I'm really not surprised that a survey that monitors browser market share finally has a Firefox version ahead of the most popular Internet Explorer version. Does it mean much? No! As was stated in the article the totals for all Microsoft browsers still exceeds those of all Firefox browsers by 20% points, and that the results from each survey site vary wildly. In and of itself this survey should be taken with a grain of sand, however when combined with data from other sources, like the one stating that Internet Explorer has lost a full percentage of market share for each of the last five months, one starts to get the feeling there really may be some serious erosion of Microsoft's lead taking place. It couldn't happen fast enough for me.

This will be useful to me. A local web design shop (small town) refused to change a local charity web-page to be friendly to FF, because FF was a fringe browser. Now I have the ammo, to change his mind.

I remember the days I "fanatically" kept using Netscape Navigator, because I wanted to remind the world they had to develop according to W3C and not "as long as it works in IE".

I'm also hoping Opera will see some growth once the new browser choice screen is implemented in Windows (only Europe?).

Freedom to choose is a good thing!

It is not right to say the IE6, IE7 and IE8 together have a higher share ... try designing a webpage with some of the features available in IE8 and then see what it looks like in IE6 ... IE6 is not compatible with IE8 so it is right to compare market share of Firefox 3.5 with IE8 or with IE7 alone ... but don't lump all version of IE together.

Well, I think even 30% is great, I seem to remember there was a time when MS had upwards to 95% of the market and everybody was thinking FF would be lucky to get a mere toehold.

The recent numbers for Firefox are impressive. If you take into account that close to 90-92% of desktop PCs use Windows (this varies on the data source), and Firefox is used 30%, this means that a lot of Windows users have intentionally NOT used the built-in browser in Windows, and have chosen to ditch it and install Firefox instead. The users that still use IE are probably those that are satisfied with it, and put up with all of the quirks and security holes. I hope to see the share for Firefox increases. It is a great tool. The amount of plugins available are astounding, and it is very lightweight compared to Internet Exploder.

@bitbangerok -
The web design shop you mention has a typical attitude which is that MS is "in charge" of the Internet. They don't realise that IE browsers including the latest aren't exactly standards driven. They're probably designing to suit IE rather than the internationally accepted standards of html etc.

Even going from one version of IE to the latest will change how certain sites appear on screen. IE8 allows you to switch on a compatibility mode so that "websites designed for older versions of IE can appear correctly".

If MS lose the dominance in browsers it should be easier for professional web developers to design sites based precisely around the one set of standards.

@CdeS -
You're absolutely right. That's not only because MS use their own "standards" but because they change them every time a new browser version becomes available.

CdeS has a point. I have upgraded to Firefox 3.5 on my PC, but my laptop is compatible with Firefox 3, because it is more compatible with my OS. Why are the data combined so that Microsoft's gets to include more than one version? Why does MS get to stack the cards?