Why oh why?

[Geodun1]

Why do we shoot for such a wide cross browser compatibility when the W3Schools browser usage report shows only 3 used browsers?

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

I see people mentioning their supporting Google Chrome, Opera, and Safari, but all in all, these browsers only account for about 8% of viewers. Now, if your website TARGETS that 8%, then that's another issue, but why shoot for compatibility when the other 92% of users are on IE6,IE7, and overwhelmingly, Firefox?

Open to debate

 

[jnjc]

First off I don't know if those stats are indicative of a general website. W3Schools is a technical website and it's sort of accepted that techos tend to use FF where as Joe Bloggs tends to use IE.

If I look at one of my sites for the past month (aimed at the general public) the spread I get is as follows:

IE 62.26%
Firefox 30.95%
Safari 5.18%
Opera 0.83%
Chrome 0.67%

I don't bother with Chrome, and Opera I give a brief test but to be honest I wouldn't spend time on it either.

So for me the rule is IE and FF are a must and Safari tends to work the same as FF so it gets supported also. After that I don't spend too much time on the others. If it works for these three it tends to work on the others anyway.

JC

 

[Geodun1]

I guess it's true that Techo's do indeed use Firefox more. I hadn't considered that fact, but either way, Firefox users increase every year