Browser Wars: Firefox, Safari Gaining Ground

A recent post over at Mac Observer notes that 1 out of 4 people online are no longer using Microsoft's Internet Explorer Web browser.  

Just four years ago, Internet Explorer was the king of Web browsers. It was loaded onto every PC, and over 90% of people were using it to surf online.  

But times they are a-changin'. The latest data from Market Share for September shows:

• 71.5% of people use Microsoft's Internet Explorer 
• 19.5% of people use Mozilla's Firefox
• 6.5% of people use Apple's Safari
• < 1% of people use Google's Chrome

Why does this matter?

Three words: cross browser compatibility. 

Ideally, all websites would look and act more or less the same in all Web browsers. Unfortunately, each browser implements HTML, JavaScript and Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) a little differently.

The result is everything from minor cosmetic differences to webpages that just don't work in certain browsers – most notably, Internet Explorer.  

Browser Trends & Web Design

Internet Explorer (IE) has long been the worst offender, refusing to comply with web standards. So websites that would look almost identical in Firefox and Safari could look almost unintelligable in IE. 

This meant web designers had to spend countless hours debugging code and patching various IE bugs using hacks - a time consuming and frustrating process.

The declining market share of Internet Explorer is very good news. The trend towards more standards-compliant browsers like Firefox and Safari should mean less headaches for us web designers in the future.

Ignoring Visitors

Amazingly, many web designers still code only for Internet Explorer, essentially ignoring almost 3 out of every 10 visitors.  

At Primal Media, we've always tested cross-platform and across browsers, ensuring that our sites look and work well in all of the major browsers – on Mac's or PC's. 

So while the browser wars continue to rage on, we'll be quietly working in the background to make sure that our client's sites simply rock.