In 2003 Mozilla web browser was launched; and before that Internet Explorer was the most successful and popular browser, reaching near 84% of the internet users in the world. In that year the changes began.
Today, we have a space-run to the user preference where IE, Mozilla, Firefox, Safari, Netscape, Opera and others take place. IE is still on charge, but with only 53% of the users (22% on IE7 only). Firefox, the great challenger comes in his tail with 37% of the user preference. And so we have the others competitors, sharing the 20% remaining.

Not only the browsers was diversified during this late years, but the launch plataforms too. WinXP is still the most popular OS with almost 73% of users, but Linux and Mac ones are about 4% each one. Windows Vista had a slowly start and today only 8.4% of internet users are using it.

We had a great migration in the display resolution from 2002 to now. There was, in that year, only 38% of screens in 1024x768, but now they are more than 50%. Higher ones are too many also, about a quarter of all users.

Considering the increase of the portable plataforms as internet users, this numbers are too representative and, as Web designers and developers, a good start in thinking about the technologies we will plan or build in a so diversified universe.

Based on W3Schools Browser Information