Steve Reynolds (Program Manager) stated "with today’s ‘Installation and Availability Update,’ Internet Explorer 7 installation will no longer require Windows Genuine Advantage validation and will be available to all Windows XP users."

This is a big step for IE 7 as it pushes to become the worlds most used browser.  With this news it will not be too long until its superiority will be unsurpassed, so expect the usage statistics to pick up dramatically.

For more information on the new release of Internet Explorer 7 and its latest updates have a look at the IEBlog.  If you wish to download Internet Explorer 7 you can do so at the IE 7 download page.

stats

As soon as I saw these stats I remembered an article I came across over at Seopher.com stating that they have also had impressive stats at between 65-70%. That is impressive enough; however, 88% seems to be extraordinary.

This begs the question is Firefox really closing the gap significantly on Internet Explorer with more and more users becoming deluded with poor operating systems (a la Vista) and cloned idealess browsers (IE7)? Or is it more likely that the user base of this website simply being of a techie variety is producing the immense results?

My only answer is that it has to be a happy medium between the two. Yes I think more people are making the switch especially with computer manufactures such as Dell providing machines with Linux installed, however, a good portion has to be the user group viewing this site. Its literally the margin of the result that has caught me by surprise.

When looking at for example the W3C Schools stats you can clearly see that they place that Internet Explorer dominates the market at present although you can also see a trend of growth from Firefox.

More W3C Schools Stats…

I think these stats when looked in conjunction with the AndrewSellick.com stats provide more questions than answers, however, they both do seem to show Firefox as (eventually) the market leading web browser.

Let me know of your thoughts and web stats below.

Long live the Fox….

Having browsed the Firefox 3 documentation there have been no significant changes which will greatly affect any web developers out there, more slight tweaks to the existing product and bug fixes from 2.0.

Some notable features include:

• Cross-domain XMLHttpRequest
• Print layout and preview layout should look identical
• Support for Quartz Netscape Plugin API (NPAPI)
• Version detection for Windows - Vista vs XP since we may want to have a different theme for each. Installation configuration piece
• Growl alert notifications for Mac OS X

Well I’m going to give the Alpha release a go a see what it throws up.  Let me know if anyone out there has had any issues as yet.

Add, edit and delete options are all provided as well as a nice feature allowing users to select their speed dials from a frequently visited pages and open pages list or even allowing users to drag and drop bookmarks onto the grid.

Other options include using Ctrl + [1-9] to quickly access desired speed dial site.

This is a powerful tool and is definitely bringing Opera to the forefront of the browser market. I think it is about time I gave Opera a fair crack for a while and what better time to start.

Have a look for yourself at www.opera.com.

The browser known as A-Browser was conceived by a blind employee, Dr Chieko Asakawa, from IBM’s research lab in Japan.

The browser is totally controllable from the keyboard and allows users to engage with multimedia content (currently targeting both Real Player and Windows Media Player) by using defined keyboard keys and therefore not relying on sight to see controls and using the mouse to click on them.

Video content can be further controlled by speeding it up or slowing it down and can also house an extra narration track that is inclujded in many films and TV programmes.

With over 160 million visually impaired users world wide there is a huge market to target and IBM could have made a very clever decision by targeting this area and its about time too.

Having developed countless accessible sights myself it becomes very frustrating when listening to sites in screen readers such as Jaws.  They sound long winded and are amazingly difficult to navigate and that’s from a developer’s point of view let alone somebody who has never visited the site before.

A-Browser could really be an incredible step in the right direction and should be applauded, and with the product due to be delivered later this year for free (hopefully) and open source IBM have truly made a bold move.