DarthStamp wrote:

Sorry TA, and I hesitate to say this to such a knowledgeable one, but your statement above is wrong. I am sure you are right within the "developer" world, but 99% of Internet users (i.e. the ones that actually buy from our sites) don't even know or care that Firefox exists). OK I'm maybe exaggerating the % but coincidentally I did a straw poll in our pub a couple of weeks ago (for a completely different reason) and of the 21 people in the group only 3 had heard about Firefox and only one was using it (he, like me was in the computer industry).

Happy New Year to all.

You haven't actually proven my statement wrong with actual stats by polling 21 people in a pub with straws ... most were probably fairly well soused and had no clue as to what you were talking about ... look at the stats in the URL graciously provided by DMX in the above post -- it clearly shows I, and many millions more, are not wrong about the percentage of FF users over MicroStoopid IE.

TA,

You have to add the first three columns: IE7, IE6 & IE5 together into one large dysFUNctional family 59.9 % of the market vs.29.9% for Firefox. The thing that looks promising though, is the steady 1% per month growth.

And to make matters even worse Roxane posted it in this thread first

DMX - I understand what you're saying, but I wasn't adding the columns; just watching the FF percentage go up as each month goes by ... tells me alot and I didn't need 21straws!

2006         IE7    IE6    IE5     Fx     Moz* N7/8 O7/8/9
November 7.1% 49.9% 2.9% 29.9% 2.5% 0.2% 1.5%

Straws? Don't they get in your eye when you're drinking beer?


I know 21 bar patrons doesn't make a very authoritative control group.  At least it wouldn't prove much with the group I used to hang out with

No matter how these upgrades are crammed is completely irrelevant. The fact is from my logs IE7 has replaced the 8.7% FF users plus 10%. So now across the board I can say at least 95% of my visitors use IE in one form or another.
Personally I use FF 2.0, only because of the plugins available. Otherwise I would still be using http://www.maxthon.com/, which in my opinion is superior to IE7 and FF if you do not consider the plugins available to FF. Maxthon comes close though, closer than MS. IMO MS should have acquired Maxthon they may still we can only wait and see.
The tricky upgrade MS is sending out is BAD. Everyone says you cannot avoid this "upgrade" if you have windows 2000 or newer. NOT TRUE!
If you click "OK" I don't care you are in for trouble.
IE7 changes many settings in your registry, if everything is not in order i.e.your thousands of .dll files CRASH!
How to avoid?
DO NOT ALLOW INSTALLATION!
Simple as that. And if you insist make a complete backup of your system!
Crashes in the middle of installation are very minute, but would you want to be a  victim????????
Careful, Dan
Happy New Year All

Maxthon is based on the MSIE structure; therefore I wouldn't use that either -- but, each to his own ... now you know why I refuse to use, much less d/l MicroStoopid IE -- no matter what version!

Happy New Year!

If you already have a working version of IE on your comp. you will not have a prob with installation  of Maxthon.
Forrest Gump response again,
Happy neeew year!
With the search engine wars , hoprfully not the brroeser wars again!!!
Dan

Nah; I took IE off my PC almost 9 months ago!

If you have a pc you did not get rid of IE.

HA -- ya caught me; I meant I removed the MSIE browser ... yep; I've still got IE on the HD!

Weeeelll going by those ststistics, ffox seems to be gaining on IE. Seems like the more people know, the more they realise the better product . Talking about that has anyone noticed the strides taken by Open source oses like suse 10 and ubuntu, they are trying to make stuff easy to use. Imagine having the power of such OSes on easy to use GUIS. Its almost like using powerful windows. OK, the files are in different  places at first but eventually, things work out. Not to rally against Windows and start an OS war, but i Think those guys deserve hugs and pats on shoukders for all theyve done!

Time magazine reports this month that people switch from Internet Exploder to Firefox at a rate of 7 million per month.

Internet Explorer causes AIDS.

I agree with Dann on most points and whatever TA is saying on IE how can he be qualified to do so if he doesn't even have it in use on his machine (unless he is using it but on other people's of course).

There are multiple improvements in IE which bring it closer to FF  which I suppose is a compliment to FF rather than to Bill. As somebody who is only interested in having people come to my site I have to be open-minded about the use of IE rather than have the luxury of "tuning it out".

Don't get me wrong  - I much prefer to work in FF, but I have to be able to work with IE as well to ensure site capability in both browsers as I am not moving away from my theory on the user % of the two browsers despite TA's tirade.
PS - I have had no problems with IE since the install.

I do have two points though:

I would like FF even better if it would allow me to have an English English dictionary for the spell checker rather than US English (no comments on the difference between the two is necessary - I've had that argument years ago). DOes anyone know if this exists? I did try to download a "different English" dictionary but it didn't work (the download that is - it just downloaded a HTML file) so I have no idea if it was the one I was looking for.

Secondly - check out the Adsense adverts at the bottom of this thread - all advertising the download of IE7 - I hope nobody's clicking on them based on the comments I've read above!

Mutilated1 wrote:

Time magazine reports this month that people switch from Internet Exploder to Firefox at a rate of 7 million per month.

Internet Explorer causes AIDS.

ROTFLMAO -- Internet "Exploder" causes AIDS...

DarthStamp wrote:

I agree with Dann on most points and whatever TA is saying on IE how can he be qualified to do so if he doesn't even have it in use on his machine (unless he is using it but on other people's of course).

There are multiple improvements in IE which bring it closer to FF  which I suppose is a compliment to FF rather than to Bill. As somebody who is only interested in having people come to my site I have to be open-minded about the use of IE rather than have the luxury of "tuning it out".

Don't get me wrong  - I much prefer to work in FF, but I have to be able to work with IE as well to ensure site capability in both browsers as I am not moving away from my theory on the user % of the two browsers despite TA's tirade.
PS - I have had no problems with IE since the install.

I do have two points though:

I would like FF even better if it would allow me to have an English English dictionary for the spell checker rather than US English (no comments on the difference between the two is necessary - I've had that argument years ago). DOes anyone know if this exists? I did try to download a "different English" dictionary but it didn't work (the download that is - it just downloaded a HTML file) so I have no idea if it was the one I was looking for.

Secondly - check out the Adsense adverts at the bottom of this thread - all advertising the download of IE7 - I hope nobody's clicking on them based on the comments I've read above!

My extensive experience with IE comes from having worked at MicroStoopid for several years as a Programmer; and no -- I don't have that browser on my machine and won't use it at all ... hence, my "tirade"...

FF was built by developers using the U.S. English dictionary -- maybe the Queen has an extra copy laying around.

As for the Adsense adverts on the bottom -- all advertising is based on the original subject of the thread, if you'll pay close attention to that minute detail.

I would like FF even better if it would allow me to have an English English dictionary for the spell checker rather than US English

It will allow you to have whatever kind of dictionary you want.  Look in C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\dictionaries and add to or change the dictionaries if you feel like it.  They're just text files.

Or better yet choose a different dictionary if you don't like editing/creating your own:
https://addons.mozilla.org/firefox/dict … lang=en-US

Secondly - check out the Adsense adverts at the bottom of this thread

No, I don't check out AdSense advertising.  I use Firefox and AdBlock so I don't even see the AdSense panels.

AdSense ads are for losers that use Internet Explorer.

I still remain baffled, IE has has never really given me uphill except when trying to use flash on ie6... FF doesnt let my back button on the mouse take me back.. ie does... which makes ie better in my eyes... or does? FF looks real purdy and ie has not changed in appearance for years which means FF is eye candy soooooooooo.... I use FF cause i would rather at the full boddied look as opposed to the boring and pale gray skinned IE.

travelagent wrote:

Nah; I took IE off my PC almost 9 months ago!

Then what you are saying is that you don't care what 86.9% of your visitors see.  Yes, the number of FF users are growing, but that's mainly because of false advertising from Googles AdSense, like below...



Faster, better, more secure?  Where's the proof?  But, I'm sure the average computer user that sees that downloads FF thinking that despite their 56k modem, they are going to be browsing so fast their mouse is going to take their arm off.

I reckon the average person wouldn't care to switch to FF if they were not being lied to.  Sure, for people like us, FF has it's advantages, but then we are not average.

You pose a good point but i beg to differ, most web users... unlike ourselves are far more paranoid about what they download than you give them credit for. With all the spam around why take something so blatent to heart, as the theory goes "if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is" and most people feel that way as far as i know.

Downloading FF would require em to do some sort of background check on it which is just time consuming and probably not what they are willing to spend time doing. In your defence though.. there are a whole lot of gullable people out there who probably do just download Perhaps the amount of people "like us" is just growing, unfortunately the trend for computers is in and just about everyone wants a career in computers before it gets flooded... to late me thinks.

What percentage of visitors use what type of browser is going to depend on your site. If you have a website about the latest rpg's you are going to get a switched on bunch of (zombie) visitors. If, like us, your visitors are of a more 'senior' nature, then the stats are likely to be very different. It doesn't make sense to just say, "You need a ..." without knowing the nature of the site and its visitors.

Here are our percentages for yesterday:

IE 6 - 36.7%
IE 7 - 24.0%
FF - 16.2%

We even had 94 visitors with Netscape 4, 74 with Netscape 3, 98 with IE5.5,  73 with IE5 and 6 with IE4!

By all means have the latest browser for your own personal surfing but bear in mind what the punters use when you are designing and checking your site(s).

I had an 'Urgent patch' to install too - IE (wouldn't you rather have a virus?) 7.