Do You Really Believe Those Market Share Numbers?

My company started using Homestead to host our website a couple months ago. You know, Homestead.com, which has been around since 1998, was acquired by Intuit in 2007, and hosts more than 12 million websites. Well anyway, every time I login to our account, this message pops up on my office PC. Fyi, the office PC is a Compaq Pentium 4 which was upgraded from Windows XP Professional to Windows 8 Pro, back in October 2012. I have never installed, nor use any other browser except IE.

Each time I login I click Dismiss and I am able to navigate the site just fine without any error messages. But I got tried of seeing it today so decided to start a tech chat. This is sort of how things went.

Jim: This is more a comment than a question. I am getting this “nag” message each time I login, even though I am using Windows 8, along with IE10.0. This machine was upgraded from Win XP, but that shouldn’t matter. Btw, my new Win 8 machine at home does not get the message.

Carol B: For further assistance with your technical issue, let me get you connected to our Tier 2 chat support team as they have the expertise to assist you. You may experience a brief delay during this transfer process so your patience is highly appreciated. Thank you for chatting with me and please remain on the chat!

Addie O: Hi Jim

Jim: Hello

Addie O: The records on your account indicate you are using IE 7

Jim: Hmm. Interesting. The machine was using IE8 when I got here 18 months ago. And I upgraded to Win8 Pro, along with IE10 on 10/27/12.

Addie O: The user sessions indicate you are logged in today with IE7

Addie O: You could also download Firefox and use that  (Ah, another Microsoft hater!)

Jim: Why would I want to do that. IE10 is the “best” browser available today. That’s what I have installed on my machine, and that’s what I am using. Wouldn’t even know where to find a copy of IE7.

Addie O: Do you have any other questions?

Jim: All I do is Dismiss the nag message each time I login in and my sessions run perfectly. Obviously, whatever you are using to detect my browser is not working properly. Thought you might want to to know that, but suppose it’s not important.

Addie O: I agree

Addie O: The chat session shows you on IE 10 and the logged in site is showing IE 7

Jim: Now that’s really interesting. Using the same browser for both. Never had any other browser installed on this machine since upgrading to Win8 last October.

Addie O: I will inform our developers of this issue. Thanks for the info.

Addie O: Thanks for chatting with me today.  Have a nice night.

So, based on the above, would you put any faith in the information below that Homestead is providing to me. I wouldn’t.

And with that said, how much faith would you put in the information published each month/quarter. Better stated, what degree of accuracy/certainty do you think we are being fed; 95%, 90, 80, less? I realize that nothing’s perfect, but I wonder how many other servers are detecting me, and many others, as using IE7, or whatever. Maybe it’s a Microsoft issue, not updating something with the Win 8 upgrade, but either way, it’s inaccurate. Personally, I look at those monthly numbers with a handful of salt. You might want to do the same.

UPDATE: OK, well nothing above has changed, but I did find a solution to my problem and it might work for you.

When you open a webpage in IE10, press F12 to bring up F12 Tools. Click on Browser Mode to see what version of IE10 you are running for that particular page. I was using IE10: Compatibility Mode (don’t remember putting the page in CM) and changed it to IE10 which got rid of the message.

You should also set the Documents Mode to Standards, which is where I was already set.

You can find all the details about Compatibility Mode here.