Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Shooting For 10 Percent
Random BedHead Ed writes "An
article on ZDNet Monday features an interview with Bart Decrem, the Mozilla organization spokesman, who says that by the end of next year they expect to have 10% of the browser share. "We have the momentum," he says. He attributes some of the success to faster browsing and a lack of software bloat, and suggests that other open source projects might see similar success if they trim features. The article also quotes some very interesting figures from ZDNet's own web servers. About 9% of ZDnet visitors were using a Mozilla browser in February; now in it's at 19%." The average for OSTG overall is about 30%.
Come on Hemos! Pull back the curtain, let the truth set you free! Slashdot readers want OS/browser stats.
My website's percentages (I would say a somewhat stereotype independent website):
.5% every month), so that kind of confuses me. Either way, IE is going way down, and Mozilla/FireFox are going up.
September 2003:
MS Internet Explorer 95.9 %
Netscape 1.8 %
Mozilla 1 %
Opera 0.4 %
Safari 0.4 %
September 2004:
MS Internet Explorer 92.5 %
Mozilla 4.1 %
Netscape1.4 %
Safari 0.8 %
Opera 0.5 %
October 2004:
MS Internet Explorer 90.9 %
Mozilla 2.7 %
FireFox 2.1 %
Netscape 1.4 %
My guess is that my host just updated awstats so that firefox and mozilla are seperated. It does list FireBird (less than
-LBArrettAnderson (I seem to be banned permenantly).
So can we say they are ahead of Macintosh now?
That's still 99% for Internet Explorer assuming that the 10% from Mozilla is cut from the remaining 1%.
.. that all those obnoxious web developers who make their sites IE only "because it's got 99% of the market" will have to stop telling us to "just use IE" and learn to develop standards compliant websites?
Is there a tool that can make FF the browser that comes up when *any* request for a brower is made by external programs?
Example: I build a Win2k box for my Dad who uses netzero. Netzero will still launch IE for the web based emai.
thoughts?
...yup...
Is it not expected that ZDNet readers would skew towards Mozilla? How about the percentage of users to the top ten visited websites? Save for google.com, why would we expect that Mozilla access rates to those site would be markedly higher?
The typical ZDNet visitor is much more technically savvy than the average internet user. This explains why their Mozilla use rate has increase. Go to www.aarp.org and you more than likely won't see the same results.
Well according to the data on my site of which most of the traffic comes from slashdot referrers I have found this since 6/04 for MSIE 6.0 (and only 6.0) and Mozilla 5.0:
June '04:
MSIE 6.0 - 6444 (56%)
Moz 5.0 - 2330 (20%)
July '04:
MSIE 6.0 - 8673 (48%)
Moz 5.0 - 5144 (28%)
August '04:
MSIE 6.0 - 8954 (42%)
Moz 5.0 - 7331 (34%)
September '04:
MSIE 6.0 - 15515 (41%)
Moz 5.0 - 12550 (33%)
October '04 (through yesterday):
MSIE 6.0 - 16209 (39%)
Moz 5.0 - 14540 (35%)
Yup, my numbers are just as meaningless and skewed as any other site except perhaps google. But I still find it interesting that SO many people use MSIE over Mozilla-based browsers even when they are mostly coming from Slashdot.
Why even bother with 10% when after Google releases the G-browser (Google branded Firefox) it will shoot for 90%?
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
Setup your account at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ and be a Champion for a Better Browser.
Get Firefox!
Solider: "Bumagi Pazhaluysta!"
Eastwood hands him a roll of toilet paper.
...or maybe not.
Click here and download, if you haven't already.
On my site, I get an average of about forty percent Firefox and fifty percent IE users.
I think it's because most of the people I deal with are in the antispyware/privacy community, so that could skew it a little.
Striking fear in the authors of godawful fanfiction, I am here, appearing in darkness, Tuxedo Jack!
Acrocrap pdf reader has the same problem when clicking embedded links - it launches IE no matter what's the default browser.
I can't comment for other sites, but for our city's website, http://www.laytoncity.org/, here's our breakdown as of 9:14am today:
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
Just go to the site WITHOUT an affiliate link, Spread Firefox.
When will Firefox render slashdot properly? I still have the page text overlapping the margins, and about 9 times out of 10 when I submit a comment or click to read into a thread, I get a page full of crap and have to reload a few times.
What's the deal? 1.0 preview release now, and it's been this way since 0.6. It's in Bugzilla, though I suspect it's slashdot's problem, like so many other amateur websites they probably only test with IE.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
Some applications have hardwired to launch iexplore.exe - so changing your default browser won't help if NetZero is one of those applications.
Thats when you complain to NetZero so they know its not appreciated.
- sarcasm is just one more service we offer -
... if by any chance you have MS LAN with AD, you can deploy Firefox to all your clients nearly instantly using Firefox MSI. It works like a charm and increase their chances to keep the promise.
From my Page:
June '04:
MSIE 6.0 - (99%)
Moz 5.0 - (1%)
July '04:
MSIE 6.0 - (99%)
Moz 5.0 - (1%)
August '04:
MSIE 6.0 - (99%)
Moz 5.0 - (1%)
September '04:
MSIE 6.0 - (99%)
Moz 5.0 - (1%)
October '04 (through yesterday):
MSIE 6.0 - (100%)
Moz 5.0 - (0%)
Firefox is a great little browser, but both it and Mozilla have some odd quirks in their UI implementation in their Mac forms. Mainly, the way they scroll is no where near smooth, especially with a scroll wheel.
I would have thought, with all the *NIX and Open Source OS being used if even in a trial format today, added to the CERT announcement to stop using IE for security reasons and whatever, that they would already be near 10% or more.
"Genius may shine aloof and alone, like a star, but goodness is social, and it takes two men and God to make a Brother."
Business 2.0 has an interesting article titled "Microsoft's Worst Nightmare" with some additional background on the rise of Firefox.
Reading the text you can almost imagine Redmond concocting a cunning plan to distract 19-year-old Blake from his Firefox duties, involving free tickets to a tropical island with Natalie Portman. And daily hot grits via room service.
When will Slashdot use proper HTML. They claim it's HTML 3.2. It's not. It doesn't validate. In fact, it comes closer to validating as HTML 4.01 Transitional.
How bad would it hose the box if "iexplore.exe" was a shortcut to Firefox's executable? Might be worth a try.
It's a strange concept, I know, but has firefox become the "underdog" we all want to cheer on? Google took the world by storm with its quality. After all, it once was an underdog to the likes of altavista and yahoo.
Sure, Firefox has its roots in Netscape (which once had its day in the browser wars)...but Netscape rested on its laurels and didn't really pick up again until it got open-sourced. Now firefox definitely fits in the underdog category.
Google's gone public and it's really starting to creep me out with the various directions it's trying for. I almost have a need to fill the "fanboy" void and I'm looking towards Firefox. Not that I'm just jumping on the bandwagon...I've used Mozilla in one way or another for a while (don't feel like wine-ing my way back to IE, thank you)
So the question is -- is firefox the new google -- the upcoming product that's bound to revolutionize how we do things on the web?
Today Dave Winer wrote, "I won't use any non-Internet Microsoft product until they start investing again in MSIE. I don't hold out much hope, but it's the least I can do for the Web."
Not using MS products IS probably is the least you can do. Whatever happened to Microsoft Free Fridays? With FireFox aiming for 10% of the Web, it seems like it might be time to do more than the "least" for the web.
Any interest in a javascript alert message campaign to promote Firefox on Fridays? People could add the script to their site and on Friday an alert message would display saying something allong the lines of "The browser you are using isn't startard compliant or secure. Please consider upgrading to Firefox."
I doubt you can stop a third party program from calling IE explicity. Any program that just says open an html file should open with your default browser.
Or were you wanting to try to strip IE from windows and rename firefox iexplore.exe?
I got 100% Mozilla on my webserver logs! Of course my website is callled "localhost"...
The tipping point is coming. The point where enough late-adopters see news stories, tv segments, links on the web, and most importantly, other late-adopters using firefox. I actually think numbers like 25% or higher are achievable.
Firefox is a good browser, not a great one. Geeks love it, but there is still a lot of overhead to it and a lot of sites that won't display right. If all they are shooting for is 10% then I don't think it's going to get THAT much better.
I'd like to see them continue improving, but it appears they are settling for some of the crumbs instead of making a true alternative for the masses.
If you can read this, you should be using Firefox.
In particular, MSN messenger. 'Check your email' launches IE regardless of default browser.
Free Flat Screen HERE!
Why did they have to move all of the cookie, popup, image and password management and bury it all in the preferences dialog?
That's the best part about Mozilla -- being able to easily manage that sort of stuff.
Or is too many menu items some childish definition of 'bloat'?
I've just dealt with something similar. The first step is to go through (manually and painfully) Win32 file associations and make sure nothing points to Internet Explorer. That, and having FF set as the default browser, should significantly reduce the need for IE.
The next step, and one that I have yet to try, is to find a test system and symlink the IE binary to FF. It's a disaster waiting to happen, I know, but I think the experiment itself is worth the effort, let alone any possible success. In case you're wondering how to link in Win32, take a gander here.
*blinking cursor*
This isn't a troll (I'm posting from FireFox), but I wish the Mozilla group would stop rushing to get 1.0 out the door and fix the rendering problems associated with sites like CodeProject.com, Slashdot, MSDN, pinvoke.net, Neowin, and the host of others I've visited that often are problematic.
Tech, life, family, faith: Give me a visit
But we know it's you Bill just spouting the stats from microsoft.com...
Might be fun to rename IE to iexplore.bak and FF to iexplore.exe - add the FF folder to PATH and see what happens. No promises, 'cause I haven't tried it, but like I said, might be fun ;)
ABSURDITY, n.: A statement or belief manifestly inconsistent with one's own opinion.
From a medium ecommerce site:
Internet Explorer 85.77%
Netscape Navigator 4.37%
Mozilla 1.71%
America Online 4.80%
Safari 1.08%
Opera 0.23%
Our site (web dev):
Internet Explorer 50.99%
Netscape Navigator 6.00%
America Online 0.54%
Mozilla 3.36%
unknown 34.34%
Safari 2.06%
Local downtown portal:
Internet Explorer 89.38%
Netscape Navigator 4.21%
Mozilla 1.87%
America Online 1.92%
Safari 1.11%
Opera 0.12%
... by convincing (begging, whining, pleading) to a friend of mine to use anything, ANYTHING, but I.E.
She finally succumbed.
Her reaction: "Wow, it lets me do much more than I could before. I love it!"
If everyone tells two friends (and they tell two friends), we can finally eliminate I.E. from the universe! BWAHAHAHAHA!
IANAL, but I've seen actors play them on TV
MS Internet Explorer 27.6 %
Mozilla 7.2 %
Opera 7 %
Netscape 3.2 %
Safari 1.6 %
Unknown 0.7 %
Konqueror 0.3 %
WebCopier 0 %
But Jolt Finder does not see a lot of traffic, I was thrilled when Firefox overtook Explorer. But then again, I use Firefox, and obsessivly check the statistics waiting for a slashdotting.
There are two kinds of fool. One says, This is old, and therefore good. And one says, This is new, and therefore better.
The desire to want to match features is an artifact of the hidden source monolithic development model. If you have a product you're trying to sell, you want to maximize how attractive it looks to the purchaser.
FOSS developers, on the other hand, generally want to use the program they're writing (and don't want its performance to suffer). Also, they're open to the possibility that their niche has a boundary past which they shouldn't grow. There is generally less financial pressure to add new features than there is general pressure to keep the program working.
The thing that keeps Linux competitive is that Linus won't accept (*) a new kernel feature patch that decreases performance. As a result, Linux benefits from new hardware but continues to work on the older stuff (or at least, you can make it work).
I think as long as the Mozilla people keep these principles in mind, they'll keep doing great work.
----
(* except for emergency security fixes, or in a development kernel where the current state of a new patch is too slow, but the technology looks like it will eventually be faster.)
sigs, as if you care.
``He attributes some of the success to faster browsing and a lack of software bloat''
Compared to what? Mozilla is a piece of bloatware, and although the Firefox team stripped a lot of bloat, it still isn't exactly a lean browser. Konqueror on my 333 MHz Celeron feels faster than Firefox on my 800 MHz G4, not to mention Firefox on the Celeron.
I've heard about many IE users who didn't want to switch, because IE is faster. Opera leaves both of them a mile behind.
Seriously, there are good reasons for using Firefox, but speed and lack of bloat are not among them.
Anybody still working on the KHTML to GTK port?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
MS can save corporate, institutional, and kiosk users by simply having a "lockdown mode" that's trivial to set.
Here's what I envision:
With a single configuration setting - something a non-techie library employee can set when logged in as an administrator, have it automatically block all potentially-hostile content from everyone that's not on a predefined whitelist.
The default whitelist is *.yourorganization.com + *.microsoft.com. Whitelisted sites would not necessarily be treated as the "local" zone, but rather they'd be treated the same as if the lockdown were not in effect.
Plus, add a button to the end-user screen that says "site doesn't work." If a user clicks on this, the administrators will be notified to check it out and, if they deem the site safe, grant it more privilages.
This is something MS, or possibly even a third-party vendor, could do in a matter of weeks. It requires few if any underlying code changes, mainly just a browser-helper-object and some "re-packaging" of existing configuration settings.
The long term solution of course is to redesign IE's security model.
If MS takes no action, they'll continue to lose market share to browsers that don't represent such an open door to hostile code.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Lack of support to dynamic fonts is a major draw back to the popularity of Mozilla in asian countries and for people who uses browser to read asian websites. Now a days most websites uses dynamic fonts to render their pages and it does not work in Mozilla or in Netscape 6 and above. We cannot ask the websites to change that practice and go with the option of downloading fonts or use unicode fonts. Some of those asian lanugages does not have unicode support
Problem is: Some of us work in a corporate environment. FireFox may not be a "Certified" application for use. Thus we are stuck with IE. Most of my web-browsing is done from work. If I use a home PC its for playing games explicitly.
I know that a lot of people are posting their stats that show ~30% Moz these days. I think mine is a little more extreme: I was getting 45% Mozilla in December of 2000 . It then leveled off to about 20% when my site started getting a little more traffic from different sources. It's still around 20% with the 1mil pages/month traffic I get now.
So getting large percentages of Gecko based browsers on your tech website is not even a recent trend. I'd go with big sites like thecounter.com. Their stats are a little behind, but they record a hell of lot more stats than any of us and have a broader range. They also show around 2% for September this year, so Firefox has a long way to go.
I don't think anything else needs to be said.
Don't bother posting stats culled from httpd logs. They just can't provide that kind of information with any kind of accuracy. HTTP is just not designed that way, there are a hundred different things that can bias the stats, even if you assume that your website is representative of the "average" user.
I swear to god, every time a browser story comes up on Slashdot, people start posting these bogus numbers in an attempt to make a point. Great, you have a website. I'm sure you are very proud. But at least learn a thing or two about HTTP before trying to tell everyone what you think you know.
I think there is a difference between writing valid html/xhtml or whatever and writing a cross platform AutoCAD program.
True, a difference exists, but just as HTML 4 mitigates differences among display systems connected to the Web, toolkits such as wxWidgets, GTK+, GRE, and the like mitigate differences among desktop systems.
It might be fun to back everything up before you try that, since Internet Explorer is an integral part of the OS... :)
--RJ
No doubt I'll get tagged as a troll, but when was the last time MS added nice features to IE? I suspect Microsoft let IE languish once they had the market share. Now they're letting FireFox feel like it has a chance and then they'll start ramping up development again. Steal all the nice features from FireFox, add some of their own, launch a multi-million dollar marketing campaign and wala, FireFox is just a memory for the average Internet user once again.
Firewall off port 80 and install a proxy. It's trivial for a proxy to rewrite the User-Agent header, so check the documentation. Then configure the other browsers to use the proxy.
Remember, of course, that this only affects the User-Agent header; it's still possible for a website to determine the browser you are using through other means, even if you disable Javascript.
Example: I build a Win2k box for my Dad who uses netzero. Netzero will still launch IE for the web based emai.
Well then the problem is that Netzero is launching Internet Explorer, not that it shows up as Internet Explorer. Even if it says it is Firefox, it will still be vulnerable to all the malware it was before. Do him a favour and get him to switch, even if *gasp* he has to click an icon manually to get to his email.
Experience shows that brand recognition counts. If you just have a random collection of better mousetraps, I mean browsers, the world will *not* beat a path to your door. It will continue to use whatever came with the OS, which in the vast majority of cases means Windows, which means IE.
OTOH, if you have 1 (or even 2 or 3) well-marketed, better whatsits, you have a reasonable chance of moving the 900 pound gorilla towards 0%, especially when he's sleeping (as MS is with IE).
Otherwise, the only 0% is your chance of moving the gorilla even vaguely in the direction of 0%.
Seriously, seeing sites that render well in IE but look bad or are unusable in Firefox really puts it at a disadvantage.
If asked, I say "just use Firefox".
What about people whose only web access is through an organization such as an employer or a public library, where they have no power to get the organization to add Firefox to the system image?
I think you hit it on the head. I'd guess that for most people, a browser and office suite is all they use. If people see they can use some other browser, and some other office suite, it's not far from there to using some other operating system.
Sort of like hoof and mouth disease for their cash cow.
sigs, as if you care.
``if IE use drops to 0% across the board, how does this affect M$'s bottom line?''
The magic word here is `control'. As long as virtually everybody is using IE, Microsoft has great control over what websites can do and how they do it. For example, websites do use ActiveX controls, but they don't use XUL.
When Microsoft integrates XAML support into IE, web developers will be doing the things they can now do with XUL, but using XAML instead. F/OSS browsers will be locked out, because they don't support the new features the Microsoft way, even though XUL was there first.
Users will be bound to IE, and consequently Windows - the only platform IE runs on (the Mac port was discontinued, IIRC). This is why IE market share affects MS's bottom line. Without near-universal deployment of IE, they wouldn't be able to control the market like this.
It saddens me that the F/OSS communities don't work harder on enhancing interactivity on the web. I think this will be the killer feature of XAML - and I don't see why we need to sit and wait until Microsoft introduces it. We can beat them to it!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I recently deleted Mozilla on my FreeBSD laptop and compiled Firefox and Thunderbird. I found that when clicking on web links in email, or clicking on email links on web pages, I could not bring up the complementary program. I ended up putting Mozilla back on the laptop. I am wondering if this is natural behavior for these programs or if I missed a setting?
Might be fun to rename IE to iexplore.bak and FF to iexplore.exe
:)
I'd prefer renaming iexplore.exe to iexplore.pos
since Internet Explorer is an integral part of the OS
Another way to do this is to back up iexplore.exe, calling it windowsupdate.exe, and then patch iexplore.exe (or any other application linking to mshtml.dll) with the Mozilla ActiveX control.
Go ahead and try deleting iexplore.exe. Then wait 5-20secs and a new copy will appear! (atleast under XP)
If all the OSS trimmed their features, keeping only the ones that worked and were documtented, certain Distros could fit on a floppy.
Aug 2004
MS Internet Explorer No 63689 91.9 %
Mozilla No 1875 2.7 %
Netscape No 1363 1.9 %
Unknown ? 702 1 %
Safari No 563 0.8 %
FireFox No 554 0.7 %
Opera No 315 0.4 %
Firebird (Old FireFox) No 121 0.1 %
Sept 2004
MS Internet Explorer No 56837 91.5 %
Mozilla No 1685 2.7 %
Netscape No 1294 2 %
Safari No 945 1.5 %
FireFox No 931 1.4 %
Unknown ? 211 0.3 %
Opera No 118 0.1 %
Oct 2004
MS Internet Explorer No 40864 91.9 %
Mozilla No 895 2 %
Netscape No 880 1.9 %
FireFox No 757 1.7 %
Safari No 628 1.4 %
Unknown ? 235 0.5 %
Opera No 85 0.1 %
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
``Since the cost of making the site correctly in the first place is very low, likely the same price as doing it incorrectly''
That's not true. Any script kiddie with a WYSIWYG tool can generate a website that has hideous code but will be grokked by browsers. Making a standards-compliant website requires someone with actual knowledge and a certain passion, and likely needs to be hand-coded. This obviously costs a lot more.
At least, until the script kiddie FUBARs the site, of which I have seen the results a number of times. And cleaning such a mess is not pretty.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Dead horse beats you, whatever...
Don't joke...
There is a binary replacement for the IE ActiveX control, which will "replace" the control with one built from the Mozilla source.
In my testing (minimal) it seems to work reasonably well...
Scarily enough, the person doing it has also provided a tool to modify existing binaries to use this control rather than the IE one... I haven't tried it personally, but looks... interesting.
[root@GRIFFIN root]# rpm -e coffee-1.22.3-1a.i386.rpm
error: removing these packages would break dependencies:
... is that they are their own worst enemy.
And current stats for October-The site doesn't get that much traffic, but when those 2 big IE vulnerabilities came out a couple months ago, I started a big push on our forums for people to switch. It seems to have worked. At least for our regular traffic.
No unauthorized use. Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
I use IE to browse slashdot because installing or using firefox at work will get me fired.
with the SCO stuff that's going on, my company WILL NOT allow anyone to install ANYTHING that we haven't protected ourselves from. This basically means that we pay hundreds of dollars per line of source code to use open source software for the sole purpose of saying that "We got it from a vendor, sue the vendor not us!"
in the event that some company comes around and claims that they themselves wrote firefox and decides to sue every user, i guess we'll be protected.
I call bullshit. it drives me MAD that i can't use PuTTY or Firefox at work. Its an easy choice i guess, to use IE or get fired, but I'm already looking for another job because of it. Yes I HATE IE that much.
Concerning sites that sell stuff to end users, adopting standards is becoming a good business proposition. Managers will be quite pleased when they learn they can reach 10% more customers just by tweaking their site..
Concerning nutso web developers who want to provide a rich multimedia experience on the web, firefox will need a 20-30% market share before they care.
Stop the brainwash
I'm pretty sure we'll be ok without you.
OSTG is not exactly the best benchmark for the acceptance of Firefox.
"I wonder what the most popular browser on msn.com is..."
Likewise with myself - we are not "allowed" to use any other applications than those that are deemed as safe to use at work. If I even try to install FF, the next time I reboot FF is 'magically' removed and IE is the default again. Same goes for Opera.
I personally find it humorous to watch the IT gang here scurrying to patch machines due to new IE security threats when they could just approve FF to use at work.
What might be more interesting for stats is to get the same numbers split into work-hours and and after-hours.
Hotmail doesn't work properly in Mozilla, so...
The ability to turn Flash crap on/off with the PreBar add-on is a great feature. I cannot understand why it isn't implemented in the brower. Does anyone have any insight into this why such a usefull feature is not included by default?
If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
To date over 1/3 are from outside the US, 60 different countries.
Get your name in The New York Times when Firefox goes 1.0.
SpreadFirefox.com
/. has more than a million readers yet http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ has less than 7,300 names as of today. So less than 1% of readers who are PRO Open Source are willing to put their money where their mouth is.
People, this is once in a lifetime shot at getting the web back from commercial interested.
$30 or even a $10 will go a LONG way.
I've been using firefox (then phoenix) since 2002, it hit our corporate desktops at 0.3 and most staff have since switched browsers at home. I actually get help with the rollouts, even requests for nightlies from people who are tracking bugs. None of this happens with any other software we use.
The website you are using (Slashdot.org) is not standards compliant.
Washington University recommends you upgrade to a better site immediately.
10 percent for Firefox (well, let's say for Mozilla browsers in general) seemed like a hedged bet :)
Everyone whose computer I've put it on seems to have taken to Firefox quickly (or in some cases, Mozilla), and I've heard several of them recommending it to other people.
timothy
jrnl: http://tinyurl.com/c2l8yr / foes: http://tinyurl.com/ckjno5
http://slashdot.org/articles/00/11/07/0253219.shtm l
"Personally, I'd recommend beta-testing IE 6, since IE not only has won the browser wars, it's clearly a better browser - and will remain so."
How far we have come.
to see Slashdot statistics broken down by browsers.
Only shooting for 10%? They should come up with a good slogan to help them hit their goals, like:
Mozilla FireFox -- The Libertarian Candidate of Browsers
Mozilla FireFox -- Shouldn't YOUR computer be on Fire?
I use IE to browse slashdot because installing or using firefox at work will get me fired.
Its an easy choice i guess, to use IE or get fired, but I'm already looking for another job because of it. Yes I HATE IE that much.
You know, you could just wait until you get home to read Slashdot.
What I'm still waiting for is to see what's next. I'm surprised someone hasn't come out with something superior to a browser.
Most of what people want to do with the a browser just doesn't work that well. For whoever solves that, they'll be the next big thing.
I just don't see a lot of progess in information management and presentation. I guess the web has become main stream and such changes just aren't practical. Much like we're still using ancient SMTP for mail.
Mozilla has an oppurtunity. If they can make their browser easy to develop plugins and developer software for they'll have a chance at really gaining on IE. Until that becomes easier, there's still going to be a lot of resistance in IT shops where they need more than just a browser. The FireFox as a platform idea from Blake is nothing new, but the problem is that Open Source developers don't seem to have the ability to create a solution thats easy to develop for. Often it takes an age to accomplish something fairly minor
Ofcourse all that effort could bet squashed by whoever comes out with the next gotta have technology. Microsoft also has an oppurtunity to really shake things up. Unfortunately they'll probably go the proprietary route and get slammed for that. I should put a signature here
Start Button > Set Program Access and Defaults > Choose a Default Web Browser
A number of people these days speculate that Google will be entering the browser war, especially when they bring up the fact that Google hired the main IE guy from Microsoft. Google _won't_ be building a browser, and it won't even be leasing it. Google may be investing their time, money, and people in pushing the existing Firefox browser, and enhancing its already powerful platform-like features (e.g. extensions and plugins).
For an example, you can try Firefox/Mozilla search plugin that lets you _full-text_ search your bookmarks from Firefox via Simpy[1]. I am sure you will see a lot more of that stuff soon.
Firefox is powerful, and when 1.0 hits download servers, all major newspapers will be blabbering about it, just like they were blabbering about GOOG's IPO. Then even non-tech people will dump IE in favour of Firefox.
[1] Simpy
Simpy
What is interesting is that the company will waste so much money and time "authorizing" software, but won't do simpler money-saving things like checking if their employees are wasting time reading web sites instead of working!
I use IE to browse slashdot because installing or using firefox at work will get me fired.
so run it off a usb thumb drive.
That is whgat I do, my links, and firefox I execute for mthe install I made to a dirt cheap 128 meg usb thumb drive.
the dipshits at IT cant do a thing about that, nor can they track and control it..
which makes me grin... I think I'll go and borrow everyone's ID again and run through the building making the IT people think there is a mob of employees looking for them. (RFID monitoring by a moron boss.)
Agreed...At home my computers are restricted so you can't utilize IE...you are forced to use mozilla. And being in the IT department at work I can install anything I want, but since one part of our website (key for me) is not exactly Mozilla extreme friendly, I need to use IE and thusly i use IE at work all the time...though our marketing dept uses Firefox :D (thats cause the marketing department managers husband is an IT geek)...
I mod down so you can mod up. Your welcome.
I have several thousand bookmarks / favorites with directories within dirs, within dirs, etc.
FF only displays them in treed mode and scrolling up, down, side to side is a pain.
I'd like something that opens a window in explorer list mode.
Much easier to navigate.
Have you considered trying again? get a newer version of Firefox. It is so much more secure, and I don't think I could live without tab browsing now...
I, for one, welcome our red commie wacko monster overlords...
Seriously, though. If you and others feel threatened by an image which is obviously a satirical take on Socialist propganda, and which, if you step back off of the leftwing vs. rightwing toadstool, also seems to be saying something about people worshipping a large red Godzilla-clone.... then I dunno.
I suppose it would be better and more freedom-loving if we had a gif of the mozilla monster inside a Star of David or hanging from a cross or riding on the back of an elephant, against a waving american flag.
It's a joke.
Or maybe the wackos really are coming. They want our internets.
B
"We must still have chaos within in order to be able to give birth to a dancing star." --Friedrich Nietzsche
Seriously, nobody who stops by the Mozilla website and reads the Firefox product page is even going to see that picture. And even if they did why should it matter? To me it's petty to avoid Mozilla simply because of an attempt to make a humorous play on the whole open-source thing.
Hotmail doesn't work properly in Mozilla, so...
It's always worked fine for me, and I know many other people that have reported it works fine. I'd say this is a case of user error, but since you didn't bother to give any details at all I'm also willing to believe that you are simply trolling.
Must...not...repeat...memme...Must... ...not...ahhh...I feel weak...
Slashdot renders properly - in Japan.
I've yet to try Firefox out on the same platform as Mozilla and Konqueror, but I can say that Konqueror is now may favorite browser. It looks good, it's quick on modest hardware like 333 MHz PII and up, and it's integrated spell check and file manipulation tools across local, ftp and sftp rock. I miss the specific blocking features, but the trade off is worth while.
For pure speed, Dillo is very cool. It won't do scripts but it runs like lightning under fluxbox on a 90MHz P1 with 24 MB of RAM.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Have been using firefox since it was firebird, on both windows and *nix, and slashdot has always rendered perfectly.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
My useragent is set to GoogleBot. That way, I can see articles which are set to be open to google indexing. IGN does this a lot.
Might be fun to rename IE to iexplore.bak and FF to iexplore.exe
I gave it a whack on my test machine, and it sort of works. What I did was installed firefox to C:\Program Files\Internet Explorer so as to not worry about path issues. Made a copy of IEXPLORE.EXE and made my IE shortcut point to the copy, made a copy of firefox.exe and renamed that copy to IEXPLORE.. This way, when firefox is called for normally, nothing is different for it. MSN launches firefox now when checking my hotmail, except it doesn't actually load hotmail, that doesn't work seem to work, with the way IE is being called by MSN. Then, when I launch IE manually later, it loads two instances of the browser: 1 with my start page and 1 with hotmail in it. If I hadn't run MSN just prior, and tried to check hotmail in firefox then it just does the start page. IE also now gives a warning about running in compatibility mode, and that some features may be disabled (probably a good thing, heh), but my online banking works so it works well enough. I'd figured there wouldn't be major issues with filename conflicts, though something obviously did bork somewhere.
never seen that pic before, I like it!
It is bound to "help" adopt Mozilla since the Kapitalistic armies aren't rounding up support, they're rather killing it off.
Death to the oil thieves.
I'm not advocating blocking content and yes, to get people's attention sometimes you have to inconvenience them. Picketing Walmart for living wages might annoy some of their customers, but isn't that kind of the point?
An alert is just that, an alert. If enough sites did this and enough people switched browsers Microsoft might just say, hey... we need to stop giving this lip service and really make fixing our browser a priority.
I don't use IE because I'm a OSX user and it just blows compared to the alternatives. I understand the attraction to ActiveX's flash and sizzle. Outlook Web Access is almost usable on a Windows box with IE... but at what cost? I've helped WAY too many friends try to remove adware from their machines. I don't have time to go door to door switching people to FireFox, but I control sites that thousands of people I visit each day.
This is my way of saying, I tried of fixing your machine because of problems with Microsoft's products. Please take a small step that will have a big impact and switch to FireFox.
I'm tired of the intarweb acting as a giant perverted application. Animated div layers, popup windows, javascript, frames, etc. Fuck ActiveX. Fuck Xul. Fuck Flash. Fuck Java. Fuck plug-ins. Fuck them all. Just give me static hyperlinked pages. That's all I want.
On the other hand, gmail refuses (or at least refused) to let me in using IE 6 on Windows. Gave me a message saying words to the effect of "Use a more secure browser".
Delicious!
Rob
(posting via Safari)
.
They will never know the simple pleasure of a monkey knife fight
Simple, Install Mandrake 10, Mozilla(or Firefox) and KPPP. /dev/ttyS0 /dev/modem if your serial modem is connected to com1.
Configure KPPP to launch Mozilla(or Firefox) via the "Configure" Dialog Box (program to launch. upon connect)
Some folks may need to open a console and type:
ln -s
If you use a win modem you might replace it for $20 with a serial modem.
Done
P.S. You also need to convert your password to the scrambled string that Netzero expects in place of your password. There are web utils to help with this.
You'll never have to worry about IE again.
The government which is strong enough to protect you from everything is strong enough to take everything from you.
If IE usage really dropped to 0% (pretty much impossible) it would make the use of other desktops far more viable.
Furthermore it reduces the focus on developing all web apps for IE alone. That could happen at 10-20% though, that's a big enough number that banks (for instance) would probably spend a lot more time caring about cross-browser compatibility.
One other effect of Mozilla gaining larger than a 70% or so share would be a proportinate increas in the amount of XUL apps around. That's what really concerns Microsoft as they have XAML in the wings waiting to take that position.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
What moron modded that down? It's the correct procedure, or is Redmond in the house today?
if labs in universities and colleges are setup to include firefox in their computers, post a simple motd login screen to tell them to use firefox, and remove all IE shortcuts, wouldn't that not only boost the percentage of users using the superior browser, but also make the sys admin's lives a lot easier because you dont get as many security issues?
Seriously, how hard is it to get firefox installed in the labs. one of my ee labs at school have mozilla installed but the default profile is broken and you're unable to save your preferences and half of the time it doesn't even start. honestly though, i hate wasting time tweaking things and want things to just work so i can put spend time in doing actual work. if things like mozilla aren't set up properly, people just wont use them. after a while, they'll not think about its existance and totally forgetting about it altogether, even when it's not the school computer they're using.
my blog
That didn't happen with me until I installed Service Pack 2. I had a lot of trouble installing my Notepad replacement, which SP2 obliterated by putting the default Notepad back. I can't remember how I got around XP's shenanigans. I think I had to disable the "Cryptographic Services" service while I did the switch-a-roo. I might have had to disable something else, too. It was just trial and error until I succeeded.
Aw, whatsa matter, moderator? I hurt your feelings by calling you dumb? The truth hurts, I guess?
here you go
There might be a lot, but certainly not 100% of the slashdot readers. Besides, the comment says it: only 30% of the /. readers use FF.
I'll probably get flamed to death for writing this, but I think a lot of OSS people are hypocrits. They claim "Source should be free! Source should be free!" and then beg for money. I know that "free software" is not like "free beer", but if you expect to make a lot of money from an OSS, you're a fool.
Besides, is all the donated money distributed to every single developer who worked on FF? Or is it all going into aol's pockets (mozilla is netscape is aol right?)? I see this as a kind of disguised slavery "Work on an OSS project for free, people! It's for a good cause. (And then I collect money from donations)". I almost prefer paying for Opera instead (In fact, I did buy it, but I use FF). At least, I know that every developer who worked on Opera has been paid for their work.
Bottom line: OSS is a cute philosophy, but as long as you don't start begging for money to your users.
perception is reality
Does this mean they might be willing to fix their shit Java support? Ah, I feel much better. Now, back to dealing with Foxfire's shit Java support...
You suck.
I had the newest version at the time (the time being a couple days ago... I used it for a few weeks)
yea and when one of the IT guys walks past his office or the internal sites start showing firefox User Agent strings they track it to him and he gets fired.
Snowden and Manning are heroes.
What percentage of web users are capable of going to mozilla.org and downloading a browser? For those that can't, the only way to convert them to Firefox is to either send them a disk with it or install it for them.
I don't know wether it will help you, but you can run Mozilla without installing from an USB-stick or a CD. As soon as you take out the CD or remove the USB-stick, there won't be a single trace of Mozilla left on the machine.
People PC is the same way. Regardless of your default browser, if you click one of their links on their "start page" an IE window opens.
Doing my part though. I taught grandma how to copy and paste the url into the address bar of her Firefox browser.
Whereas Trillian launches the system default browser, and Hotmail renders perfectly in FireFox here.
I can't attribute the quote:
The radical left and the radical right are both, very wrong, and, very dangerous
Required reading for internet skeptics
phozz
I guess the above post was supposed to be humorous, but I'll answer anyway. :)
Macs make up about 2-3% of the browser market. This share is split between IE 5.2 (no longer supported), Safari (default on new Macs), and Mozilla.
Mozilla (Firefox, Firebird, etc) probably has 5-10% of the market share.
I run a browser stats page that might be helpful: it is at http://www.theoblique.com/pub/browser-stats.html
Enough with the damn popups. SP2 blocks popups. The Google toolbar blocks popups. The Yahoo toolbar blocks pop-ups. Noton blocks popups. Download.com lists 253 popup blockers. Search results
For those managers who need some sort of indemnification against claims about freeware... You can create an "action plan" to swap out the offending piece of software for a commercial equivalent in the case of a spurious lawsuit (like SCO). This will limit your exposure, while not hindering your options.
Fight FUD
These stats may be interesting, maybe not. They are for a small farm equipment manufacturer in the midwest, so they are fairly representitive of a non-techie crowd.
IE 6.0: 73.2%
IE 5.5: 6.6%
IE 5.0: 6.1%
NN 6.+: 1.6%
NN 4.7: 1.0%
Mozilla: 3.7%
Safari: 1.6%
And 12 hits from Konqueror! Props to the unix-geek farmers!
"If a site refuses my browser, whatever that browser may be, then I refuse to surf that site."
I actually converted our office over to Firefox, but now am in the process of moving half of them back. Why?
The new software we are using has drop down menus that only work in IE. (Apparently Sun got them to upgrade it so that it works with Mozilla 4.0 or something too?)
Anyway, the point being, many of us unfortunately have no choice. Worse yet, those of us who do attempt to switch can lose credibility with users, when software/web sites force us to switch back :(
I use firefox only, but it isn't all that great as slashdotters would like to believe. A few nice extra features like Tabbed browsing, and Other small stuff like Fast Find, Live bookmarks. If MSFT wants to, they can easily add these features to IE. If MSFT perceives Firefox as a danger, they will certainly defeat it by improving IE. I feel Firefox must add a lot more features. It seems to have a Windows 95 like clunky user interface. For example, why can't I close a tab directly. The closing "X" icon should be right on the tab just like in the Eclipse IDE. Second, I should be able to browse the various tabs by keyboard (so simple, yet not implemented. It clearly Shows that developers and not end-users are driving the GUI design). Third, open the Excel/Word/Other documents without the extra browser window. Finally, For heaven sake, please remove the "View Saved Passwords" option in the Privacy tab. If a guest wants to use my PC, I hesitate because he can easily check my passwords. So I stopped using the Password Manager totally. Finally, make the ad-block Extension a fundamental part of Firefox. This is the one and only reason I use firefox today. It is an absolutely lovely extension. kudos to adblock.
they can track me through the proxy.
.exe's i'm running. if i hide firefox.exe by naming it iexplore.exe they can (and do) do an md5 sum to verify.
they can see what
not long ago a person on my team was fired for USING putty. if you've used it you know there is no installation. there's not even a eula to agree to. he was fired anyway.
there is no way i'll use firefox even if its on a cd or a usb key. they scan all drives at random times and i'm not losing my job.
you can bet i'm working on another one though.
More love of Opera needs to be spread. I have not found a real reason to switch from it to Firefox... Agree or disagree?
How about using Opera? It's closed source from a "real" company, but it still knocks the socks off IE. A few adverts are nothing compared to all the problems with Internet Explorer.
Anyway, that's why I suggest renaming IE rather than deleting it outright. I can't think of anything I use that demands IE, other than Windows Update, so I've never had much impetus to play with it myself, which is where the "no promises" disclaimer comes from....
Ughhhh "now in it's at 19%"
"He attributes some of the success to faster browsing."
A lot of people claim this, and I don't understand it (at least on Win).
I tried FF months ago and found it unusably slow.
Switched to Moz, somewhat better.
Recently went back to FF, about the same as Moz.
BOTH are significantly and consistently slower than IE6.
At times it takes 5+ seconds even to show the first visible sign of responding to a click (e.g. in the mouse icon or status bar).
And redrawing a window (after being uncovered or un-minimized) is excruciating.
This is running w2kPro on a 1+Ghz Asus/AMD system with 256MB, a late-model WD IDE drive, and a 21-inch Hitachi monitor driven at 1152x864 32-bit colors by an STB Velocity 128 AGP card.
Even with the old video card and small amount of RAM, why should Moz/FF be so much slower than IE?
Am I the only one to notice that the devs involved are becoming more focused on FireFox and less focused on Mozilla?
FireFox has a better download manager.
If both code bases are open, why don't the improvements I've noticed in FireFox filter back to Mozilla itself?
I'll stop whining. Guess I should learn to program, then check in the appropos subroutines in CVS, and see if it ever gets built.
We're at work! :)
I have a Mac, and my browsers of choice are Safari and Firefox. My dad has a PC running XP, which my sister uses.
Recently, I noticed there was an extra bar in IE - spyware, of course. A little googling and I managed to remove it. Then, I installed Firefox, and told sis not to use IE anymore. And I intend to install Thunderbird.
My Mac is safe, I guess... but I would like to make that PC safer. And, if possible, cleansed of Internet Explorer and Outlook Express. How does one do it? I heard MS made it very tricky. Any clues? Also, any good site with security tips?
Circumcision is child abuse.
IANAL, but I don't know what you think your company will be protected from. AFAIK, neither copyright violations nor patent violations are subject to "good faith" knowledge or depend on how much you paid for the products. This is especially true for patents; unless, of course, your company has a separate agreement with the vendor where in case of lawsuit the vendor will pay litigation costs. Then they surely must have a similar agreement for the proprietary software as well.
Stats for a high-traffic commercial site with a general audience. The Mozilla category includes Netscape, Mozilla, and Firefox.
OCTOBER 2003
IE 78%
Mozilla 15%
Safari 1%
Opera 1%
Other 5%
OCTOBER 2004
IE 75%
Mozilla 18%
Safari 1%
Opera 1%
Other 5%
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
The default home page, and links to msn.com, are worth a *lot* of money in terms of traffic.
Internet Explorer is not free. It is a part of a expensive piece of software program, Microsoft Windows.
Plus, it's not free in the sense of freedom. Firefox is.
Plus, it's not open, as in open standards. Open standards ensure web client independence.
So, it matters whether people use IE or Firefox.
It wouldn't matter if they chose between _free_ browsers.
In my job, not reading web pages will get me fired a lot quicker than browsing the web from time to time. Even if some % of that is for less related stuff.
Why not use the productivity of the worker to check if something is wrong? Restricting freedoms like that can have quite an impact on morale, and in the case of the internet, on the personal development of the employee.
Especially in computer related jobs, keeping up to date is quite essential.
you would not believe the amount of time that it takes to authorize a piece of software. we're talking years here, just to *decide* to use something like websphere application studio. (to be fair, we're a very, very large company, and a ship this big takes a long time to turn. we own the largest privately owned network in the USA - something like 200k employees)
... statement, yes they dont' care at all how much i surf, as long as i surf using an insecure browser.
they don't allow you to install any software because click-thru licensing is so evil, even on gpl software. the problem lies in the fact that there is no indemnification clause. there is nothign in those licenses preventing someone from suing us for using software X.
its a big mess. this company does not seem to care that popups install spyware. they have activex disabled to a degree but that did not stop the javascript drag-n-drop vulnerability from infecting my corp machine. we're still not patched for that. of course few others believe that it is a big mess but the entire IT department (8500 folks, with a loose definition of IT) as a whole does not. "what is firefox" is the response i get to almost every mention of it.
but to answer your
What is interesting is that the company will waste so much money and time "authorizing" software, but won't do simpler money-saving things like checking if their employees are wasting time reading web sites instead of working!
Put your lawyer hat on for a second. The act of wasting time reading web sites itself may not violate any vendor contracts or purchase agreements. However just the act of installing Firefox could.
Employee termination procedures and lawsuit settlements cost more than thumb-up-the-butt presenteeism.
Speak truth to power.
> He attributes some of the success to faster browsing and a lack of software bloat, and suggests that other open source projects might see similar success if they trim features.
What a crock of bull. Look at Gnome, people are droping it right and left because it's too stripped down. I used mozilla (only for browsing) and amd playing with Firefox, but notice that there are some features in mozilla for browsing that firefox hasn't implemented (even as extension). I miss them and will probably go back to mozilla. If a lot of OSS projects start stripping features, then their windows counterparts will be more attractive.
Attributing the success of Firefox to striped features is way off base.
Translation: We don't guarantee we own it (CONDITION OF TITLE), don't guarantee you won't get legally harrassed because of using it (QUIET ENJOYMENT), and don't guarantee it doesn't infringe on anyone else's copyright (NON-INFRINGEMENT). Your employer has no more guarantee using commercial software unless specifically stated otherwise in a contract.
Show your boss the licenses to the commercial software you're using and watch the sparks fly.
While lack of dynamic font support is a drawback is't not that huge a problem. Because most people in Asian countries that want to read Asian websites tend to already have the fonts installed. A guy in Taiwan using his localised Windows will already have the fonts he needs to read tarditional Chinese over the web. It's only when he wants to read Japanese websites that he'll run into font issues.
For better or worse, IE has set the standard for
a good many things. There's no reason to fight that.
The Firefox users do not benefit from their
inability to handle sites that rely on IE CSS
behavior. Rendering HTML like IE does would not
introduce security or portability problems.
Being "right" isn't always right. Sometimes a
helping of humble pie is good for you.
To be really nice, a Wine+qemu jail would be used
to safely run ActiveX stuff. That might be going
above and beyond the call of duty though.
Mozilla FireFox -- looks like a fox humping the world
I run my own computer repair biz after school. Many times my customer has a spyware problem so after I fix it I always put mozilla on. I have always seen spyware go down because of mozilla, and the spyware that does go on is cookies, no apps!!! My customers love mozilla for all the great features it has and the speed, not one has complaned. The only reason I am putting mozilla on and not firefox is because mozilla is stable and firefox is not, once firefox becomes stable I will start putting it on. Oh ya just my 2 cents about the IE only webpages. Im on Linux and everytime I click the "Enter Anyway" link everything works fine so there all bs.
...here's my stats:
:-)
IE: 1%
Tabbed browsers: 25%
WinHTTrack: 9%
curl: 65%
yes, I'm kiddng.
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
I run quite a small website (~80 sessions a day), but here are its stats since June.
Internet Explorer 44.97%
Mozilla 24.38%
msnbot 12.26%
Gigabot 7.20%
Googlebot 2.25%
Opera 1.90%
Jetbot 1.61%
Konqueror 1.20%
ia_archiver 1.17%
Mozilla Compatible Agent 1.11%
If Google ever releases a browser based on Firefox and promotes it in every frikkin page they have, I believe things could get pretty shaky for MS.
And once you are there, who knows what could happen. I can see a Google browser becoming a truly powerful and dominant consumer platform.
The data contradict your assertion.
MS is losing marketshare to Firefox. This is undeniable.
Why yes, I AM a rocket scientist!
I often get family and friends asking me to come over thier house to fix thier spyware laden and virus infected computers. I would often do this only to have to come back six months later to clean up all over again.
I now tell them in order for me to support thier computers five things have to happen:
1) Virus software is manditory. If you dont have it I will pick it up but hand you the bill.
2) Adaware.
3) Zone Alarm. Only because it's not microsoft. This is not meant to slam them. I figure minority software has a smaller chance of being attacked/exploited.
4) Thunderbird instead of outlook. The history of outlook exoploits mandates this one.
5) Firefox instead of mozilla. I just like it better and again I figure minority software has a smaller chance of being attacked/exploited.
If thier favorite IE only sites dont work in firefox I just tell them the sites are broken. If they insist on IE I in turn insist that they will be on thier own and I will no longer support thier computers.
I use zone alarm to block IE and outlook in addition to using the XP application chooser or whatever its called.
If I am going to be responsible for fixing someones computer for free; I am doing it on my terms.
please note OPERA is 50% (cuz we da users use opera mostly and the rest is scued via search bots)
.NET .NET CLR 1
1 1023 24.48% Opera/7.50 (Windows NT 5.0; U) [en]
2 452 10.82% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0) Opera 7.23
3 356 8.52% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1;
4 333 7.97% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1; SV1)
5 280 6.70% Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Yahoo! Slurp; http://help.yahoo.com/
6 258 6.17% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.0)
7 206 4.93% Opera/7.51 (Windows 98; U) [en]
8 140 3.35% msnbot/0.3 (+http://search.msn.com/msnbot.htm)
9 130 3.11% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/2004
10 94 2.25% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1)
11 90 2.15% Googlebot/2.1 (+http://www.google.com/bot.html)
12 86 2.06% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows NT 5.1;
13 78 1.87% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/2004
14 71 1.70% Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 5.01; Windows NT 5.0)
15 69 1.65% ia_archiver
I think one of the key pieces missing for XUL adoption is the lack of a robust, powerful IDE. If there was something with a notionally similar user interface to Boa Constructur, but spitting out XUL instead of wxPython code, it would be a HUGE advance.
Creating GUIs is fundamentally a different mindset to writing straight code. As a coder, I tend to use more "primitive" tools such as vim that let me get my hands dirty in the code (although Eclipse has just about turned me around); on those admittedly rare occasions when I have to build a GUI, I'm just lost without a powerful IDE. One of the big reasons for the success of VB in the past has been the absolutely killer drag-and-drop style IDE.
If/when MS releases XAML, you can be very sure it'll have a terrific IDE behind it. If there's no moderately comparable IDE for XUL at that point, I think it'll be very tough for XUL to keep up.
At that point, I'm going to e-mail all of my friends about it, and also put a "Take Back the Web" link in my AIM profile and start spreading the word. Firefox 1.0PR is ready for the masses, as ready as it will be. The only way it will get better is with MASS USAGE, and I'm on board with the 1.0 release party. I'm kinda excited to be honest.
Berto
That's what a motivational speaker would say.
You know, for when we need that extra kick in articles, we can say "Our user base goes up to 11%."
That's a very strange (but highly amusing) site. Check out their graphic of the IE logo dressed as Bin Laden.
Vino, gyno, and techno -Bruce Sterling
Sturgeon's Law: then 90% of Web browsers will be crap!
Imagine this twist to the 'browser wars'...
Instead of couting how many visitors went to one site, count the number of sites a person visits within each browser. Firefox is a power-user's browser, the most important market segment. As power-browsers give feedback on their favorite and open sourced browser the product, the browser will become fine tuned and ready to take the entire market.
Firefox has grown leaps and bounds in a short time by using open source ideas allowing them to exchange code with their (main?) Mozilla project, they have already laid the foundation for a perfect product.
Firefox wins in the end.
Get your Unix fortune now!
The folks over at metafilter are having an interesting conversation with lots of people complaining about a site that doesn't work in IE. Funny that many are so against that notion. I wonder if they are similarly outraged when a site doesn't work in mozilla.
http://www.popularculturegaming.com -- my blog about the culture of videogame players
Then in 1998, AOL bought Netscape and I threw in the towel, I finally resigned to using IE on my Windows machines (which were usually at work - at work I either use a desktop thats Linux, Solaris or Windows, at home, Linux). IE had caught up, and with AOL owning Netscape, using Netscape felt less like the "rebel" position.
Then through partially through the lobbying of Jamie Zawinski, Mozilla was released, and I became interested again. I downloaded it - and I liked it. Tabs. Cookie/Password/Form managers. View Image option on web pages. Other features I like I'm probably forgetting. And Mozilla is free software, something which is important to me. It's free software, it's not Microsoft, and it's better than Microsoft! After downloading Mozilla for the first time I became a confirmed Mozilla user.
and if you could create adm files for group policy in active directory, then we can customize firefox like ie (from proxy settings, etc.)
the target is mainly consumers, but if corporate would start adopting firefox, then sites will become standard to firefox and users at home will use firefox as it is used in the office.
Live your life each day as if it was your last.
... and I use IE exclusively.
*sob* Why?
At least here in the PRC, Windows comes with CJK fonts. SimSun, NSimSun, SimFang and SimHei for simplified chinese (although these also contain a sizeable number of traditional characters, being GBK), MingLiu, PMingLiu for Traditional Chinese, MS Gothic and MS Mincho for Japanese, and the Batang font family for Korean.
I would imagine that a Taiwanese or HK version of Windows would contain more traditional fonts, and a Japanese version more Japanese fonts, but the fonts included represent both "serif" and "sans-serif" styles (as the W3C interprets those terms for Asian fonts), which means that essentially all pages are browsable.
I use Firefox on Debian GNU/Linux, with these fonts (and others not packaged with Windows) copied from my coworkers' windows machines, and I have never come across a page that doesn't look nice.
A much larger problem (for me) is the fact that FreeType seems unable to create italic, oblique and bold versions of its CJK fonts. I am using the xftt module for X -- it apparently is capable of this -- but I still am unable to see bold fonts, which is a real pain.
But this is not the case in Windows.
A much larger problem than fonts is that the notion of standards compliance, CSS, and the like have not really penetrated the asian web design market -- these guys are doing 1994-style web design, with animated gifs and blink tags and an overuse of bad javascript. Active X is not uncommon. In general, only IE (and usually only IE 6) is tested, which means that everything else breaks.
With the Mozilla Active X control.
Google for it.
thats what he will get from MS just so he can quit his position as lead for firefox project. its a WIN -WIN situation dont ya think? :P
No, DO NOT do this! I have tried this and windows will actually create a new IEXPLORE.EXE and it will create a lot of random problems.
Natural Selection: self-destruction of the poor and lazy
If advanced browsers are only n% of the market, then supporting W3C standards would allow that site to increase it's potential customer base by n%. Apparently, non-MSIE browsers are already over 15% of the hits for sites visited by early adopters of other tech. So, it's not a matter of a long while before the more average folks follow, too.
One of my anecdotes regards my former bank. They went with a MSIE-only "net" bank. I walked down the block and to their competitor and got a platform independent web bank, plus better interest and reduced service charges, and for a few things no service charges. I'm not that good of a negotiator either. So vote with your wallet. Some bank will offer you a good enough deal to switch. Considering that I was investigating a house loan at the time, the MSIE-only bank lost out more than bottle & can money.
Another example was a relative of mine who bought a good handful of tickets for transatlantic flights all at once. First choice was SAS, but their site was MSIE-only so he went with a competitor and sent a copy of the receipt plus a polite letter (took 5 minutes - template, print, envelope, stamp, post) explaining how they could get his business in the future.
Ask and ye shall receive...
The squeaky wheel gets the grease...
etc.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Not agreeing isn't the same as trolling, you retards.
Here is a case in point: US vehicle regulations limit the max brightness of daytime running lamps; this helps keep daytime motorcycle headlamps more conspicuous. Canadian vehicles, however, run DRL's at full headlamp brightness. I suspect that a lower number of motorcyclists (because of the shorter riding season there) contributes to his difference in the regulations.
My wife's site serves cute graphics to ladies like school teachers. About 20 visitors a day.
IE 92%
Firefox 4%
Netscape 1%
Others 1%
Tom Haws
I sure hope they can get several of the more annoying 1.0PR bugs out before the big release or else the big 1.0 publicity could end up being a bad thing for their increasing market share.
Some browsers don't offer the features that really harness the power of the web. Therefore, choosing the browser that best suits your needs, can really make a difference.
testing out my trending skills
Unless your company is dealing with top secret stuff I'm surprised *anyone* works there, or your company even exists at all.
I wonder how many of your bosses are running trial versions of WinZip, or some other illegal software. According to their logic Spyware should get you canned, but the bosses may be above the law.
Rules like that are a joke at best. I realize they are afraid of getting an SCO style lawsuit in the mail, but surely they are spending way more $$$ protecting themselves than some small fine SCO or whoever may try to charge. If you find a new job, I would suggest installing a ton of junk on your computer and do a cost benefit analysis including your increased productivity and the better bottom line. Leave it on all your bosses desks when you leave, as high up as your RFID tracker will let you get.
I work for a very pervasive insurance company. State Farm.
.exes unceremoniously deleted. they scan every directory, on every drive, and they do it at least twice per week per PC. before i knew about these rules I was running firefox from my USB key and i was confronted at my desk, in front of everyone about my use of unauthorized software. it was my second day at the company.
we bought a company-wide version of winzip, and it took a great deal of business cases to even get administrative access on my own machine.
our computers are scanned regularly. ssh sessions (we don't use SSH, we have vpn's everywhere) are closed, unauthorized applications automatically uninstalled, unauthorized
they may be a joke to you, but to state farm, they're very serious.
Dillo crashes immediately when I tried it. I wanted to try a graphical browser on my 16MHz box just for kicks. But I guess I'll stick with Links in text mode.
Constitutionally Correct
The latest Firefox has an Explorer-like view for the bookmark manager.
The idea of "standards" are foreign to most web designers, even those that really ought to know better (/.).
Instead, they will make two versions of the page, one for IE and one for Mozilla/Firefox, and tell everyone else to "upgrade". Just like they did when Netscape and IE both had significant marketshare.
PS: The Firefox version will of course be so outdated and broken, that you get better results by pretenting to be IE and let FireFox "bug compatibility" handle it.