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Recent figures released show that Mozilla’s Firefox internet browser is rapidly gaining ground against its main rival, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer.

Across Europe, FireFox now has a 28% share of the market – a 4.5% increase on the previous year. Though Microsoft’s IE still dominates the market, it’s own market share is falling – more than 2% in the past 6 months.

The increased security, speed and simplicity of FireFox has made it a popular choice for internet users, despite the fact that most PC’s are shipped pre-loaded with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. FireFox passed the 500 million download mark earlier this year.

In the UK, usage stands at around 20% but in some parts of Europe, particularly Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, usage has grown to more than 40% of internet users.

Safari and Opera have also seen small increases over the past year.

In June this year, the launch of version 3 of the FireFox browser set a world record for the number of software downloads in one day, with more than 8 million downloads in the first 24 hours.

Given the rise in popularity of these alternative browsers, all companies should be checking that their websites work within these environments.

The way in which a browser displays information from a website can vary from one browser to the next, so when designing a website, it’s imperative to test how information is displayed in all browsers. To design a site for only one browser risks alienating a growing proportion of internet users, damaging your brand and, ultimately, your bottom line.

© Amatica 30/09/2008