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Nice one, another great article!!

I can’t believe the “maximize” statistics though, I’ve always seen users maximise their browser window…its the first thing they do! I’ve very rarely seen anyone using a small window for the many years I’ve been doing this. Surely if they can see the site is bigger than their window size they would maximize it anyway?

Awesome article, thank you.

I do hope you might consider reviewing various browser-stat services in a future article also though. =)

as always, a great article.

Thanks!

The “maximize” statistic is fairly misleading, as any user who has resized their browser to the dimensions of their desktop (rather than clicking the maximize button) will show up as a “no”. Mac users in particular are more likely to resize than to maximize. I’d take the numbers with a grain of salt. :)

OFFTOPIC: Have you guys noticed that Google no longer paginates search results, but instead of that when you reach to the bottom of the page it reloads and shows even more results? I realized that after iI saw like number 95 of sites returned as results…. Looks like they’re borrowing from live.com image search interface.

This is a great article. Having the research and resources boiled down to one location is handy. I am constantly looking for this kind of data in my job so I know how long it took you to put it together.

I would like to point out some slight discrepancies. According to your numbers, Mac OS accounts for 3% of the OSes in use. Yet Safari is 5% of the market for the September time frame listed in item #4. I know Apple launched the beta of Safari for Windows (I use it daily), but can we really think that this application is being used on Windows 2% of the time? This doesn’t account for the Mac users that aren’t on OS X either. Clearly something is askew in the tracking because while many people have multiple browsers installed (I have six), I have a hard time believing many surf with more than one.

I would say the important thing to take away from the browser stats is that while IE6 still has more people using it than any other single browser version, It is no longer holding a majority when you combine “modern” browsers. IE7, FF 1.5 and 2, Safari 2 and Opera 9.2 add up to just over 47%, and those five browsers do not need as much (or any) adjusting to make a site work as intended.

“An average web user browses with Internet Explorer 6.0 on Windows XP with the screen resolution 1024×768″ is the wrong thing to take away from this info. It is more accurate to say that an average web users browses with a “modern” browser on XP at 10×7.

In other words, IE6 is the exception, not the rule. Maybe this is obvious to everyone, but I felt it needed to be pointed out.

I’m proud to be Slovenian. We have the best firefox usage percentage.

Nice and usefull article. thanks a lot sir

I thought a lot more users still use 800×600. That good to know!

a very interesting post
i haven’t known that the IE is soooo widespreed
but –> FIREFOX 4 EVER

^ It ate my comment.

I’m wondering how effective this is for the Mac. While browsers do have an ‘enlarge’ option, it does not really maximize the window to the true width of the screen at all times. I wonder if this functionality is either misleading or killing the statistics somehow. Also, perhaps more users would ‘maximize’ on the Mac if the functionality was truly available.

nice one.

most of my websites are less than 1000px width. anyway, what I’m really intersted in is what my visitors will use in two month or so. this way I won’t have to re-design everything twice a year… What will happen if MS push IE7 in auto update without WGA ? IE6 will hugely decline!!!

as we’re on the subject. How do they measure that people have non -maximazed windows ? If I use a non-maximized window that is 800×600, will they know I’m 1024×768 ot will they take this as a maximized 800×600 window ?

Great article again, my favorite subjects are in good hands with you folks!
I’m a Mac user, and never maximaze a window, it doesn’t really have a button for maximizing either in Firefox nor Safari, I’m sure that makes a difference in the stats.
I do use a the OPT-CMD-H al lot to keep my nerves quite though.

Rather than saying “most popular” browser (IE), I think you should say “most used”. “Most popular” implies “I like it the best” while most of us know IE is used the most because the average Joe is not aware or inclined to use other browsers.

Nice article. But sad info. IE is still the most pop browser? Tragedy.

Thanks Smashing Mag for the 8 valuable points.

Nicely put! a little sigh because of IE though…

Great Article!!