How’s the IE hacking coming along? Are you guys running Parallels for your cross-browser shenanigans? I’ve found that IE7 can actually cause more layout problems than IE6 (damn you, hasLayout!), although it does have better support for many CSS declarations…

I’m a web designer.
I read the headline to this post and went “I wish, man.”

IE just doesn’t seem to want to catch up and be compatible. Worse, a lot of not tech-savvy people are still using IE6. IE7 irritates me as being the odd duck that won’t comply with my CSS menus and sometimes formats things oddly–IE6, on the other hand, flat-out refuses to recognize a lot of extremely valid code, and can’t deal with transparency in PNGs (resulting in some fantastically ugly stuff happening to otherwise fantastically awesome designs). The great majority of my time spent optimizing websites is spent optimizing for IE6… and then re-optimizing for everything else once I’ve made Microsoft happy.

Who the heck uses IE6? Well, a majority of my clients, apparently. I think there’s a certain type of person who is just computer literate enough to click on the “IE” icon on their Windows desktop and get to their email, and beyond that just can’t deal. These people use IE6 — and, clearly, cannot design their own websites. Possibly, you and I are at opposite ends of the spectrum in terms of our visitors.

My website, http://www.luckforlaura.com, has 40.1% of users coming in with IE, 34.9% with Firefox, 16.1% with Safari, 6.7% with “unknown” and 2.6% with Mozilla.

This was a post worth reading — thanks for touching on the subject. I’m also a big fan of Thunderbird — and other web designers might like to know it’s the only email program that will allow them to insert and send their own HTML (instead of just working with a WYSIWYG editor).

You can probably put the high percentage use of Firefox down to it being flexible for ‘creatives’. That is you can add a web designers toolbar, add things like Rember The Milk, and numerous other handy applications. I doubt this would extend beyond the creative boundary. I can’t see system admins allowing or installing IE on normal office computers or it being used by people that only use their computers to surf the net and use it pretty much in the same state they had it in when they first switched it on.

It’s a nice idea but most people I’d suggest aren’t either away that there is an alternative to IE or actually care.

gav.

Wow, I didn’t realize people were so passionate to protest about this.
Well…I switched to Firefox from Safari a few years ago..and overall I’ve been quite happy with Firefox. I started out with Internet Explorer like most others. Then entered the new players in the arena. IE just couldn’t keep up with the competition. So many browser issues that just couldn’t keep the internet masses happy. My blog looks totally messed up on IE..but I really don’t care cause I know there aren’t too many visitors on IE.

My site is website and graphic design-related. I believe it gives a fairly decent idea of what small to medium sized businesses and organizations use.

My stats (Jan 2008) break down like so:

Firefox: 37.9%
IE: 31.8%
(IE6: 15.9%)
(IE7: 15.6%)
Unknown: 29.1%
Safari: 0.2%
Opera: 0.4%

What I find encouraging is that, a year ago, I had to inform clients that there was another browser besides Internet Explorer (or *gasp* Netscape). Now many of my new clients already use Firefox. That makes explaining the importance of web standards much easier.

I would love to not have to spend 90% of my time working out IE6-related issues.

I was surprised when my grandma and my aunt both had downloaded Firefox. They told me they heard it was ‘faster.’ I don’t know how true that is, but I’m glad they’re using the fox.

I run http://www.branchrecords.com and these are numbers. I think it shows that a lot of younger kids are really buying into the mac market. Especially the ones interested in independent music.

Safari 39.20%
Internet Explorer 30.11%
Firefox 30.11%
Netscape 0.57%

Well, CssGlance January browser stats are:
firefox: 63,35%
IE: 23,06% (IE7: 63,09; IE6: 36,73%)
Safari: 7,53%
Opera: 2,58%

But we have to consider our target made of professional figures.
For other kind of websites, such as institutional ones, IE is still “the King” with reversed percentages.

Thanks for all of your input I think its really interesting to look at these stats. I look forward to seeing if Firefox will continue to spread. I know its very viral via word of mouth, especially with younger people, but IE still has a big edge and is a lot older.

Ill make a post again in 6 months or so so we can compare stats again. In the meantime I guess us web designers will have to deal with the thorn in our butts called IE. =)

by the way.. I set up both my parents computers to run on Firefox or else they’d still be using IE. I had my sister switch as well and she’s grateful. Much of the older generation just doesn’t have the tech savvy to know that there are different internet browsers out there so they’re just stick with what little they know or what their computers came with. Shoot..my mom may have still been stuck with AOL if I hadn’t taken her off a few years back. It’s really up to us who know what’s best to teach and assist those who simply don’ know the difference.
I’m also a big fan of Thunderbird which I gladly switched to from Entourage.

Most of my sites have 3 different stylesheets for this specific purpose. IE butchers most of my code. The worst part of my job is browser compatibility testing.

The worst part is that IE is not going anywhere. Ever. As long as it is bundled with windows, we will always have to develop for it.

internet explorer is nowhere near dead

about a month after you posted this article they released ie 8 beta
which is based off web standards

microsoft is finally catching up

Finally, i heard something about them dropping support for an old version of IE as well. Maybe my post inspired them hahahaha.

We can never expect IE to die. Microsoft needs it. What we can all do is hope IE8 renders things better than its predecessors.