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Browser statistics can, like all stats, be a bit of a minefield. On the surface the web offers the easiest opportunity to collect anonymous usage data.

However...it's just not that simple (you saw that coming, didn't you?).

The user agent - the bit of a browser that identifies it's make and model - can be "spoofed" to make the browser to appear to be a different version or browser entirely (often by less-than-savoury visitors like email harvesters). Add to this that browser data from any one site can be skewed by the target audience - for example technical sites have a much higher number of visitors who are not using IE compared to most sites, because IT and Web Dev staff are more likely to install FireFox or use Macs with Apple's browser, Safari.

Not so easy, is it?

So...how to get a reasonable idea of browser usage in the UK?

One way is to look at aggregated statistics from multiple website. Onestat publish these at intervals every year in the PR section of their website; they gather them from 75,000 sites globally. The latest stats:

United Kingdom - February 2008 (brackets show % change since June 2007)

• Internet Explorer 86.15%  - increased by 0.15%
• Mozilla Firefox 11.52% - increased by 0.30%
• Apple Safari 1.59% - down 0.02%
• Opera 0.52% - down 0.01%
• Netscape 0.12% - increased by 0.02% (NB: Netscape has now been killed-off by AOL)

So...IE and FireFox are the obvious winners, but what about different versions of each browser?

Browser Version Stats from Wikipedia (for 2007)

• IE7 at 45.5% in 2007
• IE6 at 32.64%
• FireFox Version 2 has 16.30%
• FireFox 3 (beta) 0.18%

Internet Exporer entry; FireFox (Netapplications.com stats).

So whilst IE7 is replacing IE6, it is still going strong - and Firefox 3, from these stats at least, is still in the minority.

The conclusion: no surprise- designing for IE6, IE7 and both FireFox versions, as well as Safari, remains important to provide cross-platform and browser compatibility.

Oh, and there's Opera too...and for some sites, mobile access is becoming more common...

 A developer's work is never done!