A survey on web browser usability

Abstract

Web browsers are the most used tool to retrieve web contents, though the features might be

similar among different browsers, the interfaces are different. Further, more users are

accessing the internet using the browsers. It is important to study the usability of the

browsers because unusable browsers can distort any websites and make web information

retrieval inconvenient. This study conducted an online survey on the usability of the web

browser. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis is conducted on the data. Data is being

analyzed from gender and age perspectives as well as general usage of the browsers.

1. Introduction (importance and motivation)

With advanced technology, personal computers are getting cheaper. More people are using

computers and have more chances to access the internet[1]. More and more information are

being put on the internet; and information can be accessed whenever and wherever. The most

common and important way to view the information of World Wide Web (WWW) is using

the browser[2]. The browser has been evolved from very limited browser-editor[3] to various

types and multiple functions since 1999. The users of the browser are not only computer

experts but also any person. Though, browser is ‘only a tool’ to help retrieve information and

display information in a human acceptable format, it can help people saving time and effort

from doing searching online, even saving money when shopping online. The browser is a

digital window for user to see the digital world.

The WWW is displayed differently on different browsers due to browser compatibility

issues. More over, the diversified nature of human being has different ways in how to use the

browser. The ubiquitous computing makes user using browsers everywhere in any possible

formats from handheld devices to luxury in house big screens. It would be very hard to say

that one browser fits everybody; therefore it is worthy to discuss the usability issues of the

browsers.

There are quite some studies focused on the web usability [4], such as how to optimally

display content retrieved by browser[5], how to organize content to ease the navigation

through web pages[6], even some modify browsers to plug in more functions to make

browser more usable such as adaptive browser[7], bravo browser [8], hyperbolic tree browser

[9], brain browser[10], semantic Magpie browser[11], 3d audio web browser[12], etc.

Interestingly, there are not many studies that specially focus on the general usability of the

web browser. As a fact, users browse “19.5 to 204.8 pages per active day” according to

Weinreich et al’s study [6], therefore it is important to improve the usability of the browsers.

This study is designated to find out the general usability factors of the existing browsers. The

rest of the article is organized like as following. In section 2, study methodology will be

described in study instrument and participants in details. Results will be discussed in section

3. Discussion and conclusion will be provided in section 4 and 5 respectively.

2. Methodology

Since most people use browsers to retrieve internet content, an internet survey will be most

suitable for the purpose of finding how users are using the web browsers. More over, subjects

can fill the survey while using the browsers which can reduce the mental work [13].

2.1. The web browser models

In this section, the survey questions will be explained in details. The survey questions are

based on several browser architecture models [14], [15], [16]. Larrondo-Petrie et al. [14]

built the feature tree based on the common features provided by different browsers.

Navigation interface features such as home, back, forward, go to, etc. and bookmark features

etc. are included in the feature tree. Rees believed that the web card model would be

implemented for the browser [15]. Figure 1 shows the model. Sa-nga-ngam described the

user’s mental model of the web browser which was constituted by title, menu, toolbar, web

page and status bar five parts [16].

Figure 1. web card user interface architecture from [15]

Figure 2. users mental model of the web browser [16]

2.2. The browser usability survey

This survey has 20 questions in two sections. Section one is demographic questions. The

questions for this part focused on gender, age, highest degree completed, number of years

using the browser, number of hours per day using browser and proficiency of using browser

as well. This survey want to find general usage of the browser, therefore the first thing is to

find who the users are, that is why gender, age, highest degree are necessary. In Pitkow’s

study[17] the income also is one of the important indicator of the user type. Since the subject

for this survey mostly will be college students, the income will have little relationship with

the personal usage of the browsers, therefore income is not considered here. The longer years

of using browser will result in more experiences in using browsers; hence they will have

more opinions on the browsers, and provide more valuable feedbacks. On the other hand,

years of using browser does not necessarily end up in long period of time by using it every

day. Hence, for users who have used browser for a short time, their opinions are still very

valuable if they spend long time period using the browser everyday. Therefore hours per day

on using the browser is a necessary question to balance the years of using browser.

It is very difficult to test the proficiency of using the browser objectively because there are so

many different types of browsers. Secondly each browser has so many add on functions or

features [18]. Thirdly there are so many different browser related tasks depending on how the

task is defined and types of web content. For example, authors of [16],[19], [20], [21], etc

defined their browser related tasks to meet different research objectives. In short, each user

has their unique pattern of using the browsers, which is using certain browser and certain

functions for certain ways. Further, Bernard et al argued that retrospective data on self-rating

was valid [22], therefore it is better for the users to state their efficiency level of using the

browsers.

The second section is general browser usage questions. They are listed as following.

What browser(s) do you have experience with?

Which browser(s) are you currently using?

What is your primary browser if you have more than one browser on your system?

What are the primary uses of your WWW browser?

Please pick the web browser features that you would like to have?

What is your screen size?

How do you customize your web browser to improve the Internet experience? ( such as

re-arrange the icons, managing tool bars, etc

Usage of toolbars, namely what are the buttons should be displayed.

Whether the toolbar should be visible or not.

Whether the menu should be visible or not.

How do you use the status bar?

Please rate your skill level of using the web browser? (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10)

Any suggestions for improving your browser in general?

Browser usage trend can be detected by asking the browsers that the users have experience

with. It is highly possible that users have access to multiple computers that might have

different browsers installed. The browser currently in use is not necessary the primary

browser that the user in favor to use. For this reason, what is the current and primary browser

is being asked. The choices of browsers are generated based on web browser statistics 2004

[23], 2005 [24]and 2007 [18]. The order is Internet Explorer, FireFox, Mozillar, Netscape,

Opera, Safari, etc.

According to Kellar[25], there are five task categories in order to achieve information goals.

They are Factor finding (Looking for specific facts, files, or pieces of information, etc )

Information gathering (Collecting information, often from various sources, in order to make a

decision, write a report, complete a project, etc) Browsing/Surfing the Web (Viewing web

pages, with no specific goal in mind, often just for entertainment, etc) Transactions (email,

banking, shopping, etc) and others ( the ones not in previous four category). After finishing

the pilot study, we were suggested Entertainment (gaming, watching video, etc) can be as

one category, therefore the choices for the primary usage of the web browsers are above six

categories.

There are lots of features[14] for each browser, but not all the browsers have the same

number of features. In order to reduce subjects’ mental work and keep subjects engaged in

the survey, the listed items are chosen based on the importance in web navigation. They are

Bookmark managing[26], [6], Search engine toolbar[16], Tabbed browsing [6, 27], Pop-up

blocking [27], Page zooming [28] . This is an open-ended question, in case subjects want

other features besides above ones.

It is difficult to navigate through the pages when the screen is small [29] which includes lots

of scrolling and clicking, therefore the usability of the web browser will be effected by the

screen size[30], [6].

To improve the internet experience of the users, adaptive web browsers[7] such as the ones

that provide reading difficulty users with sound and pictures[31], or the ones that can enlarge

fonts for elderly[32], etc are specially developed. The fact is such browsers are either very

rare, or expensive or still being developing in lab, therefore it will be more realistic for users

to customize the browsers themselves such as re-arranging the icons, managing tool bars etc.

rather than purchasing special browsers. It is appropriate to ask users how they customize the

browser in open ended question in order to know how they are using the browser.

There are many buttons can be displayed on the web browser toolbar for quick access

functions or tasks. Besides that, different browser has certain different button labels. In order

to catch this information, this question provides multiple choices and one open end to give

user the freedom to fill in. Back, Forward, Stop, Refresh, Home, Search, History, RSS, Mail,

Print, Copy, Cut, Past, Font Size and Full screen browser toolbar buttons are choosen based

on the study of Catledge[33] , Tomori[10] and Zhao[26].

It is interesting to know whether users want to hide the toolbar or menu in case to get best

visual effects of the web content, therefore questions on visibility of the toolbar and menu are

asked. Those questions are open ended.

The very last part of the browser interface is the status bar according to the model. Open

ended question “How do users use the status bar” is asked.

There are two very similar questions in the survey which are the Cronbach alpha questions

for testing the consistency of the data collected. It used the 1 to 10 scale to indicate the

different levels of browser using skill. Although those two questions are asking self-rating

scores on the browser usage, as state before, it is an efficient way to gain the general ideas of

what users’ experience of using browser would be.

The very last question is an open ended question on suggestions for improving the browser

in general.

There are no mandatory questions in this survey. Participants have all the rights to answer or

to skip the question. However, the participants still answered the questions very patiently,

even for the open ended questions.

2.2. Participants

The survey was conducted online, as the participant group is consisted of user with browser

experience. This allowed the researchers to broadly distribute the survey and reach a

representative samples. An initial power analysis based on Thiemann and Kraemer [34]

indicated that a sample size of about one hundred to one hundred and fifty participants would

be adequate to measure the variables in the survey. The survey announcement was distributed

via college e-mail groups and newsgroups, and data were collected on the online survey site

surveymonkey.com. Participants are using the browsing while filling the survey about the

browser. By this way, the users can provide more accurate information [22] because there is

less time for the memory to decay. Further, participants can fill the survey at their pace

instead of in a limited time period, which also can improve the response quality [13].

3. Results

There are 111 participants who filled the survey and 100 records are qualified to use after the

cleanup.

3.1 demographic data

The average age of the participants is 32.4. There are 56 female and 43 males, as well as one

participant is not willing to give the gender information. The average year for using the

browser is 11.1. The average time for using the browser is 5.8 hours per day. The above data

showed that browser was a very important tool in retrieving web content in their daily life.

The average score for self-rated proficiency is 8.96, which means that the participants are

very confident in using the browser. The overall demographic data showed that participants

have been use the browser for years, and have confident browser experience. The

demographic data are shown in table 1 in details.

Age Mean=32.4; Std. Dev=11.0Gender Female=56; Male=43; unknown=1Occupation Student=43 ; working in IT=41; working in education=14; null=2Highest degree High school=27; bachelor=29; master=35; Ph. D=6; Associate=3Total years of using browser

Mean=11.1 ; Std. Dev=3.3; max=20;

Total time using browser daily

Mean=5.8; Std. Dev=2.9; max=12; min=0.5

Proficiency Mean=8.96; Std.Dev=1.19Table1. Summary of participants demographics (N=100)

3.2 browser questions

Although previous online resource[24] showed that Microsoft IE has the largest market

share which was true in the past as the data shown in chart1, the current most popular

browser is FireFox. Microsoft IE and Safari are in second and third place respectively. The

rank for primary browser is FireFox first, Microsoft IE second, and Netscape the third. This

means IE is not the most favored browser anymore. There is a trend that more people are

using FireFox because it is more “flexible” than IE. There were other browsers mentioned by

the participants, such as mosaic, conqueror, amaya, etc. which shows the participants do use

variety of browsers. From gender perspective, male participants are more likely to use

FireFox as primary browser comparing to female participants though there is very slight

higher chance that both gender are current using FireFox. See chart2 for details.

10093

45

83

58

13

6878

83

22

5

23

61

210

3 00

20

40

60

80

100

120

MicrosoftInternetExplorer

MozillaFirefox

Opera Netscape MacSafari

MacCamino

past

current

primary

Chart 1. browsers used in past, currently in use , and primary browsers

Chart 2. browser used in past, currently in use and primary browsers for female and male category, in percentage.

According to [35], the interaction with browser can be categorized into four categories: fact

finding, information gathering, browsing/surfing the web and transaction. This study

confirms this categorization for usage of web browsers. 91% of the users use it for fact

finding; 96% of the users use it for information gathering; 90% of the users use it for

browsing/surfing the web and specifically 55% of the users use it for online entertainment;

93% of the users use it for online transactions. Besides above listed usages, a more general

browsing usage also can be categorized after coding the text in the open-ended part. 13% of

the users are using it for web work, such as web design, testing and development; 3 % of the

users are using it for research which is in the category of fact finding; 6% of the users use it

for personal communications, such as blogs, forums, discussion, RSS, etc.

Fact finding --- Looking for specific facts, files, or pieces of information.

91

Information gathering --- Collecting information, often from various sources, in order to make a decision, write a report, complete a project, etc.

96

Browsing/Surfing the Web --- Viewing web pages, with no specific goal in mind, often just for entertainment, etc.

90

Transactions --- email, banking, shopping, etc. 93Entertainment --- games, watching movies, etc. 55

Work: web design, testing, development 13Research: 3Communication: email, blog, forums, RSS, discussion 6Table 2. Primary reasons for using the browsers (total 100 participants)

0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1

1.2

MicrosoftInternetExplorer

MozillaFirefox

Opera Netscape Mac Safari MacCamino

female past

male past

0

0.1

0.2

0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

0.8

0.9

1

MicrosoftInternetExplorer

MozillaFirefox

Opera Netscape Mac Safari Mac Camino

female current

male current

0

0.1

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0.3

0.4

0.5

0.6

0.7

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MicrosoftInternetExplorer

MozillaFirefox

Opera Netscape Mac Safari MacCamino

female primary

male primary

For browser features, as shown in the chart3, the most desired feature is the ability of popup

blocking ( 86%). The second favored feature is tabbed browsing as some participants state

that ‘I cannot live without tabbed browsing’ (83%). The third one is search engine toolbar

(73%). The forth one is bookmark management (72%). The fifth is auto-complete (46%). The

sixth is page zooming (30%). Besides choosing the given options, 17 participants specified

other features wanted, such as password management and protection, RSS feed, Open in new

window or tab, Session management, accessibility, keyboard shortcuts, saving tab status

when closing or crashing of machine, social networking book-marking, user profile transfer,

navigational shortcuts, etc.

brow ser features

72

46

73

83 86

30

0

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

80

90

100

Bookmarkmanagement

Auto-complete Search enginetoolbar

Tabbedbrow sing

Pop-upblocking

Page zooming

Chart3. Browser features.

mean Mean for female

Mean for male

Mean for age (0-19)

Mean for age (20-44)

Mean for age (45+)

7.75 7.40 8.19 4.82 7.86 9.33

Size(inches) <10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 >23option 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14

Table 3. gender and age means for screen size

The mean for screen size is 7.75 which stand for the average screen size between 16 and 17

inches. The average screen size for male is slightly larger than the average screen size for

female (8.19 > 7.40). From age perspective, the older the users are the bigger size the screen

is.

There are 85 out of 100 participants that responded to the question “How do you customize

your web browser?”. There are 5 out of 85 (6%) participants indicate no customization of the

browsers. One of reason not to customize the browser is “company upgrades my browser or

sends a new push, customizations go away”. This means that customization is not as easy as

one mouse click; it needs some effort to achieve the way the users want. 40% of the

responses claim they customize bookmark. 29% of the responses claimed they customized

the toolbar. And 21% of responded claimed they customized the icon display. Some of

customization is to “maximize the space available for content”, or “minimum the tool bar”.

Some customization is due to the secure concern to “turn off insecure features (auto-

complete, save passwords, some java script behaviors, pop-ups, manage cookies)”. Most of

the customization is from browser extension, add-ons or plug-ins. Tabbed browsing is one of

most important extensions that “I cannot live without tab browser”.

Toolbar bookmark 32 0.4Toolbar 23 0.2875icons 17 0.2125Google toolbar 13 0.1625Browser extension 13 0.1625Tabbed browsing 12 0.15Search engine bar 8 0.1Plug-ins 7 0.0875Add-ons 6 0.075theme 6 0.075Popup block 6 0.075

Social book marking 6 0.075Font size 5 0.0625Setup home page 4 0.05Secure features 4 0.05Table4. Summary of customization web browser (N=85)

The buttons that users would like to have on their web browser are refresh, back, forward,

stop, home, in descending order. The result is a little bit different from Catledge et al’s [33]

finding that back is most used button in navigation. In this study the refresh is the most

desired button for showing on the toolbar. Other buttons such as search, print, full screen,

and font size are also frequent used buttons that users want the one click convenience. See

details in chart 4. On average participants choose 7.31 buttons to be displayed on the toolbar,

which is about 7 or 8 icons. The maxim number of buttons to be showed is 14; the minimum

number of buttons to be displayed is 0, that is user prefer implement all the activities by

using “key-board-shortcuts”. 65 % of the users agree that only frequently used features of the

web browser should be displayed as buttons on the toolbar. 15% of the users prefer to display

the default settings. 14% of the users claim that display the default setting of the buttons

would be fine, but “with ability to customize beyond what is currently offered in

customizability would be better”. See details in table 5. Surprisingly, 74% of the users prefer

to see the menu all the time. 23% want to see the menu upon request. 6% of the users want

the ability of customization of the menu. See in table 6.

buttons

95 91 8897

77

60

37

19 18

43

11 10 12

28 29

4 3 3 20

20

40

60

80

100

120

Back

Forw

ard

Stop

Refr

esh

Hom

e

Search

Hist

ory

RSS

Mail

Print

Cop

y

Cut

Past

Font S

ize

Full sc

reen

Book m

ark

Specia

l tab p

age

New ta

b

Keybo

ard s

hort

cut

Chart 4. Buttons displaying on the toolbar (N=100)

All features of the web browser should be displayed as buttons on the tool bar 6Only frequently used features of the web browser (e.g. back, forward, etc) should be displayed as buttons on the toolbar

65

The current default buttons on the toolbar should be displayed 15Display default but users have full capability to customize the buttons, such as rearrange, delete, etc

14

Table 5. Opinions concerning the buttons to be displayed on the tool bar (N=100)

The menu should be always visible to me. 74The menu should only be visible when I request it. 23The menu is not needed because buttons on the toolbar are enough for me. 2user has options to customization : turn on, off, etc. 6Table 6. Opinions concerning the menu (N=100)

When asked for the usage of status bar, 86 participants responded. There are 8 of users who

don’t use the status bar which is 9% among the responses. There are 5 categories of the status

bar usage after qualitatively coding the data. The most popular usage is to check the page

loading status, that is to “see how downloading pages proceeds”. 60% of the users use it to

check the loading status. The second usage is to preview the link URL, which is to see

“which page a link is referring to”. There are 45% of users using it since it is a “This is a very

important feature that lots of people use.” There is 21 % of the users use status bar to check

the secure lock; 12% of the users use it to check the page errors; 9% of users use it to check

information of browser extensions, such as “weather”, “popup blocker”, etc.

Checking loading status 47 60%Preview link URL 35 45%Checking secure lock 16 21%Checking page error 9 12%Information for extensions 7 9%

Table 7. usage of status bar (N=78)

Once again, participants rated their skill level in using the web browser on a 1 to 10 scale

level. The average score is 8.89 with a 1.37 standard deviation. Now, we can calculate the

Cronbach’s alpha value, which is 0.956 by running the data in SPSS. This means the over all

data is consistent through out the survey.

There are 39 participants who give suggestions for improving web browsers in general. Table

8 listed the first 4 categories after coding. 28% of the users who prefer the customization of

the browser, such as “customize the skin”, “customize the menu”, “customized the icons”.

26% of the users want browsers to be “more consistency in adherence to web standards”, “so

pages that work fine in IE also work fine in Firefox”. 10% of the users suggest the protection

from “phishing sites”, “crash”, etc. 10% of the users suggest the integration across the

different platform, different browser extensions, and different cascade style sheet. Some also

mentioned “easy navigation” and simple interfaces.

customization 11 (28%)Support web standards 10 (26%)protection 4 (10%)Integration 4 (10%)

Table 8. general suggestions for browser. (N=39)

4 Discussion

In this study, we found female users are about a year younger (31.68) than male (32.72) users

on average. On average, there is no significant difference between male and female users on

the hours spent per day on using the browsers. On average, female have used the browsers

for 10.75 year in total; male have used 11.63 years in total. And the browser proficiency for

female (8.66) is slightly lower than the male proficiency (9.35). Though more and more

female are using the browser according to [17], still the proficiency score is not as high as

male users because female spend less time on it than male users. Table 9 showed that the

screen size used by female was slightly smaller than the ones used by male users.

Age distribution

02468

101214161820

0-5 '6-10' '11-15'

'16-20'

'21-25'

'26-30'

'31-35'

'36-40'

'41-45'

'46-50'

'51-55'

'56-60'

'61-65'

'66-70'

'70+'

Age

Perc

enta

ge

Chart 5. Age distribution

This study has similar age distribution (in chart 5) as in [17]. There are no users whose age is

below18 since this study requires participant need to be 18 and older. There are 11% of the

participants in age rang of 0-19; 74% of the participants in age rang of 20-44; and 15% of the

participants in the age rang of 45+. This means elderly and very young users are using the

browsers, therefore the interface should meet their needs, such as more simpler interface for

elderly[32], and more interactive interfaces for younger generations[31]. In table 9, years of

using browsers, hours of using browser per day, proficiency score, and screen-size are

increasing along the age categories. We can conclude that the younger the users are the

smaller the screen is. On the other hand, older users prefer using bigger screen to ease the

vision problem, younger users prefer using smaller and fancier screens [36].

Female male 0-19 20-44 45+years 10.75 11.63 9.73 10.62 14.73Hours/day 5.51 6.03 5.36 5.71 6.4proficiency 8.66 9.35 8.91 8.92 9.2Screen size 7.40 8.19 4.82 7.86 9.33

Table 9. Means for year, hour per day, proficiency by gender and age category

gender N Mean Std. DeviationStd. Error

Meanage 1 56 31.68 11.391 1.522

2 43 32.72 9.871 1.505degree 1 56 2.05 .980 .131

2 43 2.23 .996 .152years 1 56 10.75 3.054 .408

2 43 11.63 3.632 .554hourpd 1 56 5.51 2.992 .400

2 43 6.03 2.649 .404proficiency 1 56 8.66 1.325 .177

2 43 9.35 .870 .133primb 1 55 1.95 .970 .131

2 43 2.26 .954 .145screensize 1 55 7.40 2.698 .364

2 43 8.19 2.831 .432toolbar 1 48 2.10 .472 .068

2 37 2.08 .493 .081skill 1 56 8.46 1.501 .201

2 43 9.44 .765 .117

Table 10. Gender mean and standard deviation

There are more female(77%) who are using the browser for entertainment than male (47%).

The skill and proficiency are significant by gender, not by age category. There more female

users using IE and Mosiac then male users, which means less experienced user will use IE

and change less.

In open-end questions, there are some interesting concerns on the usability of the browsers.

The biggest interest is the level of customization of the web browser. That is, given the

default setting, how flexible the web browser allows user to make changes on the browser.

Such as font, icon size/color, enable/disable features to maximize the content displaying

section of the browser, even remember who the user is, what are favorite sites, etc. Most of

the customization will be focused on the toolbar, such as adding or taking off the icons,

address bar, book marking, search bars, plug-ins or extensions, etc. In another word,

personalized and adaptive web browsers are expected. Users can access web without any

worry about hardware or software of the device or physical limitations of the user self. The

second interest is the security concern. Phishing websites or identity thefts should be cut off

by the browser, just like windows keep bad things outside. These thoughts of the users

demonstrate that users are expecting the browser to run more applications, to have better

page results and more powerful adaptation to users’ online behavior.

5 Conclusion

Ben Shneiderman had discussed universal usability for web sites [37] for years. Becker et al

described the details of the web site usability references [5]. Culture also effects the

perception of the websites [38]. Web browsers are the most used tool to retrieve web

contents, although the features might be the same among different browsers, the interfaces

are different. Furthermore, with different browser techniques, the content might not be

displayed as the same or even not compatible across the browsers. In short, the usability of

the browsers is at least as important as the web sites because unusable browsers can distort

any websites and make web information retrieval inconvenient. This study conducted an

online survey on the usability of the web browser. Both quantitative and qualitative analysis

is conducted on the data. Data is being analyzed from general gender and age perspectives.

Users are interested in personalization and security features of browsers. Most of the

personalization is focused on toolbar because that is the place for quick access to the

functions. Although browser is only “a tool” to retrieve internet content, it is important to

make sure the tool works first.

References