Hi J-S, On Thu, Feb 26, 2009 at 2:46 PM, Jean-Sébastien Guay <[email protected]> wrote: > Well, some people disable the sending of OS information by their browser, so > it's possible that a number of those actually would fall into the other > categories (Linux, Windows etc.)
Indeed. I have heard of Linux users configuring browsers to act report being other browsers, I presume other platform/browsers do the same. I'm curious where this practice would be most common. I'd doubt that IE users would try and mimic something other than Windows/IE as the issue in compatibility tends to be websites excluded non IE or non Windows platforms. >> Perhaps this strong showing of non windows OS's and non IE browsers in >> the graphics community might be useful in helping win over clients >> that go demanding MS specific solutions. The tide has turned. > > I find your wording funny... All dramatic and foreboding. 60% is still huge. 60% is the majority so indeed huge. But... it's very different than the 90 or 95% figure that you see often claimed about for desktop client usage, something that is certainly worthy of mention. We are very different in terms of make up, with around four times as many non Windows users as we might expect given other published figures. While the majority are working under Windows, 40% is not a small minority of non windows machines. > And keep in mind that's just visits to the web site... I don't think we can > have a direct correlation between website visits and OSG usage. It would be > a pretty big extrapolation. A big extrapolation, but typically people will develop and browse under the same platform. A few years back Don Burns did a poll of platform usage and the percentages were around 45% developed for Windows, and 40% developed for Linux, with a large number developing for both. So the figures I've published today probably aren't too surprising from our own community perspective. It's how different we are from wider averages than it surprising for me. The most surprising thing to me was just how dominant Firefox has come. I'm pretty sure a few years back it would have been IE totally dominating. > And the browser stats mean nothing since Firefox, Opera and others run on > Windows, Linux, etc. I know many people who avoid IE like the plague, even > though they run Windows. I use Firefox just because I like it more and I try > to use Open Source software wherever I can. > > You're being pretty extremist in this whole thing. You have to understand > that people can use Windows for many reasons, not only technical ones, and > it's not because someone uses Windows that they're necessarily buying into > MS's "propaganda". It's not as clear-cut as that. IMHO, Windows is just > another tool, it's superior in some respects and inferior in others, and > people will choose to use it or not (sometimes for the wrong reasons, but in > general you don't know those reasons so you can't make a judgement on > them...) and there's nothing you or I can do about that. Actually I think you're being a little tetchy. How is pointing aspects browser stats extremist? Never did I map Firefox usage to non Windows usage, the figures don't support this and I didn't suggest this. I put the two sets of stats in two separate blocks each with own quick thoughts on what this meant each individually. What is clear from the stats is that our community contains many more non windows users that the average populace. We provide a cross platform toolkit so this isn't too surprising, it's a self selective set of people visiting our website. For me a real eye opener is that Firefox has risen so rapidly, the mind share that MS once had over Windows developers clearly has ebbed dramatically in the case of browsers. Clearly MS's OS have faired better than their browser, and kept more market share, but OS's are far more of a bed rock of daily work than a single replaceable application, replacing it is not far from easy or desirable in many cases. Given the context for Gordon Tomlison's recent email about Direct3D an assertions that some clients ask for Direct3D simply because they think it's better, I think it's important to point out stats, as it's one of the tools that we have available. Times have certainly changed dramatically in the browser market, extrapolating this to a suggestion that other parts of the software eco-system might be also ripe for change as well I don't think is too unreasonable. Robert. _______________________________________________ osg-users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.openscenegraph.org/listinfo.cgi/osg-users-openscenegraph.org
