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Analysis of Browser Statistics from Three Sources Sep 2006 through Nov 2006

To Help Evaluate if Browsers Support CSS for Layout

By , About.com Guide

A common reason cited for not giving up tables for layouts is due to "browser support". So I did some analysis from three Web Browser statistics sites to see if it were true.

The Sites

The Analysis

According to W3Schools Browser Statistics page for the months of Sept-Nov 2006, 90.4% of the browsers listed were browsers that support CSS for layout and in that same time frame 37.1% were browsers with standards support (in other words, not IE 6 or 5).

To get these numbers, I added up all the columns except MSIE 5.x. W3Schools doesn't include browsers that get below 0.5% share.

The stats on the Browser News site lists an average of 95.4% use CSS browsers and 39.6% are using browsers with standards support.

This was a little trickier as Browser News gets their stats from 6 sources. I averaged the values for each browser and then added them up (again, except for MSIE 5.x) I didn't see the time period these statistics represent.

Stats from the counter.com for September - November 2006, show 96% CSS support and 16% standards support. They have the most current statistics, with December 2006, having 97% CSS and 27% standards and January (through January 17th when I looked at it) 98% CSS and 34% standards.

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