Browser Wars: Firefox Down, IE and Safari Gain

Market share for the Mozilla Foundation’s open-source browser dipped to
8.07 percent in July from a high of 8.71 percent in June, according to
NetApplications, which gathered the data from the 40,000 websites it monitors.

Microsoft Corp.’s Internet Explorer, on the other hand, increased its market
share to 87.2 percent from 86.56 percent, the Aliso Viejo, Calif.-based,
company, said. The Mac browser Safari showed modest growth to 2.13 percent,
while most other browsers experienced little change.

from Internet Week

Count the Dowbrigade among those who have abandoned Firefox after a
brief fling, and gone back to Safari, like a wayward husband returning
home after
a passionate but ultimately unfulfilling dalliance with a fast and attractive
younger model (in our dreams).

The main reason we went back to Safari was Apple’s quick and elegant
implementation of RSS aggregation directly in its browser. More than
dropping Firefox,
we feel bad about no longer firing up BlogBridge,
an excellent Java-based
aggregator. However, although it is not as powerful or functional
as a dedicated aggregator, the convenience of having one-click access to
our
most frequently consulted RSS collections from within the browser environment
won us back to Safari.

It still seems incredible to us that such a predominant percentage
of surfers use IE, which is waaaay down on our list of preferred browsers.  As
a part-time site designer, we have to take it into account, and view
our product in it to check for the inevitable cross-application idiosyncrasies,
but these occasional exposures only convince us how tasteless and short-sighted
most users must be. May the Browser Wars continue….