Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Browser On An Upward Trend
carbolic writes "The Firefox browser is ramping up as fast as Internet Explorer is ramping down. According to these stats posted from the Engadget logfiles, IE has dropped to 57% of all browsers used to visit the site, while Firefox is up to an amazing 18%! The Engadget stats reflect an early-adopter consumer crowd and backing those up, this chart from w3schools shows the same trend. I guess CERT's recommendation and a mature product are finally paying off for the Mozilla project. Less than 2 years ago, IE had a 95% lock on the market. Anyone else see a trend here?"
The logfiles for a single site can hardly be used as proof of an overall trend throughout the Internet.
Microsoft's site can probably claim higher numbers of IE users.
RedHat's site can probably claim lower numbers of IE users
I have used Firefox for about 6 months, since it was recommended to me by a friend. I've enjoyed the useful features I never got from IE, the speed of page loads and the fact that whenever a new IE venerability is released I can simply say "Meh".
But am I alone in the (admittedly selfish) desire that Firefox / Mozilla doesn't become too mainstream? As the usage of Firefox goes up - so too does the interest from exploit kiddies. Can the Mozilla / Firefox team keep ahead of the net nasties when it attains the majority of Internet users?
I can see that an open source browser can respond to security threats quicker than Microsoft has - but will it remain quick enough?
Most 0.9+ plugins should work with 1.0PR. Go to about:config, locate extensions.disabledObsolete and change its value to false . Worked for me, YMMV. Good luck.
-- CD
Use ISO 8601 dates [YYYY-MM-DD]
I'm finding myself quickly leaving sites that are built, either intentionally or out of ignorance, as IE-only.
With tabbed browsing, fantastic bookmark controls (add bookmark here and synchronized bookmarks), great content tools (bugmenot, adblock), the browser goes almost everywhere.
Folks who are reading this and who made the plunge, but still use Outlook, SWITCH TO THUNDERBIRD! While I wasn't very happy with the seemingly random way my old emails were imported (messages with multiple mime parts dont have the correct items displayed on the pane, and others meant to be displayed as shown as 'part1.1' attachments), I was incredibly happy with the abilities and extensions of the program.
Specifically, I found Thunderbird very happy to deal with my POP3 and IMAP accounts, interface very easily with GnuPG (via Enigmail)
Mozilla really sucked for quite awhile, but these days I'm surprised when I find people who still only use IE. How 2001.
I look forward to the work being done on calendaring.
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How about if Slashdot would open up their logfiles? Same crowd, but bigger sample...
I would be interested to know how many of those numbers are made up by Mozilla/Opera users whose browsers are set to identify as IE, which is the default on Opera.
I am not sure about Firefox as I don't use it.
Probably the numbers would not swing the percentages to any great degree, but it would still be interesting nevertheless.
If it wasn't for IE, a quarter of all tech. support reps would be out of a job.
Ok, not really, but I do work in tech. support, and spend a significant portion of my day dealing with IE-related issues. If a normal rep spends an average of 1 hour each day on IE issues alone, and there are 250 reps at the center I work at, then we're spending 250 hours a day on IE problems. If no one dealt with IE issues, we could shift the workload and fire 30 people! that works out closer to an eighth, but saying "1/8" isn't impressive enough these days.
I also run one site, but mine isn't geared towards techheads. (Blood conservation for hospital staff.) Here's this months stats so far:
MSIE 6.0: 86%
MSIE 5.5: 3%
MSIE 5.23: 1.2%
MSIE 5.01: 0.9%
MSIE 5.0: 1.8%
Netscape 7.2: 0.7%
Netscape 7.1: 0.7%
Mozilla: 2.5%
Opera: 2%
Unknown: 0.3%
Konqueror: 0.1%
(Missing: 0.8%)
I'm waiting for Mozilla to grow. Then again, my site still uses frames, so why am I complaining?
Sum of IE Dropped ~2% since previous months where it hovered around 94.7%+-0.3. Mozilla numbers remain unchanged from previous months; Opera took the space it seems. Oh well.
This has been discussed on many /. threads regarding firefox ... The main reason for extension incompatibility between point releases is that Firefox hasn't yet reached the 1.0 release mark ...
... your criticism would have been relevant for Firefox 1.+ ... but not now
Meaning
Never underestimate the power of idiots in large groups
What helps for me so far (100% score until now): If you find an IE-only website, make a screendump of what the website looks like in FireFox, and mail it to the sales- or marketing-dept of the company. You can be sure they contact their developer/ site-maintainer about it.
If you contact the "developer" directly, you can end in a yes/no battle about W3C, so get to the guys with the money instead
"Honey, I feel a certain distance between us..." "Really? A 31ms ping ain't that bad..."
A trend is not about absolute numbers.
Another site may have 90% Explorer and 4% firefox.
If last year the figures were 92% vs 2%, then the trend is the same as w3schools (where firefox usage jumped from 8% -> 18 %)
Washington bullets will simply be known as the "Bulle
Slashdot's nerds, techies, etc. probably have a higher number for IE because many people - including me - use it at work. But anyways: what are the numbers for Slashdot.org?
How about Wikipedia: 80% IE, 20% Mozilla & company.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
As I hinted at in another post, the problem would be seen by a CNN/Gallup poll after the respondents say:
"Which web browser do you use?"
The Internet 50%
The Web 15%
Explorer 10%
Internet Explorer 10%
Mozilla/FireFox: 12%
Other 3% (Including 1.2% who stated 'www')
Hey, IE was at 4.0 before it was barely useful. ;-)
True, the loss to MS is zero in ONLY the browser space. In other spaces, the loss may be FAR greater.
Microsoft didnt make IE out of the goodness of their hearts, they paid staff, millions of hours of development time, a court case with the DOJ, to get this "free" browser out. And we know MS doesnt give things away unless they are either goign to earn profit somewhere else, or to prevent loss occuring somewhere else.
going back to 1996/1997, Microsoft realised that Netscape, the dominant browser at the time, were slowly morphing from "Just a Browser" into something that together with Java resembles an OS. It was a platform that allowed applications to be delivered over the net, making the core OS irrelevent. Have a look at archived docs about Netscape's Aurora, and you will understand why MS was scared.
Secondly the Java & HTML can be developed by MOST students for free. You only needed a Text Editor, a paint package and a freely obtainable JDK. There is no relatively "simple" ways to create windows applications for free. This was the reason why Microsoft gave away Visual Basic Active X edition for free, to get people less intrested in Java, and create More MS centric solutions.
Therefore dont assume that there is no value to MS from Internet Explorer. It is core to them. They only got a bit of a breathing space because fo the Dot Com bust, didnt create as much intrest for Web Applications as originally thought.
Obligatory Mastercard Parody:
- development time: 10000 Man hours
- Cost of development: $1million
- Sending SP2 free to anyone who asks: $1 per CD
Mahing the Windows/Office/Visual Studio triopoly maintained, and seeing Netspace and many other compeitors ground to dust - PRICELESS.
Have a nice day!
maybe you should actually go to the site and learn how to make hyperlinks
I've just signed legislation that'll outlaw Russia forever. We'll begin bombing in five minutes.
I am a SysAdmin for a company that provides listings for real estate web sites. Sadly we aren't fully w3c compliant, but we make sure all of our code renders properly in both Mozilla/FireFox and Internet Explorer.
Last week We had 12,156,966 hits to our sites, which is only the search related pages, not photos etc.. 11,689,635 (96.15%) were from Internet Explorer.
I'd wager to say we would see a much more diverse range of users than a site specifically designed for web designers. I hate to say it, but IE is still as much of a force in the market as it ever was.
chown -R us.