In Brief: Firefox's year-end Browser Share speaks of Serious Challenge

Microsoft's Web browser, Internet Explorer (IE), has lost 5% of its users in the last year. IE now has just over 85% of market share. Almost all this change can be attributed to an increase in users of Firefox, which now has just under 10%, but Safari also picked up a small but significant set of users each month throughout 2005. And this group may grow, as Microsoft decided to turn its back on supporting IE for Macs during the year gone.

Netscape is now clearly on the way out, with only about 1.5% of the market at year end. Opera has been almost static in market terms over the last year, with a half percent. The Opera browser's business model changed in 2005, when it abandoned its two tier approach of free-with-ads and premium without. This seems to have had no discernible impact as yet.

The data above was compiled from global traffic statistics from websites tracked by NetApplications' HitsLink.com.

Internet access is 'a fundamental right'
Source: BBC, 12 March 2010
 
Almost four in five people around the world believe that access to the internet is a fundamental right, a poll for the BBC World Service suggests.

The Net generation, Unplugged
Source: The Economist, 11 March 2010
 
Is it really helpful to talk about a new generation of "digital natives" who have grown up with the internet?

Rewriting the Human-Computer interaction Handbook
Source: CIOL, 10 March 2010
 
Indrani Medhi of Microsoft Research India has developed text-free user interfaces (UIs) to allow any illiterate or semi-literate person on first contact with a computer, to proceed with minimal or no assistance.

Lip reading Mobile promises End to noisy phone calls
Source: BBC, 9 March 2010
 
A prototype device shown off at CeBIT could allow people to conduct silent phone conversations.

Games User Researchers band together
Source: UN, 8 March 2010
 
The number of UX professionals in gaming has reached critical mass.

Quince Pro enables privately-held UX Design Libraries
Source: Infragistics, 6 March 2010
 
Infragistics has launched Quince Pro, a private, secure and organized way to collaborate, communicate and cultivate private UX design libraries to ensure consistent user experiences across teams, departments and companies.

Announcing a new issue of the Journal of Usability Studies
Source: UPA, 5 March 2010
 
UPA is happy to announce the publication of the second issue of volume 5, the Journal of Usability Studies.

Impatient versus Bored
Source: Gerry McGovern, 4 March 2010
 
Customers are much more likely to get impatient with your website than they are to be bored with it.

Futures Thinking: Writing Scenarios
Source: Fast Company, 3 March 2010
 
A valuable skill for UX folks (that's 'how to write scenarios', not 'scenarios in which one writes').

How to Conduct a Usability Review
Source: UsefulUsability, 2 March 2010
 
Never hurts to be reminded.