OSNews: http://www.osnews.com/story/21172/A_Look_at_Browser_and_OS_Stats_for_OSNews Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2013, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 24 May 2013 04:13:51 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif OSNews.com http://www.osnews.com "Others" http://www.osnews.com/thread?354193 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354193 Just for the record, in my case, "others" means FreeBSD and Konqueror.

See yaEdited 2009-03-20 19:58 UTC Fri, 20 Mar 2009 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (gnemmi) Comments RE: "Others" http://www.osnews.com/thread?354194 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354194 Or maybe those 2% are OpenSolaris users?
And yes, Konqueror could be the most important part of Others.

Anyway, wouldn't it be nice if those stats applied to the entire world? Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (satan666) Comments RE[2]: "Others" http://www.osnews.com/thread?354196 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354196 Konquerer has a share of 1% according to Mint. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments S60 Symbian OS http://www.osnews.com/thread?354198 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354198 I regularly browse on my Nokia N95 to OSnews, so I assume that I would fall under the "other" group. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Schendstok) Comments Cool! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354199 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354199 Great statistics from this site.

My girlfriend uses Firefox after a long lobby... so I think the world is starting to change. I will ask her to read OS News to make clear the statistics!

At least seems balanced for technical persons that do testing stuff or work one. About IE, I think is the case that someone told here: at work most we cannot upgrade our browser, as we are in a corporate institution. At least to be sure that are patches around... Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ciplogic) Comments Epiphany http://www.osnews.com/thread?354200 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354200 Thom, thanks for compiling this information. I would be curious as to the numbers for Gnome's Epiphany browser, using either gecko or webkit backends.Edited 2009-03-20 20:26 UTC Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sbergman27) Comments Others http://www.osnews.com/thread?354201 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354201 If you could compile a list of the "others", I'm sure people here could fill in the blanks so you could update your script/software you use to generate your statistics.

AWeb, IBrowse and OWB are Amiga browsers.. OWB, which stands for Origyn Web Browser has become one of the most popular one in a short time.

I'm sure there's tons of others.. if you supply the unknown, perhaps we can make it known? Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (reflect) Comments Odd http://www.osnews.com/thread?354204 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354204 These stats actually make me feel like a fairly normal computer user. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (tweakedenigma) Comments Breakdown of Flash users http://www.osnews.com/thread?354205 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354205 From the article:

"As it turns out, most of our readers have Flash installed, with only 8% not having Flash ready on their systems. Unsurprisingly, Flash 9 and 10 are the most popular, with respectively 24% and 67%."

Your stats don't mention Swfdec or Gnash at all, which I would expect to be in use by at least 1% of your visitors. I'm guessing that Swfdec and Gnash users are lumped into the 8% that don't have Flash (which would make sense if you had specifically said "Adobe Flash Player", but is a bit ambiguous without). Is that correct? Do you have any stats for Swfdec and Gnash? Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Denver Gingerich) Comments Windows http://www.osnews.com/thread?354206 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354206 Linux/Haiku user here, but of course I check the site from work every day - Windows desktops unsurprisingly.

I'm sure a lot of others do the same and it's not representative of their OS of choice ;) Edited 2009-03-20 20:53 UTC Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (moochris) Comments Breakdown by architecture http://www.osnews.com/thread?354207 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354207 Do you have statistics for which architectures are used to visit the site (x86, x86-64, PPC, SPARC, etc.)? This information tends to be present in the user agent string (or is implied by the OS, ie. for desktop Windows users). Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:48:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Denver Gingerich) Comments RE: Breakdown of Flash users http://www.osnews.com/thread?354208 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354208
Your stats don't mention Swfdec or Gnash at all, which I would expect to be in use by at least 1% of your visitors.


Well, we have less than 1% "Flash 12". That could be the open source flash replacements. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354209 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354209 You are forgetting and not factoring in that a lot of us read OSNews at work. Normal people read Fox News, CNN, etc at the beginning of their day at work where as 'we' read OSNews instead. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 20:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sirhalos) Comments RE: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354210 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354210
You are forgetting and not factoring in that a lot of us read OSNews at work. Normal people read Fox News, CNN, etc at the beginning of their day at work where as 'we' read OSNews instead.


And...?

Whether you use it at work or at home, you're still using it. whether you use it by choice or not, you're still using it. Every hit is as valid as another ;) . Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[2]: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354211 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354211 I think he’s just trying to hint that maybe IE6/Windows usage would be noticably lower if it were not for the “work” factor ;) Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kroc) Comments RE[2]: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354212 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354212 I think a good point to make, would be that many people don't use their preferred OS or browser at work. I think the stats would be way different, if you could exclude that part.

For instance: Exclude hits from the US in working hours and the hits from Europe in working hours. Can you do that? ;) Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ben Jao Ming) Comments RE[2]: Breakdown of Flash users http://www.osnews.com/thread?354214 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354214 Hmm, doesn't Gnash show up as Flash 9? Not sure about swfdec. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (darknexus) Comments "other" browsers http://www.osnews.com/thread?354215 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354215 I wonder how many of those might be RSS readers? I use RSSOwl, but I don't know what user agent it uses to present itself to the server. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (txGreg) Comments IE6 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354217 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354217 IE6 is probably from work users who aren't allowed to upgrade (VERY common)

What I find interesting is 4-5% chrome seems to be fairly common. When it launched, it was around 8-10%, went down to around 1% (or less), and has been slowly climbing ever since. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (google_ninja) Comments Good stuff http://www.osnews.com/thread?354219 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354219 Good statistics info;

please, show us such statistics regularlly and, I do not know, maybe trend graphs would be really interesting too.

Or, I do not, maybe a "widget" showing such info in the main OSNews page ;) Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (ebasconp) Comments RE[2]: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354220 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354220 When I am at work, I am compelled to use Microsoft and Internet Exploder. At home, I am free to use Linux. I will check the osnews site from work on break using Microsoft, but in my heart I am using Linux. So, even though when I get home and I check in using Linux, I still have the stain of having used Microsoft for probably half of my visits to your site.

Would it be possible to factor *my* Microsoft/IE hits to be Linux/Firefox ones? Let's say I average 1 per day - that's 200 per year. After all, if I had a choice, I would have used Linux over Microsoft.

Would that make a difference in the stats? If more of the so-called Microsoft users were like me - using it because we are obliged to at work - would that make a difference?

After all, you are presenting your results to advertisers. I don't want them getting the wrong idea about my computing choices and interests and then making marketing decisions based on that. Just because I use Microsoft half of the time I surf to osnews does not mean I am interested in anything that would pertain to voluntary Microsoft users. I would still be much, much more interested in and likely respond to OSS/Linux related items than in Microsoft ones. However, the stats to not reflect this. Both Microsoft and FLOSS providers may incorrectly choose to either target or avoid me as a result.

To prove the point, this is typed on a laptop that I bought from a Linux-only vendor, in Linux of course. I specifically looked for a provider who offered Linux as a choice, and discounted ones who did not offer Linux or made it difficult to select Linux. Had those latter advertisers thought that my Microsoft-based hits on osnews indicated that I was a potential customer, they were misled. I even researched my choice at lunch times from work, using Microsoft. Taken at face value, that would have seemed to be a contradictory scenario. In the context of my work usage, however, it does make sense. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (note_verbale) Comments IE6 use should be a crime? http://www.osnews.com/thread?354221 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354221
Where it gets a tad bit worrying are the stats for Internet Explorer. Apparently, we still have 5% of our readers visiting OSNews with Internet Explorer 6.0, which should be a crime.

Why not make this crime punishable by not displaying the page unless another (any other) browser/IE version is reported? ;)

A simple browser upgrade is long overdue, and seriously, people who still use IE6 *should* be punished... it's been eight years since that atrocity has been released.

Also, Firefox has no exclusive control over the browser market, nor do they lack competitiors, so "big bad evil monopoly" sounds overkill. They're not even a monopoly, as their 54% and the presence of several other browsers on the pie chart show.

My stats tend to be (currently):
-Linux (Ubuntu 8.10)
-Firefox 3.0.7
-Flash installed, but almost always blocked through the use of Adblock Plus and NoScript
-Screen resolution of 1680x1050 (browser almost never maximized)

I have pretty much all the major browsers (and some minor) installed, but for a while now I've been using Firefox exclusively. I actually have Chromium, Dillo, Epiphany*, Firefox*, Konqueror, Midori, Netsurf, Opera*, SeaMonkey*, lynx, w3m, and links (ones market with * are the ones I use most). By the way, the SeaMonkey 2.0 alphas are looking really nice... Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (UltraZelda64) Comments mobile.osnews.com stats? http://www.osnews.com/thread?354222 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354222 Thom, what about stats from mobile devices?

A side note: I installed IE8 yesterday on Win XP and every time I visit osnews.com using it I get redirected to mobile.osnews.com. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:42:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (wossman) Comments RE[3]: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354223 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354223
I think a good point to make, would be that many people don't use their preferred OS or browser at work. I think the stats would be way different, if you could exclude that part.


Yes, and car sales statistics would probably also be a lot different everyone could just pick the car they wanted, instead of the car they can afford.

Wat I mean to say is is that it makes no sense to remove the work hits form the stats. Hits are hits are hits. These statistics have nothing to do with what people want to use; they show what people are using.Edited 2009-03-20 21:46 UTC Fri, 20 Mar 2009 21:45:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments Totally inaccurate http://www.osnews.com/thread?354227 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354227 Stats can always be manipulated to say whatever you want, we all know this.

This example is pretty useless, I browse the site on my main machine, and my secondary laptop, and my work machine.

My main machine dual boots between Ubuntu and PC-BSD, my laptop between Ubuntu and WinXP and my work machine between XP and Vista.

So I will be showing up with a few skewed results.

What would be better, is, if Thom can come up with a poll that asks what our preferences for a Primary OS and Primary browser are.

After all, in work, I WISH I was using something else. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (raver31) Comments RE: Breakdown of Flash users http://www.osnews.com/thread?354228 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354228 I have no idea how mint counts the open source flash variants, but google analytics counts them as flash supported. They just show up as a different version of flash. For example, "9.0 (Gnash)" vs. "9.0 r124". Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (averycfay) Comments Mozilla http://www.osnews.com/thread?354231 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354231 Long time Mozilla (now Seamonkey) user here. It's still the best (in my opinion). Total shame that very few people even know it exists. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StuffMaster) Comments Served! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354232 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354232 Thanks for listening, Thom!

Now, three things.

1 is for you, Thom: What timespan do those statistics represent? And did you specify an address we could go to see them when we wanted to (updated, of course)? Don't remember if you did. I'll reread the article later.

2 I fall into "others" as I read OSNews mostly from akregator (konqueror based) though I use firefox as my browser of choice in my box (like anybody cares, right?).

3 Well, I think this is a little more "empiric" data confirming my thesis that IE has really lost the hearts of IT people. http://maratux.blogspot.com/2009/02/has-ie-lost-hearts-of-it-people... I guess we'll have to wait and see how IE8 does during the following weeks/months. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (eantoranz) Comments Firefox 2.x http://www.osnews.com/thread?354233 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354233 The "interesting" statistic about the number of people still using Firefox 2.x can probably be explained by BeOS/Haiku users. Firefox 2 is the last available version for BeOS/Haiku. I'm using Firefox 2.0.0.18 on BeOS.

(I've also visited here using IBrowse on an Amiga 500.) Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:14:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (mrAmiga500) Comments RE: Totally inaccurate http://www.osnews.com/thread?354234 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354234
What would be better, is, if Thom can come up with a poll that asks what our preferences for a Primary OS and Primary browser are.

After all, in work, I WISH I was using something else.


Uhm, this isn't about what you WANT to use. These statistics are not meant to look into the minds of people and find out what they WANT to use.

The statistics show with what platforms and browsers people access OSNews. That's all they do. Nothing more, nothing less. They are not useless. You find them useless because you expect these statistics to give you information on something they cannot give you information about.

Similarly, a poll, as you suggest, does not provide us with the data that the statistics provide us with. They measure two completely different things.

Is the difference really that hard to understand? I'm intrigued. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:16:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments break down the Linux figure http://www.osnews.com/thread?354235 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354235 Why is this not possible?
Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009031118 Mandriva/1.9.0.7-1mdv2009.1 (2009.1) Firefox/3.0.7
What UA do other linux distributions use? Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (testerus) Comments RE: Served! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354236 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354236 I never thought that IE had gained the hearts of IT people. I knew a few that used it, but the majority used Mozilla or Opera. I never used IE myself. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:30:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (StuffMaster) Comments Sheesh! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354237 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354237 Calm down people it's just stats! Thom's not claiming to have found the cure for cancer or elixir of life!

Stats are stats; interesting and descriptive. Leave it at that! Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (charlieb) Comments RE[2]: Totally inaccurate http://www.osnews.com/thread?354239 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354239 No, they are indeed two different things. You are right, the figures are exactly what they are supposed to be. It was just me wanting something definitive as to what everyone around here likes to use. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (raver31) Comments RE: Internet Explorer http://www.osnews.com/thread?354242 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354242 Anyone running a non-standards compliant browser (I.E., IE) should be ashamed of themselves.

I've been running Opera steadily since '96 and none of the others measure up. Overall, it is the most non-geek user friendly browser out there.

BTW, All you Open Source, Free software geeks, keep on rockin'. It amazes me that people whom have a passion for coding and freedom; pose the biggest long term threat to Monoplosoft

Sincerely,

non geek. Fri, 20 Mar 2009 22:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Where did liberty go) Comments RE[2]: Internet Explorer http://www.osnews.com/thread?354255 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354255
Anyone running a non-standards compliant browser (I.E., IE) should be ashamed of themselves.


No, because those (non-geeks, "average users") who usually use IE don't notice it. They're not using a particular web browser, they're "using the Internet". For them, it is "Windows" and there's nothing else.

I've been running Opera steadily since '96 and none of the others measure up. Overall, it is the most non-geek user friendly browser out there.


I whish I could agree with that. When we would talk about Opera versions of the past, v5 or v6, I would surely say yes, it's fanfastic. But today's Opera, while still being a very powerful, standard compliant browser, rich at features, and a joy to use, has a growing taste of slowliness, complexity overhead regarding configuration and... I know it's a bit complicated to say, but Opera got slower and more complicated to use. While some changes really appeal to me, others get on my nerves, so I'm observing myself more and more often to be running Firefox - the browser that's always been accused of being "too slow", but in fact, it's sometimes much faster than Opera and displays pages that Opera don't seem to be able to display. But when I use other browsers, I always know why I miss my Opera. At this point I would not want to change, allthough I'm always be told that Firefox can be set to use mouse gestures as well...

Don't get me wrong: If a page is standard compliant, Opera has no problems, so I'm happily using it for OSNews. I even don't change the user agent identification string.

(Erm, Thom, do the statistics take into account that a Linux / UNIX browser can change it's identification string to an "Internet Explorer" pattern?)

Another nice effect of using Opera with OSNews and the pages it links to: When "Flash" is used, you just see an empty box. No dialog window annoying you to download some strange plugin, very relaxing... :-)

Ah, by the way, non-geek FreeBSD + Opera (web) user here. =^_^= Sat, 21 Mar 2009 00:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Doc Pain) Comments RE[2]: Internet Explorer http://www.osnews.com/thread?354256 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354256 Anyone running a non-standards compliant browser (I.E., IE) should be ashamed of themselves.

Well, anyone taking to serious something as trivial as a web browser should think in getting a life. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Hiev) Comments RE[4]: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354263 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354263 Finefinefine.. your statistic has a value. Wasn't trying to reject that; just saying that a statistic showing what the users prefer to use might be of more interest. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 01:53:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Ben Jao Ming) Comments Epiphany http://www.osnews.com/thread?354265 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354265 Does your method of detecting browser distinguish between firefox and epiphany?

I'd be curious to know how many epiphany users there were. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (bloodandsoil) Comments IE 7 and Vista here http://www.osnews.com/thread?354269 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354269 I use IE7 and Vista. I like Vista and I dont spend a lot of time surfing (Usually I am too busy writing) so IE 7 does just fine. I used to be in IT so I know how to take of my system and avoid malware. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (twm_bucket) Comments Other http://www.osnews.com/thread?354270 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354270 I helped in that Other category with a few visits from BeOS with Net+

:-D Glad to help!!!!! Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Kancept) Comments RE: "Others" http://www.osnews.com/thread?354271 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354271 Or Lynx and Firefox 3 in OpenBSD. :p Sat, 21 Mar 2009 02:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (sakeniwefu) Comments Comment by BSDfan http://www.osnews.com/thread?354281 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354281 The 90% of people visiting this site with Flash installed should burn in the hottest fires of hell.

I'm a part of that "Other" 2% (*BSD surely has a larger percentage..)
I'm a part of that 56% (Firefox 3.. sigh)
I'm a part of that 8% (No more f--king flash!)

I use 1024x768.. f--k people with high resolution LCD screens.Edited 2009-03-21 05:34 UTC Sat, 21 Mar 2009 05:33:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (BSDfan) Comments Working hours http://www.osnews.com/thread?354289 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354289 It would have been interesting to see any differences in statistics for working hours and non working hours. This is of course a bit more difficult to do, because you need to take different time zones into account, but non the less interesting.

My guess is that the high figures for ie6 reflects people browsing from work where they often have no choise in what browser to use. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 07:10:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (unoengborg) Comments Thanks http://www.osnews.com/thread?354292 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354292 Thanks for the stats, Thom. It was really interesting to see that. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 08:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Buck) Comments Windows share http://www.osnews.com/thread?354298 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354298
I had not expected that Windows' share would be over 50%


Well, I wouldn't say it's surprising either. E.g. I'm reading the site from Linux at home, but at work I mostly have to use Windows, thus I read OSNews more from Windows than from Linux since I - unfortunately - spend more time at work than at home on workdays. And in Europe Macs are much lower in number than in the US, just an example, we have around 300 people where I work, and there are no more than 2-3 Macs, desktops and netbooks included. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 09:08:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (l3v1) Comments Fun - NUMBERS!!! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354301 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354301 I know I've been a bit harsh on the site since the redesign in terms of things like fixed metric fonts, fixed width layout and accessability failings, but there is one important thing that makes these numbers more relevant than a LOT of statistics presented out there...

Unlike most stats, these are based on a website that actually WORKS in all browsers. As a web developer I recently got into a spat with another developer over a site we were working together on, where he was saying we didn't need to worry about Opera and Safari compatability because the existing site didn't see more than 1% total traffic from either... When (duh!) the existing site didn't WORK RIGHT in either. If the site doesn't work right in part of your demographic, guess what? You're statistics are going to be skewed. It's like doing approval rating stats for Obama at a KKK meeting, or Bush approval ratings from members of PETA - your numbers are going to be a little off ;)

A great example of this is likely the browser statistics for gmail or Microsoft's websites. "under the hood" Opera defaults to "mask as firefox" on those sites, so their developers never get to even see how many Opera users they have, lumping them together with FF users in their stats. (neither site working properly in Opera without the user javascript effectively rewriting the page!)

I'm actually suprised to see your most common resolution so high - the most common of the sites I maintain still ends up 1024x768 right now... though I'm probably one of the few listing as 1920x1200... Given the fonts being fixed size and the average user being lazy, the fixed metric fonts likely limit the resolutions you get of common visitors, most blowing right past the site instead of doing I do, and zooming everything in 40% and hitting 'fit to width' every time I visit the site.

One thing that REALLY suprises me is that the IE6 slice of the pie is so low - with so many people forced to stay on it by their workplace, and the majority of users visiting this site not being DUMB ENOUGH to use IE by choice, IE6 should be more prevalent than 7 given the number of IT departments that STILL won't touch newer versions with a 20 foot cattle prod or cannot upgrade to it because of some rubbish decade old in-house crapplet built around Trident and ActiveX.

The IE 5.x demographic probably is NOT coming from win95/98 as much as you'd think, since IE6 will run on those platforms quite well... I'd be interested in knowing how many of those IE users are actually using IE 5.2 on the Mac, since a LOT of mac users still use that outdated version since many banks and financial websites ONLY work in IE, and that's the most recent available to them. I also know people using MacOS 9 on G3's or less in which case IE 5.2 is the best browser available to them since iCab is a joke, and the last gecko based browser was mozilla suite 1.2.

Older copies of Windows CE or Mobile also likely count towards the IE 5.x demographic since it's often impractical to upgrade those types of devices to run newer versions of the browser.

But that's the fun of statistics, the numbers are concrete, but you can make them say almost anything via differing interpretations or ommissions.

Still, DAMNED good to see a website where IE (curse it to hell) is the minority even if the large slice of firefox likely being more from lemming factor than intelligence.Edited 2009-03-21 09:24 UTC Sat, 21 Mar 2009 09:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (deathshadow) Comments RE[3]: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354304 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354304
Would it be possible to factor *my* Microsoft/IE hits to be Linux/Firefox ones? Let's say I average 1 per day - that's 200 per year. After all, if I had a choice, I would have used Linux over Microsoft.


You can do that, change your useragent to Firefox on Linux ;)
(interesting twist huh?) Sat, 21 Mar 2009 10:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Beta) Comments RE: Fun - NUMBERS!!! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354308 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354308 Actually this site looks a bit rubbish on the Amiga OS (3.1/4.1/MorphOS) web Browser iBrowse, the old one was fine. Still works but looks 'orrible. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 11:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AmigaRobbo) Comments RE[2]: Internet Explorer http://www.osnews.com/thread?354312 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354312
Anyone running a non-standards compliant browser (I.E., IE) should be ashamed of themselves.

I think we can safely assume that no one visiting this site with IE 6 is doing so out of their own free will. Many of us have jobs and many companies still have IE 6 as their default browser. The company I work for only approved IE 7 as optional upgrade for those who want it a few of weeks ago. Any browser other than IE 6 or IE 7 is not allowed unless you are working on a web related project and you need other browsers for testing. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (dagw) Comments RE[2]: Fun - NUMBERS!!! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354313 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354313
Actually this site looks a bit rubbish on the Amiga OS (3.1/4.1/MorphOS) web Browser iBrowse, the old one was fine. Still works but looks 'orrible.


Well, why didn't you send us an email with screenshots and information? We can't fix something if we don't know about it! We are not rich enough to buy Amigas or MorphOS machines, so we have to rely on information from others. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 13:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments RE[3]: Fun - NUMBERS!!! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354316 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354316 Ibrowse does not support CSS, would you change your web site so it doesn't use CSS?

If the answer to that is yes, that I'll send you a screen grab. But that's not the answer I'm expecting to be honest.

Anyway, I though that at least one of you had a Peg II? Morphos is free (as in beer, for 30 minutes anyway), iBrowse is also available for 68k classic Amigas.

BTW I'm writting this in Opera on PPC Debian LennyEdited 2009-03-21 14:27 UTC Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AmigaRobbo) Comments RE[4]: Fun - NUMBERS!!! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354317 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354317 Adam might still be able to figure something out. Bug reports are always welcome, so feel free to send an email to osnews-crew @ osnews . com and adam @ osnews . com Sat, 21 Mar 2009 14:26:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments Linux x MacOS X http://www.osnews.com/thread?354322 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354322 We always see here and in other websites news about US-based statistics of OS market share and in almost all linux percentage is much lower than MacOS X. But you can observe that OS News has more linux readers than MacOS X readers, even using the english language and therefore be accessed more by americans.

But I always suspected this is not true for the entire world ans specially outside USA, where Macs are popular.

I think that linux has now more market share than MacOS X globally and this difference is very big in developing and european countries.

I'm a proud desktop linux user and I never understood how an operating system which runs only on a proprietary hardware can be more popular than a free (as beer and as freedom) operating system running on the same PC hardware used by windows. Even considering that linux is wrongly known as a geek/nerd OS, Apple has not suficient presence nor competitive prices to has more market shar than linux.Edited 2009-03-21 15:07 UTC Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (shiva) Comments RE: Epiphany http://www.osnews.com/thread?354325 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354325 I'm also an Epiphany users. I have just seen that Epiphany identifies itself as "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux x86_64; en; rv:1.9.0.6) Gecko/20080528 Epiphany/2.22" so i think most of the mozilla-users are in reality "gecko-based-browser"-users.

BTW: I'm surprised tha Chrome has already almost catched up with Opera. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (pinky) Comments RE[2]: Epiphany http://www.osnews.com/thread?354326 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354326
BTW: I'm surprised tha Chrome has already almost catched up with Opera.


Mind though that I'm a Chrome user and it wouldn't surprise me if those 5% are from me ;) . Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Thom_Holwerda) Comments Other category http://www.osnews.com/thread?354327 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354327 Some of us browse the site from our mobile phones that are not Windows based or use firefox ;) Browser: Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Teleca Q7; Brew 3.1.5; U; en) 240X400 LGE VX9700 Sat, 21 Mar 2009 15:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TaterSalad) Comments RE: "Others" http://www.osnews.com/thread?354340 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354340 In my case its from when I browse OSnews on my phone. Speaking of which, what happened to the ability to reply to comments from a mobile device?Edited 2009-03-21 17:04 UTC Sat, 21 Mar 2009 16:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (TaterSalad) Comments RE: "Others" http://www.osnews.com/thread?354347 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354347 I use OSNews as one of my test sites for Webster on Syllable. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Vanders) Comments RE: Firefox 2.x http://www.osnews.com/thread?354349 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354349 Damn partially right. Most of BeOS user use the precompiled non official release of Firefox, and it's called "Bon Echo". But it a Firefox with different label.

Mozilla/5.0 (BeOS; U; BeOS BePC; en-US; rv:1.8.1.18) Gecko/20081114 BonEcho/2.0.0.18 Sat, 21 Mar 2009 18:56:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (KrustyVader) Comments How about RSS readers? http://www.osnews.com/thread?354352 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354352 I'm actually using NetNewsWire to read this. I wonder what it reports itself as. Sat, 21 Mar 2009 19:58:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (theosib) Comments RE: Served! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354381 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354381 We installed mint less than a month ago, so these statistics represent 3-4 weeks' worth of traffic Sun, 22 Mar 2009 01:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (David) Comments Your Data is Skewed to a Partical Demographic http://www.osnews.com/thread?354389 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354389 A large fraction of computer users are neither aware of osnews nor are they securty savy like us. I am a computational mathematician and astrophysicist working in a small e-buisness that sells salt lamps http://spiritualquest.com I have been collect statistics with php for the last month if anyone wants real graphs.

60.7% WinXP users since March 6th
22.5% WinVista
8.2% Mac
3% Win2000
Rest Linux or Bots

44.5% IE 7
22.2% IE 6
19.6% Firefox
5.7% Safari
2.5% IE5
1.5% Chrome
Rest OTHER

HAVE FUN WITH REAL DATA Sun, 22 Mar 2009 02:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (haroot) Comments RE[4]: Fun - NUMBERS!!! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354398 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354398 While it's not a be-all end-all solution, this is where semantic markup comes into play - really non-css browsers are being told to **** off at this point, with the majority of developers moving to CSS only layouts since one of the big approaches (and one I heartily endorse) is called separation of presentation from content. Anything in the HMTL should say WHAT elements are, not how they appear - appearance is what CSS is for.

BUT, hand in hand with this separation is another technique called semantic markup - something that (as I mentioned in the past) is missing from this incarnation of OS News. One of the advantages to semantic markup is that when you don't have CSS available you usually at least get meaningful formatting on the page. You have a heading to a section, use a HEADING tag NOT a DIV. You have a paragraph, put it in a PARAGRAPH tag, etc, etc. Quite often using meaningful tags in this role also means a hell of a lot less classes and ID's, meaning less markup... and remember one of the goals of modern markup techniques is to get as much as possible OUT of the markup to save bandwidth.

Take the main page at OSNews, where right now (on top of the buggy confusing formatting - and don't give me that "it's in a CMS" excuse) You have an outerdiv with the so descripting class "item2", followed by a .newstitle1 and .newssubheader1 div, that star thing that I've never been able to figure out what it actually does, but should probably JUST need the anchor to function and not an anchor + span + image with a image replacement technique, an obvious paragraph, etc, etc.

Since we can't post code in here, I'll just slap together a quick example on my server.

http://www.cutcodedown.com/for_others/osnews/template.html

Which shows exactly why slapping div's willy-nilly around everything is often no better, and in many cases worse than using a table - when BOTH are in fact the wrong approach. Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (deathshadow) Comments RE: Your Data is Skewed to a Partical Demographic http://www.osnews.com/thread?354400 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354400 1) I believe they fully recognize that the numbers are skewed. OSNews users tend to be a bit sharper than Joe Sixpack.

2) A "spiritualist" website is going to have numbers just as skewed - just the opposite direction since the majority of technical minded people tend to not put much stock in that sort of thing. (trying to put that as politely as I can and not go all MC Hawking on you)

3) You know that with 201 validation errors on your page you do not even have HTML, you have complete gibberish, right?

4) Tables around single TD? Empty heading tags? Nonsensical heading orders? Hitslink markup inside your HEAD instead of the body? Inlined CSS? Presentational Markup? Marquee??? 30k of HTML for 4K of content? No wonder the layout is broken in Opera (though that could be large fonts compatability) and you are probably driving away business with the 832 megabyte website in some 33 files - at least 30 seconds on firstload here and I'm on a 22mbps downstream.

5) Three separate stats? here's a tip, pick one - or even better, use the ones built into yer damned server and save end users the hassle of loading three separate javascripts from three separate servers increasing the page load time exponentially. Reminds me of a buddy of mine who had a slow as molassas page, so he kept ADDING more statistical tracking to it trying to figure out why it was so slow when his own server had little or no load...

6) Let's just say, I wouldn't go bragging about that site.Edited 2009-03-22 05:59 UTC Sun, 22 Mar 2009 05:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (deathshadow) Comments Eh... http://www.osnews.com/thread?354416 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354416 I'm Opera Mini... Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Auxx) Comments RE[3]: Internet Explorer http://www.osnews.com/thread?354417 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354417 I would like to note, that after many years being advanced Opera user You simply can not migrate to anything else. As a web developer I have all the browsers installed (some of them in virtual machines to avoid conflicts) and I use them frequently. But experience is always awful, because their interface is like a brick: you can grab it and throw somewhere, no rubber handling, coffee-making etc.

So if you are addicted to Opera UI and its features (proper mouse gestures, proper keyboard-only interface, proper tab handling, proper shortcuts and many other things properly made) there is no escape. I do not want use a brick instead of a browser even if brick will kill my enemies with ease. Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:15:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Auxx) Comments Flash enabled != used http://www.osnews.com/thread?354418 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354418 I have Firefox with Flash enabled but with a pluging which disable Flash by default unless I click on it.

And I'm quite picky on which Flash content I click on! Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (renox) Comments RE: Your Data is Skewed to a Partical Demographic http://www.osnews.com/thread?354419 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354419 It's also based in the USA, If I as a non-American running on a non-Windows OS, wanted a salt lamp, I'd take one look see the dollars and go off and find a UK based one.

So you're going to have a Northern American bias there. Which could, and I only say could explain the high Mac/low Linux ratio.

But I think your results are a lot closer to the average than the stats for this site. Sun, 22 Mar 2009 10:50:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (AmigaRobbo) Comments RE: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354444 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354444 I'm not allowed to hook up my Macs at work but found a work around. I work in Tech Support as a Systems Analyst and we have DSL line in our department so we can test VPN accounts which has a wireless router connected to it. The tech that manages this router was sympathetic and gave me the key so I can wireless connect to it. So my stats are based on my G4 PowerBook which runs Tiger.

I notice that it didn't say anything about Safari 4 beta. I use that but before that I used the nightly builds for Webkit. I don't see that listed either. I guess it counts as Safari.

One thought, how about showing us the stats for domains for our e-mail addresses that we use to register here at OS News. That might give us more of an idea where our loyalties lie. Yes I realize that some people will have comcast or some other cable/dsl company as their e-mail address. Those like me those have an @mac.com (@me.com - I HATE me.com, it is so stupid. "me me me me me". I really not that into "me". Sun, 22 Mar 2009 16:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Sabon) Comments Why IE? http://www.osnews.com/thread?354503 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354503 I can't believe osnews readers are still using IE ;)
I mean come on there are lots of great browsers other than IE then why are you folks still using it? Mon, 23 Mar 2009 05:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (microFawad) Comments For windows, check daytime views! http://www.osnews.com/thread?354508 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354508 I'm quite sure that many of those IE- and Windows-people actually arent. Just on their work.

It would be cool to check how the stats differ from work-time to non-worktime. Of course, you have to check through users own timezone, as we're in different places. ;-) Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:13:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Velmont) Comments RE[4]: Work http://www.osnews.com/thread?354509 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354509 Ehhhh.

You're very wrong Thom. Filtering out stats is telling you something about the users of this site. So cutting out daytime to check how many of those hits are work-related actually IS interesting.

No matter how many stupid far fetched analogies you come up with.

What a cheap and very low-brow reply from you, I wouldn't expect that! Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:17:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Velmont) Comments CPU architecture stats, anywhere? http://www.osnews.com/thread?354510 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354510 It would be very interesting to look at CPU architecture statistics. user-agent strings contain this data (for example, mine is "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux ppc; en-US; rv:1.9.0.7) Gecko/2009032022 Iceweasel/3.0.6 (Debian-3.0.6-1)"), but I haven't found such kind of stats anywhere, there are only OSes and browsers. Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:20:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (douglasm) Comments RE: break down the Linux figure http://www.osnews.com/thread?354511 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354511 It is possible. Just Mint that sucks.

Can't remember if free open source analytics-like tool I use (piwik), do it. But they probably do, if else, better get a patch in there ;-) Mon, 23 Mar 2009 08:23:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Velmont) Comments RE[2]: "Others" http://www.osnews.com/thread?354561 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354561 That would be me at home, where I currently use FF3 on OpenBSD 4.4. Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Agent69) Comments RE[2]: Totally inaccurate http://www.osnews.com/thread?354562 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354562 Thom,

Have you considered doing a serious, really detailed, poll of OSNews readers regarding Computer/OS/Browser usage? A OSNews Census, if you will?

I could see that being real interesting, especially if it were done annually to track usage changes over time. Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:28:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Agent69) Comments RE: Firefox 2.x http://www.osnews.com/thread?354563 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354563 It's also the last version for Mac OS 10.3 Panther and there are a lot of people that don't like the new address bar.Edited 2009-03-23 16:47 UTC Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (jokkel) Comments RE: Why IE? http://www.osnews.com/thread?354605 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354605 It's been explained 9 million times already.

A lot of people check out OSN at work. A lot of work environments limit what users can do with their machines with regards to the software they can run. SO a lot of people are locked to IE at work! Mon, 23 Mar 2009 21:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (helf) Comments RE[2]: Why IE? http://www.osnews.com/thread?354663 http://www.osnews.com/thread?354663 hmm this is really bad ;) Tue, 24 Mar 2009 05:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (microFawad) Comments