Some web browser statistics
I’ve just gone over the site statistics provided by Google Analytics for both my home site (and this blog) iandevlin.com and for my HTML5 site HTML5 Laboratory for a persio of 3 months (from 20th February 2010 to 19th April 2010) and have come up with some interesting facts.
iandevlin.com
First of all let’s look at the statistics for iandevlin.com, which I will simply lay out here in table format for you to peruse:
| Browser | Overall Visits % |
| Firefox | 53.61% |
| 3.6 | 17.09% |
| 3.5.8 | 12.92% |
| 3.6.3 | 9.95% |
| 3.6.2 | 5.6% |
| < 3.5.8 | 8.05% |
| Internet Explorer | 15.70% |
| 8.0 | 9.46% |
| 7.0 | 3.72% |
| 6.0 | 2.52% |
| Chrome | 15.25% |
| Safari | 12.02% |
| Opera | 1.39% |
| Other | 1.85% |
As can be clearly seen, Firefox is by far the browser of choice by users looking at my site, followed almost equally by Internet Explorer and Chrome users with Safari not far behind.
Interestingly more users have looked at my site with Internet Explorer 6 than with Opera! Whilst it’s good to see a small percentage of Internet Explorer 6 users, it’s scary that they still outnumber the Opera users.
HTML5 Laboratory
Moving on to HTML5 Laboratory, the table of browsers used is laid out below in the same style as above:
| Browser | Overall Visits % |
| Firefox | 42.99% |
| 3.6 | 18.72% |
| 3.5.8 | 11.65% |
| 3.6.3 | 8.89% |
| 3.6.2 | 7.05% |
| < 3.5.8 | 5.77% |
| Chrome | 23.46% |
| Safari | 18.88% |
| Internet Explorer | 9.80% |
| 8.0 | 5.86% |
| 7.0 | 2.71% |
| 6.0 | 1.22% |
| Opera | 3.20% |
| Other | 1.67% |
Once again Firefox tops the browsers used, but this time Internet Explorer is beaten into 4th place behind Chrome and Safari. This isn’t that surprising since Internet Explorer currently has no support whatsoever for HTML5 and it is understandable that those users who are interested in HTML5 will probably be using a browser that has some sort of HTML5 capabilities. Bearing that in mind, it’s weird that Opera, which has some of the best current HTML5 support out there, is still behind Internet Explorer.
Using both sets of statistics together, it is surprising to see that those users who use Firefox, have largely neglected to upgrade any higher than 3.6, with many still on 3.5.8. Google’s Chrome has a much higher usage than I would have expected, with Opera quite poor. Safari is more or less what would be expected, and since it also has good HTML5 support, its not surprising that it features higher on visits to HTML5 Laboratory than iandevlin.com.
Take a look at your own site’s Google Analytics browser statistics, and let me know how they fare.
You can thank me for the Safari hits… It’s all I use anymore..!
T
call me elitist but firefox users are a little more tech savvy, i think. how about your clients? IE, right?
I was going to add that point but decided not to
Nearly all the clients who use the systems I build at my day job use IE6! But mainly because they’re forced to.
and IE6 is “challenging” enough to make the best in us turn ugly…
So true. That said, once I get a design working well in IE6 I always feel like I’ve achieved something and deserve a beer.
I’ve noticed that IE6 usage accounts for around 12-15% usage on average across the websites that I’ve design and manage.
I *wish* it would go away!
But then IE7 will become the new IE6, especially when IE9 comes out.
It’s a neverending circle of Microsoft browser buffoonery.