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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."
according to a new study by WestSideStory.
It's WEBSideStory , not WestSideStory
I feel pretty, oh so pretty...
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
granted you see this in every article...
A Microsoft spokesman did not immediately comment for this story
but i love that.
Runnin' On Empty
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?
Do not know why MS discontinued IE for Unix. I can see thay can expand there.
http://www.microsoft.com/unix/ie/default.asp/
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 more marketshare Firefox gets, the less likely lazy web designers are to design "IE only" websites.
Of course, it also becomes more and more likely that advertisers will spend more and more resources trying to figure out new and exciting ways to get past Firefox's popup blocker and the Adblock extension, so it's a bit of a double edged sword.
If people going on to Liz Claiborne or whatever are using FF, then you can assume that is someone's mom. Either that, or the IT guy trying to look at women's underwear pics through his work's web filtering. :)
Good analysis, though. Let's hope this continues...
Baby steps, right?
...I reckon much of the increase is due to IE users spoofing their user-agent and pretending to be Firefox
but the company said its Windows-only numbers are more accurate because new configurations in Apple Computer's Safari browser inadvertently skewed results. I'm speechless. We (linux/mac users) don't use Windows, so our traffic doesn't count?
Robert Bindler
A Computer Science student's views on technology.
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.
Since when is Liz Claiborne a major site?
September 2004 - 2% Mozilla
October 2004 - 2% Mozilla
November 2004 - 3% Mozilla
December 2004 - 3% Mozilla
January 2005 - 5% Mozilla???
Power to the Peaceful
I think this is my problem with Opera.
Price.
Not that I mind paying for software. Hell, I've even bought boxed Linux distros. But, and it is a big but, most people pay for perceived value. For these people, which includes me, Opera does not provide $39 more value than Firefox.
Maybe I'm just cheap...
People couldn't type. We realized: Death would eventually take care of this.
The recent discovery of a potentially damaging software flaw suggested the potential for FireFox attacks. Did that get fixed? Cuz if not, that'll be a problem in the future for firefox. One of the reasons people like firefox so much is the thought that "OOOH, now I don't have to worry about nasty viruses and hackers and evil things." Once there's a virus written for firefox, that little golden halo is gonna come crashing down.
theres no place like 127.0.0.1
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.
Admittedly, I am not a typical user. I visit numerous porn sites and am addicted to looking at gorgeous, naked women who would never spend time with me. Unfortunately, those sites are also boobytrapped with pop ups, viruses, and malware. If you do not believe me, then use IE on Windows and surf 1000 sites over the course of a month. At the end of the month, your computer will be unusable, and you will be forced to reinstall Windows.
With FireFox, I am relatively safe when I visit those sites. So far, none of the boobytraps have infected my computer. The only negative is that downloading the pictures takes a while with FireFox since it is not as tightly integrated into the OS as IE. Nonetheless, I am no longer reinstalling Windows on a monthly basis.
Now, where's that can of vaseline.... Just kidding.
Help fight these horrible new statistics... Install IE today!
Karma: bad (mostly unaffected by funny mods)
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."
While the parent comment has some truth in it (the ActiveX legacy) I think it's unfair to a lot of good, professional developers who had no choice other than to use ActiveX because a particular component (a grid, graphing tool, whatever) was actully required in the project specification.
I'm thinking of sites/apps for internal, corporate intranets - not the Internet in general.
What were these guys supposed to do exactly? Resign on a point of principle?
Get real!
Ace's Hardware recently ran a short article that Firefox passed 50% share at their website in December. They had a nice graph showing IE clearly in the majority, lessening over time, and, finally, passing into the minority.
We'll miss you, IE...not!
-- Microsoft is the most expensive commodity operating system and office suite vendor in the marketplace.
That's exactly what I'm talking about! Change your freaking bank! That's like when there were some banks that had all-night ATMs, and others didn't (guess how old I am), or later, when only some banks waived fees if you used their own ATMs and others didn't. Or, when some banks had free telephone-based auto-banking, and others didn't. You choose a commidity institution (there are thousands of banks) based on how well they provide you with that commidity. My stupid bank has a great web site for their brokerage area, but the regular banking part sucks. A lot. I've bitched at them, and actually ended up talking to the manager of their web dev team, who was shocked to hear about JVM version problems (what a loser!). They're working on it.
In the meantime, it's just not that big a deal to change banks, or just to fire up IE for minute. Oh... I'm guessing you run on Linux. Alas. Your bank will come around on their own, or they'll get tired of fielding the complaints. Market pressure works - banks are service companies, and believe me, they do listen to compaints - mostly in the cummulative, but they do listen.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The amazing thing is that the more you have the better since you are unlikely to guess everyone on the high or low side. The more variables you have the more accurate.
Fermi himself used this to estimate the power of the first Atom bomb via dropping paper confetti from above his head (2 meters) and look where they landed after the blast arrived. He was within 20% if I recall. There is an intersting book called Fermi Solutions that you can find here I read it like 10 years ago but the publishing date is 2001 on Amazon so maybe it's a different book I read.
Help fight continental drift.
Firefox 1.1 is going to be based on the trunk. So it's got a few rendering fixes.
1.1 also contains some decent enhancements.
IMHO adoption will pick up when 1.1 is released and some of these fixes take place.
1.1 will also have a MSI, which will make it easier for corporations to deploy Firefox to computers within their organization. That will allow for more Firefox gains.
...Netcraft confirms it. IE is dying.
"The plural of anecdote is not data" -- Bruce Schneier
Wow, I wish I could give you +1 pissed off, yet insightful.
You are so boring that when I see you my feet go to sleep.
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.
Often people like you don't realize that Microsoft does provides a huge, extensive, and powerful set of interconnected development tools. Ever pick up a single MSDN binder?
If you don't care about anything non-Microsoft, it makes sense to just use the tools in front of you. Despite your anti-Microsoft frothing, those tools usually work and get the job done, and their use is intended for use on Microsoft's platform.
I don't see anything wrong with that -- if the customer has different needs and the developer cannot provide them, the developer/provider has lost a customer.
The real thing you should be complaining about is when IE breaks or adds things to HTML standards that won't work on Firefox. That's just bad, because it's a web standard, not Microsoft's own platform.
If you say "here goes my karma" I will bite you!!!
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.
There is an ActiveX plugin for Mozilla browsers.
Really, do you expect firefox can do something if it doesn't start growing faster?
First, "% of browsers used" != "% of boxes". Firefox is having a hit because its users are people who spend a lot of time in internet. There're a *lot* of people who don't use internet a lot, and they don't get eflected in the stadistics just because they don't browse a lot.
Second, If firefox continues growing at this rate, microsoft will have enought time to rewrite their browser. Remember, 100% of windows boxes have IE installed, and as soon as microsoft gives them a update which is "good enought" they could stop using firefox. Don't understimate the power of microsoft, they control the most used software distribution channel for windows boxes - windows update
And let's remember that around 50% of the OS used to browser internet is XP. XP SP2 has a popup killer by default which is one of the biggest reasons to use firefox. And SP2 enables automatic updates, so IE is "safer". It doesn't really matters if IE is secure or not, if microsoft patches it fast enought users won't have problems.
so, what we need is to get *better*, and get better *faster*. Currently, firefox is just "a better IE". Yes, it's more than that, we know, but users only see that "a better explorer". We need to offer something different, innovative. We need to give them more things that are not just "better than the IE equivalent", but cool things that have not equivalent so users will stick with firefox. (don't talk me about extensions, IE has plugins and they could start those to add funcionality!)
And of course we need to have "automatic updates" for firefox. I think those are already there, right? If you don't updae users' browser, they won't do it themselves, automatic update (or at least a window warning about a "fastest, more secure version) is needed if you want that your users continue appreciating all the work you do.
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'm all for more quality browsers, but a great engine doesn't gain marketshare without a great application around it.
--Asa
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.
Part of what you said makes no sense at all, so I will just ignore it.
I love the fact that Firefox can be altered easily due to the way it uses such an open method of configuration and theme files, but this very thing also makes it slower. Parsing these files takes time. Using XML and such for application settings may make a program much more configurable, but it's just not good for speed.
But whether IE fully supports the standards is irrelevant. People have turned my originally innocent comment into such an opportunity to flame the IE user. It's rediculous.
The fact remains that IE controls the market, and that's not changing anytime soon. I am not an IE "fanboy" just because it's what I choose to use. I often have dislike for various things about it, but I use it because it's what works best with a lot of the web.
Whether people want to accept that or not, that's up to them. They can start flamewars over such a silly topic till they're blue in the face for all I care. It just shows me how arrogant some of the alternative browser users can truly be.
In the meantime, I'll continue using Avant, and develop for the websites I'm hired to develop for, and not think twice about all the crying that people did here over me deciding to use an IE-based browser.
This may not be worth much more than the pixels it's printed on, but a Business Week poll that asks what browser you'll be using in six months currently has Firefox at 48% against "Explorer" at 32%. "Mozilla" is listed separately at 10% so if you take Mozilla and Firefox together that's a nice lead. Opera is sitting at 3.5%.
Remember when there was a "browser market"?
Make sure to cast your vote!
I rather suspect they mean that they had the site operators embed a small (possibly 1x1 pixel transparent) gif hosted on their own servers and checked the logfiles.
Like tinyurl, but one letter less! http://qurl.co.uk/
We need to finish SVG support. We need to add an xml language to invoke java inside browsers to balance the XAML features IE will provide. We need more innovation in the xml language the browser renders. It needs to render more complex things. The form elements need to be updated to match (or surpass) Macromedia Flex's UI library (menus, toolbars, tab pages, datagrid, tree control, editable combo box, etc). I think there should be an option to enable the swing widgets set to replace the browser built-in one. This way you can upgrade the widgets separately. Browsers should support a fast animation engine similar to Flash. I think we should add a game engine to the browser that allows everyone to build sims or doom like sites much more easily.
Standards are great. I'm not saying get rid of the html 4.0 standard. I'm saying we need to create a 5.0, 6.0, etc that are much better. Standing still will cost you a lot.
If you want more high tech jobs, then create more powerful html standards. Companies will have to hire more developers to update and rewrite their applications. If they don't and their competitors do then the lagging companies will fail; I don't think companies have a choice. All you need to do is give them a compelling reason. The first web browser led to a huge employment boost. The evolution of HTML was a key factor. If you want more money then add power to the browser. We need to make the create a new html standard the makes the current standard look out of date and boring. This is what Microsoft did with MFC over the years. It drives a lot of upgrade revenue for everyone. This could work for you!
We should not use w3c for this; they are much too slow. Debate the features and schema on Slashdot. Build it in FireFox and w3c can standardize it years from now.
but you can't claim that it's 40-worth better (or whatever the actual price is).
Sure I can. Who are you to tell me what I should value or how I should spend my money?
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
That isn't the point.
The point I was making is that professional programmers work to specifications and if the spec says "use ACME's ActiveX charting control" then that's exactly what you do kiddo! You don't whine and bitch about it, you get on and do it.
To give a real world example, I have often had to use sophisticated 3D charting contols and frankly, the Java applet ones suck mightily IMHO in terms of features and performance compared to the ActiveX ones.
Ever try free-spinning a large 3D surface plot on any axis by click-and-drag using a Java applet? Yeah, I thought not.
Also, as far as image blocking goes, while the stock Firefox build blocks images from specific domains (so you wouldn't want to block the ad if it came from the same server or proxy as the good images) a simple ad-on like AdBlock gives users the power to easily block ads without losing the legitimate page content.
--Asa
I've always wondered how much browser dominance really matters to Microsoft. IE comes bundled w/ their OS, so even if everyone runs Mozilla, they still have IE in their system, and all the other MS apps (and many others) still leverage IE's plugability into other client software. So in terms of lock-in to the platform, there's still all the web enabled client apps out there (like most MS products).
Scrollbar coloring is supported by many browsers, and the fact that the Mozilla line of browsers doesn't is a failing on its part.
Mozilla could support scrollbar coloring. It can draw either natively-colored or -themed scroll bars, or it can draw them in what the current browser theme specifies (the theme either says "draw them like this" or "go native"). It would certainly be possible.
Many things aren't part of the W3C standards, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't use them. If enough features are used on the internet which people enjoy, then it will force W3C to catch up. That's not to say that alternative methods shouldn't be employed for browsers which don't support these things. I'm all for making a site usable for everyone.
Remind me again what usefulness colored scrollbars have? Scrollbars belong to the browser or the operating system, but not to the Web page.
Forget semantics and standards, what's really important is c0lor3d scrollbars?
R.Mo
PayPal.
Three things:
This is rediculous. The parent poster posted a dissenting view and he was modded down. Granted, the majority of /.ers obviously feel that Firefox is better (I'm a Safari user myself), but that's no reason to mod this post TROLL!
I hope this mod pops up in meta-moderation, and somebody wakes up. Firefox could start supporting scrollbar colors, because maybe that means something to somebody.
Sheesh, usually the Slashdot moderation system works, but sometimes it's just a big let down.
"There's no success like failure, and failure's no success at all."
- Bob Dylan
only idiots design a site for one browser
Not only have I had to deal with recently a web application designed for only one browser but it wouldn't work on all versions of Windows either. Had to run on 2k or NT, wouldn't work on XP. I am not even sure how to categorize actions like that. The people who did that one (not going to name the company) should be in the bad software decision hall of fame.
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.