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1 Million Firefoxes in 4 Days

Dodger73 writes "The Mozilla guys would have liked to reach 1 Million downloads of the Firefox 1.0 pre-release version within ten days of its release. After four days, the download counter now shows 1,006,060 downloads, surpassing the 10^6 mark more than twice as fast as they desired! Congratulations!"

17 of 602 comments (clear)

  1. Link to get it by bobbis.u · · Score: 5, Informative

    How about adding a few more downloads?! Get it here.

    1. Re:Link to get it by bhtooefr · · Score: 4, Informative

      Actually, Firefox IS meant to be cross-platform. It's Moz that cross-platform was a side-effect on. Windows first, Mac second, *nix later. This is because it's the OSS Netscape.

    2. Re:Link to get it by Finuvir · · Score: 4, Informative

      The original intention for Phoenix, according to Blake Ross, was to make the best browser on Windows. It has always been cross-platform and the developers are compltely committed to that now, but it was conceived for Windows.

      --
      Why is anything anything?
    3. Re:Link to get it by Myen · · Score: 5, Informative

      See bug 121832 on bugzilla.mozilla.org
      They did talk to them; Yahoo replied that they want to be able to script Windows Media Player (plugin). Not sure what's happenning now.

      It would probably help if you complained to Yahoo as well (hopefully more complaints would help motivate them to fix things).

    4. Re:Link to get it by dwhitman · · Score: 5, Informative
      Grandparent: Still, keep in mind that Firefox was originally meant to be a Windows program (but it doesn't hurt to be available on multiple platforms though, which I'm definitely in support of).

      Parent: Do you have a reference to this intention?

      The opening paragraph of the Firefox Development Charter says:

      Firefox grew out of the desire to make the best browser for Microsoft Windows. Eventually we began to build on Linux as well, and also Macintosh. Most of our development work is done on Windows, and so that platform naturally tends to lead although we express a desire to work as well as is feasible on every system we can.

  2. More downloads... by dutt · · Score: 5, Informative
    If the amount is over one million at the download counter on their site, then it doesn't meen that it's only one million downloads.

    Copies are spread through many other sources so the actual amount of downloads is probably much more than the download counter indicates!

    Congrats Firefox!

  3. How many did you contribute? by GillBates0 · · Score: 4, Informative
    I got 2 Windows users to download and install it. I would've liked to do more, but something's better than nothing. I followed up ofcourse, with a short demo of the "essential" features and setting up the homepage, importing bookmarks, etc.

    Things that impressed them the most over their first ~5 mins.

    1. Tabbed Browsing
    2. Ability to set multiple pages as home pages.
    3. Sleek look.
    4. Small download size.

    I guess the popup blocker didn't make as much of an impact because of 3rd party blockers/etc that they had installed and functional.

    Go Firefox!

    --
    An Indian-American Hindu committed to non-violent thought/speech/action alarmed by the global explosion of radical Islam
  4. Re:Firefox vs. Windows update by Nerftoe · · Score: 4, Informative
  5. Firefox.com by Artega+VH · · Score: 4, Informative

    I can't believe noone mentioned Kevin Karpenske who kindly donated the firefox.com domain to the mozilla guys.

    Kudos to Kevin for demonstrating a great deal of kindness in supporting our favourite browser..

    --
    groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
  6. Thats nothing compared to the future by mnmn · · Score: 4, Informative

    I've been looking at ways to automatically deploy it using MSI files, and switch the default browser to it across the company network.

    Even though I limit peoples permissions they still get spyware. When things get bad especially for people who need admin access to their machines for legacy apps, I have to reinstall Windows2k. Not fun.

    Wait till we get version 1.2 or something, and people can confidently install it in the corporate.

    Then start counting.

    --
    "Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
  7. Re:Now how about fixing slashdot? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    You should take a look at slashdot through the W3C markup validator.

    Of course, the Slashdot Moderators(tm) don't want you to look at the site through the w3c. That's why you get the 403 forbidden error. However, if you save a page from this site and upload just that html file to w3c, you'll get over a hundred html errors. Try it with this story and you'll see what I'm talking about.

    And people wonder why this site doesn't render right on different browsers, sheesh.

    Shaggy

    p.s. Yes, I know it's easier to bitch and moan than to actually do something about it. But damnit Jim, I'm a bicycle mechanic, not a programmer!

  8. Re:It's a conspiracy... ok not really, but sort of by asa · · Score: 5, Informative

    With almost every release of Mozilla based products, we fix security bugs. We announce those security bugs when we release, that's our standard operating procedure. See http://www.mozilla.org/security/ and http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html.

    We're very proud of our new Security Bug Bounty program which went into effect well before the Firefox PR shipped. That program helped us identify and fix several more security bugs than might have otherwise been fixed in this release.

    The PR was actually release a couple of weeks behind schedule, in part due to our being busy working on fixing a couple of security and privacy issues. We certainly didn't "throw together a preview for the sake of not having to announce it as a fix for major exploits." What actually happened was that we announced the security fixes to the public and to security research firms like Secunia when we shipped PR. They found out about the problem because we shipped and we disclosed the bugs -- our normal process.

    You seem to have the misconception that the security issues were about to be disclosed so we rushed a release out. That's just not the case. It was the Mozilla Foundation that made the security disclosures. We do that each time we ship a new release that has security related bug fixes.

    --Asa

  9. Re:Now how about fixing slashdot? by Soul-Burn666 · · Score: 5, Informative

    Yes. This bug still apears in 1.0PR.
    It comes from the ability to view the site while not all of the data was already downloaded. In case images don't have their size properties, it assumes a default value and forgets to update it when the data appears.

    To fix, simply ctrl- and ctrl+ to change font size and it'll fix the layout.

    --
    ^_^
  10. Re:What's so "cool" about FireFox? by asa · · Score: 5, Informative

    Actually, given the increasing number of broadband users in the USA, the difference in download times for FireFox and Mozilla 1.7.3 is no longer significant.

    The difference between 4.5 MB and 11MB is dramatic for the 60 million (49%) US internet users who still don't have broadband.

    I'm not sure how a figure like "half" isn't significant. Half of the US still isn't on broadband and for them, Firefox downloading much easier than Mozilla. Firefox is about the size of an MP3. People can relate to downloading something that size.

    But Mozilla has a few things that FireFox lacks right now: 1) better page-rendering accuracy and 2) a very good mail and newsgroup reader.

    Mozilla and Firefox share the same Gecko rendering engine so I'm not sure where you get the "better page-rendering accuracy" from. Firefox has a powerful companion e-mail application called Thunderbird for anyone who needs a great (not "good") email and newsgroup reader. Thunderbird is to Mozilla email what Firefox is to Mozilla browser.

    --Asa

  11. Re:Firefox 1.0PR sucks!! by Deathanatos · · Score: 4, Informative
    1) Switching tabs does not update the window title. WTF?! I don't want my window to have the wrong title! It isn't the first tab or anything like that. Just whichever one it likes.
    Hmm... works fine for me.
    2) I don't want a fucking top bar every time a popup is blocked. What was wrong with the icon at the bottom? Oh yeah, SP2 added their "Information Bar" crap, so Firefox has to have it! What if the popup comes up after a few seconds? Does all the page content move down to allow for their Information Bar thing? (I don't know, somebody tell)
    It is a pretty nice looking bar, but I agree it's annoying. Try click on the bar, and hit 'Don't show info message when popup are blocked.' (The little icon will still appear in the lower right corner.)
    5) I stay focused in this text box, switch tabs, and I can keep typing into this box. Obviously I should be find-as-you-type-ing into the new tab.
    I also can't reproduce this... and find-as-you-type was disabled on my installation. But you can re-enable it through Tools-->Options, Advanced, Accessability. (Or you can use Ctrl+F to bring it up.)
  12. Re:Minimo by asa · · Score: 4, Informative

    Interesting project, although I think building a lean browser from the ground up is the better approach compared to trying to strip the bloat off Mozilla.

    I think that anyone who has ever built a rendering engine capable of displaying even 95% of today's websites would beg to differ with you. Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine is the most capable standards supporting code available. Minimo is an attempt to get that rendering engine leaned down some and running on small devices.

    I've spent some time testing Minimo on an iPaq and it rocks. It can handle just about any web page you throw at it, like Mozilla and Firefox, and it fits in your pocket :-)

    --Asa

  13. Re:Firefox vs. Real Mozilla? by asa · · Score: 4, Informative

    Do the Mozilla folks have any good recommendations on when to use Firefox vs. Mozilla?

    http://www.mozilla.org/products/choosing-product s. html

    --Asa