Slashdot Mirror
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!"
True 1 million is 1 million, but I for one downloaded it at home, and twice at work. Once for the windows box, and once for the linux box.
Saying "I'll probably get modded down for this", is a magnet for my -1 mod token. I hate to disappoint.
yes, but so what?
it's still more than with the previous releases, meaning that it has gotten quite a few new users since that.
(ok, the release having magical 1.0 number in it might have something to do with it too)
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Well I think they deserve the attention. About a week ago I wined about things I thought Firefox and Thunderbird could not do, but I switched and I must say it's far better than I expected. This is a great browser. I especially like the way almost everything is configurable. I think I'll stick to this for a long time to come.
-- Cheers!
I just hope this leads web-developers to eventually test and validate their pages with something else than IE.
I am always so annoyed with the "Your browser is not supported" mesage...
Okay, I probably downloaded it more times than was really necessary, but they were all for different computers. Two for Win98, one for Win95, and one for MacOS X.
Something I don't think has been promoted enough is that Firefox works brilliantly on older computers. I've got an old Win95 machine that I use for when I need to use Microsoft Office (OpenOffice.org is great, but sometimes I need the real MS thing), and was trying to update the IE 4 that it's currently stuck with. Is it possible? I've no idea. I was bounced around various Microsoft download pages, unable to find something that suited Windows 95 - all the system requirements for newer versions of IE given were at least Win98...
Contrast this with Firefox. Visit the Mozilla site, and it guesses which version of Firefox you should need from the User-Agent string of your existing browser. Big link on front page, click on it to download, and minutes later you're in a new browser.
There are many, many older computers around, and before not it was too easy to get stuck with an out-of-date browser. There were alternatives, but Firefox has become the easiest of the lot - it's incredibly simple to upgrade to something secure and modern. It's brilliant!
Tedious Bloggy Stuff - hooray?
Behold.. Windows Update Extension for Firefox.
:-P
If I understand the comments correctly, IE is still required to be fully installed. All it does is to add a menu item for "Windows Update" that runs IE?
What would be nice is a special program that grabs stuff from WU. I know the WU client does, but only the critical security updates.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
Most of the people I tell about firefox either don't see the benefits of tabbed browsing because they only view one page at a time, or they don't want to use it because they like to have multiple windows open instead. tabbed browsing was THE feature that made me switch to mozilla and now firefox months ago.
Yeah, I noticed that before, when Mozilla was still under the arm of AOL, they hardly had any marketing at all. They barely pushed their Mozilla suite back then, instead focusing all the marketing effort on the (then crippled) Netscape 6/7 releases.
I think this hurt Mozilla's adoption greatly; if they had marketed with the furor they're marketing with now, they would have a LOT more users, as AOL could have placed links to their stuff on pages visited by TENS of millions of people daily.
Kudos to the Mozilla team and all the people pushing Firefox to the masses. It's about freakin' time. }:)
-Z
I took the advice I read from another article (can't remember source) that stated a good idea was/is to load up a USB keychain mini-drive with Mozilla and FOSS software so that when somebody bugs you with a problem, you can quickly load up Firefox. I've had several occasions to use it, and I'm glad I did so! Go, Firefox, go!
Windows update depends on activex. Without it you cannot scan for packages. It's best to just go ahead and use ie for windows update. The odds of WU getting hacked are pretty slim as surely Microsoft concentrates all its security efforts there, and if your DNS isn't pointing to someplace bad then it ought to be fairly safe in general.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Most of the people who suddenly downloaded the update were probably already using a prior version of Firefox. I would seriously doubt that this represents anything like 1 million new users.
Based on my reading of the referrer stats, a significant portion of those downloading Firefox 1.0 PR were using IE to perform that download.
--Asa
I'm probably way behind the Slashdot curve here, but I finally switched over to Mozilla a few months ago after IE started to routinely crash, even after updates and a new firewall/anti-virus. I didn't like Mozilla all that much (it felt a bit clunky), but it worked and was reasonably fast so I stuck with it.
I just got the new release of Firefox a few days ago after a friend recommended it, and I think I have just found my new favorite browser. It has the same streamlined look that I had customized on my old IE setup, but without the MS junk and frequent crashes. Its very fast too, and tabs seem like a great feature (I used to just open everything in a new window before Mozilla.)
I'm basically stuck with a crappy operating system because of gaming and office fonts, but its nice to know that I'm not stuck with IE if I want a fast streamlined browser.
The 1 million downloads are only from english-speaking people. The german version for example is not translated yet. I guess that a few 100,000 users alone in germany, austria and swiss would download the final version.
So the counter would be much higher, if other languages were finished.
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).
Do you have a reference to this intention? One would think that Firefox had the intention of being a cross-platform browser like Mozilla before it.
Linux on desktop was a much less credible beast at the time of first phoenix release, though...
Save your wrists today - switch to Dvorak
Kevin Gerich (who, along with Stephen Horlander created the default theme for Firefox) has done some really nice Firefox replacement widgets at his weblog- check them out and install them, they are very nice.
But what about people like me who emerge -u firefox? Do we get counted?
:-)
Unfortunately not. We miss a lot of downloads. Right now we're just looking at our primary FTP mirrors. We're not taking into account all of the not Mozilla FTP mirror download locations or mechanisms.
If you have suggestions about how to get a more inclusive count, please let me know.
The good news is that this is probably a conservative estimate and our real number of 1.0PR downloads are probably higher than what we're reporting.
1 million is great, and like every poster here has said. The count isn't close to accurate. So let us now aim for 2 million!
See SpreadFirefox.com where we're already looking for that second million
--Asa
I downloaded it once and installed it on replicated NFS servers for a Fortune 100 company with over 20,000 UNIX/Linux users. The Fedora, SUSE, and Debian maintainers download it once each for a total of millions of users. It takes a lot of multiple-downloaders like you to equal a few people like me and them, so I wouldn't assume that there's fewer than one million users. There might be quite a few more than a million from those million downloads.
I think most (decent) web designers check their work for some compatibility with browsers like mozilla/firefox.
IE is still the browser used by the vast majority of visitors (like it or not), so that is and should be the main target for any professional web designer. Even if you don't like IE yourself, you work for a client and should respect their wishes.
However, the market share of other browsers is growing, and we should all realise that that relatively small percentage of visitors should be able to visit the website as well.
Honesty, I don't go out of my way to get pages identical to the pixel in all browsers, but I ensure that firefox-users have a pretty good user experience too. Getting it pixel-perfect usually is qutie some work (IE's quirks are mostly at fault there), but giving all visitors an acceptable user experience is really not that hard!
You can semi-permanently wipe away the irrelevant distracting bits of Slashdot easily by checking the 'light' menu box in user config, and then right clicking to block graphics from images.slashdot.org. That, and blocking images from a few ad servers, and Slashdot returns to being content-rich and eyespam free.
"What's the frequency Kenneth?"
I just went to that site(to test it) with 1.0PR and I got a bar at the top of the page that says, "To protect your computer, Firefox prevented the site (xxxtoolbar.com) from installing software on your computer." People can still allow sites to install software, but that requires conscious effort to put the site in the preferences.
a significant portion
... and I'm really quite interested in the number of IE converts vs. number of raw downloads. I don't want to sound rude, but can you be more specific?
For me, that could be anywhere between 30% and 80%
I partly agree with you, but don't be so harsh, I have several comments on your arguments:
:)
:)
:)
* First, it simply works [tm] for most users and most sites, so, yes there are still bugs on HTML rendering and it haunting them down will be long story, but as I said - it works for most users.
* I guess lot of those users won't chase cool plugins as long as after month or two of casual browsing - or maybe won't look after plugins at all. So this stuff is for advanced users who already know that they should wait.
* This (t.i. third) point is the most I would agree with - but hey, it's a common problem and it is not only with Firefox.
* Hmmm, smart thought, but I think marketing should start when it should start - it must be slightly before the release of original product. See, Microsoft hypes about Longhorng veeeeeery eaaaarly
* Of coarse lot of things could be improved, but hey, let's leave it to the next versions
* I really LOVE the new way of handling Flash plugins - just click on the embeded object with text 'Download the plugin', opens the wizard, several 'Next' and vola - I got working Flash. It is really MUCH better than previous way of handling things.
So, it is not so bad - it is marketing and I really happy to see that it works - even for open source.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
Yes I meant to say when will the Mozilla Foundation talk launch.yahoo.com ... etc. etc. Having no good way of getting a hold of them, you need bigger entities to make the persuasive argument. I know that firefox would be able to handle it. Unless they went the activeX route.
Occam's razor is the blind faith in the natural selection of least resistance and in universal oversimplification. -- EF
I am kind of puzzled by why Mozilla FireFox is hip. As a user of Mozilla
Firefox doesn't look and feel like Netscape, circa 1997.
There's a reason why I stopped using Netscape, I don't want to go back...
I think that sums it up.
You can't take the sky from me...
That's what I think, too. The extension management should be built closer in the installation. So if you install, you can select all the extensions you want and the setup downloads them for you, and installs them.
I imagine a DAU (duemmster anzunehmender user[ger], stupidest imaginable user) downloading mozilla and not even knowing there _are_ extensions (except they read what's on the page at start). There is an improvement, altought, in the interface (see here), but you have to browse there manually and you gotta know what you're looking for on the firefox page (its small on the right side).
Still, you have to configure it anyhow, like IE if you want it to work like you want, you cant go around this.
besides, it imports settings etc from the IE, so you don't have to set up that much. (I havent tried that, I'm not using IE at all)
I've got to say, that although I'm generally opposed to being given someone elses defaults, I think the "consumer" idea has some merit. Maybe some functionality/extentions by default would be a good thing. The geeks don't have to have it, they could get the others. Obviously the list would vary, but your usual windows IE guy tends to use the defaults so picking a few common (i.e. google bar, gestures) and going with them as "Flagship" extensions, maybe some themes, that way they can try a few before having to hunt through the extention libray (not for newbies necesarily)
Obviously an overhead to manage the package, but nothing major. I don't think that the guy was totaly out of line.
He was however silly to not post his issues, so people could comment and the Moz release team could have some constructive critique.
I tried that and the ESC doesn't close the find bar. Nor does the incremental search work correctly (I press "/" then type, it find the word fine, but I can't CTRL-G to the next match). Personally, they broke more things then they fixed. I can't figure out how to open the Download Manager (CTRL-E and CTRL-Y do NOT work). It just seems more broken when it should be just the opposite.
Just my experience.
Firefox doesn't have Quick Launch. (You can add a shortcut to start Firefox into the Windows Quick Launch toolbar the is by default next to the Start button; however, it does not have the Quick Launch feature as in Mozilla suite where the app is loaded on Windows startup and hidden in the systray).
I'm working on MinimizeToTray which can fake the feature (install extension and add "-turbo" to the end of the shortcut that launches Firefox), but it is currently buggy and interacts badly with single window extensions such as Tabbrowser Extensions.
I put in the developer's extension, and since I'm learning to work with the DOM and DHTML, I can't imagine working without it! I am a Mac girl, by the way.
Silicon.com is carrying the news that Mozilla/Firefox usage is up to 5.2% of visitors to ecommerce and corporate sites, up from 3.5% in June. Internet Explorer usage over the same timeframe fell from 95.5% to 93.7%. This makes sense as many web developers have been adopting Firefox very quickly (w3schools Gecko usage is at 17.7%) as well as techies and alpha-geeks (Engadget Gecko usage is at 23% and News.com Gecko usage is up to 18%). Usage among non-geeks is expected to grow as more positive mainstream press reports recommend ditching IE for Firefox.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
some of them are starting to ask me about this Mozilla thing! You know it's catching fire when the gun-toting hunting types want to know about it.
How'd they hear about it? Some anti-adware programs and stuff recommend installing it.
So 2 points - it's getting out there (obviously), and word of mouth is still the best tool - and with an app as slick as Firefox, you're going to get plenty of that
Berto
In Windows, if you middle click in a page, you can scroll up and down. In Linux, again, you have to enable this in the about:config
What? Middle click opens a new tab on either platform unless you have a mouse manager like Logitech's running which remaps all your buttons except left & right.
But while we're on the subject, I find it a bit annoying that in the the Firefox Help thing, it shows you the keyboard shortcuts for Windows, not Linux. For the most part they are the same, but there are subtle differences, like ctrl+k in Linux takes you to the google search bar, and in Windows (according to the documentation anyway) its "Remove End of Line". Not sure what that even means, maybe its a reference to Tron.
I recommend Bill mind his own business.
If you haven't tried Firefox DO IT! I have always been an IE user. I tried Mozilla a couple times, but its interface and Netscapeish functionality prompted me to revert immediatly. (I despise Netscape on a personal level) My first download of Firefox was ver 0.something but I was blown away. Now after upgrading to 1.0PR They havge taken care of nearly all my complaints and problems I've found. The only thing left is CSS suppot? Don't know if it is possible or in the works or not but t'would be nice.
P.S. The plugin manager kicks A$$! Microshaft beware!
The Property of One's : "The Oneitude is directly proportional to the Colditude of the one." - S.B.
ANY popups requiring user input are interuptive. Please create another way to handle errors or notifications (user choices are a different matter I suppose). A specialized event side-bar or a non-disruptive popup would really enhance my experience of mozilla or firefox. This is especially true for things like "chinese language support", script errors and the like.
Also, the notification that sending information over the unsecure internet should go away. Put it on the welcome page or something, for most users this is obvious. Or put it on some notification area, just like entering secure sites etc., and show some certifice information on that as well.
Most of these things seem to be copies from Netscape and IE. Lets make this browser better than those two.
As a web developer, my goal is to make every page 100% W3C compliant. It is up to the end-users to pick the most secure and standards compliant browser, and the browser developers to make their browser secure and standards compliant.
At home and work, I use Mozilla instead of FireFox. Having Mozilla Mail and Mozilla Navigator open simultaneously all day just makes sense, plus there are more preferences at my fingertips without resorting to about:config. I dont see any benefit to switching to FireFox and Thunderbird. But on a box where I dont want mail and dont use it all the time, FireFox is my browser of choice.
that will get lazy IE-centered webdevelopers off their b*tts
Many web developers in corporate environments are instructed what browser(s) to support, and/or the technologies they are instructed to use are clearly defined by project managers or the lead developer. Unfortunately deadlines can also be strict, meaning time is only available to test on MSIE.
My point (finally)... some IE-centered developers are not lazy. Some are very talented, but their hands are tied. For example, at my new(ish) job, most pages use JavaScript and MSXML to fetch and render content. There are presumably hundreds of thousands of lines of code - the cost and time required to rewrite would be astronomical. I dislike this situation, and am pushing for Mozilla/Safari support and portable server code (Mono, PHP, MySQL/PostgreSQL, etc). I am being listed to, and it looks like new projects will be browser independent. My next goal is server independence ;-)