Operating Systems and Browsers

If you’re a Mac or Linux person, how many times have you heard what
amounts to “We only care about Windows users”? Certain designers and even
web site owners want to design sites only for the very newest Windows version,
the very newest Internet Explorer browser. Cross-platform compatibility
be damned! “So few people use Mac or Linux (or Netscape or FireFox or visit
from their PDA or mobile phone) that we don’t need to support it.”
But is that really true?Is it really true that all you need to support is the newest
IE and the newest Windows? According to Figure 3-11, it would indeed seem that 87.4 percent of
hits come from Windows machines and 75 percent from IE.
It’s not as exact as it would be if AWStats gave us pages or unique visitors,
but it’s the best we’ve got. Looks like a lot of Windows users. It might lead you
to decide that the right thing to do is to support the newest IE 7 and the newest
Windows Vista.
And you would be dead wrong.
Let’s do some estimates. The earlier examples and screenshots show February
2006 (so don’t get confused), but in February 2007, there were 5,749 unique
visitors and 72,780 hits. That’s 12.65 hits per visitor. The 63,653 hits from Windows
machines work out to about 5,000 visitors. The other 750 odd visitors are
on Mac or another OS. Maybe 12 percent doesn’t seem like much, but are you
willing to turn away more than 750 potential readers and customers? Mary
doesn’t happen to be, so even if she weren’t a Mac-hack-from-way-back, she’d
be putting the extra time and dollars into cross-platform compatibility. It’s
good business.
But say you’re willing to sacrifice 12 percent of possible customers. You’re
sticking to the major-OS/major-browser strategy to save money. Saving
money is good business. Are you sure you’re saving money only supporting
the most recent IE version?
Take a look at Figure 3-12 to see who’s using IE 7. Certainly not the majority.
An estimated 2,700 visitors are using IE 6. About 1,500 are using IE7 (up from
14 in the first edition of this book). On the flip side, the approximately 400 people
using versions of IE5 in February 2006 have dropped to 78 in February 2007.
IE4 has dropped to single digits, and IE3 has dropped off the radar completely.
It’s probably time to drop support for IE3 and IE4 and to consider dropping
support for IE5. But IE7? If you only supported IE7 (which is notoriously
finicky), you’d be leaving the majority of your visitors who are still on IE6
behind.
And other browsers: FireFox, Safari, Netscape, Mozilla and so on? A scant
hundred fewer visitors use those browsers than use IE7. So in an effort to support
1,500 users, a whole lot of sites are ignoring 1,400 users. Supporting only
the latest and greatest is starting to look foolhardy indeed, isn’t it?
What’s more, Mozilla, FireFox, Netscape, and Camino are all related, as are
Safari and Konqueror. Support FireFox and Safari and you’re likely to support
Netscape, Mozilla, Camino, and Konqueror as well, with little extra effort. It’s
a six-for-the-price-of-two sale!
Now what exactly does “Unknown” mean? Many of those “unknown”
browsers are not as unknown as you might think. Being book authors distinctly
lacking in curiosity, no one here ever clicked that Unknown link in the
title bar to find what you now see in Figure 3-13.