Research on Web Browsers

Fall
09

MARKET RESEARCH ON WEB BROWSERS

⇒ Sagar A. Agrawal
⇒ Pratik Gandhi
⇒ Rajwin Patel
⇒ Aditya Ganjewar

IIPM Tower, 893/4 Bhandarkar Road, Deccan Gymkhana, Pune 411004
http://www.iipm.edu

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE OF PLANNING AND MANAGEMENT

MARKET RESEARCH ON WEB BROWSERS 2

Acknowledgment
We heartily thank our Project in-charge, Prof. Abhishek Lingayate (IIPM,
Pune), whose encouragement, guidance and support from the initial to the
final level enabled me to develop an understanding of the subject. We are
grateful for Sir’s contribution towards the execution of our project.

Lastly, we offer our regards and blessings to all of those who supported
us in any respect during the completion of the Research.



INDEX
S.r. no. Topic Page no.

1 Abstract 4

2 Objective of Study 5

3 Executive Summary 6

4 History OF Browsers 7

5 Introduction to the Companies 9

6 Methodology 17

7 Analysis 23

8 Global Statistics 49

9 Recommendation 53

10 Bibliography 54



Abstract

We present a case study on the usage and user-experience on Web-
Browsers. This will navigate the anticipation of usage of Browsers on a
regular basis. A browser provides a user interface for displaying and
selecting items from a list of data or from hierarchically organized lists of
data such as directory paths. With the constant addition of new and
pertinent information coming online every second it is very easy to go
information overload. The true key is to able to identify the important
information and how that information relates to information resources
through information visualization that will aid you in the creation of new
intelligence and research data using online Web-Browsers.
Following are the notifications of all the list of the browsers and its
cascaded version of getting into the research of Web-Browsers.



Objective of Study

The Internet revolution gave a rise for the ease of access to free
information. To access this information there should be a medium; a
web browser acts as a medium. A web browser is the most integral
part of computer system and when we talk about computer system
then we refer it to INTERNET. Technically, a Web browser is
a software application for retrieving, presenting, and traversing
information resources on the World Wide Web. An information
resource is identified by a Uniform Resource Identifier (URI) and
may be a web page, image, video, or other piece of
content. Hyperlinks present in resources enable users to easily
navigate their browsers to related resources.

Although browsers are primarily intended to access the World Wide
Web, they can also be used to access information provided by Web
servers in private networks or files in file systems.

In this report we will be analyzing the concept of a web browser
in a very brief format.

There are many browsers in the world and are categorized in
many types. We have taken in consideration four major web
browsers which are Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Google
Chrome, and Apple Safari. These browsers will be analyzed with
respect to different parameters based on their compositions.



Executive summary

The project merges the techniques of networked information to make
an easy but global information system. The project represents any
information accessible over the network as a part of a seamless
hypertext information space which is a “WEB BROWSER”.

This report on a web browser will determine the comparison and
usage share of web browser in percentage of users and visitors.



HISTORY OF BROWSERS

The history of the web browser dates back in to the late 1980s, when a variety of
technologies laid the foundation for the first web browser, World Wide Web, by Tim
Berners-Lee in 1991. That browser brought together a variety of existing and new
software and hardware technologies.



Introduction to the Companies

1. Internet Explorer:

Windows Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer;
abbreviated to MSIE or, more commonly, IE), is a series
of graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft and included as part
of the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems starting in 1995. It
has been the most widely used web browser since 1999, attaining a peak
of about 95% usage share during 2002 and 2003 with IE5 and IE6.

The latest release is Internet Explorer 8, which is available as a free
update for Windows XP with Service Pack 2 or later, Windows Server
2003 with Service Pack 1 or later, Windows Vista, and Windows Server
2008, and is included with Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.
Internet Explorer was originally going to be omitted from Windows 7 and
Windows Server 2008 R2 in Europe, but Microsoft later dropped the
plans, and instead included a browser ballot screen with the products,
allowing users to select a different web browser if they wish.



Features:

The latest of the Browser IE has today is IE 8, which was released on

March 19th, 2009. The main features include:

• Enhancement in the Security

• Ease of Use

• Improvements in RSS, CSS and AJAX support.



2. Mozilla Firefox

Mozilla Firefox is a free and open source web browser descended from
the Mozilla Application Suite and managed by Mozilla Corporation. The
Firefox project began as an experimental branch of the Mozilla project
by Dave Hyatt and Blake Ross. They believed the commercial
requirements of Netscape's sponsorship and developer-driven feature
creep compromised the utility of the Mozilla browser. To combat what
they saw as the Mozilla Suite's software bloat, they created a stand-alone
browser, with which they intended to replace the Mozilla Suite. On April
3, 2003, the Mozilla Organization announced that they planned to change
their focus from the Mozilla Suite to Firefox and Thunderbird.

The Firefox project has undergone several name changes. Originally
titled Phoenix, it was renamed because of trademark issues with Phoenix
Technologies. The replacement name, Firebird, provoked an intense
response from the Firebird free database software project. In response, the
Mozilla Foundation stated that the browser should always bear the
name Mozilla Firebird to avoid confusion with the database software.
Continuing pressure from the database server's development community
forced another change; on February 9, 2004, Mozilla Firebird
became Mozilla Firefox, often referred to as simply Firefox. Mozilla



prefers that Firefox be abbreviated as Fx or fx,though it is often
abbreviated as FF.

The Firefox project went through many versions before 1.0 was released
on November 9, 2004. After a series of stability and security fixes, the
Mozilla Foundation released its first major update, Firefox version 1.5, on
November 29, 2005.

Features:

• Written in C++, XUL, JavaScript, CSS.

• Real-time add on facilities from THIRD-party

• Live-Bookmarking



3. Apple Safari

Safari is a web browser developed by Apple Inc. First released as
a public beta on 7 January 2003 on the company's Mac OS X operating
system, it became Apple's default browser beginning with Mac OS X
v10.3 "Panther". Apple has also made Safari the native browser for
the iPhone OS. A version of Safari for the Microsoft Windows operating
system first released on June 11, 2007 supports Windows XP, Windows
Vista, and Windows 7.

Until 1997, Apple Macintosh computers had shipped with Netscape
Navigator and Cyberdog only. Internet Explorer for Mac was
subsequently included with Mac OS 8.1 onwards as the default web
browser, as part of the five year agreement between Apple and Microsoft.
However, Netscape Navigator continued to be included. Microsoft
released three major versions of Internet Explorer for Mac that were
bundled with Mac OS 8 and Mac OS 9. Microsoft subsequently released
a Mac OS X edition of Internet Explorer 5, which was included as the
default browser in all Mac OS X releases from Mac OS X DP4 until Mac
OS X v10.2.

On January 7, 2003, Steve Jobs announced that Apple had developed
their own web browser based on KHTML rendering engine, called Safari.



They released the first beta version that day and a number of official and
unofficial beta versions followed, until version 1.0 was released on June
23, 2003. Available as a separate download initially, it was included with
the Mac OS X v10.3 release on October 24, 2003, as the default browser,
with Internet Explorer for Mac included only as an alternative browser.
Since the release of Mac OS X v10.4 on April 29, 2005, Safari is the only
web browser included with the operating system.

Features:

• Based completely on JavaScript.

• Tabbed-Browsing

• Integration with iPhoto photo management

• Support for Transport Layer Security protocol



4. Google Chrome

Google Chrome is a web browser released by Google which uses
the WebKit layout engine and application framework. It was first released
as a beta version for Microsoft Windows on 2 September 2008, and the
public stable release was on 11 December 2008. The name is derived
from the graphical user interface frame, or "chrome", of web browsers.
As of 1 November 2009, Chrome was the fourth most widely used
browser, with 3.6% of worldwide usage share of web browsers.
Development versions of Chrome for Linux and Mac OS X were
released in June 2009.
Google released the entire source code of Chrome, including its
bespoke V8 JavaScript engine as an open source project
entitled Chromium, in 2008. This move enabled third-party developers to
study the underlying source code and potentially port the browser to
the Linux and Mac OS X platforms. A Google spokesperson also
expressed hope that other browsers would adopt V8 to help web
applications. The Google-authored portion of Chromium is released
under the permissive BSD license, which allows portions to be
incorporated into both open source and proprietary software
programs. Other portions of the source code are subject to a variety of
open-source licenses. Chromium implements the same feature set as
Chrome, but without Google branding and automatic updates, and it has a
slightly different logo.



Features:

• Safe Browsing API (Application Programming Interface)
• V8 JavaScript generates more speed
• Themes
• Usage Tracking



Methodology

Browser: User Research

We have chosen to do two rounds of interviews for our methodology to
gather informative user requirements and one questionnaire. These
interviews were done mainly in person to ensure a deeper understanding
of the user needs and wants. The problems of users can therefore be
expressed as the interviewee feels more familiar to express their ideas,
concerns and frustrations. In the interim we conducted these interviews in
terms of 'Questionnaire' which was physically taken by us from 50
people.

Before conducting the actual interviews, firstly questions developed must
be short enough to be understandable and descriptive enough to make
sense. The limited answer question helps in creating quantitative data to
portray the demographic of the users. There are more open questions
asked in the end, as interviewee are comfortable with answering and give
elaborate responses.
Specific things they like and dislike about current functions: These
qualitative results will benefit the brainstorming process greatly, tackling
targeted user wants and needs, which help reinforce what to watch out for
in designing.
Even if the questions were prepared, there was a lot of refinement and
redundant data. There were problems where answers to questions were
required to be guessed beforehand for specifying type of conclusions we
want to make.

The locations of the interview are:



One was done at
Laptech Computers, Kothrud, Pune
And second interview was done at
House of Laptops, Tilak Road, Pune.

Talking about submitting the questionnaire some are done over the
Internet via blogging where the user is in their own working space.

One was done over at two multiplexes of Pune, E-Square and INOX.
Another one was conducted in the college amongst friends, seniors and
faculty members at IIPM, Pune.

In the creation of an application, it is important to have a targeted user
groups. In this case targeting
Major usage groups of the Internet usages, the two groups that popped up
are:
· Students
· Teachers, Workers in the showroom
These users are from a range of age groups with different experiences of
using browsers or the Browser history. This will reinforce the concept
design is catered to not just very niche users.
Specifically tertiary students are chosen (age 18-35), due to the nature of
their studies, students are required to develop a research papers, with
correct references, that there is a high chance students forgets to keep
track of text that is required to be sourced.
Teachers, Workers in the showroom on the other hand requires to use the
computer for work all day long, the amount of Internet usage and work
makes it a reasonable justification to why the user group is chosen.



SAMPLE QUESTIONNAIRE FOR
MARKET RESEARCH

Thank you for taking the time to fill in this questionnaire, you will remain anonymous. We
need a sample of an audience to use as an example for our Research Project at College

1) How often you use your Computer?

□ Less then 30 Minutes
□ 1 hour
□ 2 Hours
□ 3 Hours
□ More than 3 Hours

2)What do you use your computer for?

□ Internet □ Work □ Personal □ Learning □ Gaming

□ Other, Please Specify __________

3) What are the 3 most common topics (relevant to IT) of conversation amongst
your friends?
a) ___________
b) ___________
c) ___________

4) How many hours a day would you spend on internet?

□ 1 hour
□ 2 Hours
□ 3 Hours

5) Which amongst these Web Browsers you are aware of?
□ Internet Explorer
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari
□ Other, Please Specify ____________

6) Which web browser do you use as your default web browser?
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari



7) Which web Browser do you use for your Mobile Phone?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

8) In last 6 months, was your Computer got affected with any virus? If yes or
no, which web Browser were using?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

9) Which web Browser supports your creativity?
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

10) Which web Browser advertisement do you see very often?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

11) Which products are stable?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

12) Which web browser you think has better Session Management?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

13) How would you describe the services of Internet Explorer?

□ Efficient □ Inefficient

□ Fast □ Slow

□ Reliable □ Unreliable



14) How would you describe the services of Safari?


□ Fast □ Slow


15) How would you describe the services of Google Chrome?


□ Fast □ Slow


16) How would you describe the services of Mozilla Firefox?


□ Fast □ Slow


17) Do you have Training Sessions from the respective web Browsers you have
installed?

□ Yes □ No

18) Rate your Brand on a Scale of 1 to 5
(1=poor 2=average 3=good 4=very good 5= excellent)

Brand IE Firefox Safari Chrome

Performance ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Stability ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Compatibility ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

User-friendliness ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Memory ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
Management

Customer support ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )



19) Which one would you choose?
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

20) How important is Web browser initial load speed?
□ Very Important
□ Less Important
□ Not Important

21) Would you try new web products after taking this survey?
□ Yes
□ Probably
□ Maybe
□ Probably Not
□ No

Name: ___________________________________________

Age Group: □ 15- 25 □ 25-35 □ 35+

Gender: □ Male □ Female



Analysis
Results from the interviews are interesting as they are very informative
and qualitative, results differs greatly as a student, Generation next
perspective where we know everything about computers and Internet. In
our surprise there were users that have never heard of browser history,
especially when some of the employees were in generation next.
Whilst filling the questionnaire most of the students used Firefox and
many of which who were in the age after 25 used Internet Explorer.

In searching for information, users mainly Google for white-collar
workers and students often make bookmarks of the link they know they
would visit back. Users value the search of Google more than anything.
Both users groups are wants efficiency in their searches, they every
recommended awesome bar that have an auto recognition of tags/titles,
and URLs previously visited or typed.

In evaluating the interviews, it can be said privacy wouldn’t be much of a
concern for students, as well as in developing concepts of browser history
the design does not need to take into account of adding security function
like login, since most users (employees and teachers) would have cleared
it regularly. Adding a login to browser history just adds unnecessary time
required to login, and it will probably be an annoying function if
implemented into designs.
Need to develop a higher search functions to tackle user group’s
preference of Google’s search function over histories. This might be
because users are relatively very happy with Google’s searching
functions, in this case it’s not just by tags and recent weeks, users can
search by.



Users are very happy with sticking to the traditional Internet Explorer,
when new browsers like Firefox, Google Chrome and Safari popped up.
They also did mention Opera Browser for their phone as the other option
in our questionnaire. Safari was seen as very user friendly and easy to use
browser and it seemed as though majority of the people like to stick with
what they are familiar with. (Many applicants don’t know what browser
history is, they just use Google to find past websites.) And a sense of
unwilling to change “I’m happy with what I got” and adapt new
applications. Continuing on from above many people preferred
applications that resemble existing design, it’s the familiarity of the
application that makes it friendly and easy to use. And it’s what makes
users willing to try and learn to use this application.
With the amount of applicants that stated they can remember a website by
the visual cue and elements, it seemed only normal to try implementing a
high visual aspect design into concept ideas.
From the information gathered, efficiency and simple is what users want.
Users just want to quickly and easily find the information that they’re
after. Seen from users may not know the exact dates, and doesn’t want to
load each link that they think might be the website they want. Users seem
to want a quick view and quick feedback of searching through designs.



Questionnaire Analysis: per question basis

Gender: □ Male □ Female

Male Female
41 9

Age Group: □ 15- 25 □ 25-35 □ 35+

15-25 43
25- 25 6
35+ 1



1) How often you use your Computer?

□ 1 hour
□ 2 Hours
□ 3 Hours

Less than 30 mins 6
1 hour 8
2hour 9
3 hour 14
More than 3 hours 13



2)What do you use your computer for?

□ Internet □ Work □ Personal □ Learning □ Gaming

□ Other, Please Specify __________

Internet 41
Work 23
Personal 26
Learning 18
Gaming 17
Others 3



3) What are the 3 most common topics (relevant to IT) of conversation amongst
your friends?
a) ___________
b) ___________
c) ___________

O.s 19
Network 17
Gaming 13
Networking 12
Downloading 6
Updates 12
Languages 8
Surfing 7
Software 4
Technology 4
Music 13
Education 1
Web 6
Downloading 5
Outsourcing 4
others 14



4) How many hours a day would you spend on Internet?

□ 1 hour
□ 2 Hours
□ 3 Hours

Less than 30 mins 9
1 hour 12
2hour 14
3 hour 7
More than 3 hours 8



5) Which amongst these Browsers you are aware of?
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Internet Explorer 42
Mozilla FireFox 43
Google chrome 35
Safari 22
Other 2

6) Which browser do you use as your default browser?
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Mozilla Firefox 22
Google Chrome 10
Safari 5
other 1



7) Which Browser do you use for your Mobile Phone?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Mozilla Firefox 6
Google Chrome 7
Safari 4
Other 11
N/A 10



8) In last 6 months, was your Computer got affected with any virus? If yes or
no, which Browser were using?

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Yes 27
No 23

Mozilla FireFox 5
Google chrome 4
Safari 5



9) Which Browser supports your creativity?
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Internet Explorer 8
Mozilla FireFox 26
Google chrome 15
Safari 7
Other 3

10) Which Browser advertisement do you see very often?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Mozilla Firefox 20
Google Chrome 24
Safari 5



11) Which products are stable?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Mozilla Firefox 29
Google Chrome 16
Safari 8



12) Which browser you think has better Session Management?

□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Internet Explorer 8
Mozilla FireFox 22
Google chrome 10
Safari 13

13) How would you describe the services of Internet Explorer?


□ Fast □ Slow


Efficient Inefficient
30 20
Fast Slow
15 35
Reliable Unreliable
31 19



14) How would you describe the services of Safari?


□ Fast □ Slow


Efficient Ineffiecient
24 6
Fast Slow
19 11
Reliable Unreliable
25 5

15) How would you describe the services of Google Chrome?


□ Fast □ Slow


34 8
Fast Slow
31 11
Reliable Unreliable
31 11

16) How would you describe the services of Mozilla Firefox?


□ Fast □ Slow


45 3
Fast Slow
40 8
Reliable Unreliable
38 10



….Analyzing 13,14,15 & 16

a) Fast or Slow

Fast Slow
Internet explorer 15 35
Safari 19 11
Google chrome 31 11
Mozilla FireFox 48 8

b)Efficient or Ineffecient

Safari 24 6
Google chrome 34 8



c) Reliable or Unreliable

Reliable Unreliable
Safari 25 5
Google chrome 31 11

17) Do you have Training Sessions from the respective Browsers you have
installed?

□ Yes □ No

Yes 20
No 30



18) Rate your Brand on a Scale of 1 to 5

(1=poor 2=average 3=good 4=very good 5= excellent)
Brand IE Firefox Safari Chrome

Performance ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Stability ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Compatibility ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

User-friendliness ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

Memory ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
Management

Customer support ( ) ( ) ( ) ( )

INTERNET EXPLORER
Performance 148
Stability 152
Compatibility 148
User-Friendliness 148
Memory-Management 142
Customer-support 132

MOZILLA FIREFOX
Performance 184
Stability 180
Compatibility 180

SAFARI
Performance 120
Stability 116
Compatibility 127

GOOGLE CHROME
Performance 149
Stability 146
Compatibility 151



Internet Explorer Firefox Safari Chrome
Performance 148 184 120 149
Stability 152 180 116 146
Compatibility 148 180 127 151
User-Friendliness 148 187 122 156
Memory-Management 142 172 122 151
Customer-support 132 176 115 145

19) Which one would you choose?
□ Mozilla Firefox
□ Google Chrome
□ Safari

Internet Explorer 7
Mozilla Firefox 25
Google Chrome 12
Safari 5
Other 1



20) How important is browser initial load speed?
□ Very Important
□ Less Important
□ Not Important

Very important 47
Less important 3
Not important 0



21) Would you try new web products after taking this survey?
□ Yes
□ Probably
□ Maybe
□ Probably Not
□ No

Yes 18
Probably 15
Maybe 12
Probably Not 3
No 2



Blogging Analysis- snap shots taken for the respective blogs.

Blogs - http://iprkworld.blogspot.com



Blog - http://dreamsarenobigger.blogspot.com/



Global Statistics

Source: Wikipedia



Compatibility with different Operating Systems:



Recommendation

Our work attempted to improve user satisfaction and efficient discovery
of content in an online forum for Web-Browsers.

Firefox remains the most-recommended web browser for Windows,
Mac OSX and Linux users. This is the only browser which is available on
all three Operating System and which gives maximum output. Reviews
say Firefox is even better, using less memory than earlier versions and
incorporating other improvements as well. It's by far the most
customizable web browser, with thousands of add-ons available. For
speed, Firefox rivals the new Google Chrome browser as well. Although,
there is a very little preference for Apple Safari that claims to be the
fastest Browser in the World.
From the survey which we took with respect to the questionnaire as
well as the real-time interviews we would put it very lucidly that Firefox
is a clear winner if we take in consideration all the factors which are
essential for a Web-Browser to be the best.
Out of the 50 people we asked, 22 of them had their default
Browser as Mozilla Firefox.

• First in Session Management
• First in Reliability
• First in Efficiency
• First in Stability
• First in the preference as well.



Bibliography

http://www.google.com

http://en.wikipedia.org

      http://www.w3counter.com

http://www.bloggang.com

   http://www.blognone.com

http://www.firefox.com

   http://www.apple.com/safari

http://www.google.com/chrome

http://www.electronista.com

http://www.cnet.com

              http://www.sixrevisions.com


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