Using some of these sites that offer stats is good enough to get an over-all view but you can't expect the same results on your site. You need to check you own logs. And just to be sure you are getting the full picture, you need to check for Netscape, Mozilla, Firefox and other less known Mozilla based browsers such as Kazehakase, Galeon, Epiphany, and K-Meleon. The heart of all of these browsers is the Gecko rendering engine.

I still see a lot of websites that have been designed for IE users with no thought to any other browser. To some this might be acceptable, and relying on information like the Stats published by WebsSideStory, you understand that one of these days... when you get "a round tuit" you might have to look at your site in some other browser... but it's only 5%... and you're sure everything will be fine anyway.

Thom Meyer, entreprenuer, operator of three websites recently shared his stats on my discussion forum On Friday, 17 December 2004, he posted:

Well Steve here's the stats from 3 of my sites. I am just showing IE, Mozilla, and FireFox here.

Site 1:
I.E. 49.4%
Mozilla 23.2%
FireFox 20.4%

Site 2:
I.E. 60.4%
FireFox 23%
Mozilla 8.6%

Site 3:
I.E. 51.9%
Mozilla 19.3%
FireFox 10.1%

Last month Mozilla beat out I.E. by the end of the month on two out of the three sites

I was quite surprised to learn of these results, but my stats show a higher usage too. In the middle of January, this year, 15.15% of the people visiting this site used a Gecko based browser.

I'd like to suggest something to anyone building websites this year. Don't rely on statistics that publish browser stats as a gauge to whether you need to make the site cross-browser friendly. You don't know what percentage of your users will be using something other then Internet Explorer. It would be wise to take this into account.

If anyone would care to comment on this or let us know the percentage of Gecko based browser users that frequent their site, please feel free...