Browser stats

April 23, 2005 · Comments

I’ve been tracking my stats in [Opentracker](http://www.opentracker.net) since earlier this month. I’ve been using it on this site, as well as 2 others just to have the comparison. I will be keeping the tracking going here after the trial, and [one](http://www.innatstarlightlake.com) client has agreed to keep it going as well.

Not a question for [Colorectal Cancer Coalition](http://www.c-three.org) since the nice folks at Opentracker wrote me and offered to track the site for free in exchange for a text link. I readily agreed. They do this for [selected non-profits](http://www.opentracker.net/en/company/nonprofit_charities.jsp), and I didn’t have to ask for it. They offered, I agreed.

I’ve been paying particular attention to the browser stats. Just how much attention do I need to be paying to those pesky IE 5 bugs?

Now that it has tracked over 10,000 visitors to my site (I have it set to exclude my IP) I think it’s enough of a sample to report:

Windows: 82.4%
Apple: 16.3%
Unix: 1%
Everything else: 0.1%

My Mac stats are on the high side, naturally. My other tracked sites that don’t have anything to do with technical content match what you would expect based on market share… 97% Windows, 2.9% Apple on one, 93.4% Windows, 6.5% Apple on another. Since the [C3](http://www.c-three.org) site is new, it’s a much smaller sample (186 visitors) but 25.2% Apple!

Back to my site, how does the OS break down?

Windows:
Windows XP: 63.8%
Windows 2000: 11.8%
Windows 98: 4.9%
Windows (not sure what this means): 0.9%
Windows NT 4.0: 0.4%
Windows CE: 0.1%
Windows NT, Windows ME: listed but at 0%

Apple:
OS X: 16.2%
OS 9 (listed as Apple Mac): 0.1%

Nearly everyone who visits my site from a Mac is doing so from OS X. And like Jack said in the [comments in this entry](http://www.momathome.com/viewfromhome/design/ie_7_will_support_png_transparency.php) it will be a while before the improvements in IE 7 will affect enough visitors that we can fully let loose with the fun stuff.

Browsers on my site:

IE (total): 63.6%
IE 6: 59.6%
IE 5.5: 1.1%
All the rest of the IE versions are not at 0.5% each

Firefox: 21.6%
Safari: 10.8%
Netscape: 1.4%
Mozilla: 1.3%
Opera: 0.9%

The other sites I’m tracking are seeing IE at around 85-90%, then Firefox at around 7%, everything else including Safari under that. Nowhere is IE 5.01 over 2%.

So this tells me that while I can’t quite cross IE 5.5 off my testing list it’s probably safe to hide styles in IE 5.01 and not hear much complaint. IE 7’s standards support will help, but it won’t be enough to test in just IE 7, Firefox and Safari. Yet.

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