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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'"
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!
The point is that Mozilla is ignoring corporate users. Remember that corporations are a much bigger market than home users. Mozilla needs to concentrate on this.
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
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.
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That is certainly important. Free Software encourages diversity. back in the day, even in the world of proprietary software, people had alternatives, they would ask you what OS you run, if you had a gui or not, what word processor you used, or what spreadsheet, what browser, etc.
Now, people using proprietary software uses a given set of applications, for a given set of basic tasks, and there is allmost no variation, besides versions.
Free Software encourages the necesary diversitiy in the software that is used. I Think there are not 2 geeks that has the same setup on their Free Software Box. We have various OSs to choose from, and we do, in the case of GNU/Linux, we have different distros, we use various browsers, terminal emulators, editors, office suits, IM programs, media players, mail clients, etc,etc, etc.
ALMAFUERTE
WTF am I doing replying to an AC at 5 A.M on a Friday night?
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
I think you're miscalculating. The set which includes all other browsers has risen more than the single browser Firefox, but as long as that set has even share in growth, that means Firefox is still very much the leader.
Conversion Rate Optimisation French / English consultant
In contrast, commercial products keep adding features where they aren't really needed. I'm going to whip out the old example of MS Word. I'm sure someone's going to respond saying how invaluable some new whizbang feature just added to the latest version of MS Word is to them, but such people are certainly in the minority.
Microsoft didn't add anything to IE for so long because there was no money in it. They only reason they had a browser was to head off Netscape becoming a platform unto itself. Once Netscape was thoroughly squashed, no more reason to develop. Word is a standalone product, so it is subject to different rules. And finally, the entire OS is a mixed case because while there are those who upgrade, the vast majority of OS software is bought with a new PC. And with a virtual monopoly on OEM installs, MS could afford to let its OS stagnate for years.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
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.
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.
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
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?
If you had actually RTFA, you would have seen:
Net Applications reports that other browsers maintained their user base.
and also:
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
That means that the numbers for the other browsers did not go up or down by any significant amount.
MS can come back from this and be resurgent again in the browser space. All it takes is will, it's certainly not a matter of resources for an entity the size of Microsoft.
I didn't say it was absent, just that it was lacking. Usage polls such as this would be more accurate if admins could limit changing the useragent only for *broken* sites. Also, FF does a crap job rendering some sites when the useragent is always set to show IE.
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!
There is no way for a cretin to install the plumbing of his bathroom either. Should that mean, we should not have bathrooms? Or even, that cretin's should have/use bathrooms? I think not! The cretin will just call a tradesman who does it for him.
Likewise, the company who likes to deploy firefox will fire its Windows sysadmin, and hire a competent person in its place.
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.
Publishing Webalizer stats doesn't help spammers if you hack it to use rel="nofollow" .
I run a smallish (300-400 unique visitors per day) football (soccer) site , who must rate pretty low on the techie side of things and Mozilla (presumably 99% Firefox) usage is at 36% and the vast majority of the rest using IE (just a couple of percent for Opera). All the main sites dealing with the club have been doing a bit of promotion for Firefox, though positive stuff and no nagging or little tricks to try and make people change. Generally the feedback has been very positive with people enquiring about and suggesting extensions to look at. Did give OOo a little push too with the b3ta 2.0 release, but as (seemingly) the only linux user around there, I am allowed :)
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.
Unless Firefox gained the other 0.67% between December and January.
Hint: you can't compare two changes directly if they are starting a month apart.
"Better security"
Ah, but what's the standard? Better security than Firefox, or simply better security than IE6?
"Tab Browsing"
We'll have to see the specifics of their implementation, won't we? For example, will I be able to force IE7 to operate in just one window?
"Conformance to standards"
Yes, but for Microsoft's definition of the word "standard." Rarely does it have anything to do with how the rest of the world uses that word.
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.
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Yes, just like IE 6 SP2 helped because it's so much more secure.
Tabbed browsing is the only thing I'd actually worry about. And they've already stated that they don't intend to fully support CSS 2 because they say they're going to wait for CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to mature. This statement shows how much they don't understand: CSS 2.1 and CSS 2 are both at the CR stage, and when someone says "CSS 2" support, what they mean now *is* CSS 2.1. That's what you implement if you implement CSS 2. (CSS Level 2, revision 1.) As for CSS 3, I'd say that's a long ways off yet.
R.Mo
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.
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.
If it's better than IE6, the IE users won't care, and won't switch.
Then again, the average person, no matter how much slashdot would like to think, doesn't care anyway.
That said, the traffic on my website (mostly generated from fark and slashdot) is close to 35% firefox, 25% opera, and the rest IE and others.
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
unless IE runs as LOCAL_SYSTEM, its "integration" is no more a security risk than that of FireFox, Opera, or Notepad.
The "Integration" is that microsoft considers the IE rendering engine to be a part of Windows, and so iexplore.exe just wraps that renderer in a GUI and some networking code.
That is very similar to KHTML and KDE - KHTML is used quite widely throughout KDE, not just in Konqueror.
There is nothing wrong with doing that, code reuse is a good thing and it even has potential to be _more_ secure than having every application throw together their own half-arsed HTML renderer.
All browsers (and all other native applications) tie "directly into the OS". They all have access to system commands like open(), write(), system(), and all the hideous Win32 APIs.
I am not sure I have ever heard of a security flaw in IE that only existed because of its "integration", and that could not have happened on a non "integrated" browser if it had similarly sloppy programming.
Advanced users are users too!