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Mozilla Usage Doubles in 9 Months
TheBadger writes "Thanks to the success of Firefox, Mozilla now appears to have 14.9% of the browser share, double that of 9 months ago. Let this be a lesson in complacency."
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This is a completely non-story. W3Schools is a (good) site aimed at web developers, ones that actually understand and use HTML/CSS/etc rather than whatever Frontpage makes. Yes, it's good that more developers are using Firefox/Mozilla, but it is not indicative of average users. Google's Zeitgeist was a good measure of the average user, but they've dropped the browser stats. My non-techy websites get about 7% Firefox, and about another 3% of Mozilla/Netscape 6/7 users. Is Firefox/Mozilla usage increasing? Yes, but it is not at 15%.
Seriously? Hmm... they don't seem to have any category for Konquer/Safari users... or am I missing something? Either way nice to see Moz gaining ground... but... is this really true?
The interesting this is that the browser with the biggest drop in usage from January to August is IE5. I wonder if this means that users of IE5 decided to switch rather than upgrade this year.
Google may have removed it because they dont' want to reveal the extent to which Mozilla is a threat to Microsoft's monopoly of the web browser.
"Web Browsers Used to Access Google" graphic in google montlhy Zeitgeist shows an improvement as well, but not as big as mentioned
ehi! why in july report the graphic is not there any more???
When I've checked my personal site's stats (small gardening site, roughly 400-500 page views per day) over the past couple months: I've been seeing roughly 70% Internet Explorer, 5% unknown, and the rest are mostly Mozilla/Netscape variants. Safari makes up just a couple percentage points.
About a year ago hits from IE were at about 90%.
#DeleteChrome
and THAT is why MS is "so great" for the software industry! [at least THEIR reasoning]
Particularly since it shows Linux at 3% and Mac at 2.5%.
And it shows a fairly steady (if slow) increase.
I dont know how real that info is, i mean it may just be that the sites im checking stats on are just a little off, but IE doesnt look like 78% on my sites , more like 95++ and that to, easily. Perhaps the list of sites that they are taking into consideration are just the geeky sites where people actually do have a clue as to other browsers. Im convinced the only reason MSN gets the number of hits that it does is really just because of the fact that so many users dont know how to change their home page ! Can anyone else provide feed back on their site stats ? I use FireFox for my browsing, love the tabs and the download manager, but it sure is memory hungry, i wish it would load up along with Windows and be quicker on the start, perhaps they should do what Winamp does, which is, start a winamp loader by default.
After my 15y/o son went on about it, I decided to give it a try. The clincher was when I right clicked and had an option to look up a word. This after trying several browsers in the past.
Let's your Slashdot stats. If you love your stats, you will set them free.
I just moved to a new highschool for my senior year and signed up for a java class. I was pleased when I found out that the computers in the lab have Firefox (and OpenOffice) on them. I guess word is spreading, even though most CS type teachers are probably nerds too...
i am truly happy to see a worthy alternative to IE. congratulation to mozilla team!
anonymous software engineer/code monkey
36.97%=Mozilla/5.0 ; 33.65%=MSIE 6.0 ; 6.45%=Pompos/1.3 http://dir.com/pompos.html ; 6.40%=msnbot/0.11 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) ; 2.71%=Opera 7.5 ; 2.46%=Yahoo! Slurp ; 2.41%=Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) ; 1.93%=psbot/0.1 (+http://www.picsearch.com/bot.html) ; 1.49%=MSIE 5.5 ; 0.87%=Konqueror/3.2 ; 0.80%=Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;) ; 0.56%=Konqueror/3.3 ; 0.50%=MSIE 5.0 ; 0.43%=Konqueror/3.1 ; 0.41%=Opera 7.2
Here are the more normal Aug. results with about 0% hits coming from slashdot:
46.89%=MSIE 6.0 ; 16.82%=Mozilla/5.0 ; 7.92%=msnbot/0.11 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm) ; 6.50%=Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html) ; 3.55%=Ask Jeeves/Teoma)" ; 3.14%=MSIE 5.0 ; 2.67%=Pompos/1.3 http://dir.com/pompos.html ; 1.86%=MSIE 5.5 ; 1.82%=psbot/0.1 (+http://www.picsearch.com/bot.html) ; 1.27%=HTTrack 3.0 ; 1.05%=Yahoo! Slurp ; 0.93%=Mozilla/3.01 (compatible;) ; 0.88%=Opera 7.5
Most people who visit w3schools.com are not the average user, they are developers: early adopters. It would take at least another 9 months for global Mozilla usage to reach half these levels.
I prefer to go by the stats published by OneStat.com in their Pressbox.
However, I do think the rest of the year will bring a significant change in browser usage.
Make their devlopment tools be as compliant as posible. It's actually better for browsers to not be completely bound by standards. Browsers don't have to be as long as they can render compliant code properly. It would actually be better for the average person. That way any page written by the laziest, poorest educated author can still be seen.
I just find it amazing that tools like frontpage output HTML looking code that isn't true HTML. Non-IE browsers will choke and render the page so poorly that it's unreadable, yet IE has no problem. First MS gets sued for using their desktop base to force IE on people, then they use their Office base to force the creation and publishing of IE only pages.
Slashdot's dirty little secret? The vast majority of their users are using IE on Windows.
Schools and companies are the places where there are a huge number of computers. Those are the places where Mozilla can make inroads for quick jumps in market share. My school finally dropped Netscape 4 and is offering a custom Mozilla browser with its logo to every student. How long before others follow?
Not to Firefox troll, but I think everyone should make an effort to switch at least one person over to firefox. Then, see if they can switch at least one person.
I was happy using Mozilla, but since I switched to Firefox... I've been thrilled.
It flies, it has some nice plugins (I recommend FTPsync and Browser Agent switching for those annoying sites) and my experience has been nothing but great.
Just because I occassionally switch my user agent string doesn't mean I don't complain. I recently submitted a complaint to yahooligans (A yahoo kids oreiented site).
"You should always go to other people's funerals; otherwise, they won't come to yours." -- Yogi Berra
As has been said in many previous posts, those stats JUST represent ONE site, and a tech-oriented one at that, making the results hugely biased.
1 03 09
For a comparison as to how useless those statistics are, I checked out the stats for the most popular site tracked by NedStatBasic. It's startpagina.nl with about 2.8 million pageviews per day.
Here are the browser stats:
IE 5/6: 96.7%
Mozilla: 2.7%
Other: 0.6%
You can see the stats here:
http://www.nedstatbasic.net/s?tab=1&link=5&id=7
Mozilla/Firefox can do this as well, but so far I haven't encountered sites that had trouble with these browsers.
Did you also try setting your useragent to Mozilla/Firefox and visit these pages?
home
I would hope that large organizations would eventually realize that the money saved on the back end through the hiring of cheap developers and development tools is more than negated when considering that you are also paying for the virus detection systems, support staff, and system recovery of 10,000 users, but this has not happened. And as more money is poured down the drain of IE only sites, it is just going to get harder.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
IE isn't some horrible virus MS installs by defauly on everyone's computer
Yes it is. What's the last version of Windows you bought that did't come with a version of IE with ActiveX enabled and a handful of other security holes on top of that.
It isn't the governments job to stop companies from making their product as they see fit to their target audience.
It's called the Sherman Anti-Trust act. MS used it's massive Windows base to kill the browser wars by building IE into the OS thereby removing consumers' choice.
As the customer you have the option to get another web browser and as the customer if you think MS is "shitting all over you" you wouldn't buy MS thus detering MS from "shitting all over consumers."
The internet is a community just like any other. The biggest difference is how it's regulated. In the real world, if someone is being a detriment to society they are breaking the law and are taken to court. When they get to court, they can NOT plead ignorance of the law. It's the opposite on the net. There is no law from me installing an OS and letting it get as infected as possible. I can't be forced to upgrade, or patch, or clean my system. In the mean time a good portion of the spam you get is probably being routed thru my box. I just dont care though. As long as my email and solitare work, it's your problem. Microsoft chose to not give the consumer a choice of browers. Instead they author one of the buggiest applications ever conceived, and distributed en mass, built into it's desktop dominating OS.
This isn't communist China, you have a choice.
Why is it that every day China gets a step further than America in technology and freedom? They may not be gaining many freedoms, but at the rate we let the governemnt and corporations take ours we are going to be very close, very soon.
On the same lines, I wish /. would post their stats... (Cmdr Taco?)
/.'s stats compare.
It would be interesting to see how
On a lot of website statistics gathering tools KHTML and Safari aren't supported options so they usally get counted as gecko based(at least with mine).
Damn, missed the url
Browser_Stats
IMAP for Gmail
From personal experience, I know what to make of this.
About 2 years ago I signed up for SBC Yahoo DSL. Their software, required at that time to log on, forced an update to IE 6.0 without even asking. I had been quite happy running 5.0 for years. Within two weeks I had to clean the system down to bedrock and re-install Windows to eliminate some particularly nasty spyware. IE 6.0 is just more vulnerable then 5.0 or 5.5! Need I mention that I no longer have SBC Yahoo DSL?
Since then, I have noticed a lot of new software requiring IE 6.0 before it will even run. Acrobat Reader 6.0 is really nasty in this regard: they go through ~ 1 hour download and unpacking before the software aborts, telling you that you must install IE 6.0 before it can install. Fuck 'em. I scrounged a copy of Acrobat 5.01 exe (something they don't provide anymore!) from an earlier install and I've been using that since. There will be no later copy of Acrobat Reader until they get rid of this requirement!
One woman, whose computer I maintain for her business, installed new mortgage apparisal software. It also refused to install until IE was upgraded to 6.0. Within 2 days her system was infested with spyware! I cleaned it all off, installed a copy of Netscape and told her to never use IE except for the updates to her new software (looks like that's all they needed the new browser for). She hasn't had a problem since.
This heavy-handed approach to forcing me to upgrade my web browser, fer chrissake, in order to run new software is driving me even faster to Linux. I have had enough! Particularly when the upgrade they force on me just leads to security problems!
Indeed, but Safari is a wily beast. Its default is "Mozilla/5.0":from http://developer.apple.com/internet/safari/safari
My web tracking service definitely seems to lump "Mozilla 5.0", and thus Safari, in with Netscape 7 since the other choices (Netscape 3, 4, MSIE 4, Opera and Other) all have negligible hit counts.
The same thing can happen for me (rarely though).
Anecdotal evidence would appear that it occurs when i try to view slashdot when other apps are making large numbers of tcp/ip connections. Particulary bittorrent or other firefox sessions, parsing multiple pages with 500+ images (not pr0n). In both cases, my Sygate firewall will list several hundred external connections at any one time.
No, moz doesn't have the features of opera, and lying doesn't make it true. How do you switch to user defined style sheets in Mozilla? How do you debug page design with structural element bordering? How do you switch to a text browser to test what lynx users and visually impaired people with screen readers see? How do you saving browsing sessions and use them? How do you zoom the entire page smoothly for sites with tiny fonts, or people who don't see well? Can you set it to auto-delete all cookies on exit? When I can come up with all that off the top of my head, and I don't even use all the features of opera, that means you are a total liar, and have never used opera.
As for the speed issues, yeah, they sped it up, no shit. That's why its only 3 times slower, instead of a little over 5 times slower like it used to be. And no, it definately renders slower, not personal experience, but multiple independant people's tests. Try google sometime.
And tabbed browsing works terribly in moz because its an add-on. Yes, it comes in the browser by default, but the browser was designed with a window model in mind, and so it constantly does stupid shit to break the tabbed paradigm, like opening windows instead of tabs when sites open new windows. And mouse gestures are the most useful thing about opera, mozilla having a broken version of it, and your solution of "don't use it" isn't acceptable.
Now, how about you quit lying and just say "I don't think its worth the money"? If you don't use the features, then its probably not worth it to you, but don't go around lying and saying mozilla is as good as opera.
I can not comprehend the confusion in the mind that would lead to the conclusion that IE, once integrated into the desktop, was anything less than the biggest computer security problem in the past decade.
After having to go over an idiot user's head to get him to stop using IE and Outlook, after he argued with me even as I was cleaning the trojans and spyware out of his computer that were there as a direct result of his decision to ignore the company's ban on IE and Outlook, after I spent half an afternoon doing it... I have absolutely zero sense of humor left about IE.
There is no excuse for using IE, promoting IE, shipping IE. After seven years of them completely failing (as expected) to come up with a mechanism that would make the IE-desktop integration safe, I literally can not comprehend how anyone can RATIONALLY defend that abomination.
Yes, I'm upset. I honestly thought Microsoft gave a damn. Boy, was I stupid.
called me tonight to inform me that his father does not have firefox. My son was upset and downloaded Firefox for his browser. Apparently, my ex-husband has been having problems with my son's games while with dad. We are divorced. My son informed me that his father had a lot of problems with his computer but he was going to fix it. He downloaded Ad-Aware, Spybot Search and Destroy, Mozilla Firefox and he would explain these to his dad. Uhh....he is 10. I think we are making progress. :)
I've long been plugging Mozilla/Firefox on my websites, particularly, my anti-Microsoft site at www.freedomware.us
I'm also running for state office and making Microsoft and open source software campaign issues - in Bill Gates' back yard. See my campaign website at www.edrevolt.org.
I wish more web designers would take charge of their profession and start plugging quality (i.e. non-Microsoft) software!
David Blomstrom
Webmaster of http://www.freedomware.us/ Candidate for Public Office - http://www.edrevolt.org/
People visiting W3Schools care about standards and those people are more likely to use a standards compliant browser. This is a bit like going to a Dave Matthews Band concert and asking people who their favorite band is. Or maybe doing a presidential poll at Berkeley. I work at a major dot com (millions of hits a day, you'd easily recognize the name) and we've moved from roughly 3.3% to about 3.8% over the last 3 months. I am measuring those user agents reporting Gecko. Most of the jump happened within a week of the IE exploit news & the news coverage of Mozilla. I've personally switched 6 people to FireFox and I will continue to do so. It rocks. I am hoping for the day we really do achieve 15 to 20% because then designers can no longer ignore it. I think we're getting the traction and I am hopeful. Keep up the good work on converting others. Interesting tidbit: I see higher Mozilla usage on weekends (about 1/2 a percent higher). Confirms that Mozilla penetration is higher in the home. Our site is a site that's used both by consumers and businesses.
While I wouldnt say the site is techy, I would say that the audience probably is because of the subject matter. Not many "normal" people play online games, and I know that there was a large population of people from slashdot on there for a while.
BTW, Great game and great book. Innovative marketing idea, too.
When life gives you crap, Make Crapade.
Sluggy Freelance.
- 263277 - MSIE 6
- 11580 - Mozilla 1
- 5725 - Netscape 7
- 3250 - Safari 125
- 1662 - Opera 7
So this makes it more apparent that users of ancient browsers are a tiny fraction of my visitors, but there are enough of them to be noticed, and to wonder why they never upgraded.Request your free CD of my piano music.
You mean it looks like this? I know what you're talking about, but every time I mention it here, they tell me it must be *my own* fault!
Best Buy can have you arrested
Mozilla is one HUGE application. It is grindingly slow and painful, IE is lean and mean comparatively.
For a while Netscape 4.7x communicator was all that was available for AIX, Solaris etc. Firefox has changed things, and gained market share.
I used to use netscape 3.x back in the early days, then switched to IE because it was there by default, and also because Netscape 4.x was too slow for my brand new hardware. Browsing has to be fast, and most people multitask it with other things, so it shouldnt take 100% of your memory. I then started using Opera as soon as that was available, and now back to Firefox.
I'm not alone.
Many others who were capable of downloading and installing Netscape didnt for its size alone. I just hate to see Firefox called Mozilla because theres a big difference. Sure they share code but the philosophy is different.
I hope they completely dump the entire mozilla browser and continue the firefox line, and even produce something thats smaller, leaner and faster than the current firefox, for older machines.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
It doesn't look like Mozilla is catching on much among the general public.
I run a number of porn sites, and if I were more organized in my stats, I could give you precise numbers. But informally, a lot of the freeloader-oriented sites (i.e. sites with free porn, which attract repeat, veteran porn surfers) are getting a strong majority mozilla users. I'd guess pop-up blocking was the driving force, as free porn sites are notorious for pop-ups, and are quick to adopt work-arounds to the various IE toolbar-based pop-up blockers. (So that pop-ups still appear even with google's anti-pop-up toolbar installed). XP's SP2 offers solid pop-up blocking, so I expect that incentive will dissipate now.
...for launching the initiative to create their own web browser after enduring several years of MacIE languishing, for looking to the open source community instead of inventing their own proprietary closed-source solution, for choosing KHTML and not Gecko, for publicizing their efforts and their decisions. Because of Apple, the Mozilla community was forced to re-examine itself, its mission statement, and whether its efforts were delivering any useful results. Because of Apple, the Mozilla community split the monolithic Mozilla into more useful components: Firefox for the web browser, and Thunderbird for the mail client. Or has everyone forgotten one of several Slashdot threads on the subject, or the media's take on it?
Sure enough, the Gecko-using browsers have crept up in recent months, but nothing earth-shattering - what started off as around 2.1% 6 months ago is now 3.2%. Perhaps more interesting is to note that home users are taking up Gecko browsers in a big way (now seeing almost 5% Gecko at the weekends), but on workdays, that slips to back down to under 3%.
Conclusion: Gecko browser usage is increasing on the average site, but only by about 0.2% a month (will take 3 years to reach 10%, which sounds about right).
You can't define a "standard" by what one program does, because that program will change. IE 6 has different bugs from IE 5, and IE 7 will have different bugs from IE 6.
Adhering to the published W3C standards is the only way to go.
Personally, I find very, very few sites are written exclusively for IE, apart from microsoft.com sites. Most companies have more sense than to alienate 15% of their customers.
only if you believe that there is no drawback to living a (likely) lie.
His point is that the idea (whether true or not) is one that specifically encourages people to (usually) behave in ways that are better for society as a whole, so it is therefore better to believe it than not believe it, whether it is true or not.
There are of course other belief systems that do not call for a supernatural supreme being dealing out divine justice after your death in order to give the same results. I call mine "ethics", although there are a lot of people who don't seem to believe in it...
Your right. It's near 17% when you consider that Netscape is now based on Mozilla code.
And this survey is based on several sources, not just their own stats. I can tell you as a developer for a Microsoft vendor where 98% of our traffic is directly from the Microsoft employees, 5% of Microsoft employees use Mozilla.
So if it's that high even on the MS campus, you can easily expect that 15% elsewhere.
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