Show HN: What's Your Browser's Age? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: What's Your Browser's Age?

browserage.com

56 pointsrwitoff69 comments

80% of HN is using Chrome? That is unexpected. I'd figure if Firefox would be popular anywhere, it would be here where I would imagine most people run the aurora builds (at least, I do).

The number has been mentioned to be wrong, and it is. I have Aurora 17.0a2 on Ubuntu 64 bit, which is 9 days old.

The OS numbers also seem off, saying 54% of HN is browsing from OSX but 0% from any Linux?

The facebook numbers seem strange. 45% are using Safari but 75% are using Windows. I really don't think 20% of those page views are from Windows users running Safari.

Let's face it, Firefox has been pretty popular among developers because of Firebug but given the rapid development of the Chrome Developer Tools there should be no wonder that's not the case anymore.

Just because you use a browser for webdev doesn't mean you use it for browsing. In fact, I like the idea of separating the two.

Most of the devs I know use one browser for everything and IE for testing. I take it you use FF for dev because of Firebug and Web Developer Toolbar and Chrome for browsing and personal stuff?

No, the opposite.

Out of curiosity, why's that? Why do you need a browser for dev and a different one for actually browsing the web?

I like the Chrome Developer Tools, but prefer Firefox's customizability for my personal use. I can install things like Vimperator/Pterodactl for Vim-like surfing, things like Ghostery to block monitoring sites, etc. Also, the high level of customization in my Firefox profile makes it unsuitable for testing sites.

Well true, Chrome was always the best for browsing, and Firefox for developing, but now that Chrome's web tools kicks Firefoxes ass, you can use Chrome for both :) Or just separate it, Canary for development, and stable/beta/dev for browsing :)

Firefox seems to have gotten worse. Look at the "inspect element" horribleness, and the ridiculous 3d inspector thing.

The Chrome developer tools blow all others away.

I agree that Firefox's new built-in web inspector is bad ATM but I don't think it's wise for you to make such a powerful statement when you seem to have forgotten(?) about Firebug.

HN is also the only one that shows Linux at all.

Why do some people use .org instead of .com ?

Why do some people use .com instead of .org ?

Why do sites not redirect to ONE!? :(

I understand having multiple domain extensions, but please point them all to one!

Why not .net ?

My own analysis of 21,000 HN visits a month ago had Chrome usage at 63% and 10% on Linux.

http://www.dangrossman.info/2012/08/21/what-hacker-news-user...

The OS field seems to be lying. It conveniently adds up to 100% but only has entries for windows, osx, and ios. I'm running Ubuntu 12.04, and I'm sure there's a lot of other Linux users here too.

I pulled up the stats on ihackernews; 86% safari, 6% chrome, 2% for the other big three, but OS says 68% ios, 25% android eh? Safari isn't available on Android, neither is MSIE (2%). The OS field obviously has issues, even beyond not being able to tell the difference between Android and some other Linux machine; even though telling the difference isn't that hard.

UPDATE: I just checked from my Galaxy Nexus and it thinks that I am running Safari, it also claims my browser is 1210 days old, even though Android 4.1 obviously much younger than that;

Mozilla/5.0 (Linux; U; Android 4.1.1; en-gb; Galaxy Nexus Build/JRO03C) AppleWebKit/534.30 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/4.0 Mobile Safari/534.30

My browser is TypeError: argument of type 'NoneType' is not iterable old.

Yeah, mine is too. Guess they shouldn't have showed HN...

Looks like you're on Safari, caught a bug in some of the newer user agents -- fixed now.

Actually I'm using Chromium, Version 20.0.1132.47... but it works now.

My first question was "what does browser age mean?". I think you should just put the explanation on the page itself.

6 days for me on Chrome 22. Nice. I wasn't even aware. Funny how much lower news.ycombinator.org's average is over .com's. (I'm seeing 19 vs. 61 days, respectively)

Heh, I'm on Chrome 23, and it also says 6 days old. Seems not quite accurate, esp since I built it 13 days ago.

Looks like age data for Chrome only goes to version 21: https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-ch...

Haven't read the source to see why lack of a release date gives me 6 days...

Claims 25 days, but I'm running Mozilla Nightly and restarted within the last 24 hours.

Me too. I assume it counts the major version number - which was indeed last updated a month ago - as opposed to 'minor' updates.

No, it's not doing that because I'm on Firefox Extended Support Release (which is currently at major version 10) and it says my browser is 33 days old.

Oh, then it's completely confused then.

Well, not necessarily because my browser might've got an update around that time. (Most updates to "Extended Support Release" will be security updates IIUC.)

Firefox Aurora "17.0a2 (2012-09-30)". Updated roughly 10 minutes ago, yet it says 25 days.

Firefox Nightly "18.0a1 (2012-09-30)", also 25 days old.

Seems, I think, that it's seeing Firefox and getting the latest stable release, which was 15.0.1 released on September 6th (http://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/15.0.1/releasenotes/)

Yep, it's not very smart yet. There's a small json dict of firefox releases that it's referencing (https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-fi...). I haven't updated past the stable releases so it's defaulting to the last known release date. Feel free to clone on github :)

Hmm, might be tough - I'm not sure quite how Nightly releases work, but I updated an hour ago and the version changed from 18.0a1 (old date, a few days ago I think) to 18.0a1 (2012-09-30). Meanwhile I check my useragent and I'm just seeing Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:18.0) Gecko/18.0 Firefox/18.0

Will submit a pull request if I get round to looking further and find a decent answer!

edit: Not sure there's going to be any good solution. 18.0 Nightly was first out on August 28th, which is 33 days ago, so despite the fact that I last updated today, and that the whole concept of "Nightly" is to have an update every day, the release number is technically older than the 25 days since the most recent stable release came out. And when, in 10 days, 18.0 moves to Aurora and Nightly moves to 19.0, the user agent most likely won't be different between Aurora users then and Nightly users now.

So nice of you to share [some of] your source code.

http://pastie.org/4887851

Turn off debug, kids.

Um... it looks like it's open source :)

https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge

The front end server pages are not.

If you want to see [all of] the source code you should click the link at the bottom of the page to be taken to https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge

The front end server pages are not open sourced.

Thanks @mparlane, turned off prime debugging but was still routing all requests through a WebError handler prior to hitting root. You can otherwise find the rest of the code here: https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge :)

Opera 12.02: Reports 0 days old, while it really is 28 days old.

Opera 12.01 does the same.

I just updated iceweasel/aurora (version string conveniently showing it's age is just below 3 days: 17.0~a2+20120928042009-1) and this tells me it's 25 days old.

I'm also on Linux (obviously) and it really seems strange Linux isn't even registering at all.

This is my UA string: Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:17.0) Gecko/17.0 Firefox/17.0 Iceweasel/17.0a2

I tried on Chrome and got 6 days old. I then tried it on IE9 just out of curiosity, and got 579 days old. Also, the site doesn't seem to render or work correctly on IE9. The initial table appears at the very left-hand side of the screen, and the [+] button doesn't seem to do anything. (Works fine on Chrome though).

Right now for me the referrer averages for facebook.com say 43% safari - but only 24% OS X?

Sounds improbable.

iphone? safari runs on iphone ...

iOS?

ok, neat... but what does the "age of my browser" mean?

this. plus, mine is 0 days old (Opera 12.02, released more than a month ago I think) . How come?

Same here. On Opera, 0 days. weird.

Looks like browser versions newer than newest version they have in the data files get 0 days. https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-ms... doesn't have IE10 mentioned in the other post, https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-op... doesn't have Opera 12.02.

IE10 using the Windows 8 modern interface is 0 days old. I wonder if they consider IE 10 to be released next month. I've had it installed for weeks.

It approximates how long it's been since your browser was released and aggregates other stats based on referrer. I'm asserting that site's being visited by newer browsers are gathering a more tech savvy crowd.

https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge

"How long has it been since your browser was released?"

Unfortunately I get a traceback. Chromium, Ubuntu 12.04.

EDIT: fixed now, 185 days old.

580 days on my corporate default browser (IE9) - 2192 days if I switch to "compatibility view" - and I am unable to expand the stats on either.

On Chrome, 7 days ago. Yay.

0 days for Opera! woo!

22:50 CET, OP restarts the server... now the numbers are all over the place and ycombinator.com averages on 128d? Btw. i got 6 days on chrome 22

Had to throw another instance behing the load balancer, so the data set is split. Will merge after traffic settles down.

thnx for the info

I got 438 days on my iPad 3 running Safari. Interesting bit is that I've bought this one about six weeks ago.

Not too surprising. Your iPad will have an OS image from [insert time here] ago that doesn't have a relation to when you bought it.

Where did this site get the data from? EDIT: Especially, how did he get Facebook's or Google's stats?

Those are the referrers. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer

Working fine here: "Your Browser's Age: 6 days old" for Google Chrome 22.0.1229.79.

My browser is "unknown days old". On my iPhone / Safari / iOS 5.

Apparently Chrome on Android 4.1 is 1211 days old...

0 days old? What does this mean anyway?

I got 25 days old for a beta of Firefox, which is either a lot older or a lot younger than that, depending on how you want to count.

(My profile is easily an order of magnitude older, my browser binary is substantially younger.)

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