Statistically Speaking

Nothing ever stays the same, especially in the world of the Internet. New browsers (or new versions of existing browsers) are popping up on a regular basis, computers (and their connections) are getting faster and better, monitors are getting bigger... you get the point.

If you're designing a website (or having one designed for you) it's good to know what the trends are so that most of your visitors will see what you want them to see. A great source of stats is at www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp.  It's pretty clear that Internet Explorer is still the browser of choice for most people. But, it's interesting to note that, while IE6 has hovered around 65-70% for 2½ years, IE5 has dropped from around 25% to around 6%. Not surprising that its usage has gone down, but the percentage hasn't been made up by IE6, rather mostly Firefox (around 20%). Opera's always got its following (around 1%), but that's not worth worrying about.

Bottom line is approximately 95% of Internet users these days are using IE or Firefox. So, make sure your website looks good in both of these browsers and you're pretty much covered (you can't please everyone all the time... 95% is about as good as it gets on the Web). There are some minor differences in the way the two browsers display pages (generally IE is more forgiving about certain coding) — such as some CSS elements — so you'll want to make sure everything looks okay in both (if necessary, you can have two versions of some pages).

As for other stats, such as resolution, color depth, etc., we're still moving up, which means the lowest common denominator is getting better all the time. But, it's always important to consider who your specific audience will be. If they're mostly going to be computer savvy and owning fast, newer machines, you can go big; otherwise you'll still want to cater to those with lower resolutions, slower connections, etc., to make everybody happy.