As some of you know, if there's two things I love, it's messin' with the latest Beta stuff and just great free software.
Browser usage update:
I averaged the analytics of 10 websites that I have access to early this evening. There are some surprises here.
The scoreboard on Firefox vs. Internet Explorer is now rapidly changing in some spaces.
Mainstream websites (IE: Stuff 'regular people' might visit):
Firefox jumps a point this month to an average 15% and IE now has an identity problem?.
While still maintaining a healthy share of the enterprise market at 82%, half of the Internet Explorer users are using IE6 and the other half have upgraded to IE7. 98% of Firefox users were using the latest stable version, with a few using Firefox 3.0 Beta 4. Safari is still wandering around 2-3 per cent.
Geek department: Bloggers, Social Networkers, visitors to tech-related websites, and visitors to this blog are averaging ... ugh .... 62% Firefox. That is a HUGE jump from last month!
Important sidebar: For you blog and web designers (Obviously, from the look of this blog, I am not one of them :). 800 x 600 is virtually dead and we're seeing gobs of important websites 'playing it sale' in that area?. There simply is no longer any reason to. Less than 3% of the market. It limits your delivery real estate, not to mention what you can put 'above the fold'.
Browser Betas:
Beta 5 of Firefox, (also known as Minefield), is currently in code freeze (This usually means a release soon) and is again improved on numerous fronts over the released Beta 4.
IE8, as I've mentioned in the past, should only be being used by developers. IE8 Beta 1, released at Mix08, has some really neat stuff under the dashboard but is no where ready for 'prime time'.
On a personal note, I still find myself (No, they don't pay me :) using Flock 1.1 a lot. It's just a cool piece of software.
Freebie pick of the week : VirtuaWin Version 4.0 for Windows. I never liked virtual (multiple) desktops. Now, I do. It works and is great a time-saver.