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Firefox Continues to Bite into IE Usage
InformationSage writes "According to Information Week, Firefox usage is now over 6 percent, pulling Internet Explorer usage down below 90 percent. 'Firefox is currently the only browser that is increasing market share on a monthly basis, and it is growing at the direct expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer'"
Then it's only suitable that the first post should be with firefox.
IE7 pull this back for them with:
Better security
Tab Browsing
Conformance to standards
How is it that MS can get away with releasing a 'beta' of 7th generation software? Even if there's legitimate reasons for doing such a thing in general, shouldn't MS have the user/test pool to get the thing tested and reasonable before going massive with it?
At least they're reacting to the marketplace demand for a browser now and not later.
I Want To Believe
For a site I run Firefox is nearing 30% usage for Feb-Mar 2005 (some 20 million hits) Internet Explorer 59.3 % Firefox 28.5 % Opera 6.9 % Mozilla 3% Netscape 1 % Safari 0.5 %
It's good that Firefox is gaining market shares... but what about Mozilla?
The whole mozilla projet (mozilla + firefox) is what *really* matters, not only Firefox!
Microsoft are hoping that by taking leaves from Mozilla's book, such as Tabbed Browsing and putting them into IE7, the will stop the users who are not very tech savvy from changing to firefox, therefore still keeping the larger user base
Mozilla has an advantage with the fact that they can release a new version practically anytime, with updates nightly or anything. IE updates have to go out to everyone using it, and in general the people will not know as much, therefore creating more trouble.
Business Voyeur
not at least for me, since IE doesn't run on any of the operating systems I run.
it really depends. firefox is really better than IE (sorry that i'm using IE as my current browser! hehehe)
What I'm missing is a good XUL IDE. I hear that KDevelop is going to support XUL soon and there are others, but one thing that Microsoft does really well is to help the developers to get started. Now if there just were a good IDE with syntax highlighting, completion and testing I think XUL apps would really take off. Don't you?
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
Are we at the peak of Firefox adoption or is this the calm before the storm?
I would never want to see Firefox reach the level of dominance that Internet Explorer has reacher. Having a 90% market share leads inexorably to the stalling of innovation.
A much better position would be for there to be lots of browsers with around 15% market share. This would foster creativity and would hammer home the importance of standards compliance.
I want the days of the software monopoly to come to an end, and Firefox may be the a catalyst for the wide spread disintegration of such monopolies.
Simon.
Any statistics of Firefox usage based on http log analysis will have to be adjusted upwards by some unknown factor based on how many people surf as MSIE using the User Agent Switcher Extension.
it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
I think it could, and I also think it will be easy for Microsoft to stop firefox growth. They only have to ameliorate IE enough for people not to care about installing and using another browser. The only reason firefox is growing is because IE is flawed and annoying in several ways, so if a part of Microsoft's army of programmers is directed to remove that factor, firefox's growth will decrease greatly, in my opinion.
Then again, there may be some major annoyances that they won't be able to remove for compatibility reasons, such as ActiveX (which as you know is responsible for much of the spyware problem). What people should do is get rid of features like that completely, so that IE can be a secure browser...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Better than Linx?
Does anyone know of a graph that shows broswer usage over the last few years and actually has up to date numbers? Just wondering.
--
RumorsDaily
How come the article is not yet slashdotted? Is it because it is the weekend or what? This is one of the very few times I have been successful with an article within its first minutes of posting. That was good news though. Go Firefox go...!
Your site is a gaming site. It attracts techies and geek gamers who are more likely to use a browser other than IE.
Now if your stats can show that John Q. Public or Jane Q. Soccermom is visiting your site and using FF, then that's completely different.
But Most of the users that are currently switching are users that allready used browsers other than IE (That is, Opera, Mozilla Suite, Netscape, etc. users). I would like to see actual numbers, not numbers that cames from the logs of some website, but stats that let's us track individual browser use, and see who is switching from what to what.
Most Internet Explorer market is people with default windows installs, and that is at least 70% of the market. That people is not going to switch anytime soon. So the grow of firefox will sadly certainly encounter it's roof soon.
I Would also like to make something clear, this is not a victory for Free Software like many people understand. This is not a victory against propietary software. Most of the people that installs Firefox doens't undestand or care about the fact that firefox is Free Software. Most firefox installs are under windows.
We will be talking about the victory of Free Software when people understands why Free Software is important, and why proprietary software shouldn't be used, and NOT when some specific piece of Free Software gains marketshare.
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
I am worried about the future. With IE7 on it's way, is this going to slow down the adoption of Firefox by the masses? Is Microsoft going to start advertising everywhere that IE7 is on the way so users will think "Nevermind Firefox, I can just use IE6 because IE7 will be out soon and it will work better with my sites"? (re: vapourware effect, not that I don't think Microsoft won't release it) Also, the bug that causes the user to lose the entire contents of their hard disk drive while uninstalling Firefox 1.0 is worrysome. But I've warned all my coworkers, relatives and friends (who run Firefox 1.0) to not upgrade by uninstalling and installing Firefox 1.01.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
use of Firefox rose to 6.17% from 5.59% in January.
Firefox's gain comes at the expense of Internet Explorer, which dropped to 89.04% market share, from 90.31% in December.
So, IE has dropped by 1.27% and Firefox has risen by 0.58%. That means other browsers have risen by 0.67%, which is more than Firefox.
PimpMyMazda.com - Crazy mods to a 2002 Mazda Protege DX.
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firefox will continue to innovate, and will be a more secure browser - constantly. IE doesnt have enough reasons to emply an army just because it wants to maintain its leadership. they are an ideal capitalistic organisation - they want everyone to signup to thier products and they want all of the money allocated, ever - to software & entertainment - the 2 major cash cows. until everyone parts with thier booty. they will go on with thier arm twisting.
This is true for a lot of open source software. Developers often ignore the need for more advanced management of applications. A lot of companies will not touch software unless installation and configuration can be managed properly.
I believe that it is quite easy to add this type of support to a lot of open source software. A simple thing like creating an MSI-package for your application will often help deployment a lot.
Maybe all that is missing is a few decent tutorials on packaging and AD integration to get open source software into corporate IT-environments?
Standards Schmandards
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Yes... most normal people don't know or care about security flaws or technical advantages. If the sites they visit are rendered correctly, they'll stick to that browser. If not, they'll hate the browser (even if it's only the webdesigner's fault). If the browser comes preinstalled with their operating system, they'll rather use that.
I think the main reason for the quick growth of Firefox is that it has UI advantages over IE... like tabbed browsing and other things.You can't convince people by saying "Firefox is more standards compliant, its CSS support is far better, and it has support for MathML and transparent PNGs" etc. -- most simply wouldn't care. We're talking about the mass of normal users here, which are no experts.
The UI improvements, on the contrary, are something that ALL people immediately see and appreciate.
However, still nearly 90% of the surfers use IE... it won't drop much more. I'd be surprised if it drops below 80%. Once Microsoft releases the next version with UI improvements (for example, tabbed browsing will be implemented), I bet many will use IE again on their next Windows installation.
use of Firefox rose to 6.17% from 5.59% in January
I always like how they manage to get these results out to the second decimal place.
I converted, IE evil, FireFox good. I'm warming to ThunderTurd.
6 percent is tens of millions of users
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I think that if you were a Microsoftie and you uttered this in BillG's earshot you would quickly find yourself on the streets of Redmond sans job.
:)
It IS news to MS. Their hegemony is threatened. Anything that reverses their dominance in the market is sure to be news to them.
And a word to MS: If you don't take heed, if you think that it's "Inconceivable!" that FF can upset your apple-cart, then you may be in the same unenviable position that the railroad barons were after the ascendancy of the automobile.
As you recall, these guys were the ne plus ultra of their time. Now railroads are largely irrelevant. [1] And the railroad barons at the time thought the same thing, no doubt: "It's six freaking percent. It's not much. It's nothing to get excited about, nor is it news."
Oh it is. It's the zephyr before the storm-blast.
----
[1]Well they are unless you take the PATH tubes into Manhattan in the morning instead of driving.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
I remember from somewhere that growth rates of products increasily rapidly once their market share reaches 10%. What out for it!
Giving IE users a taste of their own medicine since 2005 - http://pods.-is-a-geek.net/
Komodo is a XUL IDE that is also based on XUL and related Mozilla technologies. It's put out by Activestate and is not Free or free, but it should be nice to use and I've heard good things about it.
It's fairly cross-platform and will run on Windows, Linux, or Solaris.
So you don't have to look it up:
http://www.activestate.com/Products/Komodo/
Commercial use: $300
evaluation: $Free
I was thinking about the following: Every time the is a security warning, such as "Do you want to install this programme?" or "Do you want this java applet complete access to your hard disk?", shouldn't there also be a button marked "I have no idea what this means" and make it the default button. This button has obviously the same function as cancel.
I hate M$ but I'm realistic. Once IE7 comes out - matter how badly it will support standards, people will go back to it.
Microsoft really can easily stop firefox growth. If they are to suppress Windows users in having other browsers rather than IE, then IE sure could topple down other browsers, considering the fact that there are more Windows users than any other Operating Systems. But again, the previous versions of IE is really not that good, especially when it comes to tabbing.
These stats give useful worldwide usage. But what about local? Have you guys all seen a similar trend on your own websites? I know that on my website, which is not really a tech site, firefox currently accounts for 27.9%, and it has been steadily increasing.
I am having problems with this calculation - I may probably not thinking clearly this morning. If Firefox has 6 percent and IE is now below 90% (granted they don't give an exact figure) then that means that other browsers like Safari, Opera, Netscape, Mozilla and Conquer total for only 4% of usage? Since Apple has about a 5% market share, and Safari is the de-facto browser for Apple, doesn't that mean that mean that all of the other bowsers I mentioned basically are not used by anyone? My website statistics do not show that. I would guess that IE is WAY below 90%; maybe even approaching somewhere in the 70% area.
My
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a) it's support for (group) policies. which is simply defining control points in the registry and reading from the points and following instructions. this should not be difficult.
b) it's scripted/automatic install *and* repair. there may be some of this in there but i'm not sure.
c) other remote/automatic managenent support for not only ADS but also NDS (SuSE/Novell would be very interested in that).
eric
In my experiences with users, I have noticed you almost never see a user go from using MSIE/Outlook and Windows to migrate to *BSD or Linux. It seems an MSIE/Outlook Windows user will migrate to Firefox (typically) for their browser. Then, they will migrate to Thunderbird or gmail. After that, they get interested in Linux (it seems almost impossible to explain to them about the *BSDs). Based on this logic, I think Firefox (and sometimes Thunderbird) is where the migration to OSS starts for the typical user. For corporations, this may be different because Firefox is harder manage using traditional means (no group policies), but I think you could have a bunch of X terminals setup to go to one machine and one Firefox installation instance for all users of a particular group on *nix.
Powered by caffeine and sugar; BSD
As long as firefox does not fix it's speed issues, the market share will not beat IE. There are bug reports about memory leaks and regular slow downs after a while for about half a year now. As long as they they are not willing to fix this, some people will not switch to firefox as their standard browser.
Besides, it makes me really suspicious that they cannot handle this bugs. Doesn't leave a good impression on me.
All they would have to do is completely support CSS 2.1. Maybe even do CSS3 support with all the extension for accessability for webpages. Bump up of the control of the printing device. Have CSS selectors that act for some of the less used options that are dead if they aren't there. Geek support will gradually come in. They won't like it, but they'll have to eventually admit standards are supported.
.NET control that gives complete control over the manipulation and creation of Office documents. Yes, this will put at least 3 companies out of business. But this will also ensure (ensnare?) businesses.
Then for the final business reason to keep IE. Make a
Then everybody will have what they want. Business types just want excel/office for browing the Internet and the tech types will be able to code standards compliant web pages for their intranets.
Oh...and as a side note. Work on security a bit too. Personally, I don't see how they are going to fix it with backward compatability a overriding requirement. If they can't get rid of ActiveX, then their security problem won't go away.
-I hate unripe sigs.
You are going to mod me as troll, but we can't win like this. The reason we can't win like this is because we are becoming complacent. We can't let our own arrogance and pride be our downfall. Until we make Internet Explorer go the way of the Dodo bird, we have a real problem.
We need to keep fighting as hard as we can and not slow down for anything.
While Internet Explorer can be managed using group policies, which you have to use to lock down windows anyway, that doesn't mean firefox is entirely unmanageable in a network environment.
.ini-style settings or profiles stored in directories for ages. Using shared or synchronized files (with appropriate permissions) to propagate settings has been a common way to manage applications for ages as well.
Firefox accepts a startup flag (-profile d:\foo) that tells it what it's configuration directory is. You can install firefox on a shared directory, and have it retrieve settings from a (read-only) shared directory (or on a per user basis).
While it's not as finegrained as internet explorer's policies (where you might prevent some-one from changing only the homepage, and nothing else, or vice-versa), it's by no means unconfigurable.
This sort of thing should hardly come as a surprise. Applications have been using
Now, it's a shame firefox doesn't come with a handy-dandy MSI file, but then, neither does Internet Explorer. Then again, "deploying" firefox is a question of copying/sharing a directory and adding a shortcut with a -profile flag. Much easier and less prone to failure than a (remote/MSI) IE install.
Also, check out sysinternals. They have some real handy tools like PsExec (in the Pstools package); basically rexec for windows, which can really ease your pain when managing a zillion workstations where some change needs to be applied NOW.
And for more security options, check out windows-2003 server and XPs "software restriction policies"; and the great tdifw firewall (no GUI, just a service configured by copying a text-based file to your workstations and restarting the service, mucht better than any Norton offering) (wipfw might also be nice).
SCO employee? Check out the bounty
You can count small businesses with home users here. The many that are small enough that installing per machine is easier and cheaper than central control.
Do you have any evidence that this market is much smaller than the corporate market? I'd imagine a minority of PCs in the world are centrally managed.
Hopefully this will prompt the National Lottery's website in the UK to let me access the Subscriptions part without telling me that my browser isn't secure enough.
Try going here using FireFox and you'll see what I mean.
Summation 2
Why would Microsoft care how many people use IE? They give it away for free. Is it just that Firefox is a "gateway drug" and leads to use of other non-Microsoft solutions?
It's pretty neat how far FireFox is beginning to spread. CNN carried this story on TV just a half-hour ago. They mentioned that FireFox was becoming the most popular alternative to IE. My coworkers (who's job includes watching CNN) came by and asked me why this FireFox thing is better. I told them about tabbed browsing, popup blocking, lack of security issues, and other niceties.
:-)
One of the coworkers downloaded FireFox right away. I actually expected him to take a little while to wean off of IE. After I showed him FireFox's features, however, he set FireFox to his default browser and deleted his IE shortcuts! I think we're definitely making headway.
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...then I will know that IE is dying.
But the evil Billy Gates is a master of resurrection. IE7 will return with a minesweeper addon with new levels!
See: AWSTATS page. (Yes, it will be dog slow if everyone hits it at the same time...)
Your Servant, B. Baggins
When my father-in-law says, "I'm running Linux now," I about piss myself. Then I realize he just installed Firefox on his Windows box and confused all FOSS by lumping it in with Linux. Then, while trying to explain to him that FOSS is good but it's not just all Linux, I get questions reguarding the slowdown of his computer mysteriously timed with the install of Kazaa.
/me bashes head with phone.
For corporations, this may be different because Firefox is harder manage using traditional means (no group policies)
They have a real schizophrenic approach to Firefox at work. Corporate says "IE only", Helpdesk says "You ought to try Firefox".
I feel safer using firefox, and compatibility is getting better with every new release, so, I don't see myself going bak to IE anytime soon. I just don't "trust" IE anymore, nor Mircosoft to be able to deliver a secure browser or OS.
Plus, as long as you keep nursing at the MS teat, you are assured a job in the tech support industry, as you are sure to have many, many fires to fight each day, to justify your presence. Sometimes it is wise to build a fire break, unless you just get a rush from watching things burn. In that case, keep the status quo, and pass the marshmallows!
Could the next Internet Explorer stops the Firefox growth?
Yes, Microsoft can make the next IE have the same number of features, be stable, and secure. So in short: No (Or maybe yes, after about 5 releases to fix the buggy version they're bound to rush out the door)
I mostly agree with your post, except in one point - people may not know much about security flaws, but many DO know about things like spyware getting installed through the browser, and that is a reason for many people to change, even if they need a little help and hints from knowledgeable people (us). Once you tell them that firefox protects them from spyware (of which the most annoying visible effect is the appearence of the dreaded popups), they're usually eager to switch away from IE.
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
and 94% is 500 million users. Creaky Operating Systems Form IT Foundations
Oh, you meant goatse.com. That site is just gross, especially the picture in the top-right corner!
I, on the other hand, don't think it will be easy. Home users can't use their computers properly, so they call their local slashdot-reading, mozilla-promoting geek to fix their computer. That person doesn't like IE, and the end user will fail to notice any difference other than that the geek said it was "better".
The standard users aren't even downloading firefox themselves now, they have others doing it for them. And the persons doing the downloading dislike IE for being IE, not for it's features.
Hey, you know that by making your stats available on the web you are doing the following:
You are helping (referer) spammers!
So, for the love of [insert deity here], would you please password protect such pages
http://virtuelvis.com/
How many of these users are switching because everytime they open IE, a ton of porn banner ads open too?
Probably quite a few of them.
just guessing. I use firefox because I don't want to have a problem going to a website and then my computer becoming unusable. It still happens sometimes with firefox and opening PDFs, but I am content to blame that on the Adobe PDF viewer.
Why read the article when I can just make up a snap judgement?
It's 6 freaking perecent. It's not much. It's nothing to get excited about, nor is it news.
For developers who produce public websites it is very important. It used to be the policy of some organisations to only develop for IE viewing. That policy no longer makes sense. It would mean that more than 1 in 20 of your customers would have difficulties with your website. For a business with thousands of users (or more), like a bank, that is a real problem.
Is there a way to make Firefox launch quickly, like there is with Mozilla?
If so, I'd switch to Firefox immediately.
Then again, there may be some major annoyances that they won't be able to remove for compatibility reasons, such as ActiveX (which as you know is responsible for much of the spyware problem). What people should do is get rid of features like that completely, so that IE can be a secure browser...
Bingo! No, Ms can't suppress IE growth. Contraly to what you say, most users switch because of security flaws. Not that the users know that, but most of the people that change today are told by someone that their spyware is due to IE - they should change to Firefox so, they change and spyware is gone.
People don't even know how to use tabbed brownsig or extensions before they use FF to became adepts
Rethinking email
My wife went that way. She moved to Firefox since she got tired of getting viruses from IE and now she is very interested in moving to Linux from Windows XP.
Before Firefox she would not even think about moving to Linux no matter how much I prodded her.
_Why_ does the whole Mozilla matter?
Firefox has a master configuration directory. Pretty much every single aspect of the browser is configurable through that directory. In fact, you can do a lot of things with it there that you can't with IE.
If you want to set a particular action for your people, edit the configuration stuff. There's a lot of documentation on how to do it.
Mozilla is making their browser configuration work pretty much the same as everything else in OSS: through config files, which considering the complexity is probably a good idea.
With a GUI you'd have to play "find the menu item" to get anywhere. Ironically, though, if you want to do that, then you can log in as superuser (admin), and edit this file through the browsers config inteface for most versions of it (and for most parts of the configuration).
But to switch subjects, your "corporations are a much bigger market than home users" comment is almost certianly wrong when you're not talking about an app that you sell to users.
Consider this:
1) Almost everyone who works in a corporate environment has computers to work on at work, and ones for home. Thus, almost every corporate user is also a home user.
2) Not everyone who has a computer is in a corporation. Thus, there are a lot of home users who are not corporate users.
The bottom line is that there must always be more home users than corporate users. Sure, they may not actually want to buy Mozilla, but that doesn't mean there aren't more of them.
It makes sense that Mozilla would concentrate on its primary marketshare. Especially when it does what you want. They probably assume that if you're paid to do global configs, you can figure out how. I suppose that was a wrong assumption in your case.
Are they asking to much of Windows admins?
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
I agree, the flaws and annoyances that I talked about were things such as popups (although I've heard that IE on XP SP2 already blocks popups - well? I don't know because I use win2k) and spyware.
:)
But I'm not quite sure that Firefox will continue to grow much after the next version of windows... We'll see
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
We're already seeing popups get through Firefox, the more popular FF gets the more it will be targetted by the groups who have simply targetted IE up until now.
In this case it most certainly IS a curse to be popular.
Pretty slick. Modded up on the same freakin comment 3 times. I'll have to try that one...
According to my logs, almost NOBODY that accesses my website uses IE.
This space available.
heh I'm wondering if they are counting popups and malware-spawned browser windows toward the IE percentages. Several people are saying 70 to 80% is more likely, but if you count the extra 'hits' from popups and such, that could easily push those numbers higher. ;-)
You'd be surprised how thin on the ground the true Geek can be. I doubt that I could snare one off campus even if I set out free beer and a Hooters gal as bait.
pbranes has already posted the very same comment, three times to this story, word for word. And zillions of times to previous firefox stories.
Say no to software patents.
I help to run "one of those" sites, the nature and scope of which I will leave entirely to the reader's imagination, save to say it's unlikely people hit it from work.
Over the course of the past three months, I'm seeing closer to 30% of my traffic as being Mozilla based, with Firefox accounting for almost all of that. 60% is IE, and the rest is split between Opera, Safari, Konqueror and various spider bots. Oddly enough, Opera is better represented than Safari... I attribute this to its popularity on cell phones.
Speaking with other admins, these numbers aren't unique.
IE's lost its monopoly in the home browser market... its overall dominance comes from locked-down corporate desktops, where change comes but slow.
SoupIsGood Food
Deploying Firefox or any other program is easy with things such as Ghost Install (or a similar name which I don't recall), they do it on my university... But managing is another matter...
The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
Moderators, check pbrane's posting history. The baboon has already posted the very same comment three times to this story, and hundreds of times to previous Firefox stories (and occasionnally to non-Firefox stories too!). Mod down. Mod down hard!
It would be pretty hard for MS to walk away from ActiveX. After all, all plug-ins for IE are ActiveX components. So every single one would have to be rewritten (unless Microsoft adopted the Mozilla standard, fat chance). And if Microsoft removed ActiveX, many, many websites would be instantly broken, because they use the non-standard clsid object tags.
A much better position would be for there to be lots of browsers with around 15% market share.
I'm assuming by "lots of browsers" you mean between 5 and 8 of them, assuming there are only 100 percents in 100%.
: P
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...at least according to this Slashdot article from last November - Dutch Survey Shows IE Web Share Below 90%
So does this show there's been little further progress since then ? They used to say they were aiming for 10% by the end of 2004, so it certainly looks like growth is slowing down somewhat.
Publishing Webalizer stats doesn't help spammers if you hack it to use rel="nofollow" .
I think the main reason for the quick growth of Firefox is that it has UI advantages over IE... like tabbed browsing and other things.
My experience has been that people are sick of having their PC's clobbered by spyware and many are recommending they switch to Firefox... and they are.
I have never personally heard of a person switching because of tabbed browsing. Give me a break, it's not that big of a deal.
rd
And there never was much of a competitor until FireFox..soo you can't be impressed with the showing thus far.
..impossible to explain ...*BSDs
/.
As exactly the sort of user u describe, all I can say is that for some reason I have gotten the impression that *BSD is out of date, not GUI based (kiss of death) and has no hardware support or user base.
I'm not saying this is true or false: this is just the impression i have picked up from sites like
Also, when I go down to the store, there is a large section on Linux OS, and (I think) nothing on *BSD; I would suspect that a lot of cherry MS to *nix people like myself are willing to pay for a commercial box the first time
Also, I would imagine alot of us older users remeber *nix boxes from the prime/apollo/data general days, and boy, did they suck (I know, it is completely unfair to compair any electronic device from 15 years ago to today, but who said life was fair??)
Other people have made very good points about how browser lockin can lead to webapp lockin. Back in the bad old days this was a major issue: people were afreaid that IE would lead to mass adoption of WMV, IIS, and would allow MS to create proprietary web standards by majority. Certainly these fears haven't completely been abated, but I do think MS's ability to do this is worsening.
I also know first-hand from MS employees that some of the justification is much shorter-term. A majority of IE users don't change their home pages or search engines. These can generate significant revenue, as long as they get a lot of users. This is one reason why MS recently improved MSN search--they were embarrassed to discover that their old search engine was profitable, but that profits were shrinking as more and more turned to google.
Because they feel if they're not getting money from something, it becomes a bastard product. Microsoft doesn't want to do extra work if they already told the people to use teh XP for critical updates. They think Windows 2000 is nearly dead, though many around me think 2000 is better because it doesn't use the "jellybean Start button" visual styles (though of course they can be switched off in XP too).
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
I want the following buttons:
[Cancel] [OK] [Short explaination] [Long explaination]
For the long explaination, you take 10 moms and explain it to them in common language until they all understand, then you compile that into the help text.
The Chair Corp. comic(*00-12)
Technically I'm that sort of user as well, although I went Linux desktop years ago, it was after abandoning Outlook Express for more secure email clients, and trying W2K and thinking "oh shit, I don't want anything to do with that".
BSD does I'm sure do all these things and more, but despite being a Unix admin with experience installing SCO/Solaris/HP-UX/DGUX/Linux the first BSD install just left me cold, and I gave up very quickly.
How much longer until "Netcraft confirms:" that Firefox (like *BSD, Linux, Windows, Solaris, MacOS, etc.) is DYING?
Tuck
Tuck's Journal.
once installed, [Microsoft Internet Explorer 7] will probably block instances of Firefox from being launched, or even launching IE instead.
Antitrust. Again.
Every once in a while I get a call from a less-technical friend or colleague who needs something "technical" done to their PC. Lately, and with an alarming frequency, the "something technical" involved cleaning the system of spyware. Anti-spyware tools only catch a certain percentage of the culprits, and often the less damaging ones. Running Adaware and S&D takes a few unattended minutes. Rooting out the rest of the malware can take hours.
Since I don't feel like wiping my friends bums for them all the time, one of the first preventive measures I take is to try and remove as many hooks into IE as possible, and install Firefox as the default browser. I am not sure this helps, but the way I figure it should at least diminish the number of "support calls" I get.
I've always wondered how these companies track useage. Webside Story, who gets a posting now and then about browser useage, uses the Nielson approach and only has a limited sample of willing participants. This article is citing "Net Applications" who appear to have some product called hitslink. I've never seen a site using this and, as someone paranoid about being tracked in anyway, when I look at the ad-block info for a page, i'll immediately block anything that smacks of tracking (so they won't ever pick me up, because i'm blocking all requests from hitslink.com)
:)
On a more pleasant note, I'm pleased to see that my whole IT group has made the firefox switch and, not to be boastful, I can take credit for starting that trend
He knows very well that Firefox is easy to set up and administer remotely, he's just looking for a nice meal of fish... and apparently he's getting it!
If you have modpoints, don't reply, mod down instead!
10 LET M$="Microsoft Corporation"
if Dell or Compaq would ship firefox ALONG side with IE5/6/7 and name it that ("IE#" rather than "internet explorer") people would use it
Problem there is that if a major PC vendor were to change the icons that the user sees on first login, the vendor would lose the deep discounts Microsoft gives it.
I love how people post their personal websites stats to show FireFox is getting high, as if their sites were any indication of reality, or that anyone cares about their website.
I never liked the design of AWstats. Webstats are something that should run from a cron job and generate static pages, like Webalizer does.
I'm not sure what the advantage to generating a dynamic page for web stats is, especially when you still need a regular cron job to update the database. Just generate static pages too.
-Z
Why would Microsoft care how many people use IE? They give it away for free.
IE for Mac OS X and IE for UNIX are no longer maintained. IE for Windows is not available for Wine but instead available only under a Supplemental EULA that ties it to a copy of an existing Microsoft operating system. Therefore, the price of IE is the price of Windows.
Mod down grand-parent. Posted 3 times.
Users rarely stick with any tool for altruistic or ethical reasons, even proven performance benefits will add up badly against a users' dependency on an existing platform. For this reason the firefox team would do well by continuing to encourage developers to make more really useful extensions - things likes calendars, flash and ad-blockers, bookmarking tools and download managers all make the idea of moving from firefox very remote for me. My own reasons for using Linux are as much about feature dependency (and it's comforts) as FOSS altruism, price and performance.
Tabbed browsing shouldn't be touted as the bastion of firefox's success, afterall it's been around for a long time before FF came on the scene; investing in such triviality when making browser comparisons only strengthens Microsoft's argument that moving from an 'unsupported third-party browser' to a 'supported and integrated browser' is actually sensible. FF has a lot to offer via XUL/extensions, making it more than just another tabbed browser.
I for one have switched back to IE on my Windows workstations. FF is too incompatible with pron sites. It gives those stupid "accessing a non secure site" errors even when the box to keep showing the error is unchecked. Also I like to leave my browsers up for days at a time. FF barfs on linux and windows after a few days of being left on. You have to close it out and open it back up. Honestly, i get less pop ups with IEsp2 than i do with FF. I got tired of only using FF because i was supposed to. Bottom line is its NOT a better browser. Once IE7 is out, tabbed browsing finally, no reason to even consider FF. I dont care if IE7 isnt compliant with "standards" Which i dont believe are standard int he first place because IE doesnt support them and 90% of ppl use IE. THat is standard in my book.
As a web developer, the biggest reason that I use firefox is because of how easy it makes my life. Things like the Web Developer Toolbar, View Selection Source, Venkman Javascipt Debugger, and many other things have now made firefox an indispensible part of my web development work.
Anthropic principle: We see the universe the way it is because if it were different we would not be here to see it.
i use linux only on my desktop, but for my work laptop when IE7 comes out, i'll try it. If it happens to (no burning me at the stake) work very well on that computer, i'll use it. For some reason or another the National City corp. secure CC site chokes Firefox up every time, but IE flies right through. i use IE for little else on that machine right now, but it'll be interesting to see what the new version brings to the table. i guess i fear that many folks will see the new, although borrowed, features in IE and go back to it since it's a "known" and it can now do all that cool stuff that Fire-thingy (their words, not mine!) did.
I've seen references to the fact that people want to see alot of browsers with a medium sized market share because it stimulates inovation and that in turn makes it better for the "consumer". I beg to differ. I think there needs to always be a clear cut winnner in everything. If there's not, then it waters down the product so to speak.
Look at airlines for example. While we all have our favorites, there's not really a clear cut leader in air travel. This has led to average service and fares at best. If there was a clear cut leader, the others would bust their ass to try and overtake them.
Which leads us to things like operating systems and web browsers. Microsoft is obviously ahead in the OS department but that's led the *nix community to rally and do everything they can to try and overtake them. Same thing with the browser wars. IE has long had a dominant share of the market and that in turn has spawned Firefox, Opera, etc. Each struggling to overtake the giant. I for one love seeing the improvments browsers have made. Besides, we all like rooting for the underdog and that's exactly what Firefox is. For now....
My sig of choice is Marlboro
I have a general-interest site (no particular geeky interest), so one would think my stats would be more typical, but I see no Firefox at all, unless Firefox identifies as Netscape 5?:
ie6: 84%
ns5: 7%
ie5: 5%
safari/125.12: 1%
The remaining 2%
Netscape 4.0
Yahoo! Slurp
Netscape 3.0
Microsoft Internet Explorer 4.0
Googlebot/2.1
Safari/125.9
So where's Firefox???
Comment removed based on user account deletion
Were you just not paying attention lately?
Partner sources say Microsoft is wavering on the extent to which it plans to support CSS2 with IE 7.0. Developers have been clamoring for Microsoft to update its CSS support to support the latest W3C standards for years. But Microsoft is leaning toward adding some additional CSS2 support to IE 7.0, but not embracing the standard in its entirety, partners say.
Microsoft's opposition to fully supporting CSS has been on the table for discussion for days. I'd hardly that's "conformance to standards". Plus, IE7 won't pull back. I really, really doubt that people will just say "Oh, look! IE7's out! It looks exactly like Firefox when it came out a year ago! I guess I'll switch back!" Not going to happen. The only way it'll pull back is if current FF users buy new computers with IE7, and don't bother to get Firefox for said new computers. Meanwhile, it's almost a sure thing that the dozens of bugs in security holes revealed in the first year are going to push people over to Firefox still.
...That they may license the technology from either the Avant browser or the Maxthon "shell" for IE that will become part of Internet Explorer 7.0.
This could be especially bad news for Firefox if IE 7.0 incorporates MySoft Technology's Maxthon code. I've been running Maxthon for over a month (I started with Version 1.12.00 and recently updated to 1.2.00) and believe me, once you're used to Maxthon it's hard to go back to the "stripped down" Firefox. Not only does Maxthon have tabbed browsing, but also true mouse gestures and the very powerful AD Hunter function, which can block out many online ads that slow down the computer and/or install spyware/adware without your knowledge in addition to blocking out most pop-up ad windows.
All I know is that as a Tech Support Engineer for an ISP, I spend quite a bit of my time migrating our customers over to Firefox from IE. I find they are most receptive right after they have had a major spyware/virus infestation and we helped get them cleaned up, or at least sent to someone who can clean them up (depending on the extent of the damage).
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Here in Austria (no, not in Soviet Russia), websites are reporting ~20% Mozilla, ~70% MSIE ...
"I love my job, but I hate talking to people like you" (Freddie Mercury)
The MSNBOT browser has taken 0.2% of market share, most of this gain was at the expense of Microsoft Internet Explorer. ;)
I run a snowboard store at www.snowdevil.ca and this months statistics are really surprising.
Obviously this is a pretty young clientele
Browsers:
Operating systems:
Go non MS stuff!
It is one thing to say that 1 in 20 users have installed Firefox. It is quite another thing to prove that 1 in 20 customers of Amazon.com or your local S&L are running Firefox.
Estimates of Firefox's success or IE's decline don't tell you much unless you can break them down geographically, and by age, income, usage patterns and so on.
Have you hugged your penguin today?
In a nutshell, this whole discussion can be boiled down to: _every_ statistic out there on IE usage is somehow skewed to make it look like fewer people are using it than actually are.
Slashdot: Failed Car Analogies. Amateur Lawyering. Anecdote Battles.
Once again. IE does not have javascript. Nor ECMAscript. It uses jscript.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
I'm not trolling.
When Firefox was our own little secret, no sites bothered trying to circumvent pop-up blocking and ad blocking. Now, they are. For instance, last night I got three pop-unders while visiting a couple of sites that I trust. Adblock removed the images from those pop-unders, but I still got them anyway.
Bottom line: The more popular Firefox gets, the more sites will try and succeed at circumventing Firefox's ad blocking features.
This space left intentionally blank.
Because it's easy to use lynx, w3m or some such in scripts, to get some page and produce a no-nonsense, easily parseable ASCII representation of it.
Also, in server environment, we don't usually install X at all, but still every now and then need to access some page from text console.
'Once scientists, even the dim-witted social scientists, get muzzled, the Western Civilization is finished.' - oldhack
It used to be the policy of some organisations to only develop for IE viewing. That policy no longer makes sense. It would mean that more than 1 in 20 of your customers would have difficulties with your website.
1 in 10, not 1 in 20.
The important statistic here isn't the increasing Firefox usage, it's the decreasing IE usage. A year ago, IE had 95% market share, meaning that if you developed for IE only, 19 out of 20 users could use your site. That was good enough to allow IE-only development policies, especially since the majority of the 1 in 20 non-IE users out actually did have access to IE and were tech-savvy enough to realize that if it doesn't work with Opera/Netscape/Mozilla/Whatever, they should try IE. So the net effect is that a year ago, an IE-only web site annoyed about 1 in 20 users, but only drove maybe 1 in 100 away (that's a wild guess, obviously).
Now, only 9 out of 10 users have IE as their default browser, and a smaller percentage of non-IE users recognize that a site that doesn't work well will work with IE. So now an IE-only web site annoys 1 in 10 and drives away a larger percentage of those. Perhaps half? Who knows? Anyway, not only is the non-IE population twice as big, but it's more likely to be dissuaded from using your IE-only site, so the combination means the damage to your audience is several times larger.
If IE usage continues to decline, eventually IE-only development policies are going to become untenable for most web sites. I would guess that if IE usage drops as far as 80%, most developers of non-intranet web sites are going to have to test on multiple browsers and focus on standards compliance.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
It makes no difference who came up with it. Opera is a wonderful browser, as much as I've used it, but Microsoft's only real competitor right now is Firefox. So, really, it's Firefox they will be copying, even if Firefox is, in turn, copying someone else.
I'm pretty sure these "market-share" figures are all about sales - that is, of new sales 5% of them will be Macs.
But since there are a huge number of older PC's around, 5% of new sales will take a while to really equal 5% of the total number of computers around.
A lot of people still have Windows 95/98 boxes and use them quite happily. I think this is also what's helping to pull up Firefox, which offers a more modern browsing experience even ojn older computers.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Amazing magic tricks
someone needs to write a float blocker, it shouldn't be too hard to block divs that are positioned over a block of text.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
I think the problem is one of publicity. For the regular user, firefox is freeware and a few clicks away. They would want to switch if they knew of it: 1-The regular user is becoming slightly more aware of the need for computer security. (why is my computer so slow!! why do 10 popups appear whenever I turn on my PC!!) 2-The regular user is starting to find out this is caused by programs called spyware/viri 3-They are also starting to realize part of this is due to browsing the internet (with Internet Explorer). Even without reading about it from somewhere else, just the fact that whenever they visit sites (with IE) they run into obviously illegal popups and slowodown starts imprinting in their minds that browsing is inherently dangerous to their PCs. A new program (browser) appears that promises to do their browsing (for free) without any of those problems and no technical knowledge required for installation, even joe sixpack would switch. All that's needed now is publicity and a large percentage of regular users will switch. However we all know M$ is a master of marketing so it may not happen.
More than twice the Mozilla type browsers are hitting my site than IE. My stats gathering does not differentiate between Firefox and Mozilla.
Mozilla has been growing significantly for the last year. 8 months ago it was a 50:50 split.
You can lose something that is loose, so tighten the loose item so you don't lose it.
The idea is that some bots are going to load web pages using a selected 'spam' referer value so that they can try to get on the 'referer list'.
Once they are on the list, and a search bot indexes the page, that page now increases the selected_'spam'_referer_value_site's number_of_pages_that_reference_the_site.
The more pages on the web that reference a site, the higher its ranking will be in the search engine.
The theory is that, if I have a bot that does nothing but load pages from the internet with the refer of viagra-p1mp.com, and this bot's tenacious loading of pages causes the viagra-p1mp.com site to appear on referer logs, then search engines might actually rank the site slightly higher than if I wasn't hiting those sites with GET requests every 20 seconds.
And about the password protect thing mentioned GGGP and GGP post, I believe that the idea is if you need a password to access the stats, then the bots won't index them. If that is the idea, however, wouldn't a quick edit to robot.txt be better? Not sure, since I didn't make the original posts.
BTW!!!, viagra-p1mp.com is AVAilable. Register it TODAY and GEt a frEE RQLEX.
If a corporation has settled on AD and group policies and locking down IE, then WHAT is their incentive for deploying FireFox?
The company I work for is rather small, but we still NEED Internet Explorer because a few of the web based services we use require it.
I still run FireFox on my desktop (as do most of the people in the IT department), and I run it exclusively at home.
You have to address what NEED FireFox will fulfill that IE cannot or does not. Just because YOU want to deploy it is not sufficient.
FireFox usage will grow at home and in those companies that still haven't adopted Microsoft's security schema (which includes a lot of companies in other countries).
You're looking at the "problem" from your own viewpoint. Look at it from other vantage points. I'd rather see the developers working on security holes and such than working on making the deployment more like IE.
Again, those companies that will reject FireFox because it cannot be deployed/managed like IE are most likely to be the ones that already have other ties to IE that will not allow them to replace it anyway.
mmm, It's a big deal to me. It's faster to open a new tab vs a new window, at least a new IE window. Also, I can middle click a link to open it in the background. Very handy, and much better than right clicking and going down a menu!
Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
Working at a smaller company ($30m sales), our computer policies don't include browser lockdowns or security restrictions.
In the past 5 years, the only viruses our corporation has had at all were malware downloaded by unwitting users visiting "bad" sites.
It hasn't be a terrible problem, just a little annoying to get them removed.
FireFox would address this problem somewhat better than IE, but the business case for switching browsers corporate wide (or even just a user by user basis) is not compelling enough for us to move on it anytime soon. Some of our own web apps from vendors basically require IE by the use of ActiveX Controls...
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d Capitalization really works: i helped my uncle jack off a horse
perhaps what you meant to say was "users choose to switch from ie to firefox." and, if that's true, it's b/c they favor the adblocking features which, 10 years ago, microsoft chose not to implement.
microsoft might notice some change in that trend if they took a look at the adblocking features available in firefox, and implemented them for ie (in an honest way -- not like hotmail's pseudo spam filters that block most spam, but never spam from microsoft)
"Forgive us our trespasses, as we forgive those who trespass against us." -Jesus Christ The Lord's Prayer
You're forgetting one very important thing. As a matter of fact, everyone who is a big Moz suite fan says the same thing as you, but they forget one of the biggest reasons for FF/TB: seperating the memory of the various suite applications.
Does no one remember that there was (and may still be, I use FF/TB instead of the suite now) a major problem with one part of the suite crashing and taking the rest with it? Many times I was bitten by a buggy Moz Mail plugin crashing and pulling my 10+ tab web session off the cliff with it. I was very happy to hear that they were going to redo the various components as stand-alone apps and then later reintegrate them into a single cohesive suite, but one with more protection between its various pieces.
Now the latter part of the plan seems to have fallen by the wayside and only time will tell if it will eventually happen. I understand and agree that running both FF and TB takes an inordinate amount of resources when compared to the suite, but I'm hesitant to lose that safety separation. I'm hoping that there is a happy medium that can be reached (and please educate me if you know what that would be). But what you suggest sounds to me like an invitation to the disasters of old.
We've rolled out Firefox to the 20 or so people in my office and we have no need to control it via group policy at all.
Our firewall (sonicwall) has excellent content filtering that tracks/stops unacceptable traffic without need of MS group policy.
Wikipedia can be made to agree with anyone.
Most people that switched to firefox know way better than that. Perhaps some lusers on AOL might go back to IE7 because it's newer (and of upcoming M$ FUD about their oh-so-good browser). Saying I'm gonna switch to IE7 is an insult as far as I'm concerned.
I also use Mozilla, Opera and Konqueror often (and others to test websites). IE is the very latest piece of sh*t I'm ever turning to. Not gonna happen.
On the other hand, Firefox only gained about half a point in January, whereas in previous months they usually gained nearly a full point. Perhaps they're leveling off. Or perhaps its just statistical noised. Or perhaps all Firefox "gains" are just statistical noise, and the "trend" people keep jumping on is in their own imaginations.
I look at the other posts in this story and I stats that even sillier. Like, "almost 20% of the users on my Dark Angel fansite use Firefox!" Means nothing.
Reports of Firefox's growth "spurt" began last year, egged on by all those IE security failures. At least some of that reported growth was probably real. But if there were a serious trend, we'd see something like 10% by now.
We need a moratorium on a these UFO sightings -- excuse me, I mean reports of "evidence" that Firefox is making serious inroads. Firefox advocates that jump on every statistical fluke this way are just huring their own credibility.
1 in 10, not 1 in 20.
Yes, I was considering Firefox only, and was wrong.
If IE usage continues to decline, eventually IE-only development policies are going to become untenable for most web sites. I would guess that if IE usage drops as far as 80%, most developers of non-intranet web sites are going to have to test on multiple browsers and focus on standards compliance.
My point was that this already is the situation. For a company with thousands of users, even 1% of incompatible browsers is a problem.
Thanks to Haeleth for finding the bugzilla link. The URL is (paste into browser): bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=233625
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Yes lets support VBScript and activeX and watch all the security flaws of windows show its ugly head through firefox. I have yet to find an actual use for activeX or VBScript for that matter. If those 5/10% of the WWW wanted their site to be viewed by everyone it is their responsibility of the web developer to support as many possible clients and standards as possible. Those 5 - 10% of web developers are the equivilant of stores that only accept credit cards and not actual money. An interesting way of handling business, but a surefire way of shooting one's self in the foot.
The Mozilla dev team (so far) has shown that they know how to create secure products. Microsoft as everyone on slashdot knows has a tendancy to create products that suffer from shoddy qa thus having all of these buffer overflow issues and exploits. Yes the IDN issue will eventually show it's ugly head again for firefox, but I do know IE7 WILL have the same phishing problems that firefox had because IDN. Although IDN is nice for the foreign folk and non-english speaking, many fonts repeat characters left and right through different character sets allowing for phishing.
By the way, MS's implementation of javascript was a bastardization of the initial javascript/EMCAscript standard. Accepting MS's implementation basically throws out the standard because even with MSIE's implementation, I've had a few occations where something did not act as they were documented. Oh by the way, Microsoft cannot legally call their javascript implementation javascript, their implementation is called JScript. (This may or may not be current, I just remember reading about it years ago)
Microsoft stating that they will embrace and extend standards is just another way of Microsoft saying: Yeah, we'll follow your standards up to a point, but then we will do our own thing to make it incompatible with other products. It is the 3rd party's decision to support OUR standard or not.
Enough with bashing MS though, they should rather conform to what everyone else is using. If they did that, yes firefox would have a lot of trouble switching people over.
[!] No, I can't see my comments. They are not worthy of +3 moderation.
The Middle Click - Open Link in New Tab - is crippled on Mac OS. It seems there is some obscure voodoo related to the way messages other than simple click are processed on Mac OS. Mac is single button oriented so the middle click is not so simple to implement and Firefox still can't handle it. I managed to map my wheel button with the Logitech Mouse Driver as Cmd+Click that emulates normal Middle-Click. Now that is pretty!
Safari and Camino work well with middle clicks.
Middle-click is "the core" of tabbed browsing and tabbed browsing is the main feature of Firefox compared to IE. So having a crippled middle click on Macs pretty much makes Firefox not so great. Also, the Mac Firefox is much slower that the Windows version, and definitely slower than Safari.
Other than that, I a love Firefox and I've been with it since Phoenix 0.4. Remember those days ?
... it doesn't store its config files in "my documents"
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Here is the original USENET posting inviting users to try Opera with true MDI. It is dated Jul 14 1996, 12:00 am. Google is my friend. Cheers,
Yet Socrates himself is particularly missed.
A lovely little thinker but a bugger when he's pissed.
I remember having read this some time ago...
That's one of the best ideas related to the Mozilla project I've heard in a long time - various people have suggested things similar but they've never been taken on board! If this happened then I'd install (say) libgecko (~4mb?) and firefox (~1mb?) to use Firefox and then (maybe) thunderbird (~1mb?) to use Thunderbird? Hey presto, you've cut down on lots of download time and disk space use.
... err ... is it Sunbird? I forget what the calendar is called.
Hell, an even funkier idea would be to have a persistant Gecko daemon that served rendering requests on demand from Firefox, Thunderbird or even
Food for thought!
Actually, I believe that JScript, which IE uses, is a superset of ECMAscript (AKA 'standard' javascript). In other words, IE uses Javascript with extras.
I'm not too sure where Firefox lacks in Javascript support; so far as I know it does have 100% compatibility. However the only problems I have ever had with javascript and Firefox is when the javascript is coded incorrectly. IE is more tolerant of broken code than Firefox is.
For instance, the UK Job Centre's job-search webpage uses javascript that works in IE but not in Firefox. The root of the problem in this case is bad coding. In Firefox, the function getElementById it does exactly what it says and no more; it returns an element object dependant on the id attribute. In IE, getElementById gets elements by their id or by their name. Presumably this is to help compensate for shoddy developers mistakes, yet it has the added disadvantage of producing invalid javascript.
I'm curious to know; what sites that use javascript have you found that don't work in Firefox? If I were a betting man, I'd be willing to wager that all the problems you find are down to shoddy javascript errors that IE glosses over. In other words, the problem lies with the website developer.
In Soviet Austria...websites report YOU!
Here are my top five for the month of February:
1 56.22% MSIE 6.0
2 31.59% Mozilla/5.0
3 1.10% Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.5) Gecko/20041107 Firefox/1.0
4 188864 0.98% Opera 7.5
5 184041 0.96% MSIE 5.5
I'd be very surprised if IE7 did those things too :)
However, that won't matter. People have taken up Firefox as a solution to IE's problems. As soon as microsoft announce a new version of IE that even claims to fix them, a lot of non-loyal Firefox users who don't really understand why it's better will switch back for the novelty of a "new version of IE", even though it probably won't be more than a few band-aids. At the very least, Firefox will have to have a major version bump (read: Firefox 2.0) or some serious new UI tweaking to keep peoples' interest.
A friend is the admin for a major hotel chain here in Europe, they have 5 different names for their hotels based on the rating. The servers are all together in a big farm with load balancers and multi-homed links. Their traffic is a mix of home users, business users, and travel agencies.
His stats run about 19% for Firefox, and no more than 65% for all versions of IE combined. Contrast that with 88% market share this time last year for IE.
Because of the dynamic business nature of his sites, they have over 1% spider-bot traffic, he suspects the number is closer to 5%, since many spiders identify themselves as IE to avoid simple anti-spider countermeasures. Home users and travel agencies make up the bulk of the Firefox traffic, its only the brainless business users still using IE.
He also says that Macs now account for over 10% of their traffic, requiring their web developers to test all pages on Macs as well.
Firefox is quickly becoming a major player in the market, despite claims that "overall" it has only 5% or 6% share.
the AC
Hemos is like...sci-fi fans;he thinks technology is cool, but he hasn't bothered to understand the science it's based on
Anyone else think it would be funny if the next big worm (or any malware) changed IE to report itself to sites as firefox?
the Hog wil continue to use whatever it can click on. Anything else would require at lest more than three working grey cells, so forget it, no pun inteded. It is educational to look at IE as an operator, and the populace that uses IE as roughly equivalent to its kernel, the operator's, that is. In other words, IE has a seriously non-trivial kernel!!! Firefox and family are merely trying to make this more isometric, but frankly I don't think it is a good idea. I'd rather have more people use IE, suffer the consequences and naturally join the army of people that had enough.
Geez and around, around we go.
This is very cool to watch in your site statistics. On my website, Pranks for the prankless (prank.org) there has been a very clear trend towards firefox use, now up to about 8-10%.
the Prank Institute Because a reason why never beats a why n