Web Survey Institute XiTi Monitor reports that Firefox has achieved almost 28% average use rate in Europe in the beginning of July 2007, with a progression in the totality of the 32 European countries studied.

Perhaps more interestingly to those of us south of the equator, Firefox use in Oceania is approaching 30%. With the strongest progression in points (+4.1), Oceania confirms its position of the largest Firefox user with a rate of 28.9% from July 2 to 8, 2007, ahead of Europe at 27.8%.

Given the continuing disappointing trend for Windows and/or Internet Explorer-focused web developers we are likely to see more and more broken sites in the market.

Now more than ever it is of critical importance to check which platforms and browsers your web designer is developing and testing for. If your developer is a Windows or Mac-only shop you may be ignoring a large part of your audience.

Additionally, from a users perspective, the trend of standards and accessibility aware developers towards progressive enhancement could mean that if you’re still using an older browser, you may well be missing out on the enhanced experience provided by the more up to date capabilities of browsers such as Firefox, IE7, Opera or Safari.