victum as they need to pay *far* too much for Windows/IE and they are also victum due to the lack of new innovations.
Yes IMO consumers need to pay way too much for Windows as at a certain point the development costs are covered and prices can come down drasticly. However, this hasn’t happened with Microsoft’s products as there is no competitive market.
> Overall Internet Explorer is the best one.
Agreed.
> Thanks to Microsoft we enjoy the Internet much better.
IMO thanks to Micorsoft there currently is less choice and far less oppertunities for alternative OS/webbrowser/Office software developers to make innovations and stay independent from the desktop OS monopolist.
“Nobody is there, and that’s why we have the best browser from Microsoft now. They have enough resources to make any product the best one in its own sector, and they did this without gaining anything.”
Your an idiot. IE is not technically better than Mozilla. It is more compatible than Mozilla. There is a difference. The ONLY reason it is the most popular, is because it comes with the computer. That reason alone is why it has the most market share. Sure, there are other things that help too, but bundling is the main factor that is making the huge difference. Joe users don’t know what Mozilla, Opera or IE are. I do tech support for people all the time. If i say, “Open IE.” They look at me like i’m crazy. All they know is, “I click the blue ‘e’ on my desktop to get internet.”
I have benchmarked IE, Mozilla and Opera in download speed (files not web pages) many times. IE comes in last just about all the time (i don’t know what version i was using though). Usually there is a 100k/s increase when using Mozilla over IE. Go here and see for yourself http://webservices.cnet.com/bandwidth/
Amaya is a standards compliant open source browser by W3C.
Ack! OSNews looks absolutely horrible on Amaya!! I can’t even get to half of the comments. Amaya’s GUI looks like it should have been written for Windows 2.0. Are these people trying to popularize web standards or ridicule them? 😉
//That’s because the Mac version is an afterthought to the Windows version.//
Face it. The Mac itself is an afterthought, and one that is slowly fading from the public’s memory.
I want a really fast browser, not like IE or netscape, mozilla or even opera. I like the idea of Lynx, no pictures, no java scripts, no cgi, pop-up adds, just text. Raw information, that’s what the internet is about anyway right? I want the internet just like it was back when I was rendering autocad drawings on a pentium-pro with 32 MB of RAM running MSDOS (640kb is all you’ll ever need). Who needs a bloated browser like IE, Netscape or Mozilla that sits in 7-10 MB of RAM? 😛 My 2kb on the subject is this, if you want features in a browser and on the web it’s going to take up system resources, period. People are going to use the browser that gives them the features that they want, if you like tabbed browsing, you’ll most likely use a browser such as Opera, if you like email and instant message integration you’ll probably use Netscape, I personally like a clean browser interface and separate windows. So I use IE, that’s not to say that I haven’t tried or used alternate browsers, I have. I keep coming back to IE because I like the features that it has and it preforms well for me, that doesn’t mean that you should use what I use. The majority of users(yes the majority, not just all of us techies that visit sites like OS news) don’t really care what browser they use on the web. Millions of AOL users around the world can’t be wrong about that. People will use what is made available to them, IE happens to be the browser that is made most available, and thus shows up in statistical reports as being the most used. It was not always so, like back in the day when Netscape Navigator was distributed with every ISP disk and held 70% of the market share. Support the browser of your choice, get large groups of people together and petition ISP’s to package your favorite browser, involve yourself in the development of new browsing technology and internet standardization, get involved in the W3 organization, but be prepaired to have to prove your point beyond “because microsoft sucks”.
Me thinks the interresting thing is not if the percentage of hits from IE grows. That would (imho) only show that the number of people using the internet is growing. This because most “new” internet users tend to use what is readily available (i.e. (no pun…) Windows with IE). What would be really nice would be to see the actual numbers of hits from various browsers, from some site that is used as much by all kinds of users (CNN.com?). That would show if these percentage figures show that IE is killing off all competition, or it is just a growing internet populace that (initially?) choose the first browser at hand?
> My 2kb on the subject is this, if you want features in a
> browser and on the web it’s going to take up system
> resources
Yes implementing more features mostly does result to needing more resources. However Netscape, Mozilla and IE are IMO not bloated solely because of their features, but because their inefficient design as well. For instance why are many 68k/PPC Amiga applications offering similar features to a Windows equivalent only a tenth of the size? Why is the Java engine written for the AmigaDE/intent ten times smaller and alot faster than other solutions offering an identical Java environment? IMO this is mainly the result of efficient coding. (BTW IMO Opera is relatively a low-bloat and good standards compliant webbrowser)
IMO MacOS X and WindowsXP are bloated to the extreme and not because of the features they provide. I advise people to try emulating AmigaOS on a PC to understand my point. Both the OS and many applications for AmigaOS are extremely small meanwhile providing loads of features.
http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=1561
> People are going to use the browser that gives them the
> features that they want
Actually most people will use the webbrower they already paid for and is already included with their system, that would mostly be Internet Explorer.
here you go (at least the Mac version):
http://ftp.netscape.com/pub/netscape7/english/7.0/mac/
And NO, this is not the PR1 release… it’s the full blown version, and it looks like they made some changes to the UI as well!
//Both the OS and many applications for AmigaOS are extremely small meanwhile providing loads of features.//
You have GOT TO BE KIDDING.
Amiga OS4 = Windows 3.11
Hideous GUI. Absolutely horrible. Why would anybody want to revert to 10 years ago?
Ridiculous.
>>Amiga OS4 = Windows 3.11<<
No, YOU GOT TO BE KIDDING… nothing was worse than that kludge of code, thinking about Windows 3.1 brings back nightmares!
>>Face it. The Mac itself is an afterthought, and one that is slowly fading from the public’s memory.<<
Unfortunately you won’t see that in your lifetime… it would decades to wipeout 30+ millions Mac users, and until Microsoft and the PC makers put out a reliable product, Macs will be here to stay for a forseeable future!
You need to lay off the ‘dope’ you dope!!!
> Amiga OS4 = Windows 3.11
LOL??? Have you ever used Windows 3.11? It is less advanced than version 1.0 (1985) of the Amiga operating system! You should try emulation it with PC-Task on top of the emulated AmigaOS to compare the provided features!
http://www.kearney.net/~mhoffman/amigapc.html
AmigaOS v1.0 (1985) was a fully 32-bit pre-emptive mulitasking OS while Windows 3.11 (1994) was very limited 16-bit monotasking OS.
> Hideous GUI. Absolutely horrible. Why would anybody want
> to revert to 10 years ago?
Don’t be ridiculous yourself!? How do you know AmigaOS4 will look like? It is know however that the GUI will be almost completely customizable out of the box. (Just like it is possible with 3rd party enhancements for AmigaOS 2.0 (1990) and up)
Cleaned up version:
—
Don’t be ridiculous yourself!? How do *you* know what AmigaOS4 will look like? It is known however that the GUI will almost be completely customizable out of the box.
—
Here are some examples what AmigaOS looks like on classic Amiga computers:
http://www.gfxbase.com/wbshots/wbshots.shtml
dopey_joe if you choose to enlighten yourself by following my AmigaOS emulation tutorial, you will notice that an emulated Windows3.11 environment will actually take more harddrive space (and originally also far more horsepower) than the emulated AmigaOS environment, this while not even offering half of the features provided by the emulated AmigaOS environment. This is what I mean with bloated OSes.
http://www.newsfactor.com/perl/story/19232.html
weird, but alrighty then 🙂
Incompatible web pages, browser code bloat, are you contributing to the problem? Are your own web pages liable in this mess we call browsing? Do you FORCE the viewer to watch flash animations before they can get to the information they’re after? Do you write your code with the assumption that everyone has DSL or a cable modem? Even here at this site, I’ve developed a habit of clicking the stop-loading button, otherwise after I get the text centered the page keeps adjusting itself while it works out it’s unending tables or frames or whatever the hell it’s doing. We are forever told that we need more RAM or a faster CPU, but is it really the user that needs it, or the unending barrage of advertisers on the web that constrict your browsing speed unless you can accomodate all their animations?. Is it really *you* that needs the RAM and power, or are you being forced to upgrade constantly to facilitate the display of others’ advertising? Who benefits from your purchase of higher-priced speed and bandwidth, you, or the bandwidth-stealing spyware you’re unknowingly running on some other company’s behalf? You, or the java-animated advertizing? One of these days look at your browser. I mean really LOOK at it.
HOW MUCH OF YOUR SCREEN ACTUALLY HAS INFORMATION ON IT, AND HOW MUCH IS TAKEN UP BY ADVERTIZING AND DOZENS OF BUTTONS AND PULL-DOWN MENUS THAT YOU NEVER EVEN USE??? Just look how much wasted space there is on your screen while the part you’re trying to read has to be continually scrolled and re-positioned.
All i use is Net + and Mozilla when i do webbanking. screw IE
> Off topic, but what’s up Amiga.org?
CattBeMac, Amiga.org is finally after more than a week back online. 🙂