Saint and I were discussing whether it was worth spending untold hours working around annoying Internet Explorer quirks when making some changes to the AusGamers site, so we checked out the numbers from the last month or so:

Internet Explorer: 48.35%
- IE7.0: 31.34%
- IE6.0: 16.88%
- Other: < 0.25%
Firefox: 45.66%
Opera: 3.98%
Safari: 1.28%
Other Mozilla: 0.59%

While IE6 is still a not-insignificant chunk, frankly it's such a pain in the ass trying to make everything work for it that we'd rather try to convince people to upgrade to IE7 - or to Firefox.

While all the core site functionality would still work, there'll probably be a few broken things, so if you're still (intentionally) using IE6, please take this as a bit of a prod that it's time to upgrade. If you are stuck in IE6 and can't do anything about it, let us know why in the comments.

cool, ie is beating other browsers

It's only beating Firefox by the skin of its balls though - it's amazing how much Firefox usage has increased over the past couple years.

Microsoft must be spewing about it - I'd say they've lost the browser war, because the tables have turned - now we don't have to bow to every IE quirk just because they're the majority of the users. It's quite the converse now - we can simply ignore their broken behaviours and focus on the browsers that do work (OK, sure, IE7 is one of them, but still).

i would have expected a higher ff usage percentage

i'm not surprised.

personally, i've never been impressed with ffox.

not saying i'ts bad, but it's no where near good enough to make me switch.

i would have expected a higher ff usage percentage

Possibly some of the IE users are forced to using SOE's at their workplace/school/uni (although I've noticed that QUT now seem to default firefox as their browser in some labs)

^^ quick bandwagon, GET HIM!!! ^^

I use IE cus I can :)

That said I have firefox installed on both work and home and do use it semi-regularly.
Both do the same for me, except Firefox has a few addons that I use for certain pages (Ikariam)

Its depressing to see that FF isnt in the 60% mark. Just shows peoples ignorance/stupidity.

I think your post does a much better job of that!

Even my parents use Firefox instead of IE. I'd guess that out of the users who actually post here, Firefox would be the clear leader.

even old people are now coming to realise FF is safer and improves overall quality of life. plus it is an environmentally friendly, low carbon emitter.

whats the os make up?

yeah ie6 usage would be workplaces.. Just put a large red footer explaining the ie6 problem like whirlpool do.

Then you can spend your time on improving the iPhone experience.. navigation is difficult

I keep ie6 installed for my web dev work for browser compatability testing. It's too soon to ignore it for me, but I'm all for the push to eradicate it from the world. God I hate IE!

nF, OS makeup is as follows:

1. Windows 96.84%
2. Linux 1.52%
3. Macintosh 1.46%
4. (not set) 0.06%
5. Playstation 3 0.04%
6. Playstation Portable 0.02%
7. iPhone 0.02%
8. SymbianOS 0.01%
9. iPod 0.01%
10. Nintendo Wii 0.01%


Of the Windows group:

1. XP 76.64%
2. Vista 22.06%
3. Server 2003 0.67%
4. 2000 0.45%
5. 98 0.14%
6. ME 0.02%
7. 95 0.01%
8. NT 0.01%
9. CE 0.00%

(haha, vista)

Then you can spend your time on improving the iPhone experience.. navigation is difficult

An iPhone version is on our speculative TODO ; we could easily knock something together really quickly but (if we can) I'd like to spend a bit of time doing it proper-like.

FireF FTW !!!!

Got a breakdown on Firefox 2 vs 3?

Funny that the AGN stats vary so much from the Carsales stats - we show about 85% IE (out of 4.5 million hits per day). Carpoint has about 86% IE out of 1.5 million per day, but a much lower number of Symbian users (about 1/3rd the percentage of what Carsales gets). iPhone, about 4,500 requests last month compared to Symbian on sales, around 0.03% on both sites for iPhone.

What's so strange about that? That seems totally expected to me, given the demographic of each site.

I don't think it's that funny really... Surely most gamers are going to be up on all the latest software releases/new technology than an average car sales browser would.

^ Beaten :~(

Nintendo Wii 0.01%

Ha, that's probably just me.

do you think the not set is Blackberry browser?

and infi, i think you're confusing FF with LPG :)

last edited by Mr Hardware at 15:57:59 07/Aug/08

I think it's any client that made a request without providing a value in the user agent header

ok so where's blackberry then?

(haha, vista)

Tisk Tisk Tisk .....vista users ...agreed LOL

ok so where's blackberry then?

not sure, I don't know what user agent blackberry sends. All I know is that "4. (not set) 0.06%" means no user agent value was passed in the header, or no user agent header was sent at all

looking in some of the http logs I can find user agent entries like this:
"BlackBerry8100/4.2.1 Profile/MIDP-2.0 Configuration/CLDC-1.1 VendorID/102"

trog where'd you get those stats from? our logs or some external tracking thingo?

Google Analytics

Pity Microsoft thinks it has to reinvent every wheel and not conform to any sort of standard anything anywhere...

XML, HTML, now it wants its own SWF..

I like to add an information bar into IE6 to let people know they suck.

Add this HTML at the top of your page:

<!--[if lt ie 7]>
<div id="browser-alert">
<a target="_blank" href="http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyId=9AE91EBE-3385-447C-8A30-081805B2F90B&displaylang=en" title="Click here for options">  This version of Internet Explorer is out of date and insecure.  A new version of Internet Explorer is available.  Click here to upgrade...</a></div>
<![endif]-->


Add some CSS:



#browser-alert {
color: #000;
text-align: left;
font: 11px/1 segoi ui, tahoma, arial !important;
position: absolute;
z-index: 300;
left: 0;
top: 0;
width: 100%;
}
#browser-alert a:link, #browser-alert a:visited {
display: block;
color: #000;
text-decoration: none;
padding: 7px 7px 7px 25px;
border-bottom: 2px outset #fff;
background: #ffffe1 url(images/ie-error.gif) no-repeat 5px 4px;
}
#browser-alert a:hover {
color: #fff;
cursor: default;
background: #316ac5 url(images/ie-error.gif) no-repeat 5px -80px;
}


And grab this image:
http://dennisdesign.com.au/sites/all/themes/zen/images/ie-error.gif

ie 4 life

IE sucks for tabs.

Using ie6 here at work... part of the SOE, nothing I can do about it.

That's about what I would expect for a gaming / technology site. I don't have numbers handy, but the local government site I administer is more like 80 : 18 : 2 for IE : FF : other. Our staff are SOE'd into IE6 too.

I have Firefox installed on my laptop but for some reason I just don't use it. IE7 does the stuff I need it to and has support for ActiveX and other retarded s*** when I need it.

I know its evil but I just can't be arsed switching browser (or loading an IE tab) because some arsehat wrote his site the wrong way and it only works in IE.

FF and WinXP...two pieces of 0011001 that I won't be parting with for at least another year.

IE ftw..

Also who are the spanners using ME.... seriosuly, worst OS evar.

What's so strange about that? That seems totally expected to me, given the demographic of each site. I don't think he found it strange, he just wanted to throw his epenis in the arena

Ok so let's just pretendI know very little about the differences between all the applications/OSs:

I use IE7 at home and FF at uni, there's not really _that_ much difference is there? Like someone mentioned FF is safer than IE? And trog does it matter that MS is losing the browser war? They don't actually make any money out of it do they as it's just part of Windows or is it meant to be one of the main attractions of the Windows package?

And with regards to Vista, I've just gone from XP on my old desktop to Vista on a laptop, I know it has some differences but I don't think they're that huge Why is Vista disliked so much?

While I'm throwing out 101 questions, for people running Vista is it worth/recommended to install SP1?

for people running Vista is it worth/recommended to install SP1?

Here's a scenario:

1) Asus Laptop
2) OEM copy of Vista Ultimate
3) Auto Update to Vista SP1
4) Laptop now turns off completely half way through boot sequence, like someone pulled the battery.
5) Sad Panda
6) Going to XP.

How do you like them apples ?

You should definitely install SP1 - whether or not to keep your windows install up to date is an absolute no-brainer. If updating results in problems, you need to resolve those problems, not refrain from updating - unless there's a known issue that needs a vendor fix.

We're running about 10 or so pc's in the office with vista, all with SP1 - no dramas that I'm aware of (or even any minor issues) related to SP1. And these pc's are all used by developers or otherwise tech-savvy guys, not nub users who just come home and switch on their pc to check email for an hour and are less likely to notice issues.

fkn jim!! undermining XP!!

hmm lets weigh them up:

Vista Pros:
New
better 64bit support (so ive been told)
better security (for newbs)
looks 'nice'

Vista Cons:
rapes system
compatibility issues (hardware & software)
dramas
gay networking interface
did I mention slow?
bloaty

XP Pros:
everything works, good support
compared to vista makes love to your system (sp2+)
also can look good
next to no bloat
networking is great and simple (to anyone with half a brain)

xp cons:
old
some 64bit systems have dramas
security dramas (can easily be overcome with free software and updates)


IMO they are both good but vista is better suited to people who are more computer illiterate.

It's such a different side of the coin when you're developing products that lots of people use and have been around for a long time. You want to make the software better, more secure, better performance etc. but you can't change anything, otherwise huge explosions occur. You fix a bug in an API call, and then suddenly a third party product doesn't work anymore, and you get blamed. Then try to imagine the huge number of third party products/versions/revisions/hardware that exists that relies on things like Windows or IE.

I'm not saying that all the decisions were right along the way, but it is a massive task for any software developer to maintain compatibilities. However, IE6 sucks balls and should be purged from the earth. I refuse to even test my sites on it.

Don't diss Asus mate. I use an Asus Laptop, runs perfectly fine for me. Vista is alright, if only it was less of a resource hogger. BTW I updated to SP1, perfectly fine and becomes faster and more efficient.

I'm a Firefox loyalist, using IE7 When all else fails. Funny thing is that from Firefox 2 to 3, I still get the "not responding" firefox window when opening specific sites and some pdfs.

im pretty sure everyone gets it opening pdfs

awww
I still reckon xp is good skitza

Funny thing is that from Firefox 2 to 3, I still get the "not responding" firefox window when opening specific sites and some pdfs.

that is soooo much more likely to be your internet connection dude

opening PDFs within a browser is fools work. Save to disk then open natively

Skip vista -> Win2008workstation.com

win2008, aka vista server

IE6 is a f***in pain in the arse but your browser visitor statistics are not typical of most browser statistics. Overall IE still accounts for about 26% of browsing use, so that means us webbies need to build sites that degrade gracefully in IE6 for about the next 3-4 years before it is a non-factor. It's not that hard to markup layouts in IE6 once you know the traps, I pretty much only have 1 or 2 IE6 specific hacks in my css files.

Yep, the vast, vast majority of the site is happily IE6 compatible and will work fine. There's just the occasional thing that we don't really want to spend ages trying to make it work. Most people probably won't even notice anyway.

opening PDFs within a browser is fools work. Save to disk then open natively

Saving to disk manually then opening natively is fools work.

Configure your browser to just open the PDF externally, without using the in-browser plugin. Takes about 15 seconds to do this, problem solved and you get to keep your single-click PDF-viewage.

http://homepage.powerup.com.au/~boldajis/images/pdf.png


last edited by parabol at 17:27:50 09/Aug/08

It's only beating Firefox by the skin of its balls though - it's amazing how much Firefox usage has increased over the past couple years.

Microsoft must be spewing about it - I'd say they've lost the browser war, because the tables have turned - now we don't have to bow to every IE quirk just because they're the majority of the users. It's quite the converse now - we can simply ignore their broken behaviours and focus on the browsers that do work (OK, sure, IE7 is one of them, but still).

Yeh pretty cool stats. If you had access to more detail I could run a stats analysis so you have a more fine grained knowledge. Basically what you'd be looking for is if there's a statistical difference between IE and Firefox. < 3% isn't a lot, but it could still be statistically significant if you had a huge sample size and small standard deviation. If it came out as not significant, you would know at a certain probability level (like 99.9%) that people visit your site using IE and Firefox equally.

f*** now I'm using so much cognitive load to work out if what I wrote is correct >.<

If you were predicting that there was no difference between IE and FF, we would have to run a power analysis too and check that you had a big enough sample size to detect a significant effect, if there was one.

Saving to disk manually then opening natively is fools work.

Using Adobe Read is fools work. Foxit Reader is so much faster.

qgl: ahead of the curve

I just thought even harder, and realised that I'm retarded... you only need to run analyses if you are using a sample. I assume you aren't using a sample, you're using the entire population of people who visited QGL. Duh.

Aahh Statistical Analysis at its finest!

Is that on the entire ausgamers network?

What would the difference be with just QGL?

trog - what sort of page impressions and unique visitors do you get a month (if you're willing to say)...

interesting stats

decent mixture of GET and POST requests but heavily weighted toward GET

Using Adobe Read is fools work. Foxit Reader is so much faster.

It's fast but has a few bugs. I've listed a few below .. they might not seem like a bit deal in isolation, but when you're spending half your days reading papers and other documents, it can get pretty fkn annoying.

1. The renderer just dies on certain PDFs. Have to wait 10-20 seconds for a very slow redraw.

2. Press CTRL-F or select the search input-box, type some text and hit Enter to begin a search. Nothing happens, have to actually click the Search icon.

3. If you're browsing a PDF and decide to save it to disk, Foxit will also zoom you out and take you back to Page 1, losing your position and zoom in the document.

4. The text-selector doesn't work properly about 25% of the time.

As an alternative, I've installed Acrobat 8 Pro (for PDF editing) along with the speedy Acrobat Reader 7 in parallel to be able to view PDFs without the bloat of the newer Pro version (I hate you Adobe for all your BS bloat).

Linux beats Mac. Cute and (mildly) surprising.

While on the quirks thing, not really a big deal but maybe worth noting if you guys haven't come across it:

"Request-URI Too Large

The requested URL's length exceeds the capacity limit for this server.
request failed: URI too long"

Safari (3 and iirc did the same thing on 2)

yeah i get that on my iphone if i press reply but haven't logged in first.

I think that may be me on my ps3 every so often. I know three of the linux users are actually my n810, work and home systems too. It's interesting that linux % > mac % there.

Wow what a gay thread.

I'd say they've lost the browser war, because the tables have turned

What?

IE still dominates the browser market. Firefox have just started to bridge the gap. Your web site is obviously going to show higher FF figures because power users tend to avoid IE.

Using Adobe Read is fools work. Foxit Reader is so much faster.

Try Adobe 9, I noticed it too is much faster / lightweight.

Also... not sure if anyone has used IE8 beta, but its excellent.

last edited by mongie at 08:44:08 10/Aug/08

Try Adobe 9, I noticed it too is much faster / lightweight.

Sure about that? Most of what I've heard about it has been negative:

http://blog.micropledge.com/2008/07/adobe-reader-9/

IE does not even support DOM, which blows chunks. Firefox rules.

Not sure what that guy was doing, but I didn't have any of those troubles.

Clearly because "Ben" had trouble, its Adobe's fault.

Not sure what that guy was doing, but I didn't have any of those troubles.

Troubles? The whole opinion piece was mainly about how bloated Adobe products get after each revision, which is true.

Adobe Reader 9 system requirements: 335MB of available hard disk space
Adobe Reader 7.0.9 system requirements: Up to 90MB of available hard-disk space

335MB? No big deal one might say. The thing is, with their products there is usually a strong correlation between hard-drive space requirements and system performance, since the software usually loads an insane amount of unnecessary s***.

Clearly because "Ben" had trouble, its Adobe's fault.

Clearly because "mongie" claims to have no issues, we must ignore all the bloat and pretend the software is leaner than it really is.

My adobe reader folder is 198MB.

It also contains the setup files, which are 104MB worth, so the program on my PC is using 90MB.

I have a 640GB HDD.

90MB? No big deal.

I have a 640GB HDD.

90MB? No big deal.

Yeah way to completely miss the point, where I said "No big deal one might say. The thing is, with their products there is usually a strong correlation between hard-drive space requirements and system performance, since the software usually loads an insane amount of unnecessary s***".

The ignorance in your reply is almost certainly intentional, so I won't bother wasting my time addressing it further.

hmmm, i dont know who to root for in this argument!

I'm wanking to parabol

when are you not?

after your alarm clock goes off

it's no wonder vista gets a bad rap when idiots like Harldy Normal install it on semprons or some other POS with 256 or 512M of ram!!