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First of all, good job on the project. I do not mean to be too negative, but this: > The site updates weekly with data sourced from the server access logs of a

First of all, good job on the project. I do not mean to be too negative, but this: > The site updates weekly with data sourced from the server access logs of another site I run in order to give an accurate picture of the devices and browsers being used on the web. If you only source data from one website, it is not an accurate picture by any means. Consider that other websites have different user bases. Your Firefox usage seems way too high for example, it's likely your other website is largely used by other technical people.

playingalong 4y ago
AFAICT they are not trying to provide current browser usage stats. They are only after having a list of popular browsers which is only a subset of the former. The last paragraph about scraping seems to indicate that. So they only need what is a reasonable UA as of this week. They don't need what is the most popular one.
- stayml 4y ago
  Yes, this too. It should just be a -passable- sample of what's popular and seen on the web
  - alostpuppy 4y ago
    I wonder if we can help crowdsource this.
  - kqr 4y ago
    I would accept this argument if the sample was unbiased but noisy. In this case it's extremely biased but (potentially) low in noise. If people from Uganda aren't part of the target audience of this site, we won't get Ugandan user agents even if they happen to be a fair chunk of web users worldwide (certainly more than in my small but high-tech country.)
stayml 4y ago
Thanks! And yep, fair comment, and I had noticed this as well even more so in last week's list. I have been thinking about how I could adjust the numbers in some way to counteract this or add another data source.
jsnell 4y ago
I think it's worse than that. Based on quantization of the percentage field [0], I think the source data has to be about 925 requests and is including all browsers seen at least twice. [0] I.e. look at how many browsers are bunched at 0.22, 0.32, 0.43, 0.54, 0.65 with no entries between.
kretaceous 4y ago
What about this?: 1. Run a website like whatsmyuseragent.com 2. Collect all user agents 3. Show the list
- aix1 4y ago
  That's certainly workable but, if the intention is to get a representative sample of Internet users, it'd be very biased.
culi 4y ago
it's kinda weird how high Windows Firefox is on the list yet Firefox on mac doesn't make it in the top 50 at all... Do mac users just not use Firefox??
- eitland 4y ago
  On Mac I can use Orion so I don't use Firefox that much. Why Orion? 1. It supports tree style tabs (note lower case, I mean the concept, not the extension) natively. (I think you can also use TST, the Firefox extension, as Orion strives to be compatible with Firefox and Chrome extensions). 2. It is not based on Chrome/Chromium, but rather on the built in browser engine on Macs. That said I don't know if it shows up as Safari or if it shows up as its own.

playingalong 4y ago

AFAICT they are not trying to provide current browser usage stats. They are only after having a list of popular browsers which is only a subset of the former. The last paragraph about scraping seems to indicate that. So they only need what is a reasonable UA as of this week. They don't need what is the most popular one.

stayml 4y ago
Yes, this too. It should just be a -passable- sample of what's popular and seen on the web
- alostpuppy 4y ago
  I wonder if we can help crowdsource this.
- kqr 4y ago
  I would accept this argument if the sample was unbiased but noisy. In this case it's extremely biased but (potentially) low in noise. If people from Uganda aren't part of the target audience of this site, we won't get Ugandan user agents even if they happen to be a fair chunk of web users worldwide (certainly more than in my small but high-tech country.)

stayml 4y ago

Thanks! And yep, fair comment, and I had noticed this as well even more so in last week's list. I have been thinking about how I could adjust the numbers in some way to counteract this or add another data source.

jsnell 4y ago

I think it's worse than that. Based on quantization of the percentage field [0], I think the source data has to be about 925 requests and is including all browsers seen at least twice. [0] I.e. look at how many browsers are bunched at 0.22, 0.32, 0.43, 0.54, 0.65 with no entries between.

kretaceous 4y ago

What about this?: 1. Run a website like whatsmyuseragent.com 2. Collect all user agents 3. Show the list

aix1 4y ago
That's certainly workable but, if the intention is to get a representative sample of Internet users, it'd be very biased.

culi 4y ago

it's kinda weird how high Windows Firefox is on the list yet Firefox on mac doesn't make it in the top 50 at all... Do mac users just not use Firefox??

eitland 4y ago
On Mac I can use Orion so I don't use Firefox that much. Why Orion? 1. It supports tree style tabs (note lower case, I mean the concept, not the extension) natively. (I think you can also use TST, the Firefox extension, as Orion strives to be compatible with Firefox and Chrome extensions). 2. It is not based on Chrome/Chromium, but rather on the built in browser engine on Macs. That said I don't know if it shows up as Safari or if it shows up as its own.