The browser and device landscape

Less than 10 years ago, it was reasonable to build a website at a fixed width. The expectation was that all end users would get a fairly consistent experience. This fixed width (typically 960px wide or thereabouts) wasn't too wide for laptop screens, and users with large resolution monitors merely had an abundance of space on either side.

But in 2007, Apple's iPhone ushered in the first truly usable phone browsing experience, and the way people access and interact with the web changed forever.

In the first edition of this book, published in early 2012, the following was noted about the percentage of total browser usage by device type:

In the 12 months from July 2010 to July 2011, global mobile browser use had risen from 2.86 to 7.02 percent.

In the second edition of this book, I noted:

As these words are written, in mid 2014, the same statistics system gs.statcounter.com reports that figure...