The only reason people "hack" IE is because you're not allowed to but with FireFox you're encouraged to hack it, so no one ever really does...
you mean there are alternatives??? you are exactly right, it's bung-holed with windoze and so therefore it would be tough to unseat. I bet most people my Dad's age (55+) aren't even aware that they can use IE based upon the fact that when they dial into Compuserve or similar...a crap interface browser opens up for them. I bet download.com or similar Tech site would have an accurate enough pie chart showing the browser wars. sure as heck ain't 30-30!!!
ummm yeah, netscape 1% here's what I was talking about with a graph http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=6
below are some stats by awstats of one of my website: MS Internet Explorer 82.3 % Unknown 9.3 % Firefox 4.9 % Opera 1.4 % Mozilla 0.9 % Safari 0.5 % Netscape 0.1 % WebTV browser 0.1 % Konqueror 0 %
I use firefox at work and IE at home... but slowly due to the adsense plugin, I am bound to use firefox.. Feels nice to see your updated adsense stats right when you are browsing.
I use Opera too. FF just wasn't as smooth for me; also used more memory I think Opera's tabs work better IMO but it was sure nice to have FF's plug-in's install so easily...with Opera you have to navigate to 7 different places it seems like before you find what you need/want.
Safer in the sense that fewer people use it so fewer people try to make harmful code to take advantage of it... well, that and the contributors don't have dollar signs for pupils. As far as Opera, it is a good browser and passes the Acid2 test, but what about good screen reader support? That's probably not an issue to most people, but it is something that some have to consider. I believe Opera 9 has proper Ajax support now, but I haven't tested it. I think each browser has its pluses and minuses, but I stick with FF for the majority of what I do, because of all the extensions. It's invaluable to be able to see validation errors as you are viewing pages, not to mention page rank, weather, block flash ads, etc.
My stats: MSIE 6 31631 56.25% Firefox 1.5 11651 20.72% Firefox 1 2934 5.22% AOL 9 1818 3.23% Safari 1511 2.69% Mozilla 1 995 1.77% Opera 9 917 1.63%
I switched to Firefox a while ago and have never looked back. Maybe it's just me, but IE seemed "dirty".
Actually they are not the same but firefox uses the same but enhanced mozilla core of old Netscape Navigator. My stats - Browsers________________Visits___________%age MS Internet Explorer_______146467__________79.9 % Unknown _________________16435__________8.9 % Firefox ___________________14052__________7.6 % Safari_____________________2313__________1.2 % Mozilla_____________________1684_________0.9 % Netscape__________________1035_________0.5 % Opera______________________901_________0.4 % WebTV browser______________205_________0.1 % Konqueror___________________23___________0 % Camino_____________________22___________0 % Others______________________21__________0 %
How many bots are counted in these usage stats? I often hear about IE having over 90% of the market share. But what do bad bots disguise themselves as these days? What I'm wondering is, when you get a site with very atypical browser use, is it simply because they're being hit hard by a certain type of bots, rather than (or as well as) having users who favour Netscape over IE?