Web browser viewing trends
Posted by dan on Thursday, February 26th, 2009Ask yourself the question, which is the most popular web browser? A few years ago it was Microsoft Internet Explorer version 6 (IE6). From January 2009 Fire Fox by a slim margin is the most popular web browser. Latest figures suggest Fire Fox has 45.5% of the share of overall usage and IE6 and IE7 together total 44.3%.
These statistics tell us Fire Fox and other non IE browsers should not be ignored by web designers when creating websites. Subtle differences between makes and versions of browsers have always been a problem for web designers. Some of these differences include the way objects on a web page are aligned (horizontal and vertical alignment) and margin and padding properties around objects. Typically the more complicated the graphical design, the more difficult it is to code the web page to display correctly across common browsers. The browser statistics (below) are sourced from a really useful website W3schools.com
Thankfully the situation is getting better as time goes on as all web browsers adhere more closely to the W3C Standards (WWW Consortium). Also the web browser statistics tell us that older versions of web browsers do not need to be catered for as very few people are using them e.g. IE5. What this means for web designers is they have to test new websites not just in IE7 or Fire Fox but several other versions and makes of browsers. For example Safari for Mac users.
Computer screen sizes need to be considered too by web designers. With the availability of wide screens for PCs and laptops the standard web page viewing size is changing too. Eighteen months ago the recommended viewing width for a web page would have been 800 pixels or less. Now web designers can afford to design wider web pages because statistics are telling us users have 1024 pixels wide by 786 pixels high screens or wider. Some websites are even using fluid web page designs with means the web page grows to the width of the display.
Click on the images to see the full statistics from W3schools browser statistics.
Tags: Web Design
September 28th, 2009 at 1:23 pm
[...] the back of a previous MA news posting, ‘Web browser viewing trends’ we have discovered, whilst looking through our analytics report, that Firefox has overtaken [...]