It depends where you look for your statistics, but the general consensus seems to be that the various versions of Microsoft Internet Explorer have about 80% of the market share of browser usage, whilst Firefox has about 14.5% and rising.

Browser statistics should never be taken too seriously, because logging methods are not very reliable (see the huge anomaly that is W3Schools as an example). Numbers can be over-or underestimated. Numbers could be increased if some users might set their web browsers to refresh web pages at regular intervals, and Gecko-based browsers such as Firefox "pre-fetch" links which it is likely that the user will visit soon, resulting in more apparent hits. Numbers could be underestimated because computers with large memories might cache more pages, resulting in fewer requests; also, some browsers "spoof" other web browsers' user agent strings – for example, prior to version 9, Opera by default had "Identify as Internet Explorer" to prevent malicious browser-sniffing.

However, browser statistics can still give you a good idea of which browsers it's worth you spending some time catering for, and which you may as well ignore. At any rate, you can be sure that catering only for Internet Explorer users will not cut the mustard. Firefox and Safari users both make up a considerable portion of internet users. Netscape and Opera users are also worth looking after. (1% might not sound like very much, but that 1% could contain your best customers.)

By Brian Jackson

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