According to the most recent statistics compiled by the Web analytics firm StatCounter, around the middle of last week, the Mozilla Firefox 3.5-branded browsers registered ‘more active’ usage, on all platforms including Linux, as compared to any single version of any other browser, including the Microsoft Internet Explorer 7.0 and IE8.

As per the figures tracked by StatCounter, Firefox 3.5 accounted for almost 22 percent of HTTP requests, which happened to be higher than any of the IE versions – while IE7 accounted for 21.2 percent of the requests; IE8 comprised 20.33 percent; and IE6 made up nearly 14 percent.

Noting that StatCounter has, of late, registered maximum Web site hits from Mozilla Firefox 3.5 than from any other browser, the StatCounter CEO Aodhan Cullen said: “Firefox 3.5 is now the most popular browser worldwide.”

Cullen further added that the popularity of Firefox 3.5 is all the more notable given the fact that the browser needs to be installed by the users on their computers, whereas IE is a pre-installed browser for the Microsoft windows-based new systems.

However, a comprehensive analysis of the market share statistics reveals that despite the fact that StatCounter figures show that Firefox users are more active on the Web, it cannot be deduced that the number of Firefox 3.5 surpasses IE7 users, or that there are more Firefox 3.5 installed browsers vis-a-vis IE7 browsers.