Slashdot Mirror
Firefox Continues Gains against IE
kurtz_tan writes "News.com reports that the popularity of alternative Web browser Firefox continues to rise at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, according to a new study by WestSideStory.
The study measured market share by embedding sensors on major web sites such as those of Walt Disney, Best Buy, Sony and Liz Claiborne. WebSideStory retrieves data from 30 million internet users a day passing through its monitored sites. The company then takes a snapshot of two days and compares the growth.
Since beginning its measurements last summer, WebSideStory has been cautious to draw any broad conclusions about Firefox's popularity. This time around, the company said many people are not only downloading Firefox, they're sticking with it and using it."
Not much, could probably be explained away by pure error.
Also, the websites they use probably skew the results as well; Disney, Best Buy, Sony, and Liz Claiborne?
If they want accuracy they should try throwing a few porn sites in, or maybe popular search engines.
I imagine if you had a more accurate sample that Firefox's share might be a little higher.
What?
Figures I have seen on w3cshools show a falling usage rate for opera, from 2.3% to 1.9% - almost a 20% drop. If this is a trend is across the entire userbase, then might firefox end up killing opera rather than (as well as?) IE?
Without any info given on the margin of error, this 0.88% increase is hard to put in perspective. If the margin of error was 0.7%, then we're not talking about much here. Nonetheless, it's very interesting to see FireFox taking hold, even if very slowly. (I suppose that really shows just how entrenched MSIE is.) -- Paul
OpenSource.MathCancer.org: open source comp bio
The study measured market share by embedding sensors on major web sites
.... wow!
Embedding sensors? You mean it checked the user agent. Probably logs (I don't run a webserver, so I dont know if all webservers log that). I knew media tended to sensationalize things but
FireFox is actually a good browser.
This would have happened a long time ago if such a good browser had come along sooner.
Firefox is fast, secure, easy to use, skinable, free, and compatible.
For once, IE isn't more popular based on it's merit. It's actually at a technical disadvantage again and it's decline in popularity is a result of that.
I was skeptical about converting most of my less tech savvy associates over to Firefox at first, but when a few actually actively asked me to help them and their feedback was all positive afterwards, I suggested it to a few more and then even more.
Now anyone I don't feel is capable of keeping their system clean while using IE I recommend convert and I've yet to hear one single complaint.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
I think Firefox will continue to be popular if Microsoft makes new additions to IE mainly because I don't see them removing any of the insecurities (ActiveX) or bloat or integration into the OS that made people switch to Firefox in the first place. Since when was the last time Microsoft removed a so called "useful" and "major" feature despite its obvious downsides?
1. Some non-zero number of people aren't running windows.
2. More that 5% of these are runnning firefox.
Then these figures are an underestimate for the entire web population.
Of course accepting (1) but not (2) suggests an over-estimate, so in either case be wary of considering these figures as accurate.
September 2004 - 2% Mozilla
October 2004 - 2% Mozilla
November 2004 - 3% Mozilla
December 2004 - 3% Mozilla
January 2005 - 5% Mozilla???
Power to the Peaceful
Say, that's a nice, clear-headed comment, and sure is insightful! Most people don't appreciate how much more insightful something is when it's also insulting. Also, I like how you've taken into account that some projects were kicked off years ago by VB-oriented programmers using early versions of that framework, and thus ActiveX ... way before other tools were even viable for some development teams. You may not like inertia, but it's there, and calling people who probably had an IT budget of one hour to throw together an interactive form for use on an private portal site that eventually became public, etc., is, well, assholish. I know... how about not using web sites you don't like? Nah... that's just good advice, and doesn't give me a good way to call someone an asshole. I'll have to think of another suggestion.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
I don't care what my school uses, I've intalled Portable Firefox to a flash drive that I use as well as to my student directory on the school's network. So now, no matter which computer I'm on I can use Firefox (I have the OSX version on my flash drive as well). It's really the only way, the school administration will never listen.
Don't forget to use the www.spreadfirefox.com links every time you refrence someone to download Firefox to increase the counter. Also, never let anyone use IE User-Agent when they are using Firefox, because using counterfeited User-Agent unfairly skews the statistics to the side of Microsoft, and we all know that this is a two-handed sword.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
But since Firefox is good and actually has some great features (you can thank the real browser innovator for many of these... Opera) people will stick with it.
I do believe that many, many more websites are designing to correct web standards instead of exclusively for IE.
As long as IE continues to be a security problem then alternate browsers will flourish. As to what % is significant I am undecided, my gut says 20% of the market and there will no longer be any IE only websites, at least any that plan on staying around!
i've only run into 3 websites that *REQUIRE* IE for windows (granded i havn't been looking hard either)
MLS - Multiple Listing Service for Real Estate. this website alone has prevented meny a Windows -> Mac switch for me alone, now multiply this acnticidote by 1000. but this one doesn't count because only realters are locked into the system, not the general public.
Seibol - a stupid, slow, and crapy internal system used at the techshop that i work for dealing assets, and time management. This system is probably the single biggest time waster at our shop. uhg. but this one doesn't count because only techs who work at the same company i work for are locked into the system, not the general public.
Pop Cap Games - some of the newer online games are activeX controls. it ticks me off because i got addicted to one of the activeX games while bored at school (and on windows) and i can't play at home because i refuse to use that pile of horse excreesion that Microsoft calls Internet Explorer.
So in reality, popcap are the only ones holding back the FireFox monopoly.
me on the other hand, i just developed a CSS based website that looks great in FireFox, and in Safari, and in Opera. but when i tried it in IE, i confirmed what everyone theorized - IE's CSS sucks the big one. i had to use PHP to spit out code that uses an entirely different stylesheed, and gifs rather than pngs - not to mention that i still needed IE7.
Don't call me back. Give me a call back. Bye. So yeah. But bye our, well, but alright we are on a shirt this chill.
That must be amongst the rudest AC comments ever to reach +5, Insightful on /., and it well and truly deserves the honour.
Congratulations, and I'm sorry that my own mod points timed out a few hours ago.
I guess the fact that this AC didn't get modded -1, Troll like anyone else talking like that shows that we are, almost unanimously, really, really pissed off at the state of the web.
From MSN groups:
MSN Chat is not currently compatible with your Internet browser and/or computer operating system. [...] We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause. We hope you'll be joining the fun on MSN Chat soon!
(This is the result of writing things in ActiveX when they would work in Java. IANAL, but isn't breaking websites on competing OSs anticompetitive?)
Ignite the web!
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
How is Firefox supposed to garner market share if many universities (example http://www.iss.soton.ac.uk) insist on making the default web browser IE on their computers? At Southampton/UK the only choice we have is to either use IE which of course boots up quickly or use an outdated version of netscape and have a wrapper install it. A process which can take almost a minute depending on the computer.
I work for a Washington State agency. The majority of the vistors to our main site are K-12 related (teachers, parents, students, etc). Microsoft products are quite popular around this area due to the steep discounts that Microsoft hands out to K-12 schools and their related state agencies. However, the 2004 stats for my employer's main site are quite interesting.
I pirate software, but I paid for Opera.
Why?
Simply because the people who wrote it aren't assholes. They don't have copy-protection to make my life difficult, and they compete on features rather than on marketing.
They offer a student discount, and want a letter from the registrar or a copy of your grades to prove your status. My university is run by trolls, so I wrote them and asked them if I could post a small note on my Uni webspace as proof that I was a student.
Six hours later the response came back: "Sure, that's fine. Greetings from Norway!"
I don't mind paying those guys.
As a mac user who's had compatibility complaints about some sites, the retort that I encountered was that the problematic site in question was designed for "95%" of the browsers going there, and if I wasn't in that 95% it just sucks to be me.
Now that it appears that FireFox is coming really close to squeezing on the 5% margin, my question is: will web designers really consider making their sites compatible with 92% of IE and 5% of FireFox? That could be a lot of work, depending on the site. Or are site designers just more likely to say "as long as we have 90% compatibility, that's good enough"? Turning away 10% of your customers seems like a lot, though, too.
Web designers in the biz care to comment? Are you guys seeing new compatibility standards? If so, that's good news for mac users. The faster ActiveX is obsoleted, the fewer problems Mac users are to face--even if the impetus for the compatibility change came from FireFox.
--
$tar -xvf
I must say that I had an issue with a pretty major credit card company a few years ago. Their site was changed and it broke with Opera (would attempt to disallow me to login with it), even when trying to "fake" Opera as being another browser.
I wrote the website support and they sent me a response, and even fixed the website for me.
I think that most sites would like you to access their services (only idiots design a site for one browser). Sometimes you just need to politely mention it to them.
Hear Hear!
I've done the job where the PHB insisted that the web programming department does only IE development. It sucked HUGE. 5 months later I quit that job.
Now I am working at a job where one of the conditions for me to work for them was the web programming department is required to write for W3C compliancy. All my friends thought I was nuts, placing these demands when the job market was so shakey. It was a gamble, but it payed off. So far everything our web programming department has put out is 100% W3C compliant first, then a few hacks to get IE browsers to render the pages well.
-FlynnMP3
They're not measuring "market share," they're simply measuring the gains of Firefox against IE. If the entire world moved to Linux and Mac OS, we wouldn't have this conversation - because gains against IE wouldn't be relevant. And yes, if Bill Gates were the only Windows user then IE would have 100% of the Windows browser market (assuming he uses IE). Again, that's not the issue at hand.
Increasing Linux users means that you're obviously going to decrease IE market share. That's the important part to understand, because they want to see how Firefox is doing in the market when people not only have plenty of options but they have one force-fed to them. If Firefox is increasing in market share because of increases in Linux, that's less important for the new browser wars than if Firefox is stealing IE users.