Can We Talk About Web Browser Fragmentation?

Everyone is getting a real kick out of the new IE Sucks commercial that was released today by the – wait for it – IE Team. You can check it out here on Winsyde – Microsoft Goes After The Trolls in new IE Video and it is great seeing the team poke back like Brad mentions in that article.

I bring up that video because, as we all know, the browser wars have been going on for quite some time. I use a combination of IE and Chrome to get the work done I need to do.

Well the numerous numbers of browser versions that are out there got me thinking and looking in my website traffic logs for November just to see the browser piece of visits.

I must admit I was pretty surprised at just how fragmented the browser arena is. I mean we talk about smartphone and cell phone OS fragmentation all the time but I am not sure I have ever had that same discussion about web browsers.

So anyway, I took a look at my logs as of this morning and crunched some quick numbers to come up with this chart that shows how fragmented the web browser market is.

The Others column includes RSS Readers, iTunes, PDA/Phone browsers, download managers and media players.

I also took note of the oldest version of each browser that visited my site this month and that breaks down like this:

Scary to know so many old, out of date and in some cases no longer being actively developed versions/browsers are out there. This must drive web developers crazy at times.