Browsers

Rivrdog recently ranted about the non-support of Firefox 2.0 by his IP ... Comcast, which is also my IP.

I agree. Comcast doesn't support firefox/mozilla type browsers worth a darn, and that includes my all-time favorite, Netscape. I've noticed that, for example, some emails I send via Netscape/Comcast just don't get delivered (Rob at Majornyne Guns can attest to that.)

Rivrdog wondered:

Have they ever even surveyed to find out which browsers their subscribers actually use? I've never been contacted, but I'm willing to bet that at least a third of them use Firefox, so cutting that third of their subscribers off at the knees, just as Verizon FiOS looms to undercut their price by a third and offer better services, is just piss poor management.

I have a subscription to a statistical service (statcounter) on my blog, and one of the options is to view the frequence of viewing by various browsers. If you click on the image on the left, ImageShack (a photo-hosting service which I find more convenient than hosting full-size images myself) will pop up a readible sized image.

Of the most recent 1,100 views of this blog, MSIE was by far the most commonly used, 725 times out of 1100.

Firefox, in various versions, accounted directly for 216 views.

Netscape was used 98 times.

Safari, Opera, Camino, Omniweb and (unknown) accounted for the straggling 61 "other" views.

Note: don't pay too much attention to the exact numbers; if they don't add up to 1,100, it's because it's a rough count and I added them up in my head. I'm sure you won't mind because we're only looking at trends here.

However, most of the non-MSIE browsers are variants of the original Mozilla design, which leads to the conclusion that about 325 are Firefox look-alikes.

Considering that MSIE is used approximately twice as often as Mozilla-type browsers, it's clear that IPs would focus their support on compatibility efforts for MSIE browsers.

On the other hand, since fully one third of the browsers in this (admittedly crude and unofficial) survey are basically Firefox-types, it seems clear that Rivrdog is essentially correct, if you include Netscape with Firefox.

Go Get 'em, Dog! You speak for all of us.