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.

How can we improve Mobile User Experience?
Source: Mobile Entertainment, 16 May 2008
 
A roundtable of forward thinkers convened in London last month to debate mobile user experience in advance of the forthcoming MEX conference.

HCI for Community and International Development
Source: UN, 15 May 2008
 
Emerging economies, developing countries and the challenges of designing across cultures came under scrutiny at a CHI 2008 workshop on Community and International Development.

The Future of social networking: Mobile Phones
Source: Times Online, 14 May 2008
 
The future of social networking is the coming together of internet-connected mobile phones and location or proximity technology.

Usability for Fun and Profit
Source: The Herald, 13 May 2008
 
An interview with Chris Rourke, owner and director of Edinburgh-based consultancy, UserVision.

Caroline's Corner: Usability of Content is Plain Language
Source: Caroline Jarrett, 12 May 2008
 
An exciting thing happened in the USA on 14th April 2008. It didn't quite manage to make it onto the national news - that day, we were mostly hearing about the Pope's visit to the USA. Any ideas? Any clue from my title? Give up?

HP Labs opens doors to Academia
Source: VNUNet, 10 May 2008
 
HP has unveiled an initiative allowing academic institutions to collaborate with HP Labs in joint research through an open and competitive process.

Email: is it time to get some Training?
Source: UN, 9 May 2008
 
How hard can it be? Apparently lack of email training is costing employers dearly.

Book Review: Mental Models by Indi Young
Source: UN, 8 May 2008
 
A practical, readable and relevant account of key processes in the vital task of researching, building and applying mental models to product design.

CHI '08: What makes a really Great Designer?
Source: System Concepts, 7 May 2008
 
What qualities do elite designers share, and what do they know that other members of the HCI community could benefit from?

Raising the standard of websites worldwide: BSI and Magus launch a new specification
Source: UN, 5 May 2008
 
BSI and Magus have released Publicly Available Specification (PAS) 124 to help organisations manage website standards efficiently and harness their full potential.