While each browser has its benefits and drawbacks, all are required to adhere to standards set by the W3C (or World Wide Web Consortium). As these standards are updated, web browsers are required to update their system. Not only does this provide a quality-standard for web browsers, it creates for the user a better Internet experience. Some of the latest features in web development include CSS3, HTML5, SVG, faster loading and more fluid layouts. When you take the time to update your chosen browser, you avail yourself to these features at faster speeds. If you hesitate or postpone these updates, you deny yourself a greater user experience.

If not for any other reason, you should update your browser to maintain the highest Internet security possible. In fact, most of the WC3’s new regulations are established because of security issues. Using an older version of a browser may allow unfriendly websites to read and damage your files, steal your passwords, infect your devices with viruses, etc.

Now that you know how important web browser updates can be, take the time to upgrade yours each time you are notified. You’ll not only have a more pleasurable Internet experience, you’ll benefit from more secure exploring.

What does it mean? Web developers should more likely implement HTML5 into web projects. With that environment, the new standard is going to flourish and new features of HTML5 will became common techniques faster than we expected few months ago.

The latest official versions of browsers are currently: Internet Explorer 8.0, Firefox 3.6, Chrome 7.0, Safari 5.0 and Opera 10.6.

The summary of the repprt shows that:
– 91% of Chrome users run version 7.0.
– 81% of Firefox users run version 3.6.
– 77% of Opera users run version 10.6.
– 71% of Safari users run version 5.0.
– 60% of Internet Explorer users run version 8.0.

StatCounter Global Stats shows that the family of Internet Explorer browsers has below 50% of the market, down from about 60% a year ago. This is a worldwide statistics. IE is still above 50% in North America, however it has dropped to 40% in Europe. In Asia Internet Explorer is doing peaty good and it dominants with nearly 60% of the market.

Coming back to worldwide stats, Firefox still has a strong position number two, number three is Chrome.

If we compare use of browsers only in North America, we can see an interesting battle for the third place between Chrome and Safari.

According to the newest data from netmarketshare.com, IE6 is the second most popular browser, with 16.97 percent of global market share. Number one is IE8, which has 26.87 percent.

Browser Version and Total Market Share
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 – 26.87%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 – 16.97%
Firefox 3.6 – 16.15%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 – 11.43%
Chrome 5.0 – 6.48%
Source: netmarketshare.com and browsers market share.

According to the newest data browser version market share looks as follow:
Microsoft Internet Explorer 8.0 – 26.87%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 6.0 – 16.97%
Firefox 3.6 – 16.15%
Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 – 11.43%
Chrome 5.0 – 6.48%

Firefox 4 supports also CSS 3 and HTML5, it has also better protection against buggy plugins which crash the browser. The company plans to release a new beta version of the browser every two weeks. According to the newest data about Browser Market Share Firefox is the second (after IE) most popular browser on the market.

Internet Explorer, Microsoft’s browser is used by more than 6 out of 10 people. Statistics shows that IE8 is used by more than one in four users on the Web. Unfortunately for Website developers and Web designers, IE6’s share is greater than IE7’s. Indeed Internet Explorer 6 gained 0.01 percentage points this month. The reason of it is that business still us using IE6 for customized intranet applications, also we can see that Windows XP (which has integrated Internet Explorer 6) is still more popular than Vista.

Sources: marketshare.hitslink.com

Microsoft’s Internet Explorer is still the most popular browser and has 52% of the market. Firefox is a number two with 28.5%.

Results are a surprise, it is enough to image that every single apple computer comes with Safari. Apple’s indeed has now 10% of the computer market share. On the other hand Google’s Chrome is not bundled with any computer as a default browser. Google’s Chrome is also the newest browser in the market, Chrome was introduced 2 years ago.

Browsers market share by Statcounter:
1. Internet Explorer – 52%
2. Firefox – 28.5%.
3. Chrome – 8.97%
4. Safari – 8.88%

HTML5 allows building new features for Gmail. For example one feature that the Gmail design team already created is the ability to drag files from the desktop into the browser. However, this feature works only with very few browsers, one of them is Chrome.

HTML5 is currently under development as the next major revision of the HTML standard. Like its immediate predecessors, HTML 4.01 and XHTML 1.1, HTML5 is a standard for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. The new standard incorporates features like video playback and drag-and-drop that have been previously dependent on third-party browser plug-ins such as Adobe Flash, Microsoft Silverlight, and Google Gears. Source: Wikipedia

An example bellow is crated based on Eric Meyer’s CSS reset (meyerweb.com) and it is recommended by Royal Deer Design.

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html, body, div, span, applet, object, iframe, h1, h2, h3, h4, h5, h6, p, blockquote, pre, a, abbr, acronym, address, big, cite, code, del, dfn, em, font, img, ins, kbd, q, s, samp, small, strike, strong, sub, sup, tt, var, b, u, i, center, dl, dt, dd, ol, ul, li, fieldset, form, label, legend, table, caption, tbody, tfoot, thead, tr, th, td
{
margin: 0;
padding: 0;
border: 0;
outline: 0;
font-size: 100%;
vertical-align: baseline;
background: transparent;
}

body {
line-height: 1;
}

ol, ul {
list-style: none;
}

blockquote, q {
quotes: none;
}

blockquote:before, blockquote:after, q:before, q:after {
content: ”;
content: none;
}

:focus {
outline: 0;
}

ins {
text-decoration: none;
}

del {
text-decoration: line-through;
}

table {
border-collapse: collapse;
border-spacing: 0;
}

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More info:
Definition of CSS Reset from Wikipedia: CSS Reset – CSS declarations remove margins and standardize cross-browser rendering on common elements.