Internet Explorer Falls Below 60% Market Share (first time since late 1990s)

several years ago -- can't reliably say just how many -- and have never looked back.

recommended by our IT guy instead of fooling with updating Explorer.

4 years ago.

And I LOVE never having to see ads anywhere.

I tried Mozilla and went back to IE. Maybe I'm just used to it. Who knows, but I still use IE.

I have people tell me how Chrome is wonderful and better than Firefox and yadda yadda yadda, then I download the latest version, try it for a few days, and my reaction is... meh. Then I go back to Firefox.

So I can't comment on them. I actually like IE better than Firefox.

I don't like the layout. Firefox does almost everything I want it to.

Well, I'll be.

Lightening fast.

If I try to load videos on IE and Chrome, Chrome loads them about 75% faster.

or couldn't it easily do so? online banking passwords, shopping habits, associations between sites you visit, etc.?

I get creeped out enough by Gmail that it gives me ads based on the content of my messages. If Chrome starts to compile everything I do and everywhere I go, that just feels too invasive.

I know, if you have nothing to hide, you haff nuzhing to fear.

I stay away from Chrome for the same reasons I deleted my Facebook.

Firefox could, but it would be noticed in the public source code audit.

IE could, but nobody's publicly auditing the code.

:evilgrin:

To Chrome's and Firefox's benefit, they both have a "don't remember, or save, anything" mode, aka private browsing.

WRT to your fears about the data being tracked and compiled, well, that's already being done at *many* levels.

Here's a peek into how often google gets requests from governments:
http://www.google.com/governmentrequests/

Brazil seems particularly nasty.

Not particularly proud of that, as you may guess.

But there's one thing: China refuses to disclose THEIR requests -- even total counts. Do you really believe they do that less than Brazil?

China had less than Brazil, but (piling on the irony, here) I'm guessing that China requested that their number of requests be removed from the map.

Fear is a mighty powerful tool, and fear of the unknown amplifies fear.

Even my computer-illiterate parents use Firefox now--and my sister uses Safari. I use Firefox--this is an IE-free house.

shit, it crashed every time i opened google news.

downloaded firefox to the machine and wasn't sure i had the privileges to install it. turns out i do. it doesn't crash.

now i pretty much only use IE for secure work related stuff that will only work on IE.

then maybe six months ago it started tying my CPU up like a motherfucker. It would just morph into a huge memory sink over the course of a few hours, growing more and more sluggish as it did so. I switched to Chrome -- I hate it, but it works well and eats up very little in the way of resources.

If you make this configuration change, then every time you minimize Firefox it will unload a lot of the extra stuff it's built up in memory. I made the change several years ago, but it still works the same as ever, so I assume these instructions will also apply in the latest version.

1. Open Firefox and go to the Address Bar. Type in about:config and then press Enter.
2. Right Click in the page and select New -> Boolean.
3. In the box that pops up enter config.trim_on_minimize. Press Enter.
4. Now select True and then press Enter.
5. Restart Firefox.

Thanks for the tip. I'll test-drive it tomorrow and see how it goes. :hi:

On what? Win XP OS? Computer? Thanks for the hint. I'll probably do it later ---- CAREFULLY

Just there to make sure you're not doing soething accidentally.

It still runs faster though, with no hang ups.

To download a better browser.

I have been using Chrome almost exclusively for about 3 months because Firefox is getting too bloated and has become S...L...O...W.

I'll install Firefox, and if it isn't the latest version, use its auto-update feature.

Neither on my my computer, any of my friends' computers, nor the computers at my university nor at the HS I teach at.

I still use it for about half my daily tasks, but I do hate when it consumes 1.5GB of physical and 2GB of virtual memory, then craps the bed. I've tried every configuration option known to mankind, it's just not the most stable of browsers and won't be until it allows for multiple processes. Opera seems to be better at releasing memory when tabs/windows are closed, and not leaking like a sieve. I keep Chrome around for using Flash-based video websites, nothing else. It's too inconveniently laid out to do much.

I switched to Opera from firefox because FF was getting slow and I want a speedy browser.

I'll have to take chrome on a test drive though and see what's up.

:D

But Firefox runs sketchy on my windows.

Why does Microsoft care what browser customers use?

Where's the revenue source?

I'm not sure if I'll stay with Chrome. It's less of a memory hog than Firefox, but the tabbed browsing seems a lot slower than Firefox--seems to take longer for the pages to load when you're loading pages on multiple tabs at the same time.

Barely 1/2 the sites I visited would support it.

we're at the following for the past month:

IE - 72%
Firefox - 17%
Safari - 7.5%
Chrome - 2.5%

followed by everything else.

(Good God, do people still use Netscape??? Not many but yes!)

One website, being about one subject matter and viewed by a specific subset of people, will tend to deviate greatly from the overall average.

Slashdot, for example, reports more than half Firefox. And they surely have more traffic than you.

Just kidding.

It's social networking but we do have an above average amount of older users who most likely just use whatever came with their computer (and explains why there are still a few hundred people using Netscape)

FYI, just updated the numbers as my Google Analytics always defaults to 2 years ago...so now they are showing current. We get a few million hits a day.

IE is typically used 4% higher on weekdays than on the weekends because - most people surf at work and many companies won't allow programs to be loaded on the computers besides what's included with windows.

On the weekends, IE drops by 4% and Firefox and Safari each gain 2%. Chrome is pretty stable at 2.5-3% at all times.

Damn I love stats.

I despise Chrome and think "Meh" about Safari and Opera.

But I loves me some Firefox and I don't get the virus attacks I'd get with IE.

The former for text-based stuff like DU, the latter for any video or music. Firefox works better with streaming than IE, hands down. I've never tried Chrome or Opera or anything else than these. I could certainly live without IE; I'd rather not do without Firefox.

I hope Mr. Gates can withstand the economic consequences of the decline of IE. I think he should learn to appreciate Mac & Cheese.

I don't understand why it matters to them.

Isn't expensive to continue developing IE? Where is the revenue in IE?

IE defaulted to using MS products for search (MSN, Live, Bing), and had proprietary internal code that once required expensive server licenses (IIS, Exchange, Sharepoint) to program with/to... so they could start at the desktop, and leverage it to sell server licenses, which then required more desktops, and so on. In some "enterprise" environments, that's still very much the case to this day (for example, they can do cute things like change the settings on every IE install in a company at once), but for the most part, IE was more about getting MS products onto the internet, which (in the mid to late 90's) was fairly dominated by free (or very, very, expensive) applications running on *nix boxes.

Long story short: "The first hit is free."

Thanks so much for the explanation.