Accurate Browser Statistics? 137
zyl0x asks: "A co-worker of mine has been made responsible for a large web application for our software product, and he was having a hard time deciding what functionality to implement, and whether or not to sacrifice functionality for a larger user base. With Walmart's harsh stand on browser compatibility, we got to thinking, exactly how many users would we be alienating by using some IE-only functionality on our website? We tried crawling the internet to get some current, accurate browser usage statistics, but we could only find stats for specific websites. I thought I'd try sending Google a request, since we imagine they'd have the lowest-common-denominator in terms of types of users, but I received an email from their press department telling me that they 'don't make that kind of information available.' Where can one get a current, accurate, and un-biased measurement of browser usage? Is it even possible?"
Re:Enter webcomics... (Score:2, Funny)
A Modest Proposal (Score:5, Funny)
If you're even willing to entertain the idea, then why not take it to the next level? Instead of having an interactive ActiveX-heavy website, just have a website that contains one file, a MS Windows-only executable, for your "audience" to download and execute as administrator. Then you won't have to worry about "giving up functionality" at all.
(BTW, you're never going to find the statistics that you want. Having MSIE be in the user-agent header, is practically part of the defacto http standard now. Why? Exactly because of the kind of abuse that you're contemplating. 10 years after the last copy of MSIE has been erased, it will still have 90% marketshare, at least according to the server logs.)
Re:These aren't the browser stats you're looking f (Score:1, Funny)
"Only abled bodied people buy wheelchairs! What the hell do you want one for?"
And so ignorance becomes truth.