IE8 Now Most-Used Browser

I have to admit this caught me by surprise. IE8 is evidently the world’s most-used browser, according to a report by Net Applications. The surprise comes from the fact it’s not IE7 that’s holding the top spot.

It is true that IE8 is the best IE you can use, due to the fact it’s the least-crashable, the most secure and so on. You’ve heard this all before. And it’s all true.

But if I were to poll the PCMech audience and ask what you guys and gals use, chances are IE wouldn’t exactly be at the top of the list. In fact I’d wager that it would probably be near the bottom of the list, if not dead last.

Neither Dave nor myself use IE as our primary browser. Dave uses Firefox and Safari on the Mac. I use Firefox almost exclusively in Windows 7. I use IE only on very rare occasions, and believe it or not also use a win32 port of Lynx, a browser ordinarily used only on Linux.

I don’t bash on anybody that uses IE, as long as you’re not using IE6. If you’re using 6, you’ll receive no sympathy from me because that browser is just plain horrible. I need not mention why it’s horrible because I’ve stated why several times in other articles.

I ask you, the audience, what browser are you using?

But I have a follow-up to that question.

What’s your secondary browser, should you use one? Dave uses Firefox and Safari. I use Firefox, IE8 (rarely) and Lynx.

What do you use?

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http://www.virtualpreacher.org Yohan Perera
I was going through the list of browsers used by my visitors the other day, and was surprised to find out that most of them are using, IE 8.
I was used to love Firefox but eventually it became very slow and then switched to Chrome. I don’t have a secondary browser. On rare occasions I use Firefox portable and IE 7 or 8…
DataKnight
I use IE8 in the main because Roboform works well with it.
Although at times I find IE8 so slow to do anything especially when running on my laptop under Vista Business.
I find Firefox has got too slow, too much memory usage….
I use Google Chrome as my secondary browser mostly because it’s fast, alternately I use Opera 10.
Occasionally I use Safari too.
Aaron Fournier
I use Firefox as my main browser and as my secondary browser I use Epiphany. I’ll mainly use Epiphany when I momentarily need a lite alternative, but one of the downsides right now is that it’s not compatible with Hotmail.
Floyd
The fact that IE8 is included automatically in Windows updates might have something to something to do with the numbers.
Correct me if I am wrong but I believe Lynx was originally a DOS program that pre-dates Linux. I has been around for a long time.

http://www.menga.net Rich Menga
The University of Kansas originally coded the Lynx browser in the early 1990s. It was the browser of choice for text terminals with no graphics capabilities. And I’m relatively sure (but not positive) it was not a DOS app originally.

Lanks
I have recently switched to Chrome and ditched Firefox totally, Chrome just seems so much cleaner to me. I do still use IE8 occasionally but only when i need to.
Jase
Theres an IE8 now?
Last version of IE I touched properly was version 5.5
I do have IE7 installed, but only to support the IETab extension on Firefox – theres still the odd site that blocks the browser if you are found not to be using IE.
although there was one time I found one that worked the other way.
Randall Hampton
I almost exclusively use Firefox, but I’m considering switching to Chrome. IE8 is my secondary browser.
http://howto-ubuntu.com Eli
I use Opera 10 on linux. I’ve used Epiphany and/or Firefox as my backup browser, but now my backup is the recently released in beta Chrome for linux.
I haven’t encountered one browser yet that’s as fast as Chrome. Fast as in the application itself, not necessarily loading pages. That makes things very pleasant.
Digby
1.Firefox (Scroogle SSL search)
2.SeaMonkey (Fast)
3.IE8 (Rare)
Tyler
Chrome has replace Firefox as my primary and I avoid IE like the plague.
David Kennedy
I use almost entirely Chrome, because of it’s speed. I use the others for web development. But I do use FireFox when I need high security (online banking, etc) and IE when I have a compatibility problem.
WI_Winger
I use Firefox. If I have to use a Microsoft Browser, it is E8.
Pingback: Hate IE? Use A Different Shell | PCMech
http://digitivity.org Digitivity
I’m using Google Chrome.
I held out for a while. I thought I would hate the interface, which I had assumed had been changed from other browsers’ just for the sake of change.
But I ended liking it and all of its quirks, including no menu bar, no title bar, and also opening up tabs close to the current tab, not at the last tab.