Things have been quiet here for a while. I’ve been too busy to follow progress on the browser fronts, Firefox 3 will be out next year sometime and Microsoft are being very quiet about plans for IE8. From what I can see, Firefox usage continues to grow as does that of other browsers such as Safari and Opera.
February was a record month for spam on this blog. 1545 spam were caught by the spam filter for the month of February alone by the automated spamfilter. 12,336 have been caught since this blog opened. As for actual comments we’re lucky to get 3 a month, most of our traffic still goes to the reviews ‘A Week with IE7‘ and ‘A Week with Firefox 2‘ which do not accept comments. Although the spam filter is doing a good job, I still have comments set to be moderated this means no spam should get through, however it may take a few days for legitimate comments to post. There’s also a small chance that some legit comments are caught by the spam filter, I noticed this happen just once but with the volume of spam on this site it would be easy to miss.
So with the low number of comments on this site and the high number of spam should comments just be disabled?
The end of year stats have shown a growth in IE 7 usage recently. This can be explained by a growth in readership. At the begining this site was primarily visited by Firefox users.
Of all the Firefox users 59.28% use version 2 and the majority of the rest use 1.5.x. IE currently has 59.6% of users still use version 6 while 39.23% have upgraded to IE7.
On the operating system front we have a higher than usual readership using Linux or Mac OS X but Windows still takes the lead:
It’ll already be 2007 in Australia as I write this, but we’ve still got over 12 hours to go in the UK. Wherever you are in the world have a great new year and let’s hope 2007 is another interesting year in the browser space.
In future, to avoid off topic postings on portable music players such as iPod and Zune, I’ve launched music.browserden.co.uk so far this features reviews of the iPod and Zune as well as the lessons I think Microsoft should learn from the release of the Zune.
Our stats will not represent the vast majority of the population. This site has been Slashdotted at least twice. The first was for “The Week With IE7” review and the other the article on Tamarin. So if anything, these stats show people who have an interest in browsers with a slight bias towards Slashdot readers (58.7% of referrals come from Slashdot).
So here’s the top 5 stats:
Of the Firefox users 60.6% are using Firefox 2 with the vast majority that remain are using a version from the 1.5 series. 69.95% of IE users are using IE 6, and 28.9% are now using IE7, there’s a small number still using very old versions.
On the operating system front:
Just to make this 100% clear, this doesn’t reflect the public as a whole, it just reflects the choices of the people who use this site.
Been travelling for a few days, updates will appear here in a few days time.
Well done to the Democrats in the US midterm elections, hopefully some balance in US politics will be a good thing.
As promised earlier I asked an IE 6 user to try out Firefox 2 for a week and to let us know their opinions. Thanks go to Ian Charlton for this review - A Week with Firefox 2. This review is from someone who has not used Firefox previously but with the changes up ahead with IE7 decided this was as good a time as any to try out the other options. Ian has had good experiences with Firefox and this has motivated him to try Opera too, maybe we’ll get another review if he’s not too busy.
As for other reviews, I’m still writing my review of Firefox 2 on Mac OSX and if you’ve not seen it already, there’s the “A Week With IE7” review that I’d written following the launch of IE7.
Two Firefox 2 reviews are on their way. I’ve managed to convince a current IE6 user to try out Firefox 2 for a week under Windows XP. I will also write a review of Firefox and Camino under Mac OS X.
First of all I’ve switched to IE7 exclusively for a week in order to write a review of its strengths and weaknesses. That week comes to an end on Monday so expect a review by Tuesday at the latest. I started initially on the release candidate and then IE7 final when it was released. I’m looking forward to the Firefox 2.0 release within the next few days. Prior to my IE7 testing I’ve been using the Firefox 2.0 betas and release candidates as my primary browser, IE7 is a huge improvement on IE6 but I’m definitely looking forward to return to Firefox. IE7 has its good points too though so if you’re running XP then give it a go.