Browser Optimization
A question that I sometimes encounter: “Is my site optimized for the ______ (Firefox, Opera, etc.) web browser? ” Now, with Google’s Chrome browser entering the fray, it’s bound to spawn a whole new round of the same question. This kind of browser optimization should always be checked but, before you invest hours into re-coding your site to work correctly in Firefox or Chrome, you should know the market share to balance your consideration.
StatCounter.com is a wonderful, free web analytics program that is highly recommended. Who knew they had a blog? Well they do and, in it, they’ve revealed the latest stats on Global Browser Market Share, as it has been claimed by Chrome, Internet Explorer, Firefox, Safari and “Other” top browsers (Flock, Opera, etc.):
IE FireFox Safari Chrome Other
Aug 28, 2008 68.17% 24.66% 2.83% N/A 4.33%
Aug 29, 2008 67.81% 24.78% 2.84% N/A 4.57%
Aug 30, 2008 65.41% 26.38% 3.04% N/A 5.17%
Aug 31, 2008 64.49% 26.91% 3.06% N/A 5.56%
Sep 01, 2008 66.92% 25.26% 2.99% N/A 4.84%
Sep 02, 2008 67.58% 24.36% 2.91% N/A 5.06%
Sep 03, 2008 67.81% 23.54% 2.70% 1.11% 4.87%
Sep 04, 2008 70.87% 21.26% 2.48% 1.15% 4.25%
Very interesting that it’s Firefox and “other” users who presumably compose the 1.15% now claimed by Google Chrome. To me, it indicates first adopters are the only ones using Chrome so far. The numbers for Firefox (at 21.26% on September 4, 2008) are more intriguing… there may be some “techie” skew in the sample set but not much. Chrome’s numbers show us that. At approximately 20% of market share, Firefox has nearly doubled its user base since my recollection of one year ago.
Chrome and Firefox share the same Mozilla browser core, so there shouldn’t be any major difference in the way they render your pages. The message is clear, though, if you have an error in Firefox, you should invest the time and labor to fix it for the sake of 20% of market. If a Chrome-specific error arises, explore what browser optimization would be necessary to fix the issue, but take a wait and see approach for the next few weeks.
Ultimately, if you’re not able to correct a browser-specific issue, a USER-AGENT browser redirect will be necessary with different landing pages for different browser versions.
[Full Global Browser Market Share stats]
Written by jclayc on September 7th, 2008 with
2 comments.
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#1. September 12th, 2008, at 1:53 AM.
another method for dealing with IE’s wacky rendering issues is to create a separate css file for IE. there is a one line script out on the interwebs somewhere that can then tell the browser to render the corresponding css file. sorry i cant find it right now though