I have just read the news about Firefox download day, so I thought I’d go and look Radio NZ’s web stats to see what happened to Firefox 3 usage.
Yep, looks like a lot of people started using FF3, but were they upgrades, or new users? This is the graph of the total number of FF users over the same period.
There is no statistically relevant change.
I’ve noticed that FF users quickly upgrade compared with IE users. Of version 2 users, 98% of them are on the latest release – 2.0.0.14 at the time of writing (end of June). Less than 2 % of all FF users are still on version 1.
Looking at IE use in June 2008 we can see the position two years after IE7 was launched:
IE 7: 62.1 %
IE6: 37.4 %
IE5.5: 0.26 %
IE5.0: 0.13 %
The changes in browser use over time are also interesting.
| Browser | Oct ’06 | Aug ’07 | Jun ’08 |
|---|---|---|---|
| IE | 73.46 | 69.15 | 65.61 |
| FF | 19.53 | 23.45 | 26.99 |
| Safari | 4.69 | 5.03 | 5.44 |
| Opera | 0.82 | 0.86 | 1.09 |
IE use is down and everything else is up.
I thought I’d look at operating systems use over the same period:
| OS | Oct ’06 | Aug ’07 | Jun ’08 |
|---|---|---|---|
| Windows | 92.69 | 91.37 | 90.51 |
| OS X | 6.32 | 7.40 | 8.02 |
| Linux | 0.83 | 1.01 | 1.26 |
I’m also seeing in increase in platforms like PlayStation, iPhone (starting before the release of the 3g in NZ), Symbian, and even Nintendo Wii.
From a Webmaster’s point of view, these changes suggest that my approach to content is going to have to become more platform agnostic as time passes.
Richard Hulse 