Jul 04 2007 at 2:48pm
When is it Our Job to Educate People About Browsers?
There are many people still using outdated browsers. This is obviously a problem for webmasters, yet most of us don’t do anything about it. It’s not our problem, we say. We can’t annoy users by complaining about their browser version. But how do we expect the situation to ever change if we continue to be so complacent?
Here are the stats from my work site for the month of June, 2007:
Firefox came in at 26% overall (22% v. 2.0, 4% with other versions), Opera at 2.6% and Safari with 1.3%.
The IE 6 figure is obviously the one that is concerning. The Counter.com is showing 54% with IE 6 for the same time period. This browser was pushed out over 6 months ago as a critical upgrade. It’s been out as a download for longer than that. And yet 40% of visitors to this site did not have it installed! Did they make a deliberate decision not to upgrade to the new version? Maybe some of them did, but my assumption would be that the majority were not in that situation.
The common wisdom is that it takes 5-6 years for a browser to work it’s way out of use after it has been discontinued by the software maker. This seems to be what developers are assuming will happen with IE 6. What do we do? We sit back and wait until users slowly upgrade their computers and get a new browser.
Why are we so complacent? Shouldn’t somebody be warning these users that they are using outdated, insecure software? We, as developers, are being held hostage by users who are ignorant to the choices available to them.
What do your IE stats look like? Do you think this is a problem? Are you doing anything to help users understand that they are using an outdated browser? Does anyone know if Microsoft is doing anything to encourage these users to upgrade? (I think part of the problem is that they are forcing people to validate their copy of Windows …)
Update 12/07
We’ve just installed AW stats for our domains. This has only been running for a few days but I’m seeing the same trends:
| Site | IE6 | IE7 | Firefox | Opera | Safari | Other |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A Padded Cell | 13.7% | 7.6% | 44% | 22.9% | 5.4% | 6.4% |
| The Webmaster Forums | 31% | 17.3% | 36.4% | 9% | 1.2% | 5.1% |
| MeganMcDermott.com | 20.6% | 13.1% | 39.4% | 9.5% | 2.4% | 15% |
Other interesting tidbits
- On A Padded Cell, 31.3 % are using Linux (probably thanks to Liam’s Slashdot whoring)
- The other/unkown’s on MeganMcDermott.com include 5.7 % unknown, 5% AppleSyndication, and 2.5% Amaya
Considering that these are all webmaster-related websites the proportion of IE 6 users is quite appalling.
These numbers also confirm that you can’t assume that browser usage will be the same or even similar on different sites even when they’re on the same topic, and you definitely can’t assume that yours will be the same as The Counter’s.
Update 12/08: See also Trash all IE Hacks and On the Tenacity of IE 6
Adam Kinder July 4th, 2007 at 3:53 pm
Here is what it looks like for Kinderism for all of 2007 so far:
26.8% for IE total ( 19,105 visits )
22.8% for Firefox total ( 16,266 visits )
0.6% for Netscape ( 472 visits )
49.6% for all others ( 35,398 visits )
For other, “Unknown” racked up most of that percentage - 41.2% of overall visits. Mostly trackback spam, comment spam, etc
IE 7 - 7.7%
IE 6 - 18.2%
IE 5 - 0.2% ( thank god )
Firefox 2.0.0.4 - 9.5%
Firefox 2.0.0.3 - 5.3%
Believe it or not - Firefox v0.10 - 47 visits
Opera pulled in 4.1%, and Safari was 0.9%
Adam H July 6th, 2007 at 9:05 am
Overall (last month)
IE 1,207 65.38%
FF 559 30.28%
Opera 62 3.36%
Safari 11 0.60%
(IE break down)
IE 6.0 634 52.5%
IE 7.0 573 47.4%
My content is mostly ASP.Net stuff so a high IE percentage is expected. However of developers I would expect better.
I hope Jesse publishes the main site stats again soon.
Jordynn July 6th, 2007 at 2:48 pm
I was at RPI the other week and had to get tech support to help me access their wireless, and the guy commented on the fact that i have, like, 8 different browsers in the bar thingy on the bottom of my screen… thanks to you.
Jordynn July 7th, 2007 at 9:13 am
Ok…. how do I do that???
Brent July 7th, 2007 at 5:23 pm
Remember too that a lot of corps have IT policies in place that will prohibit rolling out new technologies for a very very long time (since they may be incompatible with internal apps etc.
No excuse for the non-corp users though. I’m actually building an app now where I have to consider IE 5. If you do rally an angry mob, let me know and I’ll march them over to my client’s.
=)
Megan July 8th, 2007 at 10:32 am
Liam mentioned that too when we talked about it here. The site I posted about is mainly for students, so that probably doesn’t apply here. My guess would be that either they’re not able to run the updgrades because they don’t have a validated copy of windoze or they’re just ignoring the updates. Last weekend Liam spent ages updating my mom’s Windoze because she didn’t know she was supposed to run them. We got her using Firefox a long time ago so the browser thing wasn’t an issue there.
I think this is a larger issue of people not knowing how to use their computers. Yes, software versions change and yes, you do need to update it once in awhile! It would be like not taking your car in for an oil change or something.
And here we are, professionals being restircted by the problem and we don’t do anything about it. Who is going to tell these people that they need updates if we don’t? Not that we need to plaster it over every site we do, but there might be some cases where it’s appropriate. Many sites don’t have any problem with telling me I can’t use Opera (the jerks) - some won’t even let me into the site!
IE 5 - that’s awful! I occasionally hear about people still needing to support NS 4 too. Ghastly.
Jordynn - what are you trying to do? You can remove any icons by right-clicking and choosing “delete” (I think it says delete - not using Windoze here to check). You can also go into add/remove programs from your control panel and get rid of anything you don’t use. You should use a better web browser though
andyk July 10th, 2007 at 6:11 pm
Remember… huge numbers of windows users are using PIRATE versions of windows and that means no access to windows update and therefore no access to IE7.
I’m sure some of those pirates will be using Firefox, but a lot of people using pirated versions of windows don’t KNOW that they are using a pirated version since they got it from a friend who setup their machine or on a second hand machine etc.
I work for an ISP and we quite frequently get people calling for support with Microsoft products like Frontpage because they don’t know how to use the software. When you suggest that they read the manual that came with it they usually claim to have lost or misplaced it and I reckon in the vast majority of those cases piracy is the cause.
All future versions of IE should have a built in browser update feature like Firefox and Opera have. It’s just common sense. MS are holding back the internet and it’s driving me insane!
Megan July 11th, 2007 at 11:48 am
Yes, exactly. What they should be doing is offering the update for free and not requiring people to validate their copy of windows. And they need to notify people that something is wrong - people like those you mentioned could go on for ages without realizing they don’t have the latest updates and why they need to have them (security mainly).
What I’m thinking is that there may be some role for us as web designers in educating people on software upgrades. They won’t know they’re using an outdated browser if nobody tells them. The question is: when, where, and how is it appropriate for us to act?