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%.

Comments

So does this mean..

[ivan256]

.. 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?

Re:So does this mean..

[ivan256]

10% of the browser market is probably 1000% or more of the AutoCAD market.

What really matters is wether it would cost more to make your site standards compliant than it would bring in through the added users. 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 almost never the case. Ignoring a segment of the market, no matter what percentage of the market it is, when the costs of supporting them are less than the return is stupid. As that segment grows, it becomes clear just how stupid neglecting that market segment was.

No surprise

[1000101]

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.

Re:My Website's Stats

[IEEEmember]

The financial and business effect of browser choice is not felt on the client side, it is not typically a factor in purchase decisions.

It is felt on the server side and determines who gets to drive standards.

Additionally Firefox is carrying the banner for freely available open source software on the client much like sendmail and apache have done on the server. The success of Firefox will encourage other developers and increase the rate of adoption on software such as Open Office.

migration

[RealProgrammer]

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.

Re:My Website's Stats

[_KiTA_]

The theory was that if MS controls the client, they can influence other things.

Here are the two ideas:

If MS controlls the browser 99% of people use, then they can change the HTML spec at will. Add a few MS only extensions, a few "nifty things" that other browsers can't do, like pipelining and activex. The theory is that people will be stuck with your OS, your web editor, your browser, and -- possibly -- your Server, all because somewhere down the line it becomes too painful NOT to.

The other theory is the ActiveX thing. If the browser becomes a platform for actual programs, for example web based games, shopping systems, etc, then people are going to be locked in to that format if they are going to want to go to that website. So if they can sucker enough programmers into using ActiveX or some other MS-extended mess, then the users are going to be stuck with IE in order to view that content. Of course, how do they keep the programmers stuck using ActiveX? By suckering enough users to use IE in the first place. Fortunately, PHP, Java, and the general suckyness of ActiveX kinda stopped that in it's tracks.

Then of course, you can make these things patiented, and prevent other people from even trying to beat you at your own game.

So yeah. The idea of MS losing a good 50% or market share -- which is very much a real possibility, since most tech grunts who work at ISPs *MUCH* prefer customers who don't use Outlook and IE (MUCH MUCH easier calls) is a good thing, because it will have a snowball effect.

Re:My Website's Stats

[Just Some Guy]

The financial and business effect of browser choice is not felt on the client side, it is not typically a factor in purchase decisions.

I couldn't disagree more. I'm responsible for a web-based application that my company's customers use to access our database, generate reports, fetch scanned documents, etc. and I made strict XHTML/1.0+CSS compliance a critical priority from the first day of planning. Because of this, our clients can use Windows+IE, Windows+Firefox, OSX+Safari, Linux+Konqueror, or good ol' Lynx to use every bit of functionality throughout the site.

Our clients are in the transportation industry, and many of them have Internet-connected computers solely to visit our site. As it stands right now, they have no reason whatsoever to stick with Windows when they buy their next computer. If their friends tell them to get a Mac because they're easier to use, fine. If their kid installs Linux for them because it's free, fine. If they want to stick with Windows, that's also OK.

The point is that I've given them no reason to keep from switching to a different OS if they want to. I didn't do this because I'm anti-Microsoft - I just wanted a good experience for our customers - but I'm sure that Bill and friends would've preferred that I approached it differently.