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."

Comments

Is this the end of the ride?

[smug_lisp_weenie]

...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...

Re:Is this the end of the ride?

[cloak42]

Since both browsers take you too the same Internet, there will be a number (and not an insignificant number) who see "nothing different" and so they stay with IE.

Exactly why you should get them using Firefox. If they don't see a difference, then that makes it all that much easier for them to switch.

You know what I do?

My mom bought a new laptop from Dell recently, and she asked me to drive up and configure it for her, which I did. What I did was to use Windows' "Set Program Access and Defaults" to use Firefox as the default browser, and completely removed IE altogether from menus, the desktop, etc. by telling the configuration program to not allow access to it. This is easier than it seems, since Windows will remove all icons and shortcuts to it so there's no way to bring up IE unless you either run WindowsUpdate or specifically type 'iexplore' into the Run dialog.

I then installed an IE theme into Firefox and *poof!* To them it runs exactly the same, and nobody is the wiser. If I really wanted to make it transparent, I could've renamed the shortcuts and changed the icons, and I could probably have figured out a way to make it actuallY SAY "Internet Explorer" in the title bar.

I did the same thing today with a friend of a friend who had so much spyware she couldn't even check her webmail.

In both cases, I didn't even need to make them THINK they were running IE, as once I told them that they wouldn't notice a difference in their web surfing experience, that firefox had copied over all of their previous settings and cookies, and that they wouldn't be getting any more spyware unknowingly, they were ecstatic. All they really needed was to have their default browser changed and IE removed so they didn't load it without thinking, and they were happy as pigs in shit.

I really don't think it's too hard to make people understand that the benefits of using a better program easily outweigh the small inconvenience of remembering that it's not called Internet Explorer. Once they understand that all of those annoyances won't be showing up later on, they are more than happy to double-click on a different icon.

Re:Is this the end of the ride?

[idlake]

I wouldn't call 15% growth in 5 weeks a "plateau"...

Seems like a silly prediction to me

[Anonymous Coward]

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

It's a 1.8 improvement

[Anonymous Coward]

They are faster. Firefox 1.1 should have the same changes.

Re:Mozilla nightlies versus Firefox nightlies

[Anonymous Coward]

It almost seems like bloat is a function of nothing but how many people are working on it. Firefox was created to be the non-bloated Mozilla. When there were few people working on it, that goal was easily attained. Now that it's become the primary development focus, though, I'm hearing allegations it's the bloated one.

Are small projects just easier to optimize?

Not quite accurate

[MrWa]

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.

It will pick up once the corps grab it

[Jjeff1]

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.

Re:Not surprised at slowed growth

[agraupe]

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.

You know, Firefox's tabs convinced my buddy

[Anonymous Coward]

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).

Yup, it's true - less COM

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Interesting theory, but wrong in this case

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Here

[Anonymous Coward]

IE Theme.

Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft.

[Anonymous Coward]

It could be this: the popup blocker doesn't block popups launched from Flash (it's technically a hard thing to do, as Flash is essentially an embedded application running within Firefox and can do whatever it wants).

Sometime in the last couple of weeks, Fastclick, a major ad network, started exploiting this to get its popups around Firefox's popup blocker. The ad scripts load a small Flash movie which then lauches the popup.

You can block plugins from launching popups by using a hidden pref but this will block all plugin-launched popups, even ones launched in response to a mouse click. To do this, enter about:config in the Location bar, hit return and then right-click any where in the content area and choose New > Integer. Enter privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins as the name and 2 as the value.

Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft.

[starwed]

Flashblock is a good extension to get rid of this problem; as long as you don't mind clicking on those flash driven plugins you actually want.

Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft.

[Taladar]

Flash for Website Navigation is bad because:
- it renders your page inaccessible for blind,... people
- people can't use their browsers comfort functions with Flash (like Open in new Window)
- Flash is too dumb to distinguish between right mouse clicks and drags (like the ones used in mouse gestures), it opens a popup menu with lots of useless commands on right-click - Flash Animations and Intros annoy the shit out of your site users when they have to wait for them even though you have already seen them (slow down site usage which kills your userbase)
- Flash Player is not available for all Browsers on all Operating Systems
- Who says all your visitors want your page to look the same (Font, Font-Size,Sound,...)

You should think a bit about all these points before you decide you really need to break compatibility and comfort just for a bit of eye-candy/bells and whistles.