Filed under: Microsoft, Mozilla, Browsers
Firefox 3.5 passes IE7 as most popular web browser
We've all been watching the browser share trends for quite some time now, wondering when the day would come that an alternative finally shoved Internet Explorer off its perch.
It's finally happened - at least when we're talking about the most popular single version of a browser. You can see it all in the bar graph above: Firefox 3.5 has dethroned Internet Explorer 7.
Yes, we can all see the other two lengthy bars below IE7. Add them up, and it still means Internet Explorer (6,7, and 8 combined) is more popular overall. Still, for anything to overtake IE anywhere is pretty dang impressive.
We've still got 10 days left in 2009 to see where things wind up, but there's no denying that this has been a good year for Mozilla.
[via TheNextWeb]
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You can either be red, blue, or yellow, and you can switch at any time during the game. Each color has different capabilities -- yellow can double-jump, while red has a longer dash (which is like a forward sprint, activated by double-pressing DOWN).
Each ...
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Sebastian Anthony said 9:35AM on 12-21-2009
C'mon Opera!
Hang in there!
Why are so many people using Firefox 3.0? Stability or something?
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Cowman said 6:03PM on 12-21-2009
That's why I was saying, why do they keep on using Firefox? I mean the Ad Block Plus extension on Firefox is the only thing that's actually decent with it. Other than that, it's just bloatware since version 3. Not to mention it crashes occasionally on my Ubuntu 9.10 operating system. (These are my opinions and problems!).
Hang in there Opera, there's still people who love you.
pdott said 10:41AM on 12-22-2009
The title of this article is a little bit, ambiguous. Most popular browser on what time? Keep in mind that once Firefox 4.0 be released next year, then this trend will surely change.
Also, FF 3.5 barely even beat IE 8 (something like a 1% difference only) therefore it's still to early to tell that firefox 3.5 is earth's most popular. (lol) Maybe most popular for 6 months?
hmm said 2:32AM on 12-24-2009
I can only find Opera 9.6 on the Statcounter site. Opera 10 is in others category. How did you get the image above?
Myria said 9:46AM on 12-21-2009
Wait... There are still people left who give a rat's behind what browser other people use?
Seriously?
Wow, that's just sad.
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EGOvoruhk said 9:59AM on 12-21-2009
Does that mean that it's also sad that it obviously bothers you enough to complain about it?
Now THAT'S sad
BorderRuffian said 10:40AM on 12-21-2009
@Myria:
I'm a web developer. It's my job to care. I have to make sure my sites work on all these different browsers. When one drops below a certain market share, that's one less to have to test.
Josh said 10:45AM on 12-21-2009
Web designers care. We have to know what our user base is using so that we can code accordingly. If you are designing for a site that is 95% Firefox users, you won't both adding in the Internet Explorer specific codes needed to make your site work in IE.
weeboX said 11:03AM on 12-23-2009
Clearly you don't work in web development.
Daniel Blois said 10:41AM on 12-21-2009
And this is without a browser ballot screen - see how much bundling IE with windows has suppressed Firefox!!! EU needs to wake up.
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Jon said 10:18AM on 12-21-2009
I don't think it will last. IE 7 is losing users to IE 8 so I would imagine IE 8 will eventually take the top spot again. It's not far behind.
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Evan said 10:26AM on 12-21-2009
Is anyone else impressed that Chrome has surpassed Safari? Especially since a native Chrome client for Macs only came out a few weeks ago.
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Josh said 10:46AM on 12-21-2009
That happened when the first Chrome release happened as well. They passed up Safari pretty quickly but then fell behind once the "new" wore off. That happened again when the Mac beta was released and I expect in a month or two, Safari will be back on top.
chris said 11:48AM on 12-21-2009
As the saying goes, there are lies, damn lies and statistics.
Did you notice that Chrome, Safari and Opera combined are still lagging behind IE 6? Hilarious.
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pcnotpc59 said 12:04PM on 12-21-2009
Where exactly are they getting these statistics?
Is this a "representative sample", or are they monitoring worldwide internet traffic and getting real world numbers on browser usage?
Does this even take into account multiple-browser usage on the same workstation?
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pcnotpc59 said 12:09PM on 12-21-2009
Ah, worldwide for week 50 through 51.
So, a bunch of the people using IE7 took the week off and skewed the stats.
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Greg said 12:53PM on 12-21-2009
Firefox 3.5 will surely fall behind IE7 again as soon as Firefox 3.6 is released
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mesuth said 4:16PM on 12-21-2009
http://digg.com/software/World_map_of_most_popular_browsers_by_country_Infographic
Recently I had created this world map showing the most popular browsers by country using the same date.
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alexsupra said 6:15AM on 12-22-2009
microsoft internet explorer was the great headache for internet users and web developers during all the passed years. it integrated ugly and inconvenient standards that helped microsoft in taking control over the whole web development and converting it in disgusting commercial trash. they succeeded in that things in some extance. but internet as global network is too important and useful thing for humanity to let one rich company to control it just for increasing its profits and actually use against the people interests. that means to be evil.
mozilla firefox is great modern and useful thing made by people for people. and now it wins. it wins and it means that people win!
they win in defending their inerests in opposition to one company that trying to poison everyone for getting more and more money on every step.
all internet explorer "advantages" are too bloated and very often it is not truth. internet explorer fails in modern standards support and speed tests, that is evident. it means exactly one thing: opensource community making code for people is much more powerful thing than one closedsource commercial company making code just for money.
i work in information technologies about ten years. when i saw ie the first time in windows95 i thought that they are cheeting me! because i couldnt find the real difference between windows explorer (which was file manager and shell in my windows system) and internet explorer that seemed to me the same program accessing web. so i avoided internet explorer usage cause i worried about my security...
but now i really happy that internet usage became so fast and smart due to such modern and useful things as mozilla firefox and google chrome. thank you a lot! =)
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techpops said 10:48AM on 12-22-2009
While this is super news for me being a big fat Mozilla fanboy I think it would be interesting to consider what the situation would be like if Microsoft didn't have its browser force fed to people with every copy of Windows. On a level playing field, I wonder what that graph would look like.
I also must be one of the sad ones who finds it very interesting watching the browser wars. It's competition like this which spurs on innovation in the browser and anyone watching the race for some time will remember Microsoft only got off its fat behind when Firefox started to gain market share. Even IE lovers have Mozilla to thank for the new verve Microsoft has for improving their browser.
I also hold a little candle for chrome so its great to see that coming on strong now. For a while it looked like it was never going to catch on.
And as for Opera, die already! j/k but really, that browser just sits there with 3 users refusing to lie down.
Safari surprised me. I really thought it would of been doing better considering Apple was force feeding it to anyone with any Apple related software. You download an apple icon and boom you've got Safari installed!
Great graph!
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