Technical problems

Apparently, there is a Sitemeter upgrade that makes many sites displaying Sitemeter invisible for users using Internet Explorer. I have now swapped the old Sitemeter for the new, and you should be able to see my blog just fine, at least in more recent versions of Internet Explorer.

Now, the big question is: why would anyone still use IE? It is most security-breachable of all browsers, and does not do nearly as well as Firefox and other browsers (have you never experienced the beauty of various Firefox plug-ins?). Yet, see how many readers of this blog, supposedly tech-savvy for the most part, still use IE:

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Update - a new pie-chart taken around midnight:

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More like this

Rather surprising that so many would be using Ffox 1.x while so many others are using IE7. A comparison of the two would lean in IE's direction. Is it possible that upgraded Ffox installations are reporting the original version, and not the new version?

Those numbers don't look right. I think some versions are off. Ain't no way Safari -1- has 5 percent of your numbers. Maybe Safari 3 or 2 or all combined but not 1. Also FF -1- can't be right either with no 3. When are these from? (Browing with FF 3.01)s

Minutes before posting this, about an hour after I fixed the code, taken from Sitemeter itself, which counts the last 100 visitors.

Well, I'm sure it's much the same reason people still use Microsoft Word rather than OpenOffice Writer: you have to get around to switching, and most people don't get around to doing any sort of switch of anything unless forced to do so. Inertia rules all.

Or it could be the reason why SUVs became popular and stayed that way, namely, that everyone is out of their minds....

WebReference.com puts FF3.x at 17% and says less than 1% for FF1.x. (They had it shaved down to .0x versions which I was too lazy to add up). W3C and Wikipedia both warn against taking the browser stats seriously but lump all FF together while dividing IE 6 from 7. And also with wildly differing proportions. Wikipedia gives the biggest chunk to IE by far.

Opera doesn't even make the list!

I miss my Firefox extensions, but being able to play games or run big programs while simultaneously surfing the web is worth the switch to Opera. At least, it was to me.

I would say that a large reason that you have so many visitors still using IE is because they may be viewing from work. Corporate policies, especially those in a bank such as where I work are restrictive as to software being downloaded and installed.

The IT dept. for my bank decided years ago to take advantage of browser-based applications and chose IE for its browser because it was ubiquitous. Since Firefox 2 came out, they have not been able to get the applications to work within Firefox, and in fact have not been able to get them to work in IE7, so we are very much stuck with IE6.

I am frustrated with the situation, but since browsing between calls for support is a privilege and not a job requirement I am not able to make a solid case for switching to a Mozilla-based browser in the workplace.

So, it's not always a matter of user choice.

Am I blind, or is Firefox 3 missing from that chart?