Category: browsers
From the market leaders to the up-and-comers; news and opinion on browsing software.
From the market leaders to the up-and-comers; news and opinion on browsing software.
I find it fascinating to see the variance in browser use in the diverse regions of the world, and nowhere is that variance more apparent than in mobile web browsers. While in the West we may be used to Chrome and Safari being more or less the only game in town, elsewhere in the world the story is quite different. In this article I’m going to take a look at a few charts which illustrate that difference.
The stats used here are collected from the 30 days prior to 25th August, taken from StatCounter.com. They come with the usual disclaimer about the impossibility of getting completely accurate data, and don’t always include feature phone browsers, so should therefore be treated as indicative rather than conclusive. With the caveats out of the way, let’s begin.
I’ve spent a lot of time in my career writing and talking about future web features, from CSS3 to Web Components. But I’ve recently come to realise that, while I still think these features are important, I’ve been missing out on the bigger picture: the survival of the open web. That sounds hyperbolic, I know, but so many articles I’ve read, conversations I’ve had, and behaviours I’ve observed, have led me to the conclusion that the open web, in the form we know it now, is under threat.
At the beginning of May I wrote an article with some stats on OS and browser share and, perhaps labouring under the misapprehension that some people found it interesting, have decided to revisit those stats after roughly three months have passed.
The figures are taken from the period 27th April to 27th July, and are the mean average of two different sites I manage. For more details on audience and traffic I refer you back to the previous article.
At the recent unveiling of OSX Mavericks Apple also announced Safari 7, with greatly improved web standards support. It was left a little unclear as to which versions of OSX it would run on, but browsing through their developer area this week I found a downloadable pre-release of Safari 6.1, which I think clears that up: it seems Safari 7 will be exclusive to Mavericks, while 6.1 will run on Lion and Mountain Lion, with all of the web standards support of Safari 7, but only a limited set of new features.
As both versions are a major update for the browser, bringing almost a year’s worth of WebKit updates, I thought it would be useful to take a look through the new and updated features in each, as well as trying to identify where they differ.
Last week on Twitter I shared some browser and OS statistics from a site I manage. These turned out to be quite popular, so I’ve decided to expand on them a little further, and also add the stats from another site I manage, to broaden the base numbers a little. I’m not trying to make any point here, just sharing a little bit of analytics data. If there’s any interest in my doing so, I’ll provide further updates in the future; leave a comment if there’s anything in particular you’d like to know.
The Xbox 360 software update is due to roll out today, and among the many new features brings an Internet Explorer app, letting you browse the web on your TV (if you’re an Xbox Live Gold member). I was part of the Beta test programme and have been using Xbox IE for a few months, so here follow some of my thoughts, in a kind of review. Apologies in advance for the crappy photos.