Firefox Popularity Rises—Try It, You’ll Like It, Too

The Firefox browser has climbed to more than 21% market share, according to the December 2008 market share report from Net Applications. It started 2008 with a 17% share.

At the minimum, Website publishers should be assuring that their designs are compatible across the leading browsers. Not every one is confined to the all-Microsoft Office (including Internet Explorer) world that asset management companies live in.

Your Web analytics can tell you how the market share breakdown jibes with your site users. As a check of what the non-Internet Explorer users see, go to Browsershots.orgfor screenshots of how your site looks using Firefox, Safari, Chrome and any other browsers. Submit your URL and the request will be added to the job queue.

How it works: Distributed computers open your website in their browsers, make screenshots and upload them to Browsershots’ central server. The process can take several minutes to hours so be sure to select only the browsers your analytics suggest you should care about. Browsershots is a free open-source online service created by Johann C. Rocholl.

We highly recommend that you give Firefox a try as your own browser. It’s faster, more secure and once you’ve sampled a few of the 5,000 Firefox add-ons (here’s a list of the most popular), you’re likely to think of Internet Explorer as soooo 2008.