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Looking at the Javascript, it seems like the counter is designed to pull a "real" number every so often and then do a comparison from the last update to estimate the download rate. Essentially, the "odometer" you are seeing isn't real time, but it does attempt to syncronize every once in a while.

As for being off between machines -- the servers they are requesting data from might be returning different data. It's hard to say. Here's the XML link: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/feeds/downloads/firef ox.xml

Not quite real time.

Not quite real time.

Look at the js source, it increments each second, but it uses XMLHttpRequest to look up and correct to the actual value once per minute.

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ffcounter.js

Hey, Firefox can't go swimming, because the flames will go out.

Ah, now I get the joke on this link:
"Should we lower Mitchell, our fearless president, into an erupting volcano?"
It's a parody of the Opera Atlantic swim, Firefox style!

BTM

Anyone find it odd that the spreadfirefox image galleries don't display properly in firefox (e.g. http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=image/tid/42). Maybe 1600x1200 is just too much for the page? Who knows?

You want something spectacular, how about this site? However I sincerely hope no one does something stupidacular like setting a living fox on fire.

By the way, I really need a pair of amazing spectacle to read the counter. I keep hitting F5 which causes the counter to reset to 49,253,815, how "weird".

Is this the same stunt like what Gmail is doing with its 2134.752100 megabytes (and counting) of free storage so you'll never need to delete another message?

why every one is using Movable Type. I know it is best know out there but is not the only one even after bait and switch tactic See Netcraft

Other are very good tested e.g. Drupal at Spread Firefox

http://blogs.businessweek.com/mt/mt-check.cgi
http://blogs.redhat.com/cgi-bin/mt-check.cgi

Oh I don't know... I run it on my desktop... oh... and I run it on my users desktops at work too... Openoffice and Koffice are quite sufficient for MS Office replacements. Firefox makes a fantastic replacement for IE and Thunderbird for Outlook. I could easily go on. The issues you have mentioned... some of them worthwhile, are still somewhat minimal. Build a good image, specify / build all the boxes the same... it's cake after that...

Actually this shows the strength of Open Source Marketing - if such a term exists.
Just take a quick look at Spread Firefox and take a look at how high the number of firefox downloads is now. Only a few weeks away from 50 million.

Sure it's due more to viral marketing than anything else, but Opera could have been there too and isn't.

That being said - doing what they are doing now and focusing on the mobile market is the better long term business decision.

The true winner is really the consumer from the competition, so keep up the good work all.

Actually IE6 has now been out for 4 years. And a person should hope that a 4 year old product that is used by millions of people everday should have the bugs worked out if it by now.

Now as far as how to compare them check out this article. It compares security on a very sound premise: If you keep up-to-date with updates how long are you vulnerable. The answer: IE: 51 weeks during 2004, Firefox: 8 Weeks during 2004.

Lets rephrase that; using firefox I was safe from known exploits 10 months last year. If I was an idiot and used IE, I was only safe from known exploits 1 lousy week during the whole year.

Which are you going to choose? Get FireFox!

The Firefox Download counter is probably much more interresting

Not even Firefox supports all of CSS2.

Google found an article that describes this in more detail

Now, if MS wants to really do us a favor, they'd go for : Worksforsure or better : "Writesforsure" to ensure maximum compatibility betwen office suites ( MS Office, StarOffice, KOffice, whatever...)

... because we make the "copy" better, more secure and add more features all while adhereing to open, published standards.

Take http://www.spreadfirefox.com/, which is the Firefox webbrowser, for example. This piece of software is hardly new in the sense of being first of its kind, and yes it "copies" the same basic functionality that IE does (and IE copies from Mosaic - check out help->About Internet Explorer, it says clearly "Based on NCSA Mosaic."), but just because someone else invented the wheel doesn't mean we can't use it or make our own, or a better one.

And don't get me started on innovation. As a matter of fact FOSS has already beaten the mighty M$ to a better desktop search (Beagel http://www.gnome.org/projects/beagle/ vs. WinFS - though I will admit I can't quite predict what WinFS will be like IF it ever gets released or if the 2 are even comparable).

Oh, and we are creating new virtual machine architectures[VMA] (XEN http://www.xensource.com/ for example? Again, not sure if that is what you meant with VMA) and new visual interfaces (check out http://cairographics.org/introduction/ for Cairo, which may beat M$ again to the finish-line).

And while M$ buys 90% of the time the technology or licenses it, FOSS actually does develop their stuf from scratch.

Rehashing what's been done before and then claim we do not have freedom to do what we want to do. Interesting. I am not quite sure where these 2 opinions intersect to make sense. Please explain yourself further ...

All in all I think you are way of mark, Microsoft-Fanboy!

drupal is more than a php based blog, I have been using it since 4 years and I like to think of it as an application framework than can act as a blogserver as myblog is. Drupal was described as community plumbing but now "simpley" is an
" ...open source content management platform.

Out of the box it can do a lot, has clean code, a really cool development and support community and lots of high profile (read: often slashdotted) sites are hosted on drupal such as kerneltrap and spreadfirefox

Drupal is on the forfront of technology. It was one of the first to use real taxanomy, clean URL's and distributed authentication.
The name drupal? That is another story

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

I really think it's best for Microsoft to implement a standards based compliant browser - if they don't they will shoot themselves in the foot, and it will really hurt this time around.

This is not a case of "...well we could make it standards compliance but who cares". Some big companies are taking up Firefox, Acer for one as bundling Firefox as default. Sure Acer are not 'huge', by all means on the international level, however small yet signification changes like this will damage Microsoft.

Who bundled Opera, Mozilla or any other free browser in Windows, 1 year, 2 years ago? Noone! Who bundles it now? Acer, Australian's 3rd largest PC Manufacture - The local high school near me get's new Acer's every 18-24 months, in that time 1,000 students will be surfing the web on Firefox! The local computer deal near me, recommends Firefox. Our family company bundles Firefox, the company I work for bundles and recommends Firefox.

Microsoft have a problem, if they stuff up this time with support for standards, and CSS2 all hell will break lose.

Microsoft está intentando colocar Mozilla Firefox en la esquina! Debemos ahora separar Firefox antes de que sea demasiado atrasado, mis amigos!

Recently I learned of a bug in Windows Firefox versions prior to 1.01 which was fixed in this version. This bug wipes user's hard disks. I've located 15 users who've suffered from this bug.
Why did it take over *one year* to fix this serious bug?
http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=2257 31

The bug only occurs when a user uninstalls Firefox. A user who uninstalls version 1.0 to prepare for installing version 1.01 is vulnerable. Why has the Firefox homepage not been updated to warn all users about this fact, and to offer a safe remedy?

At least 15 people reported the bug. Assuming that 5% of victims would post publicly about it, this would leave around 300 actual victims. Even 5% is probably too high; a 1% estimate would leave around 1,500 total victims. Since the bug only occurs when Firefox is uninstalled, many hundreds or perhaps even thousands of potential future victims exist.

The bug was reported in bugzilla and discussed without fixing for over *one year*. At one point a developer didn't remove the dangerous code because he said "This is not an acceptable solution to force on all users because some people make bad assumptions and then don't read dialogs." Is Firefox truly ready for "the masses" when developers maintain this sort of attitude towards users?

(copy, remove spaces, and paste bugzilla links since they won't work from Slashdot)

Original bugzilla bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id =23362 5

Firefox advocate ivanii attempts to raise concern about this bug (10/07/2004)
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/2808

Here's links to a few people who suffered from this bug:
1.http://computercops.biz/postp82180.html
Thu Feb 12, 2004
"Using the Firefox uninstaller has deleted almost everything in the Program Files directory..."

2.http://www.terryfrazier.com/1391
10/5/2004
"What idiot writes an uninstall routine that wipes out everything in the parent folder?!"
"This is not some minor issue. This is a show stopper. I mean, damn!"
"..every last vestige of that vile firefox has been eradicated from my registry. "

3.http://sillydog.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=4062 6
04 Aug, 2004
"After un install Firefox lost all ,MBX Eudora mail files"
4.http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic. php?t=64 871&sid=2d93836acbfea243769078b48c3eff90
2004-03-28
Also posted on Bugzilla as user "Cy"
"This is not a minor inconvience. This is CARNAGE!!! Uninstalling a browser and ending up wiping out almost your entire hard drive."
"This is ruining mozilla's reputation. I now have a distrust of any win installer release by mozilla"

5.rajarajan.sampath final bugzilla victim to post.
2005-02-04
"The uninstaller wiped off, 2/3rd of my programs. This shouldnt be the case, no matter what."

6. Thomas Passin (original buzilla poster)
2004-02-09
"This is DANGEROUS."

7.https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2 42 118
2004-04-29
"...I uninstaled the whole directory "E:/Program Files"!! It wasn't very nice for me..."

8. https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=26969 9
2004-11-13
"All my backups and irreplaceble files are now lost.....Thank you for making a shitty uninstaller....i fucking hate you now"

9.https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=2 71 805
2004-11-25
"Firefox will deleted all my other program in c:\program files. very unlucky,I did it!!"

10. https://bugzil

Firefox:
Update to version 1.0.1.
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/

=

Firefox 1.0.1 Released
http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/25/032 7235&tid=154&tid=164&tid=162&tid=1


The dup firefox /. article was brought to you by the firefox marketing campaign:

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

We'll be turning on the application update mechanism starting next week. Given the daunting task of updating all the people who have downloaded and are using Firefox today, we've elected to stagger the update over several days.

Chris [Beard, Mozilla Foundation]

Who is the third?! Deaths always come in threes.

Well, we have a few candidates: Hunter S. Thompson?(Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas).

Or Sandra Dee(also known as Gidget)

Or Arthur Miller (Death of a Salesman, The Crucible)

FORTRAN?

SCO?

Delicious Delicacies?

Spreadfirefox.com?

The company project manager?

IMHO:

• "browser only" concept ( versus browser-mail-news bundle )
• simple and more comfortable looking UI
• better "marketing"
• talented people behind it

If you rotate the image, it looks a lot like the Firefox logo.

Do you recommend Firefox or Thunderbird to customers when they complain about viruses and trojans coming through IE and Outlook? If so, you should sign up at SpreadFirefox.com where you could earn a link back to your web site if you accumulate enough referral points to show up on the roll call. You also get a blog there.

Here is the PHP Class that I've been refering to. It's very basic proof of concept. I'm sure there are many elegant improvements that could be made:

http://brandonpetersen.com/code/Generate_Report.ph ps

Hope this is useful.

Brandon Petersen, http://brandonpetersen.com/
Get Firefox!

The slashdot Comment link was broken in my last post, it's as follows:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79566&cid=7029 828---

--
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!

I wrote a PHP script to do this a while back, here's my post about it:

http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=79566&cid=70 29 828

It took a OpenOffice Writer file, unzipped it, and replaced specific text with data from my database. It wasn't too difficult, and allowed me to create Template Documents that already had information inside it.

I haven't really used it though, since everyone was happy with PDF files and I use the Pear Class for generating spreadsheets in Excel (http://pear.php.net/package/Spreadsheet_Excel_Wri ter#results) .

I'm sure I'll end up using the script in the future, especially for generating bids, letters, reports, etc.

---
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!

This is all great, but it's still important to use spreadfirefox and market

Get a few images, and sprinkle them on your websites, etc.

People trust geeks and their opinions. So if all the geeks unite and say to use Firefox, there's a good chance they will.

The books are great, but it's not a time to slow down on the linking.

We need to make casual surfers think "wow, I'm out of touch, everyone talks about firefox... from books to blogs".

So spread firefox now!

This is all great, but it's still important to use spreadfirefox and market

Get a few images, and sprinkle them on your websites, etc.

People trust geeks and their opinions. So if all the geeks unite and say to use Firefox, there's a good chance they will.

The books are great, but it's not a time to slow down on the linking.

We need to make casual surfers think "wow, I'm out of touch, everyone talks about firefox... from books to blogs".

So spread firefox now!

Actually what I think he meant was something more like...

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=affiliates&id=281& t=1

Don't forget to use the www.spreadfirefox.com links every time you refrence someone to download Firefox to increase the counter. Also, never let anyone use IE User-Agent when they are using Firefox, because using counterfeited User-Agent unfairly skews the statistics to the side of Microsoft, and we all know that this is a two-handed sword.

PHIARPHOCKS You should not have had to download this MS tool in the first place.

You may have meant spreadfirefox.com.

Hmmm, if by "had all the good movies" means shitty grainy CAM AVI's that in no way equal the experience of viewing the movie in theatres, then sure.

TMD had shit quality rips. I could tell you a hundred places to get a shitload of everything and I wouldn't even be scratching the surface. Just because you were stupid enough to put up a DCC server on a channel called #LEETMOVIEZ or something to that lame extent and you were given voice doesn't mean you were the shit.

Wired is running a story that talks about how some files get onto the internet.

In my honest opinion, it is highly skewed. When I was much younger, I
was about 2 steps down from a "Top Level Site" as they are calling it.

Top level site -> Another Level -> My Distrobuter -> Me!

Also, as a result of that article, i'm sure a lot of people will be losing their positions on these sites.

There is some discussion that started from a comment on /. (Where I found this story), located here.

By the way, wondering how I got that lengthy post in before the FP'ers?
Because I'm a SLASHDOT SUBSCRIBER!!!! Highly recommended.

Hmmm, if by "had all the good movies" means shitty grainy CAM AVI's that in no way equal the experience of viewing the movie in theatres, then sure.

TMD had shit quality rips. I could tell you a hundred places to get a shitload of everything and I wouldn't even be scratching the surface. Just because you were stupid enough to put up a DCC server on a channel called #LEETMOVIEZ or something to that lame extent and you were given voice doesn't mean you were the shit.

Wired is running a story that talks about how some files get onto the internet.

In my honest opinion, it is highly skewed. When I was much younger, I
was about 2 steps down from a "Top Level Site" as they are calling it.

Top level site -> Another Level -> My Distrobuter -> Me!

Also, as a result of that article, i'm sure a lot of people will be losing their positions on these sites.

There is some discussion that started from a comment on /. (Where I found this story), located here.

By the way, wondering how I got that lengthy post in before the FP'ers?
Because I'm a SLASHDOT SUBSCRIBER!!!! Highly recommended.

Sounds like it'll do a great job at tasks of Resizing, Croping, and most image adjustments. But what about it's scripting ability, in comparison to ScripFu/TinFu scripting ability or other advanced that some people need.

Although, it'll looks to fit the needs for 95% of the people out there.

Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!

I've been using php 4 and Apahace 2 for a long time on my web servers. They're not high volume servers, but I've not had problems.

I can't remember when Redhat started using Apache 2, but I've been using it as soon as they included it into their packages.

Is this an issue that would resolve itself as Linux Distributions include Apache 2 and the # of Linux servers increases. As you have a higher volume of Apache 2 servers out there, it will tip the balance toward a friendlier attitude between PHP and Apache 2?

--

Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!

Yes, but that would break "The Sims"!

I've blogged about this here.

The subtle point that I'm getting from Peter Torr is that, you can trust Internet Explorer more because it is already installed on your computer. If you buy a new computer, it should already have IE on it and you can avoid the "scary" problems he lays out.

He knows that Firefox isn't going to be installed by default on new computers anytime soon, and you have to download it for all your older computers. So the 'trusting where your download from' issue will be there up to the point when they release their next browser in Longhorn of 2006 (well, maybe 2006).

So, this will be an issue that they will attempt to exploit in the meantime, as they try to catch up in the other areas that they lag. They have so few other advantages to go on, this will probably be one of their primary ones. The only other advantage they appear to declare, is that they can run the ActiveX packages out there. It seems to be a well thought out piece of FUD.

I personally don't think it would work. Especially when the community finds a way to elegantly tackle most of the issues that he laid out.

--
Brandon Petersen
Get Firefox!

(shakes head)

I Agree...

But I did found something less.. less.. hum.. more...

Well, see it for yourselves... http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/7588

"In the search of my own name (which I found) in the pdf, I came across a scandinavian love statement "Nicolaj Elsker Helle" => 'Nicolaj Loves Helle'."

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/3749
# How much does the ad cost? What kind of other "launch expenses" will this pay for? How do I know that people aren't pocketing my money?
All donations go directly to the Mozilla Foundation, a non-profit organization that is subject to financial controls. It is hard to give specific numbers for the cost of the ad and the other launch-related expenses. For example, we are negotiating a discount rate for the ad itself and it is not clear that we are at liberty to publicly announce that rate. A portion of the proceeds from this campaign will be used for public relations-related expenses. We cannot just disclose how much we pay our PR firm, especially since they are providing a significant amount of "pro bono" (free of charge) services. We do plan to disclose the total amount of funds raised through this campaign and how the funds were used. Rest assured that your donation will be used entirely to fund the launch of Firefox 1.0!

Same applies - any donors whose name doesn't appear correctly or doesn't appear at all can get a refund of their donation, and you'll get a free, signed copy of a corrected poster version of the ad.

You need to let them know today though, otherwise your name won't be correct on the "2nd edition" poster either!

Details are on the spread firefox site in this blog post

I have to agree. The average NYT reader isn't going to have a clue what a browser is, let alone try and figure out how to download and install one.

I'd guess that a good fraction of the NYT readers don't even go online.

I think the whole NYT idea was misguided from the start. It would have been better to put the resources to better use and get the message out to people who could make use of it.

I notice the names in the ad are listed in alphabetical order, despite the fact that the FAQ for the Ad said they would be listed in random order. Some people even paid extra to be listed in their own area - but in the end it looks like the designers of the Ad ignored this. Am I wrong about this? Can anyone explain?

Due to the large number of names and the semi-frequent changes and corrections on top of the way the names were sorted (by last name) it was fairly impossible to pull out the Community Champions separately. I decided that it also made more sense for them to be seen as "integrated" within the community, rather than segregated out on their own... AND, in some ways... the underline brings a sort of mysterious attention to them--the kind of special notice that they deserve!

The SFX team provided a page for misspelled names and typos.

Here is a link to the folks behind the ad. Including a PDF version, a poster you can buy...and a place to put in the correction if they mis-typed your name.