Re[2]: IE <5.5 vs IE >=5.5 statistics? (Should we use UTF-8?)

Thanks a great deal, Kathy!

What I need is a proof one of the following statements:

- UTF-8 is not ready for everywhere use and just because of IE5.0

- IE5.0 has gone to be no more widespread then NN4 and may be
  forgotten about - go ahead and use UTF-8 if 98% of the average
  internet audience is good enough for you

The whole question is about the percentage of UTF-8 incapable
user agents.

Yes I know audiences vary, and nothing is better then your own
stats but currently I'm more  academical then practical :-)

So my point is to state that there are _some_ audiences that
have to be accounted for.


KW> NN4.x also behaves extremely erratically with it's CSS display when using
KW> UTF-8 (it will simply stop interpreting the CSS for no other apparant reason 
KW> - reload may or may not re-draw the page properly).

KW> ... The numbers vary. Most stats sites are
KW> using stats generated from their own visitors and related sites. These sites 
KW> are most often visited by us (developers) using in most cases fairly recent 
KW> browsers - so the stats may be slanted.

KW> However Google has some useful stats from time to time:
KW> http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html
This has been gorgeous! Google browser stats shows that IE5.0 still _dominates_
each of IE5.5 and IE6.0 (but not both taken together :-). So we may consider
it has around 33%, and will probably retain no less then 15% in this year.
Anyone dare to forecast it for two years?


KW> Another good site is:
KW> http://www.thecounter.com/stats/
Not that helpful regretfully, it enlists 5.0 and 5.5 together as 5.x,
and great many other statistics pages do the same :-( they are no
good for your discussion :-((

KW> Good luck,
KW> KathyW.

Thanks a great deal! :-)

- Anton

P.S. here are the links I have found myself:
http://www.gueuledebois.net/stats.php?view=browser (good)
http://www.planetz.net/~twilight/statistics.pl?view (no date, stale?)
http://www.netmagination.net/netmaniacs-stats.html (good)
http://logs.webcenter.uab.edu/sem_conversion/ (good)
http://phpgw.de/zugriffe/m_usage_200112_002_003.html (good, a bit unclear)
http://www.rev.net/stats/www.rev.net/m_usage_200201_002_003.html (good, a bit unclear)

All these give 10%-30% to IE5.0/IE5.1

but most of these are small sites with count of hits bellow 2000 accounted.
Please, if anyone could supply more statistics it would be very-very welcome!

Regretfully the pages that have 5.x do not help much unless we make an
assumption that IE5.5/IE5.0 rate remains stable over time.. not sure
if it is a viable assumption

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