Thumbs Up: Pixel Perfect Firefox Extension

blog@undefinedrange.com (Vincent Woo) — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 20:38:00 -0800

Take a look at the Firefox extension Pixel Perfect if you implement webpages based off Photoshop mockups. It overlays a transparent image of your choice over the webpage so that out of place elements are easy to spot.

It’s currently at version 0.6.1 but it has plenty of potential. I could see how it could be integral to the workflow but at the moment it’s great for quick checks.

A Look at Web Browser Market Share

blog@undefinedrange.com (Vincent Woo) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 17:01:00 -0700

Firefox 3 has been out for almost 2 weeks now and I wanted to know how its adoption was going and if it had any effect against IE. A quick look at some Google Analytics data showed that it isn’t as good as I had hoped. I present to you a quickie browser market share comparison between last month and the time period that FF3 was available as of this writing.

My604.com
Thanks goes out to My604.com for letting me post this info. My604 is a Chinese language forum specific to the Vancouver / Lower Mainland region. I don’t have any particular demographics information but I’m seeing a sizable percentage of university students there.

Interestingly enough, there is no change in browser usage except that a quarter of Firefox users are now using the newest version.

Market Share Scope	Browser	May 2008 15,098 visits	June 17 – 28, 2008 6,279 visits
All	IE	74%	74%
All	Firefox	22%	22%
% of IE	IE 7	54%	55%
% of IE	IE 6	46%	45%
% of FF	FF 3	4%	26%
% of FF	FF 2.0.0.14	85%	65%
All	Safari	3%	3%
All	Opera	0.5%	0.5%

vt-online.vsb.bc.ca
A website for a local high school where staff members can post messages to each other, students, and parents. Note that there is a significant drop in visits since the school year ended at the same time that FF3 was released. Thus the numbers between months are not directly comparable but it should still give you an idea about their web browser usage.

Some good news on the Firefox front. Again, Firefox 3 captured at least a quarter of all Firefox users. Perhaps more importantly, Firefox is taking over at the expense of IE! Hopefully, this trend will continue when school starts up again.

Loving the IE6 numbers. I’m going to take a wild guess and assume that with high schoolers in the mix, there would be more new computers that are pre-installed with IE7. In any case, IE6 browser share has been dropping steadily over the past year and if it continues on like this, I might be able to drop IE6 support this time next year.

Market Share Scope	Browser	May 2008 4,267 visits	June 17 – 28, 2008 528 visits
All	IE	78%	66%
All	Firefox	18%	29%
% of IE	IE 7	80%	83%
% of IE	IE 6	20%	17%
% of FF	FF 3	1%	30%
% of FF	FF 2.0.0.14	88%	66%
All	Safari	4%	3.5%
All	Opera	0%	1%

Undefined Range
This blog which is more web developer / techie oriented. As expected, not many visitors, percentage-wise, use IE. You guys rock! Still, a third of IE users and rising are on version 6. In absolute numbers it isn’t that much but I’d thought that web developers have universally shunned IE6. I’m trying to justify this discrepancy but I can’t. In the past month, there was about 1% of windows users on Windows 2000, NT, or lower so upgrade options are available. Also, web developers would need to verify their work on a myriad of browsers so they should already have browser options.

Safari is doing very well here. Since my blog posts generally are about Rails, this is not a surprise. Sadly, no such love from Opera fans.

Market Share Scope	Browser	May 2008 441 visits	June 17 – 28, 2008 204 visits
All	IE	15%	10%
All	Firefox	71%	70%
% of IE	IE 7	66%	62%
% of IE	IE 6	34%	38%
% of FF	FF 3	19%	59%
% of FF	FF 2.0.0.14	71%	33%
All	Safari	12%	18%
All	Opera	1%	0.5%

Overall, I’m a little disappointed with Firefox 3’s adoption rate. I’ve always assumed that people using Firefox are more passionate about their choice of browsers and would upgrade more readily. But perhaps this is normal for Firefox since I don’t know how fast FF2 was adopted.

A bigger disappointment is how IE6 is holding steady. What would it take to sink it?

New Age Dawns on the Web

blog@undefinedrange.com (Vincent Woo) — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 01:11:00 -0700

Yesterday has seen the release of Firefox 3 and it has spread far and wide. As of this writing, some 14 hours after release, there were 5,099,057 downloads. That’s a spectacular achievement and a clear message to all that quality and standards matter.

I’ve been running the release candidates and the difference between it and FF2 is dramatic. As much as I love Firefox and use it as my primary browser, it would noticeably slow down over time until it required a restart every 2-4 days. Inconvenient, but now only a memory.

With Firefox 3.0, Opera 9.5, and Safari 3.1 all succeeding, us web developers can now realistically dream of working without legacy constraints in the near future. While generally we’re still stuck devoting half our time and sanity to necromantic and arcane arts for the purpose of persisting the one undead browser, there is still hope. It is an ongoing battle but one that we will eventually win – inching closer to the promised land with every switch to one of the above browsers or upgrade to Internet Explorer 7.

Final note: For the web developers out there, get Firebug 1.2.0b3. It works great with Firefox 3.

Undefined Range : Tag firefox, everything about firefox

Thumbs Up: Pixel Perfect Firefox Extension

A Look at Web Browser Market Share

New Age Dawns on the Web