Stats > Browser Trends

This discusses browser trends, resolution trends, colour-depth trends, and Java and JavaScript trends, for designers who want to decide what to support.

Note : the statistics quoted refer to ordinary users; also, as usual, different types of people will visit different types of websites, so stats for your websites will vary.

Note : this does not cover small web appliances such as WAP devices.

Browser Trends 

This discusses trends in the usage of the major families of browsers.

Summary

1% or more use each of the following: Gecko-based browsers (mainly Firefox), KHTML-based browsers (mainly Safari), Internet Explorer 6 and 7, and Opera.

Note : total IE numbers started dropping in mid-2004 as users switched to the Gecko based browsers.

Note : data from several sources suggest that ~0.3% of page accesses are by users with mobile devices, e.g. cellphones, with the numbers growing fairly quickly.

The Curse of Yesterdays’ Browsers

Browser makers often don’t support older operating systems, which prevents users from upgrading to the safest, most capable browsers. For example, security updates for IE are not available for the 12% of people who use versions of Windows older than Windows 2000; and IE 7 is not available for anything older than Windows XP SP2. Similarly, Firefox 3, when it appears, will not support users of Windows older than Windows 2000. If browser makers supported older operating systems for a longer period of time, there would be many fewer vulnerable PCs.

Also, many people don’t use the latest version of their browser, even when what they use is way out-of-date and has serious security defects. For example, a study of one stats source in Dec 2007 revealed that only 41% of IE 5 users were using the latest version of IE 5, and that only 49% of Opera 9 users were using the latest version of Opera 9.

Both factors result in older browsers being used long after they are obsolete. This not only complicates site design and testing, but also maintains a pool of vulnerable PCs which can act as a reservoir for malware.

Recommendation

A good way to ensure that sites will work for as many users as possible is to (a) design sites to the HTML, CSS, DOM, and other standards, (b) to test sites with common browsers that implement these standards well, and (c) to tweak the sites so that they work well enough for antique browsers still in common use.

Details

As the Stats page shows, the percentage of users using each browser depends a lot on the site. The percentages listed here are, at best, guesses as to which browsers ‘typical’ users are using, and in any case, what matters most is not the exact percentage using a browser, but rather which browsers are used by enough people that sites should support these people. You should use the stats for your site, and remember that, if few people are using a particular browser, it may be that the browser is so obsolete that few use it; or it may be that you aren’t adequately supporting the browser, and its users are going elsewhere.

Resolution Trends 

This discusses trends in the resolutions of browser displays.

Summary

Most users have 1024x768 or higher, but a large minority have 800x600. These numbers do not include those who browse using web appliances.

It is important to note that (a) the display resolution says little about the size of the browser window, and (b) users can normally resize the browser window. Consequently no particular browser window size should be assumed.

Recommendation

A good way to ensure that sites will work for as many resolutions as possible is to design sites to be resolution-independent, i.e. not to specify widths in absolute units (e.g. pixels) unless a width is that of a fixed-width object, e.g. a GIF, JPG, or PNG image.

Details

These are resolutions of special interest to website designers:

Note: MSN-TV pages can’t scroll horizontally; wide pages are squished to fit.

Note: a TV appliance’s resolution is limited by the TV technology. It is low for the NTSC and PAL televisions that are common today.

Colour-Depth Trends 

This discusses trends in the colour-depths of browser displays.

Summary

Most users have 24-bit (or more) displays (16 777 216 or more colours), but a large minority have 16-bit displays (65 536 colours), and a very small and shrinking number, ~1%, have 8-bit displays (256 colours).

Recommendation

You can generally design sites assuming 65 536 colours or more: the major thing you have to watch out for is that colours with 16-bit displays may be a bit off.

Colour Depth: a PC display’s colour-depth is limited by the amount of video memory and — in the case of flat-panel displays — by the display technology: more memory and denser flat-panels permit higher colour-depths. Typical resolutions increase as these become more affordable.

Colour Blindness: About 8% of men and 0.4% of women have some form of colour blindness. The buttons below depict some of the impact of this: the first is for people with normal vision; the following four are the same button as it might appear to those with the four common forms of colour blindness.

NormalColour-blind 1Colour-blind 2Colour-blind 3Colour-blind 4

You can find free software and services to help you see images as the colour blind would, at Fujitsu and vischeck.com.

Details

These are colour-depths of special interest to website designers:

Java and JavaScript Trends 

This discusses trends in Java and JavaScript usage.

Summary

A significant number of users have browsers in which Java or JavaScript are not enabled. The percentage has decreased somewhat over the years, but it will likely remain significant for years to come.

Recommendation

Java and JavaScript should generally not be used for things which affect a site’s functionality. They are best used to make a site look more attractive.

Details

You can find information about JavaScript, including which browsers support which versions of JavaScript, in Wikipedia.

TheCounter (Feb 2008) reports these levels of support:

Users Java Support
6½ % none/unknown
93½ % enabled
Users JavaScript Support
5 % none/disabled
95 % enabled

Sites which need Java or JavaScript to function will deter users who have disabled them, therefore such sites will have more visitors with scripting enabled, but exact percentages likely will depend a lot on the site, and such percentages are not available.

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