The latest versions of the Mozilla and Microsoft browsers, Firefox 4 and Internet Explorer 9 respectively, have both been released within the last couple of weeks and it appears that the latest incarnation of Firefox has been downloaded significantly more than IE in the first 24 hours of release. Around 7.1 million downloads for Firefox with 2.35 million downloads of the Microsoft browser.
Not sure what the long term significance of this is, but it’s good to see that adoption of these browsers appears high. I haven’t downloaded either yet but look forward to seeing them in action, I’ve largely been using Chrome recently although still use Firefox for development purposes.
I’m beginning to be more excited about the features supported by the new generation of browsers than I’m frustrated by the limitations of older ones. Having said that new developments in HTML 5 and CSS3 bring their own complications and the usage of IE7 and IE6, are falling quite quickly.
According to Statcounter usage of IE6 is below 2.5% in both Europe and North America for the last 3 months compared to between 6% and 7% for the same period last year.
I also checked the Internet Explorer 6 Countdown website which shows usage in China of around 34% and was interested to read this blog post about why IE6 usage is thought to be so high in China. Seems it’s pretty much down to piracy.
I can’t honestly see me switching over to IE under any circumstances, It’s almost become a poisoned chalice for me, but I could possibly be persuaded back to Firefox as my main browser.