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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
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?
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.
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?
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.
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)
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!
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.
Not to people who think slashdot is a major site. I think that's the point here. It's not geeks using firefox, it's everyday people who most people here never thought would want to switch.
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
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!!!
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.
I'm all for more quality browsers, but a great engine doesn't gain marketshare without a great application around it.
--Asa
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