(InfoWorld) - Microsoft's Internet Explorer halted the steady market share advance of The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser in July, a Web site monitoring company announced Friday.

Last month, IE, by far the most used browser, regained lost ground and pushed back the upstart Firefox for the first time since version 1.0 of the open source browser debuted late last year, according to NetApplications.com, an Aliso Viejo, California, maker of applications for monitoring and measuring Web site usage.

Firefox's share shrunk to 8.07 percent from 8.71 percent in June, while IE grew its market slice to 87.20 percent in July from 86.56 percent last month.

Between January and June of this year, Firefox had posted monthly market share gains of between 0.5 percent and 1 percent at the expense of IE, according to NetApplications.com, which compiles its browser usage data from more than 40,000 Web sites monitored by its HitsLink.com service.

NetApplications.com has said in the past that reaching a 10 percent market share would be a milestone for Firefox which could help it win acceptance in the corporate market.

Apple Computer's Safari ranked third and grew its share slightly to 2.13 percent from 1.93 percent, while America Online's Netscape, which once ruled this market, slid a bit to 1.50 percent from 1.55 percent. Opera Software ASA's Opera came in fifth with a 0.49 percent market share.

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