What are the top browsers by number of users?

Designing a site for the masses

[Web Footed Newbie]

Does anyone have info on the top browsers?

In general, I designed my site for my target audience, which is IE 4 and above, 68% of my traffic, then Netscape with about 20% of my traffic.

How do these percentages compare to the general number of users and the browsers they use? Is Opera or Mozilla used by very many?

Thanks in advance, WFN

[ShawnR]

One source of browser stats is [w3schools.com ]

(If that violated the terms of use, sorry. I have no affiliation, and can't vouch for the accuracy...)

Shawn

[pendanticist]

If [w3schools.com...] does, then http*//www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp won't.

Just a thought.

Pendanticist.

[tedster]

No problem linking to well recognized resources like W3schools.

Web_Footed_Newbie, 20% Netscape is a HUGE number compared to the average site these days. If I saw those numbers I'd be suspicicous about the analysis.

If you can get your stats to ignore spiders, you might see something quite different. Many spiders are counted as Netscape 2.

[Web Footed Newbie]

Thanks for the W3 link.

Yes, the netscape number is big, but my site is new. I asked several people to review my site and most of them use Netscape. Oh yes, I did remind them to convert to IE.

Thanks again, WFN

[tedster]

I did remind them to convert to IE

OOOOOhhh--that hurts.

If they're using Netscape 4.x, how about asking them to upgrade to Netscape 7, or install Mozilla, or Opera? The number of security risks in Explorer is something I'd worry about. Some of my clients who use Explorer as their default have had days of downtime across the company because of worms, viruses and trojans that use IE to propagate.

At any rate, the highest Netscape percentage I see on any of my client sites is 8%, and they are heavily used by schools -- and even that number is down from over 16% just last summer.

[Oaf357]

Those stats seem fairly accurate. Considering I've had a domain up since Feb 2003 and haven't seen a single Netscape browser yet.

[zengolfer]

I agree with the last post. My site gets less than 5% from non-IE browsers, maybe 3% Netscape, balance aol and others.

[kevinpate]

> maybe 3% Netscape, balance aol and others.

ditto on our youth org. info site. The % which is NS is about evenly divided between pre and post NS 6.0

[DXL]

recent traffic breakdown on one of the sites I maintain. The figures are pretty much similar across the board of other sites I check the stats on.

Explorer 6.0 10378 %50.69
Explorer 5.0 5541 %27.07
AOL 3818 %18.65
Mozilla 258 %1.26
Netscape 4.0 182 %0.89
Explorer 4.0 126 %0.62
Netscape 3.0 91 %0.44
Opera 44 %0.21
Netscape 6.0 28 %0.14
WebTV 4 %0.02
Opera 5 2 %0.01

[Schoolbag]

1 Microsoft Internet Explorer 91.70%
2 Netscape Navigator 6.66%
3 Netscape Compatible 1.39%
4 Others 0.08%
5 WebTV 0.07%
6 Opera 0.05%
7 OmniWeb 0.01%
8 Lynx 0.00%

[ShawnR]

1. I think it would be really cool if this thread was kept alive. What I have in mind is say once a month we post some of the browser stats we are seeing, together with a description of the industry we are in. That way we'd be able to go here to see the latest browser stats for visitors who frequent educational sites vs military sites vs IT sites vs Music sites vs... We'd also be able to monitor the trends.
   
2. Anyone know how Opera registers? It has configuration settings to allow it to present itself as IE or various Mozilla versions. So are the stats we see for Opera artificially low?
   

Shawn

[tedster]

Anyone know how Opera registers? It has configuration settings to allow it to present itself as IE or various Mozilla versions. So are the stats we see for Opera artificially low?

Yes, the stats we see for Opera are definitely low, especially because spoofing as IE can be required to get some sites to work at all.

Opera User Agent Strings [webmasterworld.com] - See Message #5

[archangelrichard]

1. It depends on your site topic (kiddie sites get more IE, shopping sites get more netscape, developer sites get more netscape, mozilla, then IE; Business sites (info, Tech Support) get a lot more Netscape. Some sites are poorly designed and need IE to work; the result is that netscape users avoid // quit the site.

2. opera is a problem - it doesn't quite use HTML standard yet. Some pages come off as junk - Microsoft notoriuosly doing this deliberately.

3. Reporting systems are notoriously easy to fake - This is a work computer and should register Netscape 7 but I can "fake" sites into thinking it is IE - useful for those trying to do suspicious activity. Many of the Mozilla based browsers (there are a bunch of public domain variants) will give you Mozilla or Netscape ID's. Some reporting systems simply take any unknown or problem ID and say (windows server) IE; especially those with Front Page Extensions active. Numbers are meaningless on the net, anything can be faked.

4. As a professional, I NEVER use IE except for testing with NO internet access. I have seen a page that wants to put something in my clipboard; Netscape ignored it. Active-X is THE number 1 way to get viruses, Netscape ignores it. If you have IE installed as the default browser, there are ways to run an IE session from aa ASP page that will NOT show up on your screen, task bar or task manager (Microsoft uses this themselves) but if Netscape is the default it can't run (actually Microsoft has another way of calling it that still runs IE in stealth mode).

[papabaer]

The good news is that a growing number of schools are finally replacing NN.x with newer, (mostly) Standards compliant browsers. In most cases IE6 is the first (and weakest) choice, but Opera and Mozilla (both with much higher levels of Standards support as compared to IE) are definitely gaining ground here.

Just last month the University of Illinois Urbana/Campus purshased a block of 40,000 licenses from Opera Soft. There are also a number of reasearch organizations that are migrating to Opera... the very important key here is that these are the very same institutions that, traditionally, have been the NN4.x holdouts. Good news all around...!

[pageoneresults]

The very important key here is that these are the very same institutions that, traditionally, have been the NN4.x holdouts.

Hehehe, that's where the 2% are. Well, now that they've purchased Opera, I guess we don't need to @import anymore. No more discussions about NN4.x? ;)

[jim_w]

I believe the U of I Opera licenses were also for their satellite campuses like in Springfield and Chicago.

Universities in IL are really anti-MS, I worked at Southern Illinois University School Of Medicine and my girlfriend still does, so I still have a lot of contact there and I know some admin’s at Lincoln Land Community College. Everyone at SIU and LLCC, at least as far as faculty and staff are concerned, will use anything but a MS product if they can. But NN < 7 had tooooo many inconsistencies and potential new students almost always used IE, so their pages had to work with IE. It caused a lot of extra work.

I do get a lot of hits from dorms of many universities and from their discussion groups that link to my site about manufacturing engineering. I would reckon that a lot of these hits are from students using their personal computers and not the library’s computers because I still get the following.

Stats for 04/2003

Internet Explorer 90.06%
Netscape 4.50%
Unknown/Other 1.52%
Cache/Proxy server 1.48%
AOL's Browser 1.45%
Opera 0.34%

Version numbers break down link this.

Internet Explorer v6.0 48.92%
Internet Explorer v5.0 23.21%
Internet Explorer v5.5 16.70%
Netscape v4.7 2.28%
Netscape v6.0 1.87%
Internet Explorer v4.0 1.07%
AOL's Browser v8.0 0.77%
AOL's Browser v7.0 0.35%
Opera v7.x 0.21%
AOL's Browser v6.0 0.18%
Netscape v4.5 0.16%
AOL's Browser v5.0 0.14%
Opera v6.x 0.12%
Internet Explorer v5.1 0.08%
Netscape v4.6 0.08%
Internet Explorer v5.2 0.07%
Netscape v4.0 0.05%
Netscape v4.8 0.05%
Konqueror 0.04%
AOL's Browser v4.0 0.03%
Internet Explorer v3.0 0.01%
Opera v5.x 0.01%

Of course this does kind of correlate with the OS’s used. So that could explain some of it.

Windows 2000 31.48%
Windows 98 24.15%
Windows XP 22.44%
Windows NT 9.91%
Windows ME 4.43%
Unknown Platform 3.03%
Windows 95 2.75%
UNIX (SunOS) 0.46%
Windows 32-bit 0.46%
Macintosh (PowerPC) 0.32%
UNIX (Linux) 0.22%
Windows 16-bit 0.22%
UNIX (Unknown/Other) 0.11%

I’ll bet Xerox wishes like heck they would not have given the GUI to Apple.

Active-X is THE number 1 way to get viruses

Your right, that’s why I have my firewall set to ask permission before running it. I only allow Active-X on trusted sites. Like Fortune 100 companies, etc.

You can change the UA for IE as well.
http**www.winguides.com/registry/display.php/799/
(hope that’s not a Bozo No-No)

And I’ll bet if you go searching in the same tree of the system registry you can figure out the other browser’s UA.

Personally, I wish end users would not do that. How in the world can a Webmaster know what level of compatibility they need on a site if everyone changes the their UA? I don’t think anyone really cares what browser they are running as long as the stats are correct for compatibility issues. I don’t see how it could be a privacy issue, but my firewall lists it as one.

[papabaer]

The abandonment of NN4.x is accelerating in any case.

I've always found these stats interesting: [cen.uiuc.edu ] - they are from the UIUC Engineering Department. Note that Opera is reported at 2% (the stats are from March 31st - prior to the license purchase?)

I have also seen stats from several German Universities and Scientific research organizations where Opera's penetration is as high as 15%. No doubt, these are clustered statistics, but they do indicate a movement away from the traditional "NN4.x only" credo.

[jim_w]

I would have thought they could have broke those down a little more! (he says sarcastically)

[graywolf]

tedster said

If they're using Netscape 4.x, how about asking them to upgrade to Netscape 7

I do this on my site (mainly e-commerce not highly technical content), and boy does it iritate those people. They say things like

...you know not everyone has the money to buy a new computer ...
... i'm not goting to spend 15 minutes downloading software just so I can shop with you...

and end with "fix your system to work with my browser or I'll spend my money somewhere else". Just my users 2 cents though.

[hartlandcat]

My stats for my website <no specifics, please> are:

MSIE 6.x/AOL & Opera -- 63%
MSIE 5.x -- 20%
Netscape 6.0/7.0/Mozilla etc. -- 12%
Netscape 3.0 -- 2%

[edited by: tedster at 1:04 am (utc) on June 7, 2003]

[hartlandcat]

Hang on... sorry---the above stats I posted are VERY unreliable. Here are the more reliable stats:

Please remember that my site <no specifics, please> attracts many children. Please note these stats have been rounded up/down.

General Browsers:
Internet Explorer -- 80%
Netscape -- 10%
AOL -- 8%
Opera -- 1%
Robots -- 1%

Version Specific (Netscape 6.0/7.0 also includes Mozilla etc.)
Internet Explorer 6.0 -- 56%
Internet Explorer 5.5 -- 13%
Internet Explorer 5.0 -- 10%
Netscape 6.0/7.0 -- 10%
AOL 7.0 -- 6%
Opera 7.0 -- 1%
Robots -- 1%
AOL 8.0 -- 1%
Internet Explorer 4.0 -- 1%

And just for fun... my OS stats as well!
Windows XP -- 41.9%
Windows 98 -- 20.9%
Windows 2000 -- 16.6%
Windows ME -- 15.0%
Macintosh -- 3.5%
Windows 95 -- 0.6%
Windows NT -- 0.6%
Linux -- 0.2%

[edited by: tedster at 1:04 am (utc) on June 7, 2003]