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The Decline of IE and Firefox

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Re: The Decline of IE and Firefox

#21

Post by thedrbrian »

doe88 wrote: post #8
stcredzero wrote: post #2

One question I have in mind: Will Safari be able to keep up, or will Apple become complacent because they're satisfied with being the best option for OS X? (Which they can achieve by being insiders on that OS, and not by being more awesome.)

I don't know on OS X but on iOS while Mobile Safari is quite good, it lacks one mandatory feature: a way to install extensions or at least a way to install Adblock. I find myself using less and less my iPad (last generation with A7) for a single reason: because how much web sites are actually cluttered with pop-ups, ad banners, and modal sheets masking contents. This has a serious impact on loading times and on usabi…

If you're at home use privoxy to filter the ads out. You can also use privoxy to filter out onswipe garbage too.

http://misctechmusings.com/ipad-ad-blocking-using-privoxy/

Re: The Decline of IE and Firefox

#22

Post by zobzu »

chasing wrote: post #12

Those graphs are misleading. The first one visually indicates that Chrome currently has something like 100x the share of Firefox -- while the numbers indicate it's more like 3x. You should at least have the base of the graphs at 0%. Probably even better to have to top line of the graphs at 100%. That'd give a truer visual representation of the data.

they also take prefetching as unique hits. only chrome does prefetching by default. makes results extremely misleading

Re: The Decline of IE and Firefox

#23

Post by Kequc »

It's kinda too bad in the case of IE. It has always been a sword in the side of every web developer that we must develop twice. Once regularly and again for IE. Recently I was pleasantly surprised to open up IE and not only did everything look correct and work, but everything worked faster.

Why didn't everyone switch away from IE ten years ago? That would have been so helpful. Now it doesn't matter.

Re: The Decline of IE and Firefox

#24

Post by vetinari »

darkandbrooding wrote: post #18
ddebernardy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only skimmed at the charts in the article, but I'd assume the underlying reason highlighted by OP is the only one that makes sense, i.e. that old Windows boxes get replaced by tablets (usually, but not necessarily, iPads), on top of smartphone sales; just less frequently for geeky users (who are more likely to be using FF or Chrome than IE). If so, "best" option for OSX seems somewhat moot: what really counts is be…

I have Gmail and Chrome installed on an iPad. HTTP links in Gmail open in Chrome if that browser is installed. Just FYI.

Yes, but that's due to specific effort of the Gmail team.

Links from other (non-Google) apps still open in Safari.

Re: The Decline of IE and Firefox

#25

Post by ris »

Touche wrote: post #17
stcredzero wrote: post #2

One question I have in mind: Will Safari be able to keep up, or will Apple become complacent because they're satisfied with being the best option for OS X? (Which they can achieve by being insiders on that OS, and not by being more awesome.)

Apple already has become complacent. They are by far the slowest browser to adopt new web features (including IE). For example IndexedDB has been around for like 4 years now and there are no signs of Safari implementing it. WebRTC is another where they are behind the other browsers. Very rarely is Safari the first to adopt anything , because frankly they almost never are the ones working on drafts. I firmly believe A…

I will add to this that Safari 6 added a host of horrible (and bizarre) bugs which seem to have received no attention or even acknowledgement from Apple.

Re: The Decline of IE and Firefox

#27

Post by JohnTHaller »

darkandbrooding wrote: post #18
ddebernardy wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I only skimmed at the charts in the article, but I'd assume the underlying reason highlighted by OP is the only one that makes sense, i.e. that old Windows boxes get replaced by tablets (usually, but not necessarily, iPads), on top of smartphone sales; just less frequently for geeky users (who are more likely to be using FF or Chrome than IE). If so, "best" option for OSX seems somewhat moot: what really counts is be…

I have Gmail and Chrome installed on an iPad. HTTP links in Gmail open in Chrome if that browser is installed. Just FYI.

Google had to do that specifically, iirc, since Apple doesn't like other browsers.

It's also worth pointing out that Chrome on your iPad is just Mobile Safari (the slower version for 3rd party apps) with a Chrome skin/UI on top of it. It's not the real Chrome/Blink engine used on Mac, Windows, Linux, Android, etc, which would be faster.

Re: The Decline of IE and Firefox

#30

Post by nerraga »

ams6110 wrote: post #14
dserban wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I would give it at least a little bit of credibility just based on the fact that it's a consumer-oriented site with a wider audience than just us technical people. But I agree it's just one data point among many. Which brings up an interesting question, since we're on a site for startup founders: what kind of traffic patterns do you guys see on your websites?

My guess would be that among tech users, Firefox has gained over the past year, given concerns about privacy and Google's relentless slurping of browsing behavior from anywhere they can get it. That's the reason I switched from Chrome to Firefox a few months ago; I now only use Chrome for Google apps.

It's interesting that you'd say this as I've found myself doing the same thing for very much the same reasons. I'm actually a little hesitant to use Chrome at all except in those cases where I need flash (I don't tend to install flash and usually rely on Chrome's bundled plugin).

Chrome is a great browser and the built-in developer tools really seem to be raising the bar but for casual browsing I've pretty much switched to Firefox or Safari (depending on the platform).

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