Google Chrome

Chrome is Google’s own browser that promotes speed, fast loading pages and (not surprisingly) direct access to search from the address bar. Give it a try – it’s really fast.

The report shows that Firefox usage has dropped for 2 months running. The top browser is Internet Explorer 8 (IE8). IE6 usage is falling but unfortunately has still not reached zero  (I say unfortunately because IE6 is old and has a lot of ‘features’ which mean it doesn’t support certain web standards properly).

So what do these trends mean to you as a website owner? Overall it means more and more different browsers to support, which means that you’ll need to do your homework and ensure your website works well across all of these. It’s good to get to know a few tricks to ensure compatibility across multiple web browsers. Some of the best tips are to start off well with clean code that meets the W3C standards and is validated and free of errors. Use a STRICT DOCTYPE to force browsers to apply the rules properly and test your site on as many different browsers as possible.

The survey is based on a limited sample of 40,000 users and might not reflect your own site. The best way to do this for your website is to check your Google Analytics results under the visitors tab. For example I see Firefox is the most popular browser for one of my technical sites but IE8 is the most popular for my non-techie sites.