Plugins

Question: Do you know where I can find some stats on browser plugins? Most popular or usage?

Answer: Mozilla publishes the total number of downloads for extensions (per week or ever) on their extensions website: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/

Is that the kind of plugin that you mean, or do you mean Flash/Quicktime/etc. ?

Question: Flash, Quicktime, Java... the only place I have found any stats was on Adobe.com.... They said that FlashPlayer has reached 99% of internet enabled desktops in a mature market...

Answer: Analytics keeps track of Java and Flash usage (including version). Very little of my development experience is in flash, and essentially none is in Quicktime or Java, so I am probably not the best for that kind of information. The new kid on the block is Microsoft's Silverlite, a supposed answer to Flash, which seems to me to be a day late and a dollar short.

Flash version can sometimes be very important, since Flash is becoming more of an application platform, and the functionality that makes your app go might not be available in the version your users have. That's why free products like SWFObject (http://code.google.com/p/swfobject/), which is a drop-in Javascript product for using Flash on your site, in addition to allowing all kinds different options for how your Flash is displayed, also allows for prompting your users to upgrade their Flash before continuing, even down to minor version and revision...i.e. you have version x.y.0 but this page requires version x.y.z.