Browser preferences – what’s yours?

[AnnaBrown]

A recent poll showed that community members’ browser of choice was Firefox, followed by Chrome and then Internet Explorer (I understand that this is a low sample size of the community with just a few votes, but I’m working with what we have). Interestingly enough, I researched ways to share results from this poll before I left for maternity leave last fall. Back then, I found a StatCounter graph from Sept. 2013 showing the geographic spread of global browser preferences:

While reviewing poll results to date, I looked up the same graph for March 2014. Wow, look at the difference:

Chrome has taken over in popularity while IE preference is diminishing.

Now let’s take a look at the geographic spread and preference of the community for April 2014 – see SAS Visual Analytics map below. Color codes indicate top browser by country and the list/legend shows the total number of times each browser was the top browser. The overall top browser is Chrome (shocker) with 33 countries having it as top choice:

It’s interesting to compare the geo-spread of preferences among the community with the global preference evolution from the StatCounter graphs.

Any thoughts here? Why the increase in Chrome preference? The original community poll is still active so if you want to vote for your favorite, go right ahead.

[MichelleHomes]

Nice graphs and analysis...

Perhaps the popularity increase in Chrome is due to IE security flaw... Microsoft Patches Latest Internet Explorer Security Flaw - Even For XP Users | TechCrunch

[AnnaBrown]

Thanks Michelle.

That's a good point. I wonder how many community members ... and the entire online population for that matter ... are still using Windows XP. It may be more than we think.

[I_Kong_SAS]

It would be interesting to see if any response to the security news is reflected in the browser and OS stats for community visitors for May.

[AnnaBrown]

It certainly would, I-Kong, great idea. I''ll look into that.

Any other angles the community would find interesting to show on this front?

Anna