Browser Usage

15 commentsWritten on February 2nd, 2010 by
Categories: About The Blog

I read an article today about how Chrome has increased a lot in market share in the past year, mostly at the expense of Firefox.  I wanted to see how Chrome usage on this blog has progressed in the past year so i got some stats from Google Analytics and created this little graph:

image

(note: these numbers are obviously only from visits to this blog and are thus not representative of the entire internet (yet) etc…)

I started at the month before the first Chrome users were reported to give you an idea of Firefox’s score at that time.  Naturally, the people that come to this blog are into technology so it’s no wonder that Firefox is the dominant browser instead of IE.  Before Chrome entered the picture, nearly 70% of all visits to this blog in August 2008 were from Firefox users.  In its first month, Chrome immediately got about 8%, which i thought was pretty impressive.  Firefox’s numbers dropped below 50% for the first time less than a year later.  That’s a pretty big impact in a relatively short time.   And as you can see, Chrome usage has been growing a lot in the past 6 months ago, at the expense of both Firefox and IE.  I wouldn’t be surprised if Chrome catches up to Firefox in another 6 months.

I’m not fanatic about any browser (as long as i don’t have to use IE, right?)… i use Firefox for OS X at home, but i use Chrome at work.  I’m not really into the whole plugin/extension thing (except for Adblock obviously) so i’m not really ‘tied’ to a specific browser.  Now, some people are pretty fanatic about their browser so what i’m wondering is: what would it take for you to switch to another browser (no matter which one you use now)?  Are you hooked on extensions that you can’t go without in another browser?  What was the reason you picked your current browser and why are you sticking with it? Or is it all pretty much the same for you?  Do you frequently use multiple browsers?

In some weird way, i find that kinda stuff interesting so please do share :)

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 2nd, 2010 at 22:06 and is filed under About The Blog. You can subscribe to any comments to this entry via RSS 2.0. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • dave-ilsw

    I use all three browsers. Firefox is my default browser. I use Chrome for Google Reader and NetSuite. I only use IE8 (usually via the IEtab plugin for Firefox) when I visit a web site that I must visit and tries way too hard to not work with any other browser.

  • Brian

    Does it impede my workflow? Does it make my life easier or more difficult? Simply put, does it work (right)? If I can’t do what I need to do in a quick, painless fashion, I’ll move on to something that’s a better fit.

  • cb

    Firefox, Chrome and IE only when required. Not zealous about it, when Chrome 4 is stable I will give it a try as my primary.

  • http://dnagir.blogspot.com Dmitriy Nagirnyak

    To answer your “what would it take for you to switch to another browser (no matter which one you use now)?”:

    1. Developer tools (I find Firebug the most useful, thus Firefox is my primary browser).
    2. Usability (including startup time) – Chrome is very easy to use (so I use it just with the purpose: search & browse) while Firefox is just pretty slow (as for v3.5).
    3. Cross-platform with same features set in different OSs (Win+Linux at least).

    For now, because of the reasons above, I use mostly Firefox in Ubuntu (Will try Chrome of course too) and Firefox+Chrome in Windows.

    And yes, IE. IE 8 is Ok, Not too bad; but again for the reasons above I switch to other browsers.

    One more thing, I try to abstract from extensions for any browser that I would not be able to live without. For now I am tight to RoboForm (has not yet good support in Chrome and NA for Linux). So will just have to get rid of it ASAP.

    Cheers.

  • http://peter.worksontheweb.net Peter Eysermans

    I was a very big Firefox fan, until it became very slow to use. Maybe it was my own fault by installing numerous plugins but I heard from multiple people that they had similar complaints. Once Chrome for Mac OS X came out I switched and never looked back.

    But when web developing for the web on Windows (ASP.Net) I still use Firefox in combination with Firebug for Javascript and CSS development.

  • http://davesquared.net David

    I’m not fanatical about staying with the one browser. In fact, I switched to Chrome after being a long-term FireFox a few months back. I’ll happily switch again if I find a browser that is faster and nicer to use.

    The reasons I use Chrome? It just seems so fast, has a minimalist/elegant UI, nice WebKit rendering of focussed elements, and an incredibly smart location bar (YMMV). I find using FireFox quite painful now by comparison and generally avoid it.

    As an aside, I think the Chrome extensions are worthwhile looking at. I recommend RSS Subscription Extension and Type-ahead-find (which allows incremental search of links like in FF). They’re lightweight and very handy.

  • Yann Schwartz

    I use Firefox most of the time, to my own dismay. It has become more bloated and crash prone with every release, but it has four extensions I can’t browse without: AdBlock+ (which *really* blocks ads, by not downloading them in the first place, while the Chrome equivalent just hides them), NoScript (white list execution of javascript – something that the current chrome extension API does not allow), Greasemonkey (ok this one was just released on Chrome) and FireBug.

    Chrome is ultra fast, and I would switch to it, but I’m not interested in ultra fast annoying or non-vouched for Javascript and ultra-fast ads.

    As others have said, IE8 is not that bad (and its built-in firebug clone is surprisingly good) but its extensions are a joke (it’s super-easy! Implement these 12 COM interfaces (6 of which are undocumented) and you’re set! What could be simpler and less crash prone?).

    Safari on the Mac is OK, on Windows it’s a trainwreck (along with the Windows port of iTunes, a despicable piece of trash which makes WMP look good in comparison).

  • Siim

    I’ve using Chrome already for 6 months as my main browser for search & browse because of it’s speed and simplicity. But it’s too bad it doesn’t have proper Google toolbars. I started using Chrome for searching and RSS right when it came out.

    For development purposes (Firebug + it’s extensions, Web developer toolbar and etc) I use still Firefox.

    And yes, IE8 is pretty OK, but I use it only when I definitely need to…

  • http://davybrion.com Davy Brion

    Yeah, Safari on the mac is alright, but the thing i really miss in it is the ability to reopen the tabs that were still open the last time the browser was closed. At least, i’ve never seemed to find the option to make it behave like that so i might’ve just missed something obvious.

    I typically use tabs as a ‘to-read’ list… i browse and just open interesting links in new tabs and i’ll read them when i get to them. Not being able to close a browser in fear of losing the tabs is pretty annoying, and making bookmarks out of the open tabs solely for the purpose of being able to reopen them in a new browser session is a bit silly.

    I did install the beta of Chrome on OS X and used it once, but for some reason i didn’t make the switch… i guess i’m happy enough with Firefox on the mac :)

  • http://dgoyani.blogspot.com/ Dhananjay Goyani

    @Davy
    Crome: One month back I switched crome as my default browser both at work and home. I love UI (usability stuffs), some plug-ins (Speed Tracer, AdThwart and WOT), Cleanness and bookmarks sync thing.

    IE8: Mostly to run web apps that we develop (For last 4 I am into same project and we only support IE7/8). And to run web mail console and some sites that just don’t work nice with non IE8 like our intranet portal developed in sharepoint. After I ditched IE last month, I hardly open IE other than that.

    Firefox, Opera, Safari: Just for checking different browser specific things such as ySlow, etc. They are always installed but I rarely run them.

    @Yann
    >>> Chrome equivalent just hides them
    Oh, really? They have made me fool. ;-)

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  • http://www.sjmdev.com Simon

    I’m not too precious about the browser I use and try to give equal run to them all. But for web development I almost exclusively use Firefox + Firebug + YSlow + Lori + Web Developer Toolbar + MeasureIt + Fiddler + Delicious plugins (I’m not addicted honest!)

    I like using Chrome for general browsing, but will also use Flock (good for Flickr, blogging etc), Opera (built in torrent client) and IE (well we have to check how it’s doing every so often)

    Personally I just want my browser(s) to display my sites the same way – that’s the most important thing that’s missing from all browsers. After they’ve nailed that then they can try to sell me on the extra frills. AFAIC the next version of all browsers should display all sites the same and have a legacy mode that’ll allow them to display sites with their current (broken) rendering.

  • Moti

    At this state, Firefox is pretty much unusable for non-coding related browsing.
    IE8 is nice, but it’s developers feature is almost useless on too many occasions, so i guess i pretty much combine between them.

    This leave Chrome as a last choice, but since i don’t appreciate ANYONE installing stuff on my computer without asking me, so I’m using srware iron instead (same engine, no EULA).

    I wonder if Google analytics even bothers to separate chrome from srware iron.

  • http://twitter.com/rla4 roberta

    I use firefox at work – usually because of firebug. it has become quite slow recently, however.

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