IE6 11% market share?

Ye' old general discussion board. Basically, for everything that isn't covered elsewhere. Come here to shoot the breeze, shoot your mouth off, or whatever suits your fancy.
This forum is not for asking programming related questions.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
User avatar
daedalus__
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1925
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:52 pm

IE6 11% market share?

Post by daedalus__ »

http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php

check it out.

Web Browsers
Internet Explorer 8.0 22.43%
Firefox 3.5 22.18%
Internet Explorer 7.0 16.43%
Internet Explorer 6.0 11.44%

Screen Resolutions
1024x768 28.24%
1280x800 20.25%

This report was generated 12/31/2009 based on the last 15,000 page views to each website tracked by W3Counter. W3Counter's sample currently includes 31,713 websites.

465,000,000 page views is good enough for me.
User avatar
Eran
DevNet Master
Posts: 3549
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:36 am
Location: Israel, ME

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by Eran »

Proceeding according to my projections ;)
http://www.techfounder.net/2008/07/03/t ... cy-of-ie6/
alex.barylski
DevNet Evangelist
Posts: 6267
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:00 pm
Location: Winnipeg

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by alex.barylski »

You guys are such zealots. :P

Honestly I will continue to use IE on a regular basis until the day comes Windows no longer ships with a version of IE and I am forced into downloading a browser, at which point I would probably go with FireFox.

I use FF during development but for purely rendering purposes, in my experience, IE is the best browser. 99.9999999999% of web sites will work in IE, whereas I often have minor glitches when using FF, Chrome, Opera, Safari, etc.

IE (under Windows) is also the fastest to get up and running. FireFox always seems to lag, and I do not take Chrome, or others serious enough to use on daily basis. :P

I suspect that a majority of computer users feel the same. Why download another browser and use it when IE is *right there*. Despite security issues (yes I am aware of many of them but have rarely if ever had a problem myself) IE is just convenient, fast and does the trick in most cases, more than other browsers.

So I have stepped on your toes, and not acted like Ièm walking on egg shells, let the flaming begin. :P

I agree it is probably the wrong choice, but it is still a choice. What sites are those w3c analytics from...probably not the New York Post, Toronto Sun, Winnipeg Free Press, Kijiji, Craigslist, Facebook, etc of the world...

I would like to see the stats for the top 10% of web sites which probably consume 90% of the general public time. :P Obviously vertical market (especially development oriented sites -- which the w3c I assume manages much of) web sites geared towards developers are going to favor alternative browsers because of people like you two. I mean nothing by that, I am just saying for the sake of argument. :)

Cheers,
Alex
User avatar
daedalus__
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1925
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:52 pm

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by daedalus__ »

i only hate IE6. i've used 7 and 8 and i simply like firefox better. because i get firebug and web developer toolbar. IE has alternatives im sure but it's w/e.

there are a million reasons i don't want to use IE6 and a bunch of reasons i want it to die already. i feel like it holds back the internet haha

i could be zealous though. if my friends have a computer problem i ask them.. were you using internet explorer 6? and if they say yes i tell them to hire someone. i wouldn't try to save someone who threw himself in the river. :p

what id really like to see is some of the massive amounts of information that google soaks up about everything. they are like the shopping mall of the internet, everybody goes there you can't really avoid it. i tried to find browser statistics but i failed.
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by matthijs »

IE6? I remember that one from the early days ...

My own stats for 2 completely different sites (my company site and a hobby site) both say around 10% IE6. So as far as testing goes, I hardly check IE6 nowadays. Maybe just a quick look to see if there are no major layout screw-ups.
User avatar
Weirdan
Moderator
Posts: 5978
Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2003 6:13 pm
Location: Odessa, Ukraine

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by Weirdan »

daedalus__ wrote:what id really like to see is some of the massive amounts of information that google soaks up about everything. they are like the shopping mall of the internet, everybody goes there you can't really avoid it.
What's Google? Is it something like Yandex, but for those poor fellas who don't speak Russian? :D

Seriously though, Google's market penetration is not a constant throughout the world. My impression is that there's several distinct regions in today's internet world. Roughly, there's Western Europe + North America + Australia I suppose (dominated by Google), Russian speaking region (Yandex, Mail.ru and several others), Asian (Baidu.com I believe), and South America is probably a world of its own too.
Reviresco
Forum Contributor
Posts: 172
Joined: Tue Feb 19, 2008 4:18 pm
Location: Milwaukee

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by Reviresco »

Yep, my sites average about 11% for IE 6. Some much higher, some lower.

I keep an old Windows 2000 machine around just for IE6 testing. It's a pain, but after a while you just remember all the bugs (the double margin float bug is the most common), and I just use conditional comments to include an ie6.css style sheet with different margins or whatever else needs to be different.
alex.barylski
DevNet Evangelist
Posts: 6267
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:00 pm
Location: Winnipeg

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by alex.barylski »

i only hate IE6. i've used 7 and 8 and i simply like firefox better. because i get firebug and web developer toolbar. IE has alternatives im sure but it's
As a developer FF is better, sure. I use half a dozen extensions myself (like FireBug, WebDev toolbar, JSONView, ColorPicker, etc). But as a regular user, it seems to lag.
Seriously though, Google's market penetration is not a constant throughout the world. My impression is that there's several distinct regions in today's internet world. Roughly, there's Western Europe + North America + Australia I suppose (dominated by Google), Russian speaking region (Yandex, Mail.ru and several others), Asian (Baidu.com I believe), and South America is probably a world of its own too.
Google still has the greatest global influence, people in China do actually use Google and Baidu, most people in Google dominated countries have not even heard of Baidu or Yandex. China make up a huge portion of the online community and Google is still used by a majority of Internet users.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8455712.stm

A third of the Chinese is fairly significant, IMO. :) Despite the gradual decline, I am sure if they put their A game into Chinese search they would win back a lot of search. Their biggest disadvantage, is probably similar to Walmart trying to enter Chinese markets. Cultural differences, etc. I actually wonder if that applies to search results??? I am sure they have Chinese engineers who could write algorithms to return results as equally well in Chinese as one might in English, but the marketing, cultural appeal, etc. Baidu is also a government controlled search engine from what I remember, so that gives them a major advantage right there.

Cheers,
Alex
User avatar
Eran
DevNet Master
Posts: 3549
Joined: Fri Jan 18, 2008 12:36 am
Location: Israel, ME

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by Eran »

Baidu is also a government controlled search engine from what I remember, so that gives them a major advantage right there.
Not to stray off the topic here, but that would be the opposite. China imposes strict censorship and anything government related would be heavily censored. Google on the hand can be affected by censorship to a much lesser degree.

Back to the topic - the thread was concerned with IE6 only. Having said that, even IE8 is still stalling the evolution of the web, disregarding emerging standards and technologies such as HTML5, CSS2.1 and CSS3.0, Canvas, etc, etc. It's pretty incredible that something as basic as rounded corners still can't be done in IE8 using markup alone.
User avatar
Kev
Forum Newbie
Posts: 21
Joined: Tue Aug 25, 2009 9:11 pm

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by Kev »

I kid you not, one of my sites has a 17% IE6 demographic. It makes me want to puke! I consider myself expert-level CSS'er and within 10 minutes can make just about any design look the same across FF3.6 and IE6, but it's that 10 minutes I hate with every passion in my heart!!!

Don't you wish you could code a big boxing glove into your website that would shoot itself on a spring out to the IE6 visitor and punch them smack in the face?

if ($_SERVER['HTTP_USER_AGENT'] == 'ie6')
{
punch('hard');
header('Location: http://www.firefox.com', 301);
exit();
}
alex.barylski
DevNet Evangelist
Posts: 6267
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:00 pm
Location: Winnipeg

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by alex.barylski »

Not to stray off the topic here, but that would be the opposite. China imposes strict censorship and anything government related would be heavily censored. Google on the hand can be affected by censorship to a much lesser degree.
In that regard, yes I would agree. Although what I meant was that, by being government controlled, they probably promote the use of Baidu more than Google does in that market, simply because they want Chinese to use internal searches not something which can only be controlled in a limited manner.
Back to the topic - the thread was concerned with IE6 only. Having said that, even IE8 is still stalling the evolution of the web, disregarding emerging standards and technologies such as HTML5, CSS2.1 and CSS3.0, Canvas, etc, etc. It's pretty incredible that something as basic as rounded corners still can't be done in IE8 using markup alone
It probably is, I am not arguing that. I cannot really comment much more in that regard, as I do not put as much effort into learning client-side standards as other developers. However, my point was that hoping for IE to fall off the face of the earth is some what wishful thinking. At least until it stops shipping with Windows. Which, I thought Windows 7 did not, yet I do not remember having to download any browser. Also, without a default browser available after install, how wold an end-user ever be expected to download a browser in the first place?

I think what it was, is that W7 does not *require* the existance of IE (at least as extensively) so you can chose to actually remove it once you have downloaded a new browser.
Don't you wish you could code a big boxing glove into your website that would shoot itself on a spring out to the IE6 visitor and punch them smack in the face?
I actually had that happen just a while ago, cannot remember if it was a blog or maybe when I tried using that editor project (part of Mozilla -- bespin?) but it has happened to me in the past. Thankfully I have every major (and not so major) browser installed for testing purposes, so I was able to do what I wanted.

Cheers,
Alex
User avatar
Weirdan
Moderator
Posts: 5978
Joined: Mon Nov 03, 2003 6:13 pm
Location: Odessa, Ukraine

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by Weirdan »

PCSpectra wrote:Also, without a default browser available after install, how wold an end-user ever be expected to download a browser in the first place?
sudo aptitude install ie8 :D Obviously, it's not going to happen on Windows as DLL Hell issue (major force that has given us all package managers on Linux) is traditionally solved by bundling most dependencies there.
User avatar
arjan.top
Forum Contributor
Posts: 305
Joined: Sun Oct 14, 2007 4:36 am
Location: Hoče, Slovenia

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by arjan.top »

in Europe you would get this soon:
Image
matthijs
DevNet Master
Posts: 3360
Joined: Thu Oct 06, 2005 3:57 pm

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by matthijs »

And otherwise you get the European minister for internet business chasing you. That is (will be) the Dutch Nelie Kroes. The one who got Microsoft on it's knees :D :drunk:
User avatar
daedalus__
DevNet Resident
Posts: 1925
Joined: Thu Feb 09, 2006 4:52 pm

Re: IE6 11% market share?

Post by daedalus__ »

google might not have perfect statistics for the whole world but as far as english speaking countries go i would think they'd have pretty comprehensive numbers. like a lot of people said for their english language websites figures for ie 6 are about 11%. that's low enough that i really don't want to make the extra effort unless its mission critical. 508 it and call it good, thats what they get for using a ten year old browser any way. i dont know. im so frustrated with the whole deal lately. i still see table based layouts being used by major websites and i want to route my hand through their dns and slap them in the face.
Post Reply