The Firefox web browser rebounded in August from a small decline in market share the previous month, but the biggest gain was recorded by Netscape, a web-site analysis company said Monday.

FireFox, offered through the Mozilla Corp., rose a fifth of a point in market share in August to 8.27 percent from 8.07 percent in July, NetApplications said. Microsoft's IE, on the other hand, continued its slide in the market, dropping to 86.31 percent from 87.2 percent.

IE lost market share as Firefox, Apple Computer Inc.'s Safari; and America Online Inc.'s Netscape gained. Safari rose to 2.2 percent from 2.13 percent in July, while Netscape posted the biggest gain to 2.02 percent from 1.5 percent.

“FireFox isn’t the only interesting story in August, with Safari and Netscape on the rise, Internet Explorer faced an offensive on three separate fronts,” Phil Vizzaccaro, chief executive of NetApplications, said in a statement.

No. 5 Opera web browser also gained market share to 0.62 percent from 0.49 percent.

Internet Explorer has lost market share since October 2004, when it held 92.31 percent of the market, according to NetApplication, based in Aliso Viejo, Calif.

NetApplications provides online tools on a subscription basis for small and medium-sized businesses. The products are used to measure performance of web site marketing efforts. NetApplications draws its market share numbers from data collected from the more than 40,000 websites its monitors globally.