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Browsers Used and Supported
 

Browsers Used and Supported

To ensure the websites we build are widely accessible, we monitor the browsers used by visitors to the BU Web and design websites to be compatible with those browsers.

During the month of November 2006, Boston University's main website at www.bu.edu served over 70 million pages, according to the traffic report for that month.  The browsers used for viewing over 47 million of those pages are included in the summary of supported and unsupported browsers below.  About 23 million pages viewed by search engines, Java applications, and others are not included below.

Sites designed by NIS should display and function properly in the supported browsers listed below.  Problems may arise with very old browsers or the sole unsupported browser listed below, IE 5 on the Macintosh.  Today, only about 0.29% of traffic to the BU Web is from this browser. Since Microsoft no longer supports IE for the Mac, and therefore no longer repairs security problems or performance issues, Microsoft itself recommends that Macintosh users switch to a modern browser, such as Safari or Firefox.  We concur with that recommendation.

Page Requests % of Total

Supported Browsers 47,272,344 99.71
Internet Explorer 6.x 26,184,507 55.23
Windows XP 24,554,949 51.79
Windows 2000 1,362,087 2.87
Windows 98 247,691 0.36
Windows Server 2003 19,780 0.52
Firefox 1.x 12,041,303 25.40
Windows XP 10,646,713 22.46
Mac OS X 1,204,920 2.54
Windows 2000 133,054 0.28
Linux 56,616 0.12
Safari (all builds) 4,993,064 10.53
Mac OS X 4,993,064 10.53
Firefox 2.x 1,764,629 3.72
Windows XP 1,518,634 3.20
Mac OS X 218,751 0.46
Windows 2000 27,244 0.06
Internet Explorer 7.x 1,621,066 3.42
Windows XP 1,621,066 3.42
Firefox 0.x 395,725 0.83
Linux 358,680 0.76
Windows XP 37,045 0.08
Internet Explorer 5.x 135,153 0.29
Windows 2000 76,189 0.16
Windows 95 35,153 0.07
Windows 98 23,811 0.05
Netscape 8.x 68,895 0.15
Windows XP 68,895 0.15
Netscape 7.x 48,836 0.10
Mac OS X 48,836 0.10
Opera 19,166 0.04
Windows XP 19,166 0.04

Unsupported Browsers 137,374 0.29
Internet Explorer 5.x 137,374 0.29
Mac PowerPC 137,374 0.29

Note: Microsoft no longer actively develops or supports IE for the Mac. Therefore, existing versions of IE for the Mac are vulnerable to any number of viruses, Trojan Horses, and rogue agents that have been discovered since 2003. It is strongly recommended that all IE/Mac users switch to a modern browser, such as Safari or Firefox.


Total 47,409,718 100.00
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NIS  |  OIT  |  Boston University  |   January 4, 2007