Update On Web Browser Usage - April 2012

Here's a look at current web browser usage in April 2012, according to both Statcounter and Netmarketshare. All numbers rounded to nearest percentage point.

Usage stats for IE - Chrome - Firefox - Safari
  - Statcounter: 35% - 31% - 25% - 7%
  - Netmarketshare: 54% - 19% - 21% - 5%

Statcounter uses "15 billion pageviews per month collected from... more than 3 million websites".

Netmarketshare uses "160 million unique visits per month" from "over 40,000 websites".

URL Expander Add-on For Firefox

We all know that the shortened URLs found on Twitter and other sites can sometimes lead to malware, spamware, trojan, and hacking sites. Most of the time it is intentional, but it can also be accidental. By way of example, an official city tourism site that I follow on Twitter recently posted a bit.ly link that took me to a porn site! They were stunned when I brought it to their attention, and thanked me profusely.

I've always felt that posting links on Twitter and blogs is very helpful, and try to do it often for my followers. Knowing the risks of shortened URLs, I actually make special efforts to post links that I can embed directly without having to shorten. I want my readers to see clearly exactly where any click will take them. Of course the problem is sometimes I want to link to something with a web address that's a mile long. Blog posts are definitely annoying to link to. Most blog platforms turn the entire blog title into the corresponding URL for that post, resulting in extremely long addresses full of dashes, and sometimes adding the date to make it even longer.

There isn't really a solution to the underlying problem - some sites have short URLs and some have long ones. The best you can do is protect yourself when clicking on someone else's link.

Thus I recently installed a Firefox add-on called Long URL Please. It automatically reveals all shortened URLs on every web page, with no need to do anything. It works with all the typical shortener services. Some comments from users on the Firefox plug-in site mention slow load times and system hangs, but I haven't encountered either in the week I've been using it. It works fine, and has removed any concerns I used to have about shortened and masked links. I can finally tell which links go to affiliate sales pitches and which ones go to news stories and blogs, it's fantastic.

I recommend it or a similar add-on to make your online travels safer. (... and I naturally assume you are using Firefox in the first place!)

Stats: Browsers Used By Visitors To Our Sites

Here's a current look at the browsers being used by visitors to the heaviest traffic sites that we operate. No big surprises with Internet Explorer leading the pack, followed by Firefox.


Without saying too much about our clients, trust me when I say this traffic is very broad in scope. These statistics reflect traffic to sites in many unrelated industries, with very different target audiences and user demographics (from highly educated specialists to random consumers, and from world-wide to Peterborough-specific).

Facebook, Firefox, Opera, Google...

Facebook movie closer to reality? Lots of info hitting the airwaves right now. This isn't exactly a breaking story, since Aaron Sorkin's official Facebook Movie group went up in August of 2008. For some of the latest gossip, check this CNET article

The new Firefox 3.5 is due out sometime around the start of July 2009. Watch the video overview on the Firefox YouTube channel

The new Opera 10 will incorporated some built-in applications, plus the concept of "client-based serving" right inside the browser, a very ambitious feature. There's a video overview of the Opera 10 beta on the CNET Blog

Google has begun a series of tips to help online business webmasters stay on top of their site analytics, and maximize traffic, revenue, and AdSense income in these poor economic times. Go to the Google AdSense Blog