One of the biggest troubles with being a web developer is the sheer number of browsers you have to cater for. There’s Firefox, Safari and Opera; several versions of Internet Explorer; the Playstation 3 and Nintendo Wii browsers; and then there’s tons and tons of different mobile devices such as PDAs, iPods and mobile phones.
There’s so many, that how is a web developer meant to get any rest around here?
As we become more experienced as web developers, we begin to learn the issues, problems and solutions associated with each of the more popular browsers, but the truth is that unless you have a lot of time on your hands (or a fairly simple structure to your website) you are never going to get your website looking perfect on everything. Sometimes you just have to let go.
Many of you have probably heard of, and used, the W3Schools website as a quick reference to HTML and CSS tags in times of need, but did you know that W3Schools also provide statistics on what browsers, operating systems and display settings Internet users across the world are using. The statistics W3Schools’ use are extracted from their own log-files combined with other reliable sources to give a realistic overview.
The most recent statistics (December 2007) are as follows:
Firefox: 36.3%
Internet Explorer 6: 33.2%
Internet Explorer 7: 21.0%
Safari: 1.7%
Internet Explorer 5: 1.7%
Mozilla (Gecko, Netscape): 1.4%
Opera: 1.4%
Personally, I can’t believe how many people are still using Internet Explorer 6. And while the number is decreasing, it’s decreasing at almost an alarmingly slow rate.
As a web developer, this means we still need to seriously cater for Internet Explorer 6 users, regardless of the amount of pain suffered making today’s complicated websites work on the ageing browser.
Have a wander over to W3School’s statistics pages and check out the other figures for yourself.
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