Reliable browser usage stats?

Cianos

Hi,
My developer is saying that it's not worth the risk making the site look/perform worse in IE/FF, by tweaking it to suit Safari. He says Safari along with Opera only account for around 3% of browser usage.

I found this site, and it says pretty much the same thing.

But I was wondering are these stats really that reliable, and do they represent 'recreational' web usage?

Macs do seem fairly popular now, and maybe these stats are being scuppered by industry based machines that wouldn't ever be going near my site?

Thanks

Bob the Builder

Depends what it's for...
If you're website was a Mac info site, about 40% of your traffic would be safari, same goes for a website aboyr graphic design.

If you're wbesite is a normal website, your looking at 5-9% at maximum to be honest. Your as well off designing for mobile browsers, as they will be a lot more prominent in the coming years, then maybe Mac, if time and budget permits.

mneylon

It depends on your site's target audience

Anything design / technology related - make it work with as many browsers as you can

nikimere

Any good developer should be able to get the site to work in IE 6 & 7, FF, Safari and Opera without having any effect on one another.

Malice

nikimere wrote: »

Any good developer should be able to get the site to work in IE 6 & 7, FF, Safari and Opera without having any effect on one another.

I agree with this even if it takes a bit of tweaking to fix bloody IE6 "features"! In general, a site will look the same on Firefox, Opera and Safari as those browsers adhere to the standards more than IE does. I'm not sure why your developer says this:

My developer is saying that it's not worth the risk making the site look/perform worse in IE/FF, by tweaking it to suit Safari

Do they have any justification for this?

Cianos

Thanks for the replies.

The site is a pretty complex build, so making adjustments could also be a complex matter.

It's a fairly unique service so while it's not really technology orientated, I'm hoping it will spread around the net a bit due to it's innovation.

Hence I was worried that if it's non compatible with the design community, it could look pretty bad for us and limit our reach.

Eoin

Cianos wrote: »

I found this site, and it says pretty much the same thing.

As that site says itself, the stats can be misleading. Because that sort of site attracts a lot of web development type people, there is a much higher rate of Firefox users. Their stats say that they get nearly 40% FF users, which is much higher than the percentage on any of the sites where I can see their stats.

Rollo Tamasi

Graceful Degradation Browser Support
- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fault-tolerant_system

You may not get the site looking perfect in every main browser but you should still test it so it doesn't look too screwy to turn someone off using your product.

If your site is any bit innovative it may get reviewed by many bloggers who are Apple advocates. You'd be amazed at the uptake in the global Mac market in the last two/three years. These users are primarily recreational based users too.

You should fully support Safari on Mac (screw the Windows client, it's only there as a gimmick to make Windows users aware of Safari as a browser for iTouch and iPhone marketing purposes) and provide degraded support for Opera on both Mac+MS (in my opinion). Firefox on Mac works almost identically to Firefox on MS. There are some weird font based issues but nothing too major.

darkstar_tfd

My latest stats ( webmaster, tech theme for websites ) say that Firefox and IE7 are most used browsers.

Opera counts just 2% and Safari the same. The next on the list after IE7 and Firefox would be IE6 ( which also has some problems and it is different of IE7 ).

aidan_walsh

To be honest I'm a little surprised that someone like Google or another analytics company hasn't released information on this given that they would have the most accurate information available gathered from a more reliable cross section of websites out there.