IE: 52.38%
Firefox: 38.46%
Google Chrome: 5.40%
Opera: 1.89%
Safari: 1.33%
Mozilla: 0.39%

IE’s 0.94% increase snapped a 4-month streak during which it lost market share every month.  Google Chrome was also a winner in June, increasing by 0.37%.  Firefox was the big loser during the month, as it saw its market share shrunk by 1.12%.   IE’s gain was not seasonal, as the browser market share was largely unchanged in June 2008.  It’s possible that IE’s gain was related to IE 8, as IE 8 has been seeing increasing adoption among IE users, going from 6.4% of all IE browsers in April to 10.5% in May to 14.3% in June.

IE: 51.44%
Firefox: 39.58%
Google Chrome: 5.03%
Opera: 2.07%
Safari: 1.32%
Mozilla: 0.38%

In May, IE lost another 0.71%, making this its 4th straight losing month. Firefox and Google Chrome both gained market share, increasing by 0.22% and 0.39%, respectively. It’s worth noting that Google Chrome, after having been stuck around 3% since its release until late last year, has been increasing steadily this year, now finally breaking the 5% mark. This increase did not directly come at the expense of Firefox, whose market share also rose during the same time frame.

Once the site is up and running, I need to know the traffic going to the mobile site. There are several mobile analytics programs available, so I decided to pick 3 of them: AdMob, Bango, and Google Analytics, and compare their results. I also analyzed my web server log for that one day to provide a reference.

The results based on one day’s worth of data are as follows:

AdMob and Bango were both a little low on pageviews. AdMob was lower by 21%, while Bango was lower by 27%. Google Analytics, on the other hand, missed out on 64% of all pageviews.

For visitors, all 3 mobile analytics tools were disappointing: Google Analytics and AdMob were too low, and Bango was too high.

In conclusion, among the 3 web analytics tools, AdMob and Bango both do an acceptable job in measuring pageviews. None of the 3 tools, on the other hand, provide a good visitor count.

IE: 52.15%
Firefox: 39.36%
Google Chrome: 4.64%
Opera: 2.03%
Safari: 1.31%
Mozilla: 0.36%

In April, IE continued to lose market share, shedding another 0.41%. The big winner was Google Chrome, which gained 0.38%. Safari was unable to continue its momentum gained in March, losing 0.09% in market share during April. It’s worth noting that IE’s market share is now only 2 percentage points above 50%. At the current rate, we’ll see IE’s market share drop below 50% some time in Q4 of this year.

1.  It was painless to download the package from Wordpress, unzip it, and then ftp the unzipped files into the web host.  Simply  following the direction in the Wordpress site did the trick.

2.  The databsae upgrade was smooth.

3.  After I had finished the processed describe in the Wordpress site, I went to the site.  Everything looked normal except that the tags were gone.  I had been using Jerome’s Keywords plugin to set my tags, and KeyCloud Widgets plugin to display the tag cloud.  A little research told me that I needed to use the Tools/Import function to import tags set with Jerome’s Keywords into Wordpress’s own tag database (back in the 2.2 days, Wordpress did not have native support of tags.  That feature was introduced in 2.3).

4.  The import was successful and I also edited my theme so the function calls for showing the tags and the tag clouds were updated.  However, the tags still did not appear.  After more poking around, which included querying the database tables to make sure all the relationships were correct between each tag and each post, I found the solution:  I needed to deactivate Jerome’s Keywords.  Once I deactived that plugin, the tags and the tag clouds appeared normally.

In summary, the upgrade from 2.2 to 2.7.1 was relatively painless.  The only extra steps were to 1) import tags from Jerome’s Keywords to Wordpress, 2) modify the theme so the right function calls are used to display tags and tag clouds, and 3) disable Jerome’s Keywords plugin.

IE: 52.56%
Firefox: 39.26%
Google Chrome: 4.26%
Opera: 1.97%
Safari: 1.40%
Mozilla: 0.39%

In March, IE was the biggest loser, with a 0.9% decrease in market share.  Clearly, IE8 hasn’t helped IE’s slide.  Interesting to note that Safair gained 0.2%.  This is not a big jump in absolute terms, but it is significant relative to Safari’s small market share.  So, early returns do indicate that Apple’s investment in Safari 4 is paying dividends.

IE: 53.46%
Firefox: 38.89%
Google Chrome: 4.02%
Opera: 1.88%
Safari: 1.20%
Mozilla: 0.38%

In February, the winners were Firefox, which gained 0.68% versus January, and Google Chrome, which broke 4% market share for the first time.  Clearly IE8 has not stopped the exodus to Firefox and now Chrome.  On February 24th, Apple announced Safari 4, which the company claimed to be the world’s fastest browser.  March numbers should give us an indication whether Safari 4 will increase Safari’s so-far-small browser market share.

IE: 54.38%
Firefox: 38.21%
Google Chrome: 3.50%
Opera: 2.18%
Safari: 1.13%
Mozilla: 0.46%

Compared to December, the biggest gainer was Chrome, which increased by 0.34%.  The biggest loser was IE, which saw its market share decrease by 0.32%.  Firefox saw a small increase at 0.13%.   IE8, which is the next version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer browser, released its RC (release candidate) version in January 2009.  We have started to see a small trickle of IE8 browser (1.68% of all IE traffic).  We have not yet tried IE8, and will report our thoughts on it once we have done so.

IE: 54.38%
Firefox: 38.21%
Google Chrome: 3.50%
Opera: 2.18%
Safari: 1.13%
Mozilla: 0.46%

In December, Chrome, Opera, and IE all saw small gains, mostly at the expense of Firefox.  This is the first time since September that Firefox lost market share.  Google Chrome appears to be pretty firmly entrenched as the #3 browser on the market.  Its market share, though, is still less than 10% of either of the top two.

IE: 54.28%
Firefox: 38.69%
Google Chrome: 3.22%
Opera: 1.97%
Safari: 1.16%
Mozilla: 0.53%

IE lost 1.16% in November, with most of that going to Firefox (+1.04%).  Google Chrome essentially stayed flat at 3.22%.  Market appears to be telling us that ther IS no need for two alternatives to IE.  I expect Google to either try to increase Chrome’s market share by integrating it more tightly with other Google services, or Google may decide to shut it down as it did with Lively, since this appears to be one of the things that did not stick on the wall.