NYPL Labs

I was asked recently if a significant number of our visitors were using Firefox. Our Web traffic trends indicate that they mostly aren’t: folks coming to the Digital Gallery who use Microsoft’s Internet Explorer still outnumber all other browsers 4 to 1. Although I can’t think of single person at NYPL Labs who doesn’t currently prefer a Mozilla browser, Microsoft’s IE - and this may remain a fact of life for awhile - dominates our overall usage statistics.

Common Gecko. Digital ID: 815158. New York Public Library

This isn’t to say that Mozilla’s (and Safaria, Opera, etc.) NYPL numbers - around 20% of our total hits - aren’t impressive. Digital Gallery’s total browser traffic from FY 2007 breaks down roughly to 20 million hits for Mozilla, Safari, etc. vs. 70 million for Microsoft IE, out of about 90 million total hits that weren’t from bots. That’s a great leap for non-IE browsers from just a few years ago. NYPL’s numbers fall in line with global browser share statistics , which show Microsoft loosing its overall share of the browser market since early 2004, when 95% of users favored IE.

Firefox’s increase (5% to 13.49 %) in the past few years, though not a power curve, has been steady. In 2000, IE had the same 80% market it does now; the story behind the 2000-07 numbers depicts a 4 year span when Microsoft completely eliminated Netscape as a factor, peaking with Microsoft’s 95% share, then - with the rebirth of Mozilla - IE’s return to its pre-2000 status.

But even with IE’s recent slide, it’s probably a safe bet that, at least for the foreseeable future, there will likely remain a large majority of users who access Web sites with whatever tool was installed on their PC when they bought it.

Will Microsoft’s browser share stabilize at 80% or continue downward? That open source browsers are beginning to flourish is often described as a Good Thing; the flip side, however, could be a potential return to the days I’m sure no one in web design wants to live through again, when phrases like “works best in (insert browser version here),” or even worse “works only in Browser A” were just part of the tradeoff in designing for multiple browsers. Thankfully, the work of groups like WaSP helped pull us and the browser-makers (somewhat) out of the mire then.

In the interest of full disclosure, I’ll admit I use Firefox and love it. But in the long run could it be that geeks (you know who you are!), who don’t mind the simple install required to run OS software like Firefox, will always prefer those tools when they work better than the alternative, and non-geeks really don’t care? And should they?

FY 2007 selected Digital Gallery numbers, listed for browser, visitors, and hits. (covers all flavors of any specific browser)

Microsoft IE 1,380,145 69,987,796
Firefox 267,832 9,819,988
Safari 96,807 4,398,806
Netscape * 43,699 3,223,701
Mozilla 20,428 555,495
Opera 19,228 656,759
Netscape 12,447 680,989
Snapbot 5,987 8,139
Bloglines 5,821 4,666

Other notable stragglers…

Lynx (!) 1,605 5,702
Java 1,560 92,093
WebTV 1,463 10,628
Konqueror 17,384 1,421

* denotes Netscape compatible