With the help of SiteMeter, I’ve been keeping track of which browsers are used by visitors to this site. The latest stats continue to confirm that most people have made up their minds about which browser they want to use:
The last time I published these stats was on April 30, 2006. The share of visitors using Firefox or Mozilla has dipped roughly 1% since then, from 35.2% down to 34.18%. It’s still a bit higher than the August 2005 share of 33.2%, however.
Meanwhile, IE’s share crept back up by 1.5%, from almost exactly 60% to 61.47%. Not surprisingly, the percentage of people visiting this site using IE7 has more than doubled, from 6.53% last April to 14.52% today.
Five months ago, I drew this tentative conclusion and made a prediction:
The easy gains for Firefox are over. I’ll be very surprised if Firefox is able to make any significant gains in share when I look at this snapshot six months from now. In fact, I’d be willing to bet that IE will gain back some ground during that time with the help of IE7.
I jumped the gun by a month, but the prediction appears accurate. And although Firefox 2 looks like a perfectly solid upgrade, it doesn’t offer anything that’s likely to convince IE holdouts to switch now.
Trend-watchers can look at all previous editions by following these links:
Update: Here’s a chart I put together showing the general trends among the major browsers. I combined all versions of each product into a single number to make the trend easier to see. (Click to see a larger version.)
Ed Bott 
No question that the FF hype is over. It is nice to see IE7 taking away from IE6. Is there any way to add a simple total for each browser: FF, IE, Opera, Netscape ect…?
Nice to see the Opera numbers up too.
What on earth is Opera 0.x, which had a whopping (for Opera) 1.35% in April but is now much less? The only thing I can imagine it really being is 6.x, but the numbers seem too high for something that old. The first public release of Opera, back over a decade ago, was 2.x.
I suspect it might be beta versions or something because it was at over 1% last year before Opera 9 was released.
The problem with Firefox is that it’s changed direction. It started out life as a secure alternative to Internet Explorer. However, that’s now changed into just being an alternative to Internet Explorer. I think that a small number of people really get their jets roaring over browsers, but for most users (the quiet people who just use a browser), whatever’s to hand is good enough. I’ve had a number of people tell me that the fanboyism and religion surrounding Firefox actually puts them off switching to it.
Can’t be beta versions, since those identify exactly the same as released versions (just earlier than the released versions).
Hours after posting last night, I figured out what it must be: Opera 8.x by default would ID as IE, but with “Opera” still in the string (ensuring it could never be mistaken for the real IE). This was done for compatibility purposes. Ed’s software must become confused by this (since the string includes IE AND Opera) and throw up its hands and declare it “Opera 0.x.”
As of Opera 9.0, Opera ID’s as “Opera” by default, so this explains why Opera 0.x has become significantly less popular as 9.x has become more popular.
How to explain the existence of a tiny number of “Opera 8.x” users in the table? That would be people who changed the IE+Opera emulation back to “Opera,” and very few people did that.
This all jibes with the 10/04 post as well, which shows Opera 7.x with nearly nothing and Opera 0.x with 1.34%. Opera 7.x also defaulted to IE+Opera in the string.