I’m not sure if people have flagged this up before, but I’ve noticed a few interesting trends in the browser usage statistics presented by StatCounter’s Global Stats. Here for instance is the graph for roughly the last three months:
Worldwide Browser Breakdown – Last three months
Clearly the overall trend in browser share isn’t changing much, that’s not what I’m interested here. Instead I’m looking at the fluctuations that the lines show around their mean value. Particularly the IE and Firefox can be seen to have the same fluctuations in the opposite directions. When IE’s usage is up, Firefox is down and vice versa.
Since these are the two most popular browsers this should come as no surprise. What’s interesting is the periodicity in these fluctuations. The peaks in the Firefox usage appear to be regularly spaced. Almost all of the peaks infact correspond to Sundays. I want to suggest that this is because more people use Firefox at home than they do at work, and hence when more people are at home at the weekend Firefox usage rises a percent or two.
What I couldn’t explain is the M shape in the IE line (or the corresponding W in Firefox’s line). This seemed a bit anomalous. I then remembered that this is worldwide data, and I have very limited knowledge of holidays and special events on a worldwide level that could be affecting the share in this way. I therefore decided to limit my scope to the UK to see the pattern there.
UK Browser Share - Last Three Months
We have two long weekends in May, and both of them can be seen on this StatCounter graph. First was 2nd, 3rd, 4th May, and the second was 23rd, 24th, 25th. Both weekends have longer dips in their IE curves – three point dips rather than the regular two – reflecting the extra day off.
I’m not sure what the peak in Safari usage is though which happens around the time of the original M I couldn’t explain. Any thoughts?
Me and Joe went on a trip today and hit Sandringham, Castle Rising Castle and the Beach. Follow the trip over on field.davyson.com which was updated as we went along.
Everyone is ranting about the DiggBar at the moment. It’s stealing content, search engine credit, pageviews… However I haven’t seen anyone suggest a minor change which would (I think) make a signifcant improvement.
If you click on a site on Digg and are presented with some content with the DiggBar overlaid, and then if click on some content on the page you remain at the digg.com/shortaddress because of the framing. When you then come to click on the clock button on the DiggBar you get sent back to the original page that was dugg. Instead they should detect the current page in the main frame and load you that. It’s a tiny bit of JavaScript to detect the location and load it.
It doesn’t stop the arguments about it but it certainly improves it I think.
This is a warship open to members of the public. Free entry! But that comes with the warning that this is a real warship and that it has not been modified for the safety of tourists. It clearly has, but there is still a sign that says this. Can see cramped conditions that many people worked in etc.
The top deck of the ferry that we went on around the harbour. We had to stop for a few minutes for the large green tanker to safely pass through the port. Apparently it carries natural gas and is at least a little controversial.
Woke after not very much sleep at all at 4.30 to go and get on the coach. Thanks Andy for letting me out of college. I slept a bit on the coach. Arrived at Heathrow at 8.00. Checked in and went through security. Then got some breakfast at Spoons. Sausage sandwich. At about 10.20 left the terminal in a bus towards the plane, finally leaving London just after 10.45. Limited on board film selection with the entertainment being non-interactive. I watched some of Madagascar 2: Back 2 Africa, but didn’t really enjoy it. Then on the second loop I watched some of Starksey & Hutch. It was ok.
Landed in Boston and lost 4 hours. It’s now 14.00. Met Nick at the airport. Went on a bus and a train back to his house. Dropped off my bag and headed to MIT. Really nice campus and university buildings. Got a Subway footlong from the MIT students union and walked to Harvard. Looked round the university very briefly and went to Lowell house where James wants to live next year. We then got the subway to the centre of Boston and walked from there to Nick’ house. Went to bed early – 9.45 ish. Rather tired.
We took a ferry from here for a tour of the harbour. To our surprise the ferry stopped at the other side in Charlestown as part of the trip. We jumped off and spent a couple of hours there.
