

Show HN: What's Your Browser's Age? - rwitoff
http://browserage.com

======
zanny
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.

~~~
creativityhurts
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.

~~~
w1ntermute
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.

~~~
creativityhurts
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?

~~~
w1ntermute
No, the opposite.

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

~~~
w1ntermute
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.

------
jey
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.

~~~
tankenmate
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

------
duck
My browser is _TypeError: argument of type 'NoneType' is not iterable_ old.

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

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

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

------
artursapek
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)

~~~
kelnos
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...](https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-chrome.json)

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

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

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

~~~
hollerith
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.

~~~
azakai
Oh, then it's completely confused then.

~~~
hollerith
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.)

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

~~~
corin_
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/>)

~~~
rwitoff
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...](https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-
firefox.json)). I haven't updated past the stable releases so it's defaulting
to the last known release date. Feel free to clone on github :)

~~~
corin_
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.

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

<http://pastie.org/4887851>

Turn off debug, kids.

~~~
corin_
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>

~~~
mparlane
The front end server pages are not open sourced.

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

~~~
lsh
Opera 12.01 does the same.

------
domdelimar
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

------
andywhite37
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).

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

Sounds improbable.

~~~
niggler
iphone? safari runs on iphone ...

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

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

~~~
thronemonkey
Same here. On Opera, 0 days. weird.

~~~
jarek
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...](https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-msie.json)
doesn't have IE10 mentioned in the other post,
[https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-
op...](https://github.com/witoff/BrowserAge/blob/master/data/age-opera.json)
doesn't have Opera 12.02.

------
andreasvc
Unfortunately I get a traceback. Chromium, Ubuntu 12.04.

EDIT: fixed now, 185 days old.

------
klausjensen
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.

------
recursive
0 days for Opera! woo!

------
jcfrei
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

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

~~~
jcfrei
thnx for the info

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

~~~
untog
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.

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

~~~
Jyaif
Those are the referrers. <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_referer>

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

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

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

------
SCdF
0 days old? What does this mean anyway?

------
derleth
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.)

