From the perspective of someone implementing web application software, Firefox is now the dominant browser. Mozilla does an excellent job of making Mac and Windows Firefox almost identical from a programmer’s perspective and every new browser from Microsoft is like a new platform. It would be interesting if Firefox versions were broken out in the stats, but the difference between Firefox 1, 2, and 3 from a compatibility perspective is nowhere as dramatic as the differences between IE 5.5, IE6 and IE7.
Even when you aggregate the versions, Firefox is fast approaching IE…
source w3schools.com
The flaw in your argument is that the data for your marketshare stats is based only on w3schools, which suffers from a selection bias because it is not reflective of the average Web user.
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Thanks for pointing that out, Tony. Digging into the stats more, I found two other sources that show Firefox at less than 20% and IE7 at over 35%:
http://marketshare.hitslink.com/report.aspx?qprid=2 and http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2008/October/browser.php In these other surveys Firefox is gaining ground over IE, but it’ll be a while before Firefox is the dominant browser. Sigh.