What is an Internet Browser? And for that matter, what difference does it make?

For the uninitiated, the Internet Browser is a program used to access web pages, and if you’re not familiar with this term then chances are you’ve just been using the default Windows Internet Explorer which comes pre-loaded on all Windows PCs. This browser has been the dominant standard for the past 5 years.

It seems that only a short while ago, Microsoft Internet Explorer (IE) had won the browser wars and the corpse of Netscape was finally laid to rest, however, there are now a number of new challenges to IE.

Firstly is Firefox, an alternative browser which has made massive gains in the last couple of years. Firefox is our browser of choice due to it’s speed and a number of pioneering innovations which were lacking on IE.

Secondly is the resurgent Apple Safari . Apple uses it’s own Safari browser in it’s computers and it’s recent success in laptop sales in particular has seen a marked increase in it’s browser share. The browser is also available on the PC.

Thirdly is the manner in which websites are accessed. Increasingly mobile devices are being used instead of home PCs and these use a number of different browsers to access the web. These in themselves are re-defining how the internet is viewed and used, and the iPhone / iPod touch in particular is a growing figure on website statistics.

Later this week I’ll be discussing why this matters, and how your website can benefit from these changes, but for the moment I’ll leave you with the statistics from our own website. As our site is technology-focused, one would expect a higher usage of alternative browsers from the mainstream but it is still an interesting change from the 80%+ dominance we used to see for IE.

Internet Explorer 60%
Firefox 29%
Safari 6%
iPhone 0.39%
Others ~4%