The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox browser nibbled off a small market-share portion from Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) in June, continuing a consistent monthly trend this year.

Firefox increased its market share to 8.71 percent, up from 8 percent in May, while IE's share shrank to 86.56 percent from 87.23 percent, NetApplications.com, an Aliso Viejo, California, maker of applications for monitoring and measuring Web site usage, said Thursday in a statement.

Since the beginning of the year, Firefox has increased its market share every month between 0.5 percent and 1 percent, mostly 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.

As Firefox approaches the 10 percent market share milestone, it is expected to gain "significant traction" once its acceptance grows among corporations, according to NetApplications.com

Rounding out the top five browsers in June were Apple Computer's Safari with 1.93 percent market share, America Online's Netscape with 1.55 percent and Opera Software's Opera with 0.59 percent.