It's disappointing the survey doesn't report the dribs and drabs of the browser world. The last one of these I saw, a few months ago, showed that 0.7% were still using Netscape! The mind boggles...
WebKit is also in Samsung's upcoming Bada OS, which I think will have between 2 to 5 % of the smartphone market by the end of this year.
Another win for WebKit, and for all we know, as PCs are being replaced by mobile devices, WebKit could become as omnipresent as IE was in its best days, with 80 %+ combined marketshare.
While it looks like Firefox as a significant lead over WebKit-based browsers, that is only on the desktop. Id like to see the percentages for all devices with browsers.
Sorry to disappoint you here a little, but what you're seeing is already the total, including mobile devices. NetApplications are reporting that mobile devices cover around 2 % of all web surfing now, with Java browsers for dumb phones (Opera) and iPhone OS dominating at around 0.75 % each, and 0.5 % for all the others combined, including Symbian, Android, Blackberry (in that order).
On a worldwide basis, almost all of our web browsing time (98 %) seems to still be spent on the PC/Mac, not on mobile devices.
Now it could be that the US and Western Countries are ahead in this respect, so the mobile share might be much higher than 2 % here.
It could be that tablets like the iPad will accelerate the shift the iPhone initiated, so mobile devices will make faster inroads in the next 3 years than in the last 3 years.
And it could also be that NetApplications cannot measure all of our internet time on mobile devices properly, because we spend a lot of time not in the browser, but in apps.
I use Firefox and the latest versions have sped things up quite a bit.
One can have speed and luxury too now.
Added the plug-in Fission, which gives a fast progress bar in the address bar like Safari.
Themed the window to cheer things up a bit, nice change from Safari´s metallic look.
So many plug-ins, so much fun. But here´s mine.
1 Click YouTube Video Downloader
Adblock Plus
Betterprivacy (Flash cookie killer)
Clipple (extended clipboard)
Cooliris (see it, neat)
Download Status bar
Fastest Fox
FlagFox
Ghostery (web bugs)
InvisibleHand (searches the net automatically for cheapest prices)
Is it Compatible?
Lazarus (form recovery)
Low Quality Flash
Morning Coffee
No Script (flash, java, javascript etc firewall, web cop)
NoSquint (remembers zoom levels for pages)
OptimizeGoogle
RequestPolicy
SmoothWheel (smooth scrolling)
Split Browser (splits browser window as you like)
TrackMeNot (randomizes search entries)
TVFox (eh, still checking it out)
WOT (web of trust, green your good! also works for links in web mail)
Also Firefox is Ubuntu Linux main browser, so the plug-in goodies are available there too.
One can get a safe, malware free and inexpensive pre-installed Linux netbook for a few hundred dollars if all one plans to do is surf, email, open office. The UI is a lot like OS X, or it can be themed to look like XP or OS X even. Install Flash from Adobe and your off.
Apple's motivation for developing Safari and Google's motivation for developing Chrome are different. Apple likely developed Safari because 1) Microsoft decided it wanted to stop supporting Explorer on the Mac and 2) Apple was tired of third parties controlling something as important as Apple's browsing experience. If Firefox abandoned Mac development, Apple would have been screwed. Further, Microsoft's proprietary standard in browsing made for a horrible browsing experience [at least on a Mac].
Google's motivation in my humble opinion is not so ambivalent. It is using Chrome for two principle reasons. First, it doesn't like paying Firefox and Apple millions of dollars for featuring Google's search results [it pays Firefox a lot of dough]. It hopes to bury Safari and Firefox so it doesn't have to pay those folks anymore. For Firefox, that would be devastating and likely kill it because it receives most if not all of it's support from Google.
Second, Google likely uses Chrome as a huge data mining tool. My suspicion on this second point is grounded in my use of Little Snitch. Google's Chrome tries to call home at least three or four different times on start up. So, many call home Windows pop up, I just stopped using it. Safari only tries to call home periodically to check for updates (maybe one a week).
Quote:
Originally Posted by DayRobot
Chrome is pretty similar to what Safari is... they come from the same codebase
Usability-wise, Safari is better. Chrome is a bit buggy in that regard. Can't even bookmark links by right (option) clicking on them... Can't delete individual history items without typing in the address in the address bar, then pressing Shift + Delete while pointing at that option with the mouse. Can't move text around a text box by selecting it and dragging to a new spot (glaring bug!)... It's definitely half-baked. But rendering bugs, which are few, are the same in both.
WebKit on desktop is pretty unified. Webkit on mobile though, is riddled with different issues and dissimilarities...
Dan
P.S. Good to see that people are finally getting a taste of the decent browsers!
Come on Firefox, let's have some add-ons that allow for h.264 vids to be played back (at least on a mac). I love FF, it is my main browser, but if h.264 issue is not resolved (either by other people using ogg or FF supporting it) I think their market share will stagnate, while IE losses will be eaten up by Webkit.
I like safari and its evil brother Chrome. Safari is less buggy and seems faster on a Mac (Chrome is insanely fast on PC) but they both have a problem. Their speed goes way down after using them for 10-20 minutes of research. You have to shut them down and open up again. Firefox does not have the same slowdown problems for me, plus it is still more customizable.
Microsoft sells the OS that powers 90 percent of the world's PCs. There is no indication whatsoever that is going to change anytime soon.
No one cares anymore. Microsoft lost the public mind years ago. It simply exists like an ancient statue and has lost the power to influence the future of the web. It's like a wet dog turd. It smells bad but once it dries out it will be picked up and discarded. Nobody cares what Microsoft says or does. That 90% share you crow about has become impotent in terms of influence and innovation. IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
It would be nice if there weren't so many browsers. The small idiosyncrasies between their rendering engines creates a bottomless pit for web developers trying to make complex sites compatible among browsers.
That's just a pipe-dream though... just look at all the people still using IE6. Maybe a large percentage are all those large corporations unwilling to upgrade to a modern operating system.
No one cares anymore. Microsoft lost the public mind years ago. It simply exists like an ancient statue and has lost the power to influence the future of the web. It's like a wet dog turd. It smells bad but once it dries out it will be picked up and discarded. Nobody cares what Microsoft says or does. That 90% share you crow about has become impotent in terms of influence and innovation. IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
I wouldn't say that they are that bad. People give MS a lot of grief for many of their poor business decisions in the past, but they have had some good effects on the software industry.
If, as you suggest, their time is up, it may take quite some time for them to fall. There are massive amounts of people consuming their products. Not only that, they have very a captivating (and innovative) set of development tools and environment. These two factors will make it hard.
IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
Yup - that pretty much sums it all up for this week. MS is doomed and they are just about to lie down and die. But then again...who knows what the picture will be next week? Oh no... that's just too complicated to even consider. Lets keep it simple.
I figured that out last time the W3schools numbers were mentioned. The type of clientele that W3schools attracts are web developers. That demographic is more selective about their browsers. If Microsoft were to post numbers based on visits to MSN home page it would show that there was 99% IE adoption.
No one cares anymore. Microsoft lost the public mind years ago. It simply exists like an ancient statue and has lost the power to influence the future of the web. It's like a wet dog turd. It smells bad but once it dries out it will be picked up and discarded. Nobody cares what Microsoft says or does. That 90% share you crow about has become impotent in terms of influence and innovation. IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
My guess is that M$ has a larger installed base on mobile devices than Apple and Google put together.
Sorry to disappoint you here a little, but what you're seeing is already the total, including mobile devices. NetApplications are reporting that mobile devices cover around 2 % of all web surfing now, with Java browsers for dumb phones (Opera) and iPhone OS dominating at around 0.75 % each, and 0.5 % for all the others combined, including Symbian, Android, Blackberry (in that order).
Are you sure you're not seeing usage percentages, and not number of devices with a particular browser engine in use? I wasn't suggesting that mobile browsing accounts for a high percentage of the overall traffic to sites, but that the number of devices using a WebKit-based browser is very high and growing very fast that developer ignore WebKit, as was done previously. Though with Gecko and Firefox clawing for standards support it's pretty easy these days to support both without much fuss. Times are good, I remember when Firefox wasn't supported.
Quote:
Originally Posted by mstone
I figured that out last time the W3schools numbers were mentioned. The type of clientele that W3schools attracts are web developers. That demographic is more selective about their browsers. If Microsoft were to post numbers based on visits to MSN home page it would show that there was 99% IE adoption.
Ars always posts their site-specific stats along with these type articles. They have Firefox with 40%, and IE barely edging out Safari, both with 19% rounded. Add in Chrome's 17% and you have WebKit-based browsers getting awfully close to besting Firefox, which is pretty impressive, IMO, even if just one tech site. I wish AI did this, too.
I happen to use IE8 and don't plan to change anytime soon. I like it and won't change. Same for my parents.
On Windows I prefer IE8 as I do like browsers with good OS integration, but I do have the Chrome Frame plugin installed and set as default. It's quite nice. Have you tried it?
Comments
Another win for WebKit, and for all we know, as PCs are being replaced by mobile devices, WebKit could become as omnipresent as IE was in its best days, with 80 %+ combined marketshare.
While it looks like Firefox as a significant lead over WebKit-based browsers, that is only on the desktop. Id like to see the percentages for all devices with browsers.
Sorry to disappoint you here a little, but what you're seeing is already the total, including mobile devices. NetApplications are reporting that mobile devices cover around 2 % of all web surfing now, with Java browsers for dumb phones (Opera) and iPhone OS dominating at around 0.75 % each, and 0.5 % for all the others combined, including Symbian, Android, Blackberry (in that order).
On a worldwide basis, almost all of our web browsing time (98 %) seems to still be spent on the PC/Mac, not on mobile devices.
Now it could be that the US and Western Countries are ahead in this respect, so the mobile share might be much higher than 2 % here.
It could be that tablets like the iPad will accelerate the shift the iPhone initiated, so mobile devices will make faster inroads in the next 3 years than in the last 3 years.
And it could also be that NetApplications cannot measure all of our internet time on mobile devices properly, because we spend a lot of time not in the browser, but in apps.
One can have speed and luxury too now.
Added the plug-in Fission, which gives a fast progress bar in the address bar like Safari.
Themed the window to cheer things up a bit, nice change from Safari´s metallic look.
So many plug-ins, so much fun. But here´s mine.
1 Click YouTube Video Downloader
Adblock Plus
Betterprivacy (Flash cookie killer)
Clipple (extended clipboard)
Cooliris (see it, neat)
Download Status bar
Fastest Fox
FlagFox
Ghostery (web bugs)
InvisibleHand (searches the net automatically for cheapest prices)
Is it Compatible?
Lazarus (form recovery)
Low Quality Flash
Morning Coffee
No Script (flash, java, javascript etc firewall, web cop)
NoSquint (remembers zoom levels for pages)
OptimizeGoogle
RequestPolicy
SmoothWheel (smooth scrolling)
Split Browser (splits browser window as you like)
TrackMeNot (randomizes search entries)
TVFox (eh, still checking it out)
WOT (web of trust, green your good! also works for links in web mail)
Also Firefox is Ubuntu Linux main browser, so the plug-in goodies are available there too.
One can get a safe, malware free and inexpensive pre-installed Linux netbook for a few hundred dollars if all one plans to do is surf, email, open office. The UI is a lot like OS X, or it can be themed to look like XP or OS X even.
Google's motivation in my humble opinion is not so ambivalent. It is using Chrome for two principle reasons. First, it doesn't like paying Firefox and Apple millions of dollars for featuring Google's search results [it pays Firefox a lot of dough]. It hopes to bury Safari and Firefox so it doesn't have to pay those folks anymore. For Firefox, that would be devastating and likely kill it because it receives most if not all of it's support from Google.
Second, Google likely uses Chrome as a huge data mining tool. My suspicion on this second point is grounded in my use of Little Snitch. Google's Chrome tries to call home at least three or four different times on start up. So, many call home Windows pop up, I just stopped using it. Safari only tries to call home periodically to check for updates (maybe one a week).
Chrome is pretty similar to what Safari is... they come from the same codebase
Usability-wise, Safari is better. Chrome is a bit buggy in that regard. Can't even bookmark links by right (option) clicking on them... Can't delete individual history items without typing in the address in the address bar, then pressing Shift + Delete while pointing at that option with the mouse. Can't move text around a text box by selecting it and dragging to a new spot (glaring bug!)... It's definitely half-baked. But rendering bugs, which are few, are the same in both.
WebKit on desktop is pretty unified. Webkit on mobile though, is riddled with different issues and dissimilarities...
Dan
P.S. Good to see that people are finally getting a taste of the decent browsers!
The one thing that is abundantly clear is that the MS monopoly is coming to an end. The future is Apple vs Google vs Facebook.
Microsoft sells the OS that powers 90 percent of the world's PCs. There is no indication whatsoever that is going to change anytime soon.
I like safari and its evil brother Chrome. Safari is less buggy and seems faster on a Mac (Chrome is insanely fast on PC) but they both have a problem. Their speed goes way down after using them for 10-20 minutes of research. You have to shut them down and open up again. Firefox does not have the same slowdown problems for me, plus it is still more customizable.
Microsoft sells the OS that powers 90 percent of the world's PCs. There is no indication whatsoever that is going to change anytime soon.
No one cares anymore. Microsoft lost the public mind years ago. It simply exists like an ancient statue and has lost the power to influence the future of the web. It's like a wet dog turd. It smells bad but once it dries out it will be picked up and discarded. Nobody cares what Microsoft says or does. That 90% share you crow about has become impotent in terms of influence and innovation. IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
That's just a pipe-dream though... just look at all the people still using IE6. Maybe a large percentage are all those large corporations unwilling to upgrade to a modern operating system.
No one cares anymore. Microsoft lost the public mind years ago. It simply exists like an ancient statue and has lost the power to influence the future of the web. It's like a wet dog turd. It smells bad but once it dries out it will be picked up and discarded. Nobody cares what Microsoft says or does. That 90% share you crow about has become impotent in terms of influence and innovation. IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
I wouldn't say that they are that bad. People give MS a lot of grief for many of their poor business decisions in the past, but they have had some good effects on the software industry.
If, as you suggest, their time is up, it may take quite some time for them to fall. There are massive amounts of people consuming their products. Not only that, they have very a captivating (and innovative) set of development tools and environment. These two factors will make it hard.
IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
Yup - that pretty much sums it all up for this week. MS is doomed and they are just about to lie down and die. But then again...who knows what the picture will be next week? Oh no... that's just too complicated to even consider. Lets keep it simple.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/repo...134&qpcustomb=
http://www.businessinsider.com/googl...t-share-2010-5
Why can't both be correct?
I figured that out last time the W3schools numbers were mentioned. The type of clientele that W3schools attracts are web developers. That demographic is more selective about their browsers. If Microsoft were to post numbers based on visits to MSN home page it would show that there was 99% IE adoption.
No one cares anymore. Microsoft lost the public mind years ago. It simply exists like an ancient statue and has lost the power to influence the future of the web. It's like a wet dog turd. It smells bad but once it dries out it will be picked up and discarded. Nobody cares what Microsoft says or does. That 90% share you crow about has become impotent in terms of influence and innovation. IE is just the beginning. Next up is Office, then Windows itself. And that's all there is to Microsoft. They have already lost the mobile OS war which is clearly Apple's and Google's turf now.
My guess is that M$ has a larger installed base on mobile devices than Apple and Google put together.
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/repo...134&qpcustomb=
http://www.businessinsider.com/googl...t-share-2010-5
From the looks of that, IE and Firefox are the only browsers that matter. The Apple browser gets lost in the shuffle of lines down near zero.
Sorry to disappoint you here a little, but what you're seeing is already the total, including mobile devices. NetApplications are reporting that mobile devices cover around 2 % of all web surfing now, with Java browsers for dumb phones (Opera) and iPhone OS dominating at around 0.75 % each, and 0.5 % for all the others combined, including Symbian, Android, Blackberry (in that order).
Are you sure you're not seeing usage percentages, and not number of devices with a particular browser engine in use? I wasn't suggesting that mobile browsing accounts for a high percentage of the overall traffic to sites, but that the number of devices using a WebKit-based browser is very high and growing very fast that developer ignore WebKit, as was done previously. Though with Gecko and Firefox clawing for standards support it's pretty easy these days to support both without much fuss. Times are good, I remember when Firefox wasn't supported.
I figured that out last time the W3schools numbers were mentioned. The type of clientele that W3schools attracts are web developers. That demographic is more selective about their browsers. If Microsoft were to post numbers based on visits to MSN home page it would show that there was 99% IE adoption.
Ars always posts their site-specific stats along with these type articles. They have Firefox with 40%, and IE barely edging out Safari, both with 19% rounded. Add in Chrome's 17% and you have WebKit-based browsers getting awfully close to besting Firefox, which is pretty impressive, IMO, even if just one tech site. I wish AI did this, too.
I happen to use IE8 and don't plan to change anytime soon. I like it and won't change. Same for my parents.
On Windows I prefer IE8 as I do like browsers with good OS integration, but I do have the Chrome Frame plugin installed and set as default. It's quite nice. Have you tried it?