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Mozilla 1.8b1 Released, Firefox Growth Slowing
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla 1.8 Beta 1 has been released, and in addition to numerous bug fixes now includes ECMAScript for XML (E4X). Mozilla 1.8 will serve as the code basis for Firefox 1.1. In other Mozilla related news, WebSideStory saw Firefox's usage growth slow down to just 15% (Jan-Feb) from 22% (Dec-Jan) making Firefox's 10% marketshare goal for 2005 potentially more challenging. Their stats also saw Internet Explorer usage drop below 90% for the first time in many years."
...It does seem that everyone I know, personally, is already either using Firefox or just the kind of person that'll probably always use internet explorer forever. Let's hope this isn't the case...
...on the other hand, it is not uncommon, according to some business theories, for products to reach a temporary plateau after having reached all "early adopters" and that the majority of users will follow after a delay. Maybe that's where FireFox is now...who knows...
When nothing's driving growth rates, growth rates slow. Firefox had a big publicity push around the 1.0 release. Now that publicity push is dying down. The normal thing that happens when publicity dies down is happening.
Wait and see what happens when 1.1 is released.
Well, by God, it's Microsoft Anti-Spyware's fault!
Disclaimer: The previous statement was not intended to spread FUD. Results may vary, click link at your own risk, yadda yadda yadda.
To me, the Mozilla nightlies are starting to feel faster than the Firefox nightlies, and certainly faster than Firefox 1.0 and 1.0.1.
Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just a side effect of my old hardware? It seems like Mozilla 1.8 will be noticeably faster than at least Firefox 1.0 and last night's Firefox Feb 26 build for sure.
Just in case anyone falls for this, no, it isn't true :)
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Does it make sense to make statements like "yup, that's as many customers as they'll ever have" based on a slowing growth rate, after exactly one major release that the public was aware of?
Circumstances change over time
They are faster. Firefox 1.1 should have the same changes.
There is a lot of talk about Firefox, and everyone gets very excited about it, but Mozilla standard is still very good. Personally, under GNU/Linux, I prefer it to Firefox (Under Windows I prefer Firefox, however).
My sister uses GNU/Linux (Mandrake, with KDE) on her computer (No Windows) and prefers it to her old Windows ME OS. Mozilla was part of the reason - it is easy to use, helpful, securer and just makes sense. I'm not saying Firefox isn't any of these, but on Linux, I think it looks a little "Out of place", and Mozilla does not. My sister also preferred Mozilla to both Konqueror and Firefox.
Anyway, just wanted to point out that Mozilla itself exists for more than just feeding Firefox.
- Jax
According to these statistics Firefox is already over 20% marketshare. Why is there such a discrepancy between the two?
lasindi
I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
If Microsoft doesn't put out a really good browser soon, firefox growth will go on strong I think.
What I and many others are doing is advising everyone they know to at least TRY out Firefox. Saying it will protect against most spyware is usually enough to convince everyone...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
It catches Internet Explorer too!.
Opera and Safari shall soon take their rightful place at the top of the browser usage tables.
W3schools is aimed at techies/web developers/etc, whereas these are "Generic" user stats from all over the place.
It's no surprise that the percentage growth of Firefox in terms of marketshare is slowing down, this is the a natural part of the growth curve for any new poduct. 15% monthly growth is phenonemal, and it is literally an unsustainable growth rate. I'd be more interested to know the growth in raw numbers of new Firefox users; that number is likely almost exactly the same in January than December.
Here's my math. 0.15*(1.22)=.19, so 19% vs. 22% growth in market share from the December base, but the market is probably 1% larger. The way I see it, the number of new Firefox users is down probably 10% from January to February. Then remember that there were 3 fewer days in February than in January, which would account for the 10% difference. In other words, the number of new Firefox users per day stayed almost exactly the same from January to February. Maybe someone who RTFA can tell us what that number of new uses/day is and how it compares to earlier months.
The growth is remarkably fast, and may also be remarkably stable. How many more months would Firefox need to reach 10% market share?
The summary is not quite accurate regarding Firefox 1.1 being based on Mozilla 1.8; my understanding of the roadmap is that Gecko 1.8 - which is used in Mozilla - will form the base of the Firefox 1.1 program. Maybe just a technicality but it is different to say the base on which the programs will built is the same, rather than Firefox will be a stripped down version of Mozilla.
One of my larger customers, with some 3000+ desktops, has asked about switching to firefox. Now, there are always some web sites and web based apps that require IE, which makes this a pain. But given the amount of time we spend cleaning spyware from machines, I think I can live with it, I don't know if the users can.
In any case, a coporate wide switch won't happen overnight. I'd expect to see the next 6 months or so start to see more corporations install linux enterprise wide. Those same corporations will complain about sites that don't work in Firefox, which helps fuel the uptake.
Also note to FF people - one of the reasons cited for not installing FF enterprise wide was the lack of central patching and policy control. This means patching security holes and forcing down settings to the clients; from my desk, without spending hours writing scripts.
My university is making the switch this Fall.
So you're telling me that IE is no longer a fishing net for spyware?
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
You're assuming that Firefox has the same amount of bugs and vulnerabilities that IE does and it's not the case.
A lot of why IE has been so problematic is that during their war for the browser they "extended" the crap out of it, adding a lot of out-of-standard enhancements and extensions. IE has countless API's that keep web sites and applications stuck on IE and making it harder to switch to something else (really, no different then anything else Microsoft has ever made.)
Firefox is open source, it adheres to standards more strictly, and it's a lot more light-weight. There's less opportunity for malware to get in with Firefox, and if there's a security flaw it's fixed a lot faster. On the other hand, because of IE's extensions and extra functionality, it makes it much more difficult for Microsoft to back off on all the extra (and not soundly designed) features because everyone is stuck on them.
- It's not the Macs I hate. It's Digg users. -
Either the growth statistics were phony or you aren't surprised to see the growth slow down. You can't have it both ways, you know.
The article is also assuming that exponential growth, not linear growth.
This is here so you don't ignore the last two lines of my posts.
Earlier you mention 'phony' statistics that were 'anecdotal'. Do you have research to substantiate what you've claimed above?
The Mothership
Of course IESpell works. Maxthon is just an IE shell. You've still got all of IE's problems to deal with. IE has lots of bugs and things it can't do, but people have been coding around them for years.
Most users don't know they want tabbed browsing, but everyone I've seen who has used it for a bit, gets pissed off when they have to use Internet Explorer. This is especially bad at school because, for some reason, they think it's a security concern to be able to use File->New Window (it says it's been disabled by security settings). This can be circumvented by just starting IE again from the start menu, but it's still an annoying piece of shit.
I know quite a few people at my office that just won't try Firefox. Even though they know IE doesn't render correctly, even though they know that it allows all kinds of spyware, and even though they constantly have to close popups. They just won't do it! It's like they are not trying it for spite or something. Really weird. It's not like these people like Microsoft, but they are not just ignorant users that think the blue E is the IntarWeb.
What can be done about these kinds of users? Is this the vast middle-ground of IE users that just won't switch?
--- witty signature
Do a search through Slashdot's past stories. They are what I am referring to. Slashdot posted with headlines similar to "Firefox Usage Increases On The Web," then you'd read the article and find out what really happened was that Firefox usage increased in some web dev site's logs. It's hardly representative of Firefox's global usage. It is those making claims that Firefox is taking over the web who need to be presenting the research to back up those claims.
It's worth checking out recent browser-speed benchmarks. The new beta of Operate placed very well in terms of performance:
Browser Speed Analysis
That's an insult to Linux. Even my old tandy calculator can beat Windows ME in useability. :( Getting someone to prefer Slackware 1.0 over Windows ME is no major achievement.
--- Grow a pair, liberals... stop letting the Republicans bully you!
It doesn't matter. This is standard. If you don't have any points of your own, try to provide the illusion of a point by ascribing a flawed opinion to "Slashdot" and then debunking it.
Since the easiest way to get attention on Slashdot is to criticize it, claiming to be in opposition to something "Slashdot" supposedly said previously == instantly modded up.
They're both Mozilla related news items.
Not any more than Mozilla is/will be.
Note that the vulnerability in that last link was marked "confidential" for five years. Rather Microsoft-ish.
I have this buddy with Windows XP. You know, the kind of person who doesn't understnad just how dangerous .exe files are. As expected, this system was full of all kinds of spyware by the time I got to it. It wasn't even possible to open regedit; a spyware program was killing it. I couldn't even download Firefox from IE; I had to use the old ftp client to ftp over to ftp.mozilla.org to get the program.
So, I get and download Firefox for him. I explained to him "OK, I'm going to reinstall this system and not give you the admin password when I get time. In the meantime, use this to browse the web". I got rid of the IE icon from his desktop and replaced it with Firefox using the IE icon.
A couple of days later, my friend says he wants to keep Firefox. He told me the tabbed browsing was "tight".
I think Firefox is currently the best open source application for non-technical people out there. It is 100% open source and better than the competition (better CSS than IE; more security than IE; more feautures than IE).
Exactly. The source of the data for the decline in growth is the same as for its rise. Duh!
I've now RTFA. There were only 35 days between the last 2 surveys, and 42 days between the previous 2 surveys. This works out to a growth in market share of 0.63% (February) or 0.64% (January) for every 30 days. Since Firefox is at 5.69% now and they need another 4.31% to reach 10%, it will take about 6.8 months to achieve that goal. That works out to the end of September. If Firefox simply maintains its (phenomenal) growth rate, it will easily reach 10% by the end of 2005. They can even slow down a little and still reach 10%. Awesome.
I don't trust Webside Story. I used to have it on my site. I deleted it when I discovered that I could no longer check my stats with non ie browsers.
Notice they quote but try to find the page there.
I think this is more honest:
http://tinyurl.com/56kp
Well if you "hope it's not the case" then why are you perpetuating it by not using Firefox? Don't mean to be inflammatory, just a thought, that's all.
My favourite browser is still galeon.
There are 3 things that have been in galeon for years and are not in Firefox yet:
1. Tab detach feature
2. password manager not based on autofilling (which is dissallowed by some banks thus my on-lin bank site has password unmanageble by firefox [operations requires one-time passwords and tokens so no, there is no extra security in that ]).
3. sessions - saved in given point of time (windwos with tabs) or when browser crashes
Also there is one feature needed:
4. disabling flash player - same way as hjava.
"Mozilla 1.8 will serve as the code basis for Firefox 1.1."
errrrrt.
Firefox 1.1 will be the code base for Mozilla. Firefox is the new kid, Mozilla is old and busted. New Mozilla's will be basied off Firefox... not the other way around.
Its because some people dont like to think their stupid and dont know what theyre doing, and the more you point out to them that you know vastly more - the more theyll stick their heads in the sand. Let them be sypwared and laugh from your open source throne.
OK, Firefox grew 15% over five weeks.
.092 %. Out of a
Then it grew 22% in six weeks.
They call this a slowdown, which it is,
just barely. The change in weekly growth
could be as low as
growth rate of 3%. Just how accurate are
their numbers? No one knows. But the way
that they are presenting them seems as
if they have some sort of agenda.
Microsoft windows usage up to 110%.
Google announches they now handle 112% of the nets searches.
This just in: Slashdot announches a new strategy to deliver 120% correct stories, no more dupes, fact-errors or posting lame stories about fake screenshots.
Downloads is a measure of popularity, just a very vague one. The download count is currently 26 887 811. Even giving or taking a few million, you cannot deny Firefox has a large user base.
Anyway, I disagree that it is more of a hype. You are speaking as though Windows is the only platform in existence - it isn't. The Fedora I am typing this from had Firefox set up as the default browser from the start. I believe Ubuntu does the same.
Also there are millions of geeks who would use Firefox (or Mozilla) over any version of IE any day. Its standards-compliantness is not coming any day soon, for one thing. I use the Web Developer extension a lot, which is something I would never trust IE with (too unsafe). I can even look at its source and verify that it properly clears my cache, something which IE has been shown to not do. And with millions of geeks backing it, it isn't going to go away soon.
Guy asked me for a quarter for a cup of coffee. So I bit him.
You may have a small point there. Nevertheless, I don't think Firefox will ever have so many bugs as IE does, and MOST of them are very quickly fixed.
:)
The fact that ActiveX doesn't work on firefox is already a major factor against malware.
Now if we see the Microsoft case, they have specifically said that they will not release a new browser until Windows Longhorn is released. Now that's what I really call a sense of security
BTW, this page has a description of that bug, and some proofs of concept which no longer work on Firefox. There's also a comment in the end called "Why 5 Years?" which has some thoughts about the fact it hasn't been fully fixed yet.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
I still use I.E, but ive been told to change to firefox... is firefox all that?!
As you know, Firefox is based off the Mozilla 1.7 branch. The Mozilla devs did a lot of work 'deCOMtaminating' Mozilla for 1.8. Essentially they're removing XPCOM interfaces from various performance-critical parts of the app, allowing tighter binding + faster execution. It makes a huge difference, especially on slower hardware. Firefox 1.1 will be based off Mozilla 1.8, so it will take advantage of the streamlining.
It has nothing to do with bloat or the number of people working on the project. Instead the speed difference has everything to do with Mozilla (specifically Gecko, the rendering engine) getting much faster between Mozilla 1.7 (off which Firefox is based) and Mozilla 1.8.
Since when US users reflect the all users around the world? Considering amount of spam coming from US, users from different places of the world are more careful in selecting secure software than US computer users.
and techsavvy users is probably the reason websidestory is seeing falling stats, every good filterset and hostsfile block them and their javscript tracking shite by default
Grab "FX-ppc7450-2005.02.27.dmg" for your PowerBook, it'll probably change your mind about Firefox versus Safari! :)
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/
And that's not counting the fact that robots account for 5% of my traffic. If you subtract Robots, that brings Firefox closer to 7 1/2%. (A big story is how much of all web traffic is just from Robots). Of course, that brings IE use up too.
So that's what I'm seeing. Anyone else's weblogs showing something interesting? (Disclaimer: my site is mostly of regional - Portland, OR - interest. Home of L. Torvalds, who probably accounts for .0001% of my traffic.)
A beginners' guide to Portland, OR?
Need a little help here, I'm looking for a firefox theme which emulates IEs look EXACTLY. I have to set up a friend's mothers PC in the next few days and I figure an IE theme would be the best option here. So could someone point me in the direction I need to look please.
I like muppets.
Looks like no one is using the Mozilla Suite now, but soon everyone will be using Fx.
Firefox is not as geeky as it was when I started using it at version ~0.6 beta.
Maybe it's time to switch back to Mozilla so I can continue to use a browser no one else has.
I could get round the bloatedness issue by compiling a version with stuff like the mail component left out...
# cat
Damn, my RAM is full of llamas.
I use Firefox and Thunderbird, and I wish that Mozilla.org concentrate on those programs. I find the user interface of Mozilla not as usable as the one of other products. Also, I prefer processes to be independent. (So that crashes don't bring everything down.)
What do you use Mozilla for?
Is it the HTML editor? The IRC client?
Ouch! They're losing what tiny amount of marketshare they had.
It's faster and less bloated! My linux box doesn't have that much RAM to spare, and Firefox eats lots of it.
XUL is a silly and unnecessary extravagance. I'd prefer to stick with native interfaces, thanks.
Firefox seems to me to mostly be useful on Windows. And I don't see Windows as useful.
Agreed.
This is another reason why we should stick to developing Free Software and slowly convincing people of the ethics and freedoms of using it, rather than trying to gain a foothold in fad markets with individual software features or zero-cost competitions.
IE Theme.
What I do is make the top menu icons small, remove the "bookmark" toolbar, adjust the remaining two bars to be useful.
Then I show them that you can see more of the screen in Firefox than you can in IE, "You can see more of the internet". This makes Firefox look better on every page they see. As dumb as that is, it works.
I then do as above, removing shortcuts to IE.
Right from the Maxthon homepage:
So really, you've given up a good browser AND the security of your computer since in reality, you are now using IE.
As for your Firefox problems, it seems like it could be an issue with your machine (possible malware), internet connection, or perhaps even your selected DNS servers. I've never experienced any of the issues you mention and use Firefox on two different platforms. Mabye you should submit a bug report instead of giving up on it
Don't make points, just ascribe points to Slashdot and then attack them.
Most users don't want tabbed browsing? Are you on Crack? EVERYONE I've showed tabbed browsing to has loved it. Even when I didn't do it intentionally, e.g., googling for something with a friend I start middle clicking, he sees these tabs extending off to the right and goes "WHOA - what's that?" -- I show the sites opening up in the background -- he says "That's cool!" That's the usual response from tech savy to friends who think AOL is a nice service.
As for the "90% IE", three words "user agent spoofing".
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Firefox is a relatively small download but some people (think of older folks) just don't like to install software that way. Some entrepreneur should put together the Windows versions of Firefox, OpenOffice, and maybe Cygwin on a CD and sell it through CompUSA and Best Buy for $12. Maybe they could get work out a deal with LavaSoft to include Ad-Aware.
Deep down, COM just dispatches through something pretty much like vtables. That makes COM many things: unsafe, bug-prone, hard to program, version dependent. But it should at least be fast.
Hello, Mr. Taylor, nice to see you finally got around creating that Slashdot account :)
> What can be done about these kinds of users?
That's what malware is good for. The ones who stick with IE won't be able to boot up, much less go online. Then they'll be begging us to install Firefox!
http://jim.kearman.com/
As far as the tab detaching, you can use Tab Clicking Options to assign a detach-like (duplicate tab to new window) action to happen depending on how you click a tab. It doesn't close the old tab, but it works.
It probably wouldn't be too hard to write a detach tab extension - maybe someone already has. Heck, you could probably modify the Tab Clicking Options extension so that it did close the old tab.
I think you're the one smoking crack. Having tabbed browsing is equivalent to having 200 shortcuts on your desktop: usesless, distracting, confusing.
I have several customers who have tried Firefox and/or Mozilla and found that it doesn't work for them due primarily to dependence on IE-only sites and software which automates IE.
But the fact is--- Firefox and Mozilla use is growing. Usually when I have installed it for people, I get very positive feedback. So I am sorry to say that you are the exception rather than the rule.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
People's behaviour has a huge inert mass, it simply refuses to change impetus and/or directions :) - it takes a lot of time and effort to get moving. Nobody likes to retire a trusted tool and change work-patterns. I am not saying that this would be required by a switch to Firefox, it is what they/the users expect would happen.
see the data in a graph form and firefox looks like it's increasing well
... but why do these inane press releases keep referring to "browser market share", as if there's some MARKET out there where people BUY and SELL web browsers! Last time I checked (about 5 seconds ago), IE and Firefox were, yep, you guessed it, still FREE!
So who cares if IE has higher "market share", or if Firefox is creaping up and capturing some "market share" of it's own... I simply don't see the point in referring to anything as "market share" if there isn't something being bought and sold there.
You didn't deserve to be modded down for that. However, I don't think the original poster intended to imply any connection between Mozilla's release and a supposed slowing of Firefox growth. I understand how could be interpreted that way, but I personally saw it more as someone combining two news items into one because they were both about Mozilla.org projects.
As far as I can tell roaming profiles hasn't been added yet, has it?
This bug seems to cover it, and it is marked as fixed/verified and was slated for 1.8 alpha 1, but doesn't look like it made it.
Any idea when it should make it?
Here's something funny - I have firefox installed on my family's computer, I suggested that they use it, and they do, unless they need to go to an IE specifc website. Yesterday, I walked by the computer, and there's my sister sitting there with a good 10-15 firefox windows open.
I say "Hey, you know you could open all those sites in one window?"
She says "Oh in tabs? I'd rather use seperate windows"
That said, does anyone know of an extension that would allow me to organize tabs in multiple rows based on the site they were from? I'm willing to write one myself, but it's going to take me a little while to learn how to.
kaens.blogspot.com
- Februry is a short month
- New releases of Firefox updates have all but stopped. Its been about 4 months since the last update
- Lack of helper apps/extensions - Not much new (that is publized on places like
/.)
Firefox is solid. Early adopters have it and are happy. No new updates, so new reason to download it.No one really knows a whole lot about the new extensions because Firefox relies almost exclusively on the OSS forword of mouth. The current batch of extensions are not quite primetime so no one is pushing them.
Firefox is solid, but its reached a platue where Netscape was at 2.0. Now Firefox has to take to the next level with better advertising and new features, or fall between the cracks, just like its older brother.
You say things that offend me and I can deal with it. Can you?
It's not easy enough to deploy Firefox (or Thunderbird) in a corporate environment. And/or it's not documented well enough.
r owser"
Next week, I would like to install both apps on 12 desktops running Win2K and XP.
12 is not 1000. I cannot spend 2 days finding how to do it, testing it, correcting, etc. I could install manually, but doing 12 times the same clicking around doesn't sound like fun (I'm not a mouse clicking fan either).
While I want settings to be in the user's profile, I need to make sure the web cache is elsewhere and isn't copied through the network at every logon/logoff.
I want to get rid of the moronic paths both apps use with "default" and "some-random-string".
I would like stuff in the Default Profile, so new users get it automatically.
This sort of thing doesn't look easy and straight-forward enough yet, and I'm sure that it is what is keeping many admins from deploying it on their desktops.
I will try it anyway, but I won't be able to bill the time I will have to spend researching how to do it right. Especially since the client didn't ask me to do that anyway. They are happy with MSIE. So I will spend time on my own cost, just to find how to install something that will hopefully generate less work for me in the future because I won't have to spend so much time cleaning infected machines because of MSIE.
I hope FFDeploy will help, but there doesn't seem to be such a thing for Thunderbird.
Last but not least: Firefox and Thunderbird are terrible memory hogs, with Firefox sometimes growing to insane memory usage levels (75 MB right now, but I've seen it go to 150!), and sometimes also crashing consuming 99% CPU. Fortunately, this last problem doesn't happen very often, but I will hate it when users on whom I forced Firefox call me on the phone because it crashed, so I can tell them to "press Ctrl-Alt-Del, select Firefox, click End Task, restart Firefox but-you-know-it's-a-much-better-and-more-secure-b
I do believe it's a much better browser, and it's my default browser since it was called Phoenix, but instead of contemplating statisics, I think there is still a lot work to do to make it even better, and to help administartors actually deploying it.
Well, I imagine personal preference does play a part as well. I, for one, find multiple windows to be an annoyance because it clutters the screen. Plus, having tabs could allow you, if you were so inclined, to browse each site in different windows, or use each window for a different purpose, and open up related pages in tabs.
This makes no sense at all. Not having tabbed browsing is the epitome of disorder. For example, I might have three browser windows open. One for slashdot, one for work, one for porn. The slashdot window has the main page, the next tab the thread I'm reading, the next the article just in case I might want to RTFA. Using tabs in this manner promotes organization. Simply having 15 windows open promotes the messy desktop you (and I) abhor. And worse - it makes [alt][tab] window swapping an exercise in Russian Roulette!
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
One MAIN Firefox bug is that FF wont render more than a few sites, like this one, or my bank.
http://www.off-road.com/toc/
I dont have malware or any other problems on my PC, my guess is that im a power user with a bunch of tabs open and it cant handle it, a FF restart fixes the pages not reloading all the way, but does nothing showing about rendering few sites i go too.
Firefox is still Beta software in my opinion, and yes im aware Maxthon is based on IE, duh, im not a idiot, Maxthon just works with ALL SITES and has tabs, plus it has plenty of plugins availble.
You nailed it. It's the "devil you know" syndrome.
People will not try a new browser or even more a new OS because it's just too scary. For non IT oriented folks who just need to use a computer it's wicked hard to keep from screwing it up to the point of non functionality. It's *easy* to screw up, impossible to fix, so if they get something running for them even half way stable and half way useful they think this is the epitome of "computing". I mean even half way is plenty good enough because the alternative they have seen more often than not is "not working at all".
It's like someone's favorite old shirt, frayed, maybe a button missing, etc. Sure you can get a new shirt, but it won't be as "comfortable".
Most of the world *isn't* slashdot, they have different interests and a computer is an appliance at work to run a few boring but necessary for that paycheck tasks, or it's an exalted videogame machine at home that people more think of as a television with a few more features but not as many normal channels. and it pisses them off that after two years even though nothing is broken they are supposed to upgrade the whole thing. they go "HUH?". And with modern software of the bleeding edge, every few months. Say what? People in general just don't want to do that, it's a PITA.
People don't upgrade their toasters TVs microwaves blenders vacuunm cleaners stereos etc every other day or week, they think it's weird and stoopid you have to do that with computers, and I don't blame them, it IS weird AND stoopid.
It's just wrong to expect people to become nascar mechanics or have that level of tech interest just to drive a car. They just aren't going to be out everyday giving it a tuneup and changing the oil and doing bodywork and swapping engines and stuff like that, so it's nuts to think they are going to be doing the equivalent with computers. And to force them to do that because the stuff that was just pushed on them last month is now "horribly broken and obsolete and you need new and improved whizzbang v1.9.5x" etc is cuckoo really. They think "that geek idjit *just told me a couple months ago* this was the best thing since burgers in a bag, now I need to do it again? why???"
Why indeed!
Firefox and linux etc will only get huge market share and get "mature" when that is what's installed on new computers from all the major vendors and it's on the store shelves at the retail level,AND it's not obsolete weekly and the updates are beyond automagical.. And that won't happen without demand, and there's *very little demand to the vendors coming from the open source community because they do all that stuff themselves* and are more the equivalent of nascar mechancis and racing enthusiasts than they are 'daily drivers'. Linux and open source (browsers or whatever) NEEDS a "daily driver" dose of reality to make that breakthrough..
Nerds build their own boxes, try out new stuff, etc. It just will never get much beyond that level of mindshare and marketshare beyond what it has now without credible persistant demand at the retail store cash level, and sad to say it just isn't happening. Daily drivers aren't asking for it, and the nerds aren't either, so????? Why should the vendors or the developers deliver? The vendors still sell all they want to regardless, they still making the coin hand over fist, and the developers are off in nerd land, far far away from daily driver land.
And that's why it's slowing down, too. I've already heard from some windows users how "firefox just doesn't work" after they tried it at my recommendations. So I actually quit doing that. I have stopped recommending it. Waste of time almost. The farthest I go now is recommend people try a "live" cd, because it's easier for them to backout of the deal and I won't get any tech support cries. If they can't be bothered to download and burn a distro to try or send away 2 bucks to get a complete operating system, they for SURE won't be able to run it or tweak it even to a m
it's just obvious that firefox dropped in market-share, because the world population increases every second,
and almost everyone growing into the stage of using the internet will use internet explorer until they see the needs for firefox.
I'm sure it must be the reason!
No way Firefox can be defeated!! NO.
sadly, I wasn't modded down. After making only 4 or 5 posts on slashdot i've already got "bad karma", and my posts start at 0. I think I must just end up posting on days when less intelligent people get mod points. I personally think that we should only be able to mod up.
*De gozaru!*
What; I gotta send Bill some more money to use this 'free' software?
Thanks for nothing, guys.
I tend to browse in one window as well. When I find a site that I'm going to be opening a hell of a lot of tabs for, I'll generally open it in a new window though. For instance I might have a few forum sites that I'm currently active in in one window, and the tabs will span across the screen.
Now let's say I go to wikipedia to look up something. Wikipedia has a tendency to suck me in, and I'll have literally dozens of tabs open to read through. It can get annoying trying to check up on the discussions once in a while while having all those wikipedia tabs open, so I generally open up wikipedia in a new window.
However, I do not like having multiple windows open as it clutters up the screen, like you said. I would like to be able to have more than one row of tabs. For instance - I would open up wikipedia in a new tab row, and all the links I clicked to open in new tabs from wikipedia would open in that new row, while my slashdot tabs would stay open above it with slashdot links opening in new tabs in it's row.
Has this been done? Either way, I'm going to start trying to learn what I need to learn to write the extension myself now.
kaens.blogspot.com
This is stupid, it's apples vs. oranges. You cannot directly compare Firefox to Internet Explorer because Firefox is just a frontend to the Gecko engine, the same can be said for IE and the other browsers that hook into it's engine. For an apples to apples comparison you must compare the engine's they use! I cannot stress that enough as I'm in the middle of a battle with a website that purposely blocks all Gecko products except Netscape 6 and up.
a sp
5 = http://www.websidestory.com/services-solutions/dat ainsights/spotlight.htmlr ticle.php/5911_151151
By my own accounts Gecko has an average market share of 17% and 900 million people actively use the Internet(6), you do the math.
1, 25.4% = (20.4% + 3.9% + 1.1%)
2, 6.8%
2, 23%
2, 8.9%
2, 6.6%
2, 34%
3, 18.37%
4, 22.8%
5, 8.16% = (5.69% + 2.47%)
1 = http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
2 = http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm
3 = http://www.webreference.com/stats/browser.html
4 = http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/bstats/latest-week.html
6 = http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/a
You could be right on that point, but I'm sure I can't be alone in having noticed that Flash webpages also have a tendency to be the least informative. Glossy window-dressing is all very well, but if it leaves out the content it's just irritating.
Use cygwin and Mozilla/Firefox to provides seamless access to X Windows and X applications from within Web browsers and big corporations will love Linux even more.
m l
I have been using this in the 20th century:
http://www.powerlan-usa.com/webtermx.ht
P.S. I am also looking for ISP offering NFS access to Linux software (I have no time to install everything myself).
P.S.2 I hope that some day I will be able to run both Linux and Windows simultanoesly without vmware.
I checked out the docs for ECMAScript for XML and it looks like this is a really cool feature! Now instead of big long yucky DOM calls we get simple parent.child.grandchild access to XML data. This is going to be a boon for people doing Ajax, since it's basically all XML data.
Author's Note: Although I generally dislike propagating hackneyed jokes, at this time, I feel compelled to share this one with the Slashdot community.
Netcraft confirms it: Mozilla Firefox browser is dead. Our sympathies go to our beloved Mozilla Foundation. They gave it their best, but Microsoft is not a foe to grapple with and survive.
After a period of growth and acceptance, Firefox's rate of gain of marketshare has slowed. At the races, we'd all like to cheer for the three-legged puppy; but we ultimately place our bets on the slim, healthy hounds. Likewise, Netcraft expects wayward Firefox users to return to Microsoft Internet Explorer like sheep returning to the flock.
Netcraft suspects the rise of Internet Explorer 7.0 out of the swamp of stagnation will prompt all good Internet users into the proper order. With IE7, Microsoft will quash what little resistance remains from the Mozilla Foundation and others who promote the multi-browser fallacy. Make no mistake: Firefox's marketshare will soon rapidly accelerate towards zero.
In conclusion, Firefox sucks, and Microsoft paid us wads of cash under the table to say so.
On vit, on code et puis on meurt.
Especially since they're still growing, and incredibly quickly. They picked up about a percentage point a month two months straight. Since it started that at about 4%, they were seeing 25% *monthly* growth. Good god, how long could that have possibly continued?
Oh, and they only grew 14% this month. So I agree, that kills the whole "as many customers as they'll ever have" crap.
I mean, really. This is THE open-source success story of the year. How many companies see 14% monthly growth? Legally operating companies? Not between 1998-2000?
At this point, they'll easily see 7.5% by June. They'll need some continued press, and hopefully a few more killer IE bugs, but 10% by December is a very reachable goal.
I swear, sometimes I think the asshats around here won't be happy unless IE's at 0% by Thursday.
I saw 20% usage of Firefox in the world.
Based on the linear regression (and the amount already downloaded), it should be about 31 million downloads by the end of June. 31 million happy people. 31 million sales people. If only one of these people shows one other person, then potentially 62 million people. There might be turnover, but I'm willing to bet that more stick with Firefox, than revert back to Internet Exploder.
Firefox after 2-3 months of regular use to return to Safari. Firefox just seemed to have too many issues where it just didn't work right, especially when trying to download .doc format files from my school's website.
Firefox and Mozilla have memory leaks somewhere. Their memory usage is often clearly out of control. I submitted a bug:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=22
However, the bug report was ignored. I got suggestions like "Every app is going to cause a crash if it's opened enough times." My use of browsers was characterized as "ungodly". Someone eventually characterized the bug as "works for me", even though he did not disclose how he tested.
That bug report was for version Firefox version 0.8, but the same problem exists in the latest version, 1.0.1. The bug is difficult to characterize. It may be associated with use of plug-ins like the Adobe Acrobat plugin. The problem definitely depends on which pages are visited. The problem seems to be some insufficient allocation of memory which is used for the windows and tabs.
The memory leaks become greater and greater as Firefox is used, and then Firefox begins taking 10%, and eventually more than 90%, of the CPU cycles. Then Windows crashes. Usually, before that, Firefox crashes, crashing all Firefox windows and tabs, and losing all the information and web page positioning.
Firefox does not even render Slashdot pages well, many times!
It's a case of denial.
Why, exactly, would I use the Mozilla Suite over the seperate Firefox/Thunderbird/Chatzilla programs? Or vice-versa?
--The Klif dv
I checked out the site you mentioned (http://www.off-road.com/toc/) in FireFox 1.0 for MacOS X and it renders just fine. It has lots of pictures of idiots doing jumps with snowmobiles, but I guess that's part of the deal. :-)
Probably because people are being told Firefox is a spyware program.
It'll be good to see firefox improve with the upcoming releases... I get a lot of weird/stupid crashes especially with things like PDF and Java apps which I wouldn't get in IE. At least 2 firefox "converts" I've spoken with have all but completly switched back to IE because of little quirks like these.
I think the quality of firefox needs to keep improving to see the numbers continue to grow.
640YB ought to be enough for anybody.
I've done my share, how's everyone else doing:
1 120850 55.17% Mozilla/5.0
2 76857 35.08% MSIE 6.0
3 5897 2.69% Opera 7.54
But - ah - different statistics. Same site, mind you, same logfiles, just a different tool doing the stats:
Firefox No 2287166 39.1 %
MS Internet Explorer No 2202449 37.6 %
Mozilla No 556825 9.5 %
Opera No 515143 8.8 %
Now that's a major difference, isn't it? Ah well, as long as Firefox is #1 there, I'm happy.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
:-P
After FF starting getting a lot of attention, I was expecting the M$ politburo to respond swiftly and fiercly - but they didn't and it puzzles me.
It is very un-M$ to allow competition in a market segment. And its unlikely they didn't see this coming. Why did they wait this long to respond (IE 7.0)?
Its a testament to the strength of their monopoly that they haven't HAD to add new features to IE in 3 years (6.0 released Aug 2002).
Confirmed, Firefox renders it just fine though the page itself looks crappy all by itself with no help from Firefox needed whatsoever, especially the images.
The question isn't wether Firefox has vulnerabilities, but how easy it is to make a permanent fix to the general problem. Think in lines of "Stack protection" and similar, not fixing a single strcpy-line.
The quality of the code matters too. Just watch how Microsoft fixes holes by making the security-layer in the wrong place, in the GUI, rendering the vulnerability still open on the commandline. It wasn't long time ago a root-exploit were fixed this way.
I like to think this could never happen in FOSS. At least in a major project. Not because people there don't make the same design mistakes, but the code will reveal it to everybody else.
With Free Software / Open Source, everybody can contribute to a solution, and the code in successful software should be pretty maintainable and therefore more easy to fix.
So, even though Firefox becomes the major browser, I think they will handle the situation far better than Microsoft (which hasn't updated IE in how many years now?).
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I'm familiar with the conflict. To talk to ignorant people, you have to step down to their level of speech, otherwise they stare blankly at you and simply don't get what you're saying. They may say 'yes' a couple of times, just to get to the end, but there is no education going on.
However, if your solution breaks something, you better fix it in some way. Odds are, Firefox REALLY breaks their net-bank. If you think this is just tactics from their side, that tells me more about you.
And to force your solution to people, is not a good way to advocate a solution at all. Just make an offer:
A) Either they use your solution, which you support.
B) Or they can go with their own solution, and you drop your support.
Lying and manipulating will only corrupt, make relationships sour and further spread confusion and ignorance.
(Btw, yes I know banks should support the HTML-standard, not the other way around. However, in the real world people need to access their netbank, and will see you as a prick and a zealot behaving like that.)
You're propping up a straw man here. I haven't seen any serious (government, banking, etc.) site designed by a "Fuck off if you aren't using MSIE" moron for years.
Yes, sites that want to install spyware do this kind of nonsense, but with SP2, this will be much less of a problem.
Indeed, when I had a problem with a website because of something borked in my Firefox config, and complained that the site wasn't working in Firefox, many people replied "Works for Me in Firefox".
Can you still press ctrl-N and have it work? That's sometimes the case.
I am trolling
seem to be adopting firefox just as much as their *nix and MacOS counterparts.The article states 5.47% of windows users use firefox vs 5.69% of all OS users. I actually thought windows users percentage will be far lower.
/. I'd think firefox would account for 90%
Would be interesting to see a "What browser do you use" poll on
That actually leads me to thinking that geeks are a far lower percentage of the population than I originally thought.
The following statement is true
The preceding statement is false
You said, "Reading through the bug it seems as though the developers asked (albeit rather rudely) for some detailed debugging help which was never carried out."
I estimated that the debugging help they wanted would have taken me perhaps 100 hours to perform because I don't know the tools they were suggesting and they were not offering help. It was more than I could afford to give. When I originally reported the bug, I spent perhaps 10 hours reproducing it under both Windows and Linux, using more than one computer, and writing the report.
Since the problem always occurs, it is not difficult to reproduce. But it does take a while to open that many windows and tabs. I interpreted their response to annoyance that I posted the bug rather than an actual need to have me compile special versions of Firefox and run all those tools. The fact that the commenter knew about those tools indicates that he was probably already running them.
Note a funny thing about the comments on that bug report. I reported that Firefox crashed Windows, but under Linux only crashed itself. Then, note that two women posted comments, saying that they had the opposite result, Firefox crashed Linux but Windows was fine. Weird. I suppose they were Microsoft astroturfers.
The problem with Firefox making Windows XP unuseable (crashing it) seems related to the fact that the bug begins causing Firefox to take more and more CPU time, until that time is 97% or more. This Firefox bug seems to get involved with a virtual memory allocation bug in Windows XP, and the two drag each other down.
The Mozilla team's handling of this bug is an example of a common partial failure in the development of Open Source software. If there is no corporate participation, some bugs just don't get considered, because no one wants to do the work.
Every big Open Source development effort requires that large users contribute some real money to the effort, so people can be hired to fix the bugs that would otherwise be ignored. Large corporations should not expect to use Open Source software for free, even though that is legal.
I have stats for a large community in .se
This is for january 2005. 100.000+ visitors.
MS IE 97%
FireFox 1.3%
Opera 1.1%
Other 0.6%
After one has sucessfully installed and used Firefox for a while, he/she will detect the Extensions- feature. And after installing "User Agent Switcher" there is another IE on the internet.
It is as simple as that. Nobody whom I demonstrated Firefox would switch back to IE. And I am prefering Firefox to Safari because of these little extensions.
Compare having 10 tabs instead of 10 windows. Now what is more confusing? Give me 10 tabs at any time.
Greetings,
Project Manager of Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org). Support CS at http://tinyurl.com/cb3x4
It is quite easy to assume the poster means the two things were related. I did thought so too. ;)
For me it was part because of uncareful wording by the poster + uncareful reading by me... I didn't get bad karma because a) I'm not registered b) I didn't straight away go on shouting "Propaganda!"
Firefox's usage growth slow down to just 15% (Jan-Feb)
Reasons include slashdots consistant failure to rendor correctly on either Mozilla or Firefox browser.
Why the hell is this problem still not fixed?
Replaced IE with Mozilla in the company I used to work for. Management wouldnt let me so I replaced the Mozilla icon with the blue E and installed Mozillas IE skin. Nobody realised that there was any difference, though management surfed on with IE.
And no, I wasnt fired for changing to Moz. I quit.
Meme of the day: I browse "Disable Sigs: Checked". So should you.
I'm one of those people who likes my browser integrated with mail client.
So far the extensions to hook firefox to thunderbird have not been all that great on linux.
Plus instead of waiting for the browser to load you now wait for the browser and the client.........so I stick with Mozilla.
This extension I have told everyone that I know uses Firefox and they all love it. They don't mind the click to play flash. And if there is a site with lots of flash on it, just disable the extension and reload!
Causing Chaos Everywhere,
Nik J.
The strange world of a loner, in a populous city, drowning in society
I run a big organization of over 2000 users. Since we are running Exchange 2003, Firefox doesn't work too well with the web access. It shows emails, etc, But drag and drop features dont work. If someone could get this working, we could have many more users on Firefox.
If I had to guess, I would say Christmas is the major culprit.
Folks get a new PC for Christmas and what is the only browser loaded on it? That's right, IE.
So they use IE for a few months until someone tells them about Firefox.
I wonder how many PC's were given as preasants this Holiday season?
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Love,
bonch (aka rd_syringe aka Overly Critical Guy)
YHBT. YHL. HAND.
Love,
bonch (aka rd_syringe aka Overly Critical Guy)
Note the footnote:
> Figures for Apple's Safari browser bloated
> due to security upgrades in the browser in
> early Dec. 2004
Can anybody explain how one can do that?
Interesting. Part of the problem is with blind links. You can mouse over the link, and be completely misinformed about what will happen when you click it. Javascript is misused on at least 50% of the web sites. I guess designers want to put another technology on their web site.
Definitely, I've experienced problems with the Java plugin. (For those not knowledgeable about this, there is NO connection between Java and Javascript, other than part of the name.)
However, I have experienced problems with the PDF plugin, also. I assume that the problem exists with all plugins.
Shell Beach, I wish everyone in Open Source had your social skills.
What you don't mention is that the bug lasted for five years. It was known about and marked "confidential."
And I personally value the w3schools a lot more.
What they say is Firefox has a 20.4% market share and mozilla a 3.9 for february 2005. Which seems quite incompatible with your overall 10%.
We experience about the same figures on our webservers.
And don't forget when you analyse web logs to verify that your server handles correctly the Internet Explorer Popularity Theft Bug.