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20% of You Have Little to No Excuse
by Aaron Smith on Wednesday, January 7 2009While looking through our website statistics for the new year, I noticed that close to 20% of people who visit our site use a browser that is not current. Let me break down some numbers for you. Generally speaking, about 51% to 52% of the web traffic we receive comes from some version of Internet Explorer. About 20% to 21% comes from some version of Firefox, and around 30%, or everything else, comes from some version of something else. Various Mozilla engines make up around 14% of that left over 30%, about 8% of that 30% is unknown, and Opera and Safari round out about 3.6% of what's left. So it's really 50/50 between IE and Mozilla (with a few exceptions here and there). But here's the statistic that bothers me most: of those people using Internet Explorer, close to 15% are using version 6.0. Remember, Internet Explorer 6.0 was introduced to the world back in August of 2001. Of those people using Firefox, about 3.6% are using something other than the current version (which, as of this post, is 3.0.5). Now before you remind be about corporate security restrictions and all the other reasons why people aren't able to run a recent version of a recent browser, let me beat you to the punch and say that I already know all of that -- we talk to people quite often who are stuck in these situations. Some Internet Explorer users may have no control over what browser versions are pushed to their machines each time they log in to their networks. They have to use what they're told to use because their paycheck depends on it. Firefox users on the other hand really have no excuse, especially the 10 of you using version 1.0.7. I mean, come on. I hear the excuses from the techs all the time: IT/IS departments, web developers, and the like have customized environments for Internet Explorer 6, and they're not ready to change, even though IE6 is almost 8 years old and IE7 was introduced back in July 2005 (in beta form). Isn't three (going on four) years enough time to get up to speed with somewhat current technology? IE8 is not only on the horizon, but was released in beta back in March of last year. If you're stuck using an old browser like IE6, it's time you make some noise. Tell your administrators to Google for "dropping support for Internet Explorer 6," and peruse through the almost 400,000 results for an indication of where things are heading. The sooner they update to current technology on their own, the sooner they can avoid being forced to update to current technology. If you do have a choice, and you're sticking with the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" philosophy, understand that you're probably making more work for people who find your browser listed in their web statistics. Imagine a developer telling her manager that her team is no longer supporting outdated, buggy IE6 in their code, only to have the manager tell her that, oh, yes she is, because 15% of Internet Explorer visitors are still using the old dilapidated beast. Just keep in mind that she has to maintain customized code specific to your browser's inability to handle certain tasks, and each time her team wants to do something new, she has to make sure the old browsers don't break. In other words, your use of an old, outdated browser causes her more work. As for those of you using the Microsoft Data Access Component Internet Publishing Provider (i.e. FrontPage) to obtain GW content, you need help. [grin]
