Even Microsoft agree with us these days!

http://www.ie6countdown.com/

Agreed, but as I said – I’m simplifying things a bit.

Providing a comprehensive roundup of stats would mean me never having got round to finishing this post, and, more importantly, bored most of our readers to death!

I liked the W3C stats as you can see the relative losses / gains of the browsers on one page over time. It’s comparative rather than absolute and therefore I just used it to show a trend which can’t be argued with rather than to show an actual usage figure. You’re right, of course: the W3C figures are based on a slightly more anoraky set of people than you would normally like to share a room with; however, it could be argued that it is this group who predict the future by early-adopting and having a willingness to try the latest technology to see what’s likely to become popular amongst the general internet population.

We would never really base anything on one set of figures – there is no such thing as an unbiassed statistic. Every web project we do involves a certain amount of research into the target audience, part of which is what browser they are likely to be using. We take all web surveys and stats with a pinch of digital salt.

Also, it’s worth remembering that we are talking specifically about IE6 rather than just IE as a whole – something which even Google Analytics blurs somewhat in places. I’m guessing some average Windows users are not aware of the distinction.

Another interesting (although slightly irrelevant) point is that a lot of our clients are in the media / music / creative sector and that our experience of Mac and Safari usage amongst this subset is often skewed in relation to that of the world as a whole (I nearly said “compared to people from the real world” there!).

Thanks for adding to the discussion. I liked the StatCounter graph. We used to use them a lot, but I’d not looked at their site for ages. The MarketShare guys need to learn about GIF dithering, though!

Andy

“W3Schools is a website for people with an interest for web technologies. These people are more interested in using alternative browsers than the average user. The average user tends to use Internet Explorer, since it comes preinstalled with Windows. Most do not seek out other browsers.

These facts indicate that the browser figures above are not 100% realistic. Other web sites have statistics showing that Internet Explorer is used by at least 80% of the users.

You cannot – as a web developer – rely only on statistics. Statistics can often be misleading.

Global averages may not always be relevant to your web site. Different sites attract different audiences. Some web sites attract professional developers using professional hardware, while other sites attract hobbyists using old low spec computers. ”

If you want more accurate stats, try
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/browser-market-share.aspx?qprid=2
and
http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-monthly-200903-201004