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Most Popular Browsers (or Why You Need to Code for Internet Explorer 6)

I ran some stats today on this blog and Dabbler.ca to see what browsers people use to view the site. The results were pretty much as expected and prove that even though Internet Explorer 7 has been out for quite a while now and IE8 is on the horizon, people still predominantly use the CSS mangling Internet Explorer 6.

blog.pinkandyellow.com stats:

  1. Internet Explorer 6.0 – 18.34%
  2. Internet Explorer 7.0 – 11.18%
  3. Firefox 2.0 – 6.80%
  4. Mozilla 5 – 6.50%
  5. Firefox 1.0 – 4.58%
  6. Netscape – 3.34%
  7. Firefox 1.5 – 2.39%

Dabbler.ca stats:

  1. Internet Explorer 7.0 – 18.58%
  2. Internet Explorer 6.0 – 16.35%
  3. Firefox 2.0 – 15.77%
  4. Safari – 3.15%
  5. Firefox 1.5 – 2.92%
  6. Mozilla 5 – 1.40%
  7. Internet Explorer 5.5 – 1.21%

(If you’re wondering why these stats don’t ad up, it’s because I took out the Google, MSN and Yahoo! search bots)

These stats are actually quite interesting. First off, it’s obvious that people insist on holding on to older versions of web browsers. God knows why, but they do. Secondly, considering that this blog only contains info on programming and design and therefore should have visitors who are predominantly programmers or designers, it’s surprising to see that IE 6 tops the list. One would expect that the people who make web sites are the most up to date on the newest versions. I also note that Safari doesn’t figure on this list but comes in at #4 on Dabbler’s (guess Mac users don’t care much about Microsoft Expression). I’m glad to see that Firefox is climbing the charts even though it still has a long way to go before it can top Internet Explorer. But what really makes me scratch my head is #6, Netscape. Seeing as that company officially dumped the navigator last month, I don’t understand why programmers still use it. It’s crap people! Move on.

By Morten Rand-Hendriksen

Morten Rand-Hendriksen is a staff author at LinkedIn Learning and lynda.com specializing in WordPress and web design and development and an instructor at Emily Carr University of Art and Design. He is a popular speaker and educator on all things design, web standards and open source. As the owner and Web Head at Pink & Yellow Media, a boutique style digital media company in Burnaby, BC, Canada, he has created WordPress-based web solutions for multi-national companies, political parties, banks, and small businesses and bloggers alike. He also contributes to the local WordPress community by organizing Meetups and WordCamps.

4 replies on “Most Popular Browsers (or Why You Need to Code for Internet Explorer 6)”

Would the high percentage of IE be due to the fact you can have your browser identify as IE while you are in fact using for example Opera (like me)? Otherwise it would be quite surprising that Opera isn’t in the list at all. It has been on all browser statistics I’ve seen elsewhere so far.

Am redesigning my site and really cannot be arsed with ie6. Surely now (over a year after this post) we can do without it? What’s your opinion? At what percentage of browser popularity do you think a browser has to fall below to be considered negligible?

Thanks,

James

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