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Your browser mileage may vary ...

by Volker Weber

So, Microsoft Internet Explorer owns 95% of the market? Not according to the logs of Heise Online, the premier IT news site in this country. This is their statistic:

User-Agent	03/2002	08/2002	12/2002
MS Explorer 6.0x	29,4 %	34,0 %	37,3 %
Gecko (Mozilla/Netscape 6)	8,9 %	14,8 %	19,4 %
MS Explorer 5.5x	19,1 %	16,7 %	13,7 %
MS Explorer 5.0x	16,7 %	12,8 %	10,3 %

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Comments

As much as I'd like these figures to reflect reality I just don't think heise is the right site to get a realistic estimate. People that just use whatever browser comes with their operating system do not visit a computer technology site.

But Tobias, what about the photos of the pretty ladies?

;-)

Tobias is right. I have no doubts that Internet Explorer is the major browser right now. Until someone builds a worm/trojan combination that wipes out hundreds of millions of systems. It is not a matter of "if" but only of "when".

Ben, there are no photos of pretty ladies at Heise Online. :-)

Ben, what are you talking about?

Tobias, look for black and white images on this humble weblog.

Doh, sorry... I was thinking of THIS site in place of Heise Online. My apologies for the confusion ;-) Post in haste, repent at your leisure...

but Tobias makes a fair point. When I loaded up OS X at home the first thing I replaced was IE (I got Chimera), and when I use my work PC at home, IE's out the window in favour of Mozilla... Expected behaviour given that I'm a programmer, whereas I imagine most regular Win ME / XP users stick with IE (for example).

Isn't this how new trends start?
The geeks(no offense, I count myself as one!) latch on to something new and good. Then slowly, people take notice as geeks eulogise their new found tool and demonstrate it to their friends and colleagues.
Isn't that how Linux got so big?

Fair point. In my own experience, I simply don't know any "casual" home PC users who use Linux. Even people I consider "enthusiasts" (e.g. they build their own machines and wot-not) still insist on compromising all their hard work by sticking WinXP on top of it all ;-)

Heck, in my circles I'm considered some kind of radical -- I have a Mac!

YMMV though.

I think Chris is right. I convinced a lot of non-geek-friends to leave Exploder/Outlook behind and switch to Mozilla, and happy they are.

Don't tell them "oh, this is open source, and uh, damn standard compliant and stuff". Show them the features, show them what Mozilla can do what Exploder can't. Just demonstrate mouse gestures, tabbed browsing, and the text-smiley to symbol-smiley converter in the mail client. If that doesn't work, point the browser to "special interest sites" and demonstrate what a mighty combination the pop-up-blocker plus mozdev Bannerblind is - it convinces them all ;-)

That's right. It's like planting seeds, getting people to switch that in turn may spread the word to more and more people. I convinced 2 people so far; my best friend and my dad. My dad works for "Schulen ans Netz", which is Germany's initiative to equip schools with computers and integrate them into everyday school life. So chances are he'll mention it sometime and Phoenix may end up on 30 computers at a school where kids may notice its superiority to Explorer and switch at home as well... and so on and so on...

Ceci n'est pas un blog

vowe.net is a personal website published by Volker Weber a.k.a. vowe. I am an author, consultant and systems architect based in Darmstadt, Germany.

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