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Don’t know if you folks check your web logs in relation to browsers very often, I know I do. I’m impressed to see all the different flavours from I.E. to Firefox, Safari and of course the various products that ship with Linux distros. What does surprise me is the amount of people using old browsers - especially folks reading this blog who most probably are developers. Now - it’s none of my concern what browser you use and the reasons you use it - but I do wonder why folks don’t upgrade? Especially where Internet Explorer is concerned. I.E. 7 has been out for two years now and yet lots of folks are still runnning version 6. Similar stat’s can be seen for Firefox versions. Wouldn’t upgrading make sense? You can read more here from the article that inspired this post, it has some interesting stat’s and information on an effort to get folks to upgrade:
http://www.techcrunch.com/2008/03/25/save-the-developers-stop-using-internet-explorer-6/
On the topic of not upgrading - I’ve also seen in the web logs for this blog Windows versions going back to Win98. Win98? Developers? Yep - around 60+ hits (and two for NT 4). I find this odd, though no doubt somebody will point out some very good reasons (which I’ll probably instantly refute - but hey what’s a blog without at least one troll post from the owner? <g>).
Finally - the range of OS’ I’m seeing is impressive. In the membership only forums I am or have been a member of it’s rare to see many - if any - Mac and *nix developers. Most of the visitors here come from the BOS http://discuss.joelonsoftware.com/?biz forums. I’m getting consistently high visits from Mac and *nix users (developers I assume from the source) and the Mac is way in front of *nix flavours. XP of course leads the crowd, Vista staggers in at a distant second.
Scott Kane
One reason for not upgrading to IE7 might be if it doesn’t run on your system. If you’re running Windows 2000 or less, you’re out of luck. Another reason might be that if you don’t like it, you can’t uninstall it - you’re just stuck with IE7. And there are some crazy, crazy corporate intranets that still require IE6.
As for why not upgrade your Windows version - do you really want to be running a version of Windows that can at anytime lock you out of your data and claim your copy is “not genuine”, even if it is? Much better to run a “DRM-free” Windows… or even better, Linux or a Mac.
That doesn’t really explain IE6 browsers to your site though. Even if you have an old Windows or old IE, you can still upgrade to Firefox (or Opera).
Hi Richard,
Thanks for dropping by and commenting. Can’t say I have resistance to updating Windows nor to I fear being locked out. I did have a problem with an OEM license but I’ve solved that by never using an OEM license *for anything* - even when supplied legit with my machine as this one was. While revoking licenses bugs me I do understand why it is being done and I can’t blame those doing it. As a developer there is zero use in me releasing software that is not targeted for and optimized for the latest OS’ and more importantly tested on them. So having a license for the latest version is essential. As Windows developers we tend to take backward compatibility as a given and reality has shown us (Vista) that that can be a fatal assumption.
I’m noticing in the stat’s however that Firefox users on the whole are using version 2.0.0.12 at 19 % of total browsers compared to 2.0.0.13 (0% only one visitor) and none one for V. 3.0. So it’s not limited just to I.E. I can’t see versions for Safari but it’s a safe bet they’ll be up to date.