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Firefox Site Visits Up 237%

prostoalex writes "Nielsen//NetRatings, a top Web reporting and metrics agency, started tracking the Firefox Web site in June 2004 and has announced 237% growth since then. Nielsen tracks Firefox Web site visits, not downloads or usage patterns, but it notes that "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005.""

379 comments

  1. Sorry to disappoint everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    But that's just me clicking reload a lot.

    1. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by daeley · · Score: 5, Funny

      Hey, this is a case where "I will replace you with a very small shell script" actually applies! ;)

      --
      I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate.
    2. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by bergeron76 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Actually, that's probably from you middle-clicking and opening new tabs like crazy everywhere you go.

      (I ++love++ Firefox, but it should be noted that it's easier for FF users to load multiple sites rapidly [which it's Referrer tag keys])

      --
      Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
    3. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by VolcomPimp · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They don't track hits from the same IP like that.

    4. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Jugalator · · Score: 5, Funny

      But that's just me clicking reload a lot.

      I, for one, welcome our new 71% male / 29% female overlords!

      --
      Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
    5. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by callqcmd · · Score: 1
      You mean now its possible to tell from the IP the sex of the visitor?

      Shit... then I cant be a hot russian babe in the chat rooms anymore!

    6. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's inaccurate, I download it and distribute to my girlfriend and other female friends.

    7. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by IchBinEinPenguin · · Score: 4, Funny

      middle click?
      I use a mac (*), every click is a midle click!

      (*) You insensitive clod.

    8. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Phroggy · · Score: 1

      On a related note, bug 151249 is apparently fixed, and middle-clicking will work in Firefox 1.1.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    9. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by bonvoyage · · Score: 1

      Oh, okay. At first I thought it was just a sign of increased "development" at Microsoft.

    10. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      This is /. Be honest with us:
      s/girlfriend/mother/
      s/other female friends/sisters/

    11. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by DarkMantle · · Score: 1

      You mean every single ONE of them.

      Thank you, I'm here all week.

      --
      DarkMantle I been bored, so I started a blog.
    12. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      it's easier for FF users to load multiple sites rapidly [which it's Referrer tag keys])

      Is it really that difficult to use proper terminology? Referer is an HTTP header, not a tag (FFS, not everything remotely related to the web is a tag!).

      Even after decoding that bit, I am completely confused as to what it is you are trying to say. Did you mean "it's" or "its"? In what sense did you use the word keys?

    13. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Thrakkerzog · · Score: 1

      That's funny. I would much prefer 29% male / 71% female overlords.

      But hey, that's just me.

    14. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by circusboy · · Score: 1

      then what are you doing here? ;)

      --
      -- it's ridiculous how many people misspell ridiculous... (damn, damn, damn...)
    15. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      that should be rather obvious since all the people downloading firefox are doing it to escape the popups/spyware on porn sites.

    16. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by gg3po · · Score: 1
      I, for one, welcome our new 71% male / 29% female overlords!

      Michael Jackson uses FireFox?

      --
      ---
    17. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Thrakkerzog · · Score: 1

      I only spend 29% of my time here. ;-)

    18. Re:Sorry to disappoint everyone by Auckerman · · Score: 1

      "I use a mac (*), every click is a midle click!"

      Funny, but I use middle click in Safari to open a link in a new tab.

      --

      Burn Hollywood Burn
  2. Nielsen? by XanC · · Score: 0

    What do they have to do with the Web? How does a third party measure your Web statistics, and why would you want/need them to?

    1. Re:Nielsen? by wdd1040 · · Score: 3, Informative

      Neilson has connections to a few very high traffic sites and they either A)allow them to view the statistics on their logs, or B)allow them to put a 1x1 gif on their website for usage stats.

      --
      wdd
    2. Re:Nielsen? by plover · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Advertisers like to have an "independent" auditing firm do the counting page hits so they know they aren't getting scammed. Believe it or not, some unethical people are out there and might just put up a page filled with ads, have a script constantly getting the banners from the advertiser's servers, and then tell the advertisers they "had 100,000 page hits today!"

      You'll often find this task is accomplished by "web bugs", tiny 1x1 .GIF images that have no purpose other than to go to a third party to indicate the page was viewed, by what IP address, etc. They'll frequently try to give you cookies, too, in order to study browser habits. (I always block these cookies when requested, just to be obstinate.)

      --
      John
    3. Re:Nielsen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Except you simply cannot get accurate statistics on browser usage that way. Oh sure, lots of people try, and lots of people publish their results, but it's all built on a foundation of sand. The web just doesn't work that way.

      I can't seem to find a description of Neilsen's methodology, but if they are reporting male:female ratios, then they are using data beyond things like web bugs, and so I would be inclined to trust these figures far more than other organisations, including any data we could cull from our own log files.

    4. Re:Nielsen? by ScentCone · · Score: 5, Informative

      You can visit the Nielsen-NetRatings site and bone up a bit, and if you want, grab a a PDF of their corporate brochure which mentions that their techniques include the usual image tag bugs, but also techniques just like they use when they do TV ratings: interviews with "recall" information, journals, and other (for us web folks) seemingly unlikely approaches. It's all about doing sanity checking against traditional (and easily polluted) web stats. Big companies like to have their facts audited and tested by alternate methods, and Nielsen's been doing it for a long time with other hard-to-measure stuff.

      --
      Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
    5. Re:Nielsen? by dnoyeb · · Score: 3, Funny

      What I'd like to know is how the see the balls. Or perhaps I don't want to know...

    6. Re:Nielsen? by digidave · · Score: 4, Informative

      Um, no. Neilson bought RedSheriff last year. RedSheriff is a web analytics and data collection service that many sites pay for. The site would drop a piece of code onto their pages, including some Javascript, Java applet and a 1x1 gif.

      From there the site owners would have access to an online reporting tool that is quite good.

      AFAIK, RedSheriff didn't share or use their customers' site traffic logs for any purpose other than to report back to the site whose logs they were. Nielson may have re-jigged their privacy policy to allow it.

      --
      The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
    7. Re:Nielsen? by Theatetus · · Score: 1

      Given that this is Nielson, you might consider how they measure television and radio statistics: through a variety of instruments including interviews, journals, and where technologically possible actual tracking, all of which are compared with each other and extrapolated across the whole population.

      That kind of approach is very often accurate, though there have been some "Dewey Beats Truman" situations too.

      --
      All's true that is mistrusted
    8. Re:Nielsen? by superpulpsicle · · Score: 1

      I was looking thru Nielson site to see where Firefox really stand next to IE. I can't find squat.

      More importantly I want to know if Firefox has officially surpassed Netscape to become the #2 browser.

    9. Re:Nielsen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      How do these guys find the sex behind those links?

    10. Re:Nielsen? by Wieland · · Score: 1

      You'll often find this task is accomplished by "web bugs", tiny 1x1 .GIF images that have no purpose other than to go to a third party to indicate the page was viewed, by what IP address, etc. They'll frequently try to give you cookies, too, in order to study browser habits. (I always block these cookies when requested, just to be obstinate.) I don't have any statistics to back this up, but I'm pretty sure that Firefox users are a lot more likely to block these cookies, web bugs and tracking scripts than your avarage IE user. If anything, Nielsen will underestimate Firefox's market share.

    11. Re:Nielsen? by ikkonoishi · · Score: 1

      Two words.

      Optical mice

    12. Re:Nielsen? by dustmite · · Score: 1

      Does anyone actually still pay by impression? Geez .. I thought pretty much everyone in the ad affiliate world switched to at the very least pay by click-through back in +/- 2000 after the bust, and many switched to pay by "conversion", i.e. pay only those click-throughs that are converted to sales.

    13. Re:Nielsen? by SacredNaCl · · Score: 1

      Neilson has connections to a few very high traffic sites and they either A)allow them to view the statistics on their logs, or B)allow them to put a 1x1 gif on their website for usage stats.

      They also have a tool similar to Alexa that people (allegedly) voluntarily install and sends back data to them on what they viewed. It only works on IE as far as I know. The people that are selected to be preyed upon for their data have already participated in other marketing surveys so they know the demographics of the user.

      I used to occasionally fill out surveys on transportation company satisfaction for another large polling company (which the only real benefit was they gave you access to the data on the polls you participated in). One day they asked me to take a survey on net use, I clicked the link and it took me to Neilson Netratings which tried (without my permission) to install their software.

      I stopped dealing with the first company and the second. I thought it was pretty rude to be honest.

      --
      Freedom is merely privilege extended unless enjoyed by one and all.
    14. Re:Nielsen? by plover · · Score: 2, Interesting
      ( It's actually hard for me to comment on this because I've had such effective ad blocking software for the last four years I'm kind of out of the loop as to who is advertising what kind of products. I literally have no idea what kinds of products are being web marketed today, other than a few stock trading firms that show up on Yahoo's finance page and whatever OSDN is hawking on Slashdot. )

      Are there web advertisements that are simply "brand builders"? For example, I wouldn't expect consumers to click on a simple "Coca-Cola" ribbon to consider it effective. The only way to rate them would be on a per-impression basis.

      Oh, and as far as a few of the most annoying cookie-counters, I ended up sticking sites like siteminder.com in my hosts file. I do wish Firefox had a right-click cookie menu I could use to more easily fix cookie problems, but hey, now I'm just whining ... :-)

      --
      John
    15. Re:Nielsen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      actuly its not that hard to get stats of users of your websites. everytime someone visits your site they send a browser header this can be logged, although it may get the same user tons of times but shit happens. the stats are as good as your get

    16. Re:Nielsen? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Please learn a little more about HTTP before saying stuff like that.

      No, you can't log every time somebody visits your site. Things like caches and proxies come into it.

      Even if you completely disable things like that (at a cost of bandwidth charges and slowing down your website), completely uncontrollable factors skew the results. Things like UA string variations, differences in how browsers handle history lists, etc.

      although it may get the same user tons of times but shit happens

      The shit that is happening in this case would be flawed statistics.

    17. Re:Nielsen? by DeadChobi · · Score: 1

      Some browsers(Opera that I know of) can be set up to authenticate as other browsers when a website pokes it for auth. I have Opera set up to authenticate as MSIE 6 because otherwise my bank website wont let me in because my browser apparently doesnt support SSE. It's funny that Opera has SSE options, and that I can get in by authenticating as MSIE instead of Opera.

      --
      SRSLY.
  3. Calling Home by fembots · · Score: 5, Funny

    Does this take into account of the auto software update checks?

    And how does NetRatings know the gender of the visitors? Maybe if a visitor is quick and direct, it's a male; If a visitor is browsing around few sections back and forward, it's a female?

    1. Re:Calling Home by fireman+sam · · Score: 4, Funny

      Nah, they were measuring the stats from porn pages.

      --
      it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
    2. Re:Calling Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      how to tell if visitor to your website is a man:

      if(browser_type == "Firefox/1.0.2 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;"){
      visitor="man";
      } else{
      visitor="woman";
      }

    3. Re:Calling Home by 2*2*53*4127 · · Score: 5, Informative

      And how does NetRatings know the gender of the visitors?

      i wondered that myself. probably an opt-in deal, like the neilson TV families who allow their viewing habits to be tracked and mapped against their demographic?

    4. Re:Calling Home by daskalou · · Score: 0

      Most likely for females it would look for cookies from sites such as www.cleo.com, www.thegameoflove.com, www.ihavemoodswingsandamirrational.com, etc.

      For men www.sex.com, www.porn.com, www.sexyporn.com, etc.

      --
      The world is full of stupid people.
    5. Re:Calling Home by jacksonscottsly · · Score: 4, Funny

      it's much easier than that... they check to see if the referrer site is a male-gay porn site, a female-featured porn site, a lesbian porn site, or a male-featuring porn site meant for women...If it was any of those, the visitor is male; if not, it was a female.

      --
      [ you and I are ugly ]
    6. Re:Calling Home by FuzzyBad-Mofo · · Score: 1

      And how would that data tell them the sex of the viewer?

    7. Re:Calling Home by fireman+sam · · Score: 4, Funny

      If they stay on the same picture for about 5 minutes then leave the site it is a male. If they just browse the site (or read the articles) it a female.

      --
      it is only after a long journey that you know the strength of the horse.
    8. Re:Calling Home by yRabbit · · Score: 1

      Maybe they should be checking the gender of the viewers. Not that it would have any real relation to that either!

      Unless Nielsen/NetRatings invented a 1x1 transparent image that can automatically determine one's sex, this has to be just a look at "male/female people that volunteered for Nielsen/NetRatings that downloaded FireFox". I wonder how many people that use NetRatings are male or female, and how that compares to this number?

    9. Re:Calling Home by yRabbit · · Score: 1

      Hmm. Besides, what if multiple people are using the computer? E.g., male owns computer/uses netratings but female person goes on FireFox site? :)

      And what I meant in my last message was, maybe just more males use NetRatings? NetRatings isn't everyone.. this is just a reading of NetRatings users unless, like I said, they've developed some kind of sex-guessing magic usable on a webpage..

    10. Re:Calling Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would tell you how it was calculated, but then I'd have to kill you [and they'd fire me] -- Nielsen Employee's response when contacted

      [just a joke, but its probably something like that]

    11. Re:Calling Home by bergeron76 · · Score: 4, Funny

      case [website content] like/having:

      shoes, jewelry, kitchen renovation, closet expansion, clothes, gardening : gosub "FEMALE"

      cars, beer, basement renovation, MMORPGs, cigars, poker, sports : gosub "MALE"

      else/default

      print "What the fsck else is there in life!?!"; exit();

      end case

      --
      Don't think that a small group of dedicated individuals can't change the world. It's the only thing that ever has.
    12. Re:Calling Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      what about the fat 40 year old nerds with pizza stains all over their shirt pretending to be horny japanese schoolgirls?

      or.. is that just me?

    13. Re:Calling Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Bah, fix it to work with 100% accuracy first!
      r = random(100);
      if(browser_type == "Firefox/1.0.2 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;" && r < 80){
      visitor="man";
      } else{
      visitor="woman";
      }
    14. Re:Calling Home by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      how to tell if visitor to your website is a man: if(browser_type == "Firefox/1.0.2 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US;"){ visitor="man"; } else{ visitor="woman"; }

      I have my Firefox set to de-DE, does that mean I'm female?

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    15. Re:Calling Home by masklinn · · Score: 1

      Yes indeed, thanks to slashdot we've just discovered that about 5850000000 out of the 6 billion humans are actually all females

      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    16. Re:Calling Home by dalleboy · · Score: 2, Funny

      And still 99.9% of all visitors to Slashdot are male virgins...

    17. Re:Calling Home by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Insensitive clod!

    18. Re:Calling Home by hyfe · · Score: 1

      All foreigners are female?

      --
      "" How about taking the safety labels off everything, and let the stupidity-problem solve itself? """
    19. Re:Calling Home by Neoncow · · Score: 1

      Crap.. That means I probably account for half the female population..

    20. Re:Calling Home by espo812 · · Score: 1
      All foreigners are female?
      To slashdotters, yes, all females are foreign.
      --

      espo
    21. Re:Calling Home by IrishWonder · · Score: 1

      Not accurate. This doesn't take gay males and/or transvestites into consideration... as well as females who have more brains than it takes to just wear shoes.

  4. Heh. by Airconditioning · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Keep those figures going for a couple of years and then I'll be impressed.

  5. DUH! by zappepcs · · Score: 1, Insightful

    When is it going to stop being cliche' and just be fact... women are not as interested in technology as men, be it cars, home theater, or computers?

    This is almost stupid to post on /.

    1. Re:DUH! by strider3700 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      well most men I know started using firefox because it cured that little popup issue they had while surfing for porn. Most women I know don't complain anywhere near as much about popups and I've always assumed they don't hunt for porn as much.

      I know thats why I switched and i wouldn't be shocked if I'm not the only one.

    2. Re:DUH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      When is it going to stop being cliche' and just be fact

      Not until western culture stops holding on to the idea that gender doesn't carry behavioral predispositions.

    3. Re:DUH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Um. Duh. He said technology. That's equivalent to current porn. The only reason the steam engine was used to invent the steam hammer first is because you need a steam hammer to mass produce fucking machines.

    4. Re:DUH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NO its' because they can delete individual pron sites from the history.

    5. Re:DUH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      NO its' because they can delete individual pron sites from the history.

      Thanks for the tip...I didn't know that.

    6. Re:DUH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      insightful? wtf

    7. Re:DUH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      That is not a feature exclusive to firefox.

    8. Re:DUH! by b17bmbr · · Score: 1

      you insensitive clod. so, did you attend harvard?

      --
      My problem? I was perfectly gruntled, until some numbnuts came by and dissed me.
    9. Re:DUH! by iamlucky13 · · Score: 1

      Except that as a computer tech on a college campus (where explicit websites are assumed to represent a significant portion of the traffic), I see far more girls have with serious popup issues.

    10. Re:DUH! by DavidTC · · Score: 1
      Boys have more problem with 'legit' popups, ie, popups shown when they surf to sites. It's not just porn, either...look for warez, get porn popups.

      Girls, OTOH, seems slightly more likely to fall for 'social' spyware. You know, 'install this for cute kitten icons' and stuff like that. So their porn popups happens without any relationship to web browsing.

      Which is obviously much more embarassing. You aren't likely to search for stuff you know is going to give you porn popups in front of other people. But if you just get them randomly, that's a pretty serious problem.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    11. Re:DUH! by Aero · · Score: 2, Funny

      Most women I know don't complain anywhere near as much about popups and I've always assumed they don't hunt for porn as much.

      Women don't have to hunt for it. They just need to use their husband's/boyfriend's bookmark list.

      --
      We can believe in you for 3 minutes, but beyond that, even the King of All Cosmos can't be expected to wait.
    12. Re:DUH! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      women I know don't complain anywhere near as much about popups

      Actually, it's just YMMV thing... the women I know complain as loudly or more about these popups... and are as easily convertible (one even from Mozilla to Firefox, not sure if newer Mozilla versions have popup blocker, but 1.4 didn't have apparently).

  6. But really by Primotech · · Score: 1, Insightful

    Is this all that suprising? We all see how much press the wonderful Mozilla Foundation has been getting as of late.

    1. Re:But really by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      uhhh is it just me or is the moderation for this post messed. How can you start with a -1??? And its modded at 0 but when I click on the "Reply to This" I see a moderation of 2. I have reloaded, deleted history, everything. I always see the same thing. Jut thought you might want to know.

  7. Oddly enough... by kwoo · · Score: 3, Informative

    The most popular browser/OS combination to my sites (which are Unix-oriented) is Firefox/WinXP.

    Firefox/Linux is actually in second place. IE of various flavours on Win32 is third.

    Certainly not what I expected to see before starting the sites, that's for sure -- but it's roughly the same mix on each one.

    1. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Thats what happens when you run a free porn site my friend...

    2. Re:Oddly enough... by kwoo · · Score: 3, Funny
      Thats what happens when you run a free porn site my friend...

      I said "Unix", not "Eunuchs".

    3. Re:Oddly enough... by kai.chan · · Score: 2, Informative

      From the statistics of my personal website, I am getting 30% non-IE hits consistently. Because my site have a wide range of materials that doesn't really cater to a specific crowd, I have drawn the conclusion that although a large portion of businesses still use IE, Firefox usage percentages looks to be over 20% for home users, which is a significant gain over a year ago when it was at ~5% for my site. Does anyone have any statistics that separates the percentage of corporate machines running Firefox versus home machines running Firefox?

    4. Re:Oddly enough... by FuturePastNow · · Score: 1

      I'd like to see the stats for Slashdot.

      --
      Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
    5. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      For my small personal Website, IE6 is currently at 63%, down from 75+% a year ago, and Gecko browsers account for 21% (16% of those are Firefox) of hits.

      It's nice to see a mixture of browsers (Konqueror, Safari, Opera, even the occasional text browser) in my logs too.

    6. Re:Oddly enough... by PReDiToR · · Score: 1

      You could always email "pater" at the site and ask him to post a reply to your comment.

      I think I remember another site posting an interview with him saying that he wouldn't give the information out, but I have had a few beers, so don't take this as gospel.

      In fact don't take it at all, just email him and get your own information, mine is worthless. I can't even remember his name at the moment (hands in geek membership badge and commits hari-kari).

      --

      Do not meddle in the affairs of geeks for they are subtle and quick to anger
    7. Re:Oddly enough... by bluGill · · Score: 1

      Well, when/if your Unix machine is down and you can't remember how to partition the new drive anymore you take what you can get, even if it means using Windows.

    8. Re:Oddly enough... by Jjeff1 · · Score: 1

      I really only work on Windows machines, so this isn't totally valid, but I never surf the web from a server. I don't let my co-workers do so either....
      Linux on the server and windows on the desktop makes those stats a whole lot more reasonable.

    9. Re:Oddly enough... by kwoo · · Score: 1
      Well, when/if your Unix machine is down and you can't remember how to partition the new drive anymore you take what you can get, even if it means using Windows.

      Actually, I really do have to thank you for your reply. I'm always on the lookout for article ideas, and that's a good one. Thank you, kind sir!

    10. Re:Oddly enough... by kwoo · · Score: 1
      Linux on the server and windows on the desktop makes those stats a whole lot more reasonable.

      Agreed. I personally use Unix for both server and workstation duties, so it's easy to forget that not everyone does.

    11. Re:Oddly enough... by trawg · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The most popular browser/OS combination to my sites is FireFox/WinXP too - but I'm the only one that uses them, so that information doesn't mean anything :)

      Parent would be worthy of its Informative mod if there was some scope to its claim (I could mod as overrated but I'd rather actually find out what sort of number of people we're talking about here, because its pretty impressive if Firefox is the #1 browser on a decent-sized site!)

    12. Re:Oddly enough... by owenb · · Score: 1

      What are the other 84% of the Gecko browsers?

    13. Re:Oddly enough... by -kertrats- · · Score: 1

      They've been posted before from people hosting things offsite. Usually they're about 30% Firefox, 60% IE, and 10% mixture of other browsers (Safari, Konqueror, etc.)

      --
      The Braying and Neighing of Barnyard Animals Follows.
    14. Re:Oddly enough... by kwoo · · Score: 2, Informative
      The most popular browser/OS combination to my sites is FireFox/WinXP too - but I'm the only one that uses them, so that information doesn't mean anything :)

      For most of that time, I've used Mozilla on Solaris/x86 to access the sites.

      Parent would be worthy of its Informative mod if there was some scope to its claim (I could mod as overrated but I'd rather actually find out what sort of number of people we're talking about here, because its pretty impressive if Firefox is the #1 browser on a decent-sized site!)

      My original comment is overrated -- had I known it would be rated so highly, I would have put it in some context. Daily hits fluctuate between 50-500, and content page views between 40-300. Not a big site by any means. Monthly unique hosts is in the order of 500. About 40 TLDs are represented in each month's logs, and about 10% of the unique hosts can't be resolved back to a domain.

      Hope that helps.

    15. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Going AC on this one...

      I'm in an Australian scientific site. Recent stats are:

      1. MSIE6.x: 42.9% (on decline)
      2. Netscape 7.x: 39.7% (on sharp incline)
      3. Unknown: 4%
      4. MSIE5.0x: 3.7%
      5. AOL 9.x: 2.4%
      6. MSIE5.5: 2.1%
      7. Netscape 4.x: 1.36%
      8. Safari 1.x: 0.75%
      9. Firefox: 0.47%
      10. Aol 8.x: 0.43%

      I seriously don't get the low Firefox numbers and high Netscape 7.x numbers - but maybe it is presenting itself as NS7? Majority of viewers are US, probably schools and universities etc.

      Interesting though is the overall low IE.

    16. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My bad. That should say 76%, not 16.

    17. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I said "Unix", not "Eunuchs".

      A "Eunuchs" site would make for some boring porn.

    18. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox shouldn't show up as NS7. It should say NS5, because the user agent includes Netscape as the app name and 5.0 as the version. Most statistics pick up FF correctly by looking at the end of the user agent string, "Firefox/1.0.2".

    19. Re:Oddly enough... by DraconPern · · Score: 1

      Thinking about how I use Linux/Windows, that's not surprising. Why? When I have a problem on Linux, it means the machine is down. So I use the Windows machine to browse troubleshooting websites.

    20. Re:Oddly enough... by m50d · · Score: 1

      Isn't the whole point of eunuchs that they *don't* browse porn sites instead of working?

      --
      I am trolling
    21. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      hands in geek membership badge and commits hari-kari

      You mean "hara-kiri". And a real geek would know enough Japanese to say "seppuku" instead.

    22. Re:Oddly enough... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      In this case it is livestats.xsp from MediaSoftware, oops Deepmetrix. It gives me the feeling the US and Aussie scientific users are all Netscape 7 users (well the ones that don't use IE that is). The FF numbers are so low it looks like it's all my home usage (almost).

  8. What's more impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    In one year's time, 1 million growing to 2 million (100% increase), or 1 growing to 10 (1000% increase)?

    1. Re:What's more impressive by pbaer · · Score: 1
      1 mil going to 2 mil is much more impressive than 1 to 10. Sure the percentage is much larger with 1 to 10 but the volume is so small that the huge percantage is negligible.

      Imagine your pay check went from $5 to $10 while your friend's paycheck went from $.01 to $.10. 5-10 is a substantial increase but .01 to .1 isn't because really you still can't buy anything with a 10 cent paycheck.

      --
      There are 11 types of people, those who know unary and those who don't.
    2. Re:What's more impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Congratulations, Mr. Obvious. I'm pretty sure everyone understood what the OP was saying without your explanation. I bet you're the kind of person that likes it when movies have to pause and spell out to you exactly why each character did what they did and what they were thinking?

    3. Re:What's more impressive by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Hey thats pretty much what monologues in Shakespeare were for. In all honestly some of those plays are funny as all hell if you wanna know, well at least the comedies. So don't knock it, plays/movies like those are for the highly educated and well to do.

      *note - I'm just jokin around so you can relax because you really need to.

    4. Re:What's more impressive by david_costanzo · · Score: 1

      Now if IE could manage a 237% increase in marketshare that'd be impressive. It would disprove Norvig's 's Law.

    5. Re:What's more impressive by milosoftware · · Score: 1

      From 5 bilion to 7 bilion I'd say.

      That would mean that after we converted the infants and people on their way to be burried (or whichever form of disposal they prefer), we also got the aliens to use firefox.

      --
      Musicians don't die. They just decompose.
  9. Stop it... by BlazeQ · · Score: 0, Troll

    Quit with all these "up-and-coming" stats and just alert me when it has overtaken IE...

    1. Re:Stop it... by TheRaven64 · · Score: 1
      More important will be when (if?) IE market share drops below 50%. At that point, you will be excluding more customers by having an IE only site than by having a standards compliant one.

      I wonder where most companies put their own cut offs. Is it acceptable to exclude 10% of their potential market by having an IE only site? 20%? 30%?

      --
      I am TheRaven on Soylent News
  10. Re:Validity of the article linked to? by XanC · · Score: 1

    They're talking about visits to the Firefox site, nothing to do (directly) with browser market share.

  11. Re:Validity of the article linked to? by Xshare · · Score: 4, Informative

    This article is about visits to mozilla's website, not people using mozilla browser.

  12. Aha! by jasperbg · · Score: 0, Offtopic

    Must have been all the links from my websites...

    1. Re:Aha! by KronicD · · Score: 1

      Just use ctrl + F4 to close the current tab! much less distracting than using the mouse!

      --
      "Those who would give up Essential Liberty, to purchase a little Temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety"
    2. Re:Aha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

      But... how are you clicking the links without the mouse? I find it a lot easier to use a mouse-only approach. Are we talking about the same "internet picture hobby" here?

    3. Re:Aha! by Shazow · · Score: 1

      CTRL+W, you mean? CTRL+F4 closes the entire window.

      - shazow

    4. Re:Aha! by teknomage1 · · Score: 1

      ALT+F4 closes the window. Ctrl+F4 on KDE just moves to Desktop 4.

      --
      Stop intellectual property from infringing on me
    5. Re:Aha! by Shazow · · Score: 1

      Touché. :-)

    6. Re:Aha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Must have been an attempt to plug your websites that got modded offtopic, but is still overrated...

  13. Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 4, Interesting

    In the nine months during which Firefox has "taken the Web by storm", they haven't even tripled their visitors? Is everyone installing it by apt-get/rpm? Starting from such a small base, that tiny multiple would really disappoint me if I were hoping for a real scale-up. Is anyone impressed by these numbers?

    --

    --
    make install -not war

    1. Re:Downscale by Stevyn · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Good point. I'm sure most linux users use some means other than mozilla.org to get firefox. However, Linux users don't represent a large population.

      I don't trust metrics based on use by number of downloads. I think there is too much room for error on both sides.

    2. Re:Downscale by Deliveranc3 · · Score: 1

      If you compare it to the 6 billion some members of earth not impressive.

      If you compare it to the few hundred million internet connected computers it is very impressive.

    3. Re:Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      How do you compare "237% growth" to "300,000,000"? That kind of novel mathematics really would be impressive, if it weren't really innumeracy.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    4. Re:Downscale by digidave · · Score: 4, Informative

      Each person does not need to go to the site more than once, then just use the browser's built-in update mechanism to update to new versions.

      Looking at it like that, it means that most of these visitors are brand new to the site rather than returning visitors, thus meaning that they have increased their reach several times more than 300%.

      Nielson/Netratings has Java/Javascript code that runs on their customers' web sites to report traffic back to them (RedSheriff). If Firefox put that on their site they would be able to tell just how many of these visitors were returning from previous months.

      --
      The global economy is a great thing until you feel it locally.
    5. Re:Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1, Interesting

      That's a good point: it's the "area under the curve" (integrating the rate of first-installing visitors across the last 9 months). But still, even 3-fold growth of "new installers", from a tiny base of an unknown browser, isn't so great. I'd expect to hear about several thousand first-time installers growing several hundred-fold, if they're really a threat to IE's market saturation. Maybe Firefox is a paper tiger, exaggerated by Microsoft to take the edge off their continuing market control.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    6. Re:Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 0

      Moderation -1
      100% Troll

      TrollMods can't count, or just don't like when exaggerated Firefox good news is put in perspective.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    7. Re:Downscale by danharan · · Score: 1

      100% increase is a doubling. 200% is a tripling.

      --
      Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
    8. Re:Downscale by gad_zuki! · · Score: 2, Insightful

      A couple thoughts:

      1. Statistical lag. It is only the recent surveys that have caught those newer users. The older data and surveys, many of which are linked to 3rd party cookies and web bugs which FF usually blocks, were probably under-representing FF usage.

      2. Statistical method. Every "survey" has its ups and downs. You'll get a definitive answer when the top 5000 or so websites give up all their access log files. This, of course, will never happen. So tomorrow you may read a study about how FF usage has fallen. Look into the method and see if you trust it. Keep in mind the 3rd party cookies/web bug issue which might over or under represent FF usage.

      Regardless, the war is pretty much over. The big fear was MS taking over the web. Well, that's not going to happen with at least 10% of users using non-IE browsers. The second big fear was developers giving up cross-browser work. And lets face it, its a pain in the ass to do with even semi-complex projects, but theyre doing it because of the vocal FF user-base and smart managers who know losing 8% of their customers (or making them fire up a different browser) is bad business.

    9. Re:Downscale by tehcrazybob · · Score: 1

      You also need to consider people like me - I will download the newest version of Firefox and toss it in my 'installs' folder along with the likes of Thunderbird and Sunbird. If any friends want to grab a copy, they can get it from me.

      More importantly, current installs for the same programs get tossed on my USB key whenever I am going to fix someone's computer. It's more convenient for me to pull the installer off a drive than to download it, especially if I would be downloading through a badly infested, pre-SP2 Internet Explorer with popups all over the place.

      --
      Computers need to explode more often.
    10. Re:Downscale by TheLetterPsy · · Score: 1

      I believe that technically they got more than three times the visitors:

      Being up 100% would be twice the visitors, being up 200% would be thrice the visitors . . .

    11. Re:Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      "100%" means "unity" or "1*". The headline, summary and story are ambiguous - it's not clear whether the increase was 237% (2.37*), "up by" or the result was 237%, "2.37* more". I don't think there's much difference between 2x and 3x increase here - the whole point is that the increase is small scale, compared to the hype.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    12. Re:Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      We're not talking about other surveys, we're talking about the idea that a 2-3x increase in traffic, from an obscure software project, is a big increase. Which it isn't. I haven't commented on the other stats that say that Firefox has something like 10% of browser users.

      And the war is never over for Microsoft, except when *they* have been beaten back to 10%, like by Apache. Watch the numbers change in the face of IE7 ads, and new computers with it preinstalled, and all kinds of dirty tricks to make the Firefox honeymoon end. Personally, I'm rooting for the Fox. But it doesn't help victory to kid yourself about how close it is.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    13. Re:Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 1

      It's hard to be sure from the ambiguous language.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    14. Re:Downscale by asa · · Score: 3, Informative

      More people download Firefox from the www.mozilla.org homepage than from the slightly less visible www.mozilla.org/products/firefox page that Nielson was apparently measuring.

      - A

    15. Re:Downscale by RoLi · · Score: 1
      But it doesn't help victory to kid yourself about how close it is.

      I disagree. It was close, but if you look at the trends, they have something in common:

      • Linux making inroads on the desktop (not just in Brazil, China, Germany, etc.)
      • IE no longer the default browser on Macs and the Mac Mini being quite successful
      • Mobile (symbian) phones are used more and more for browsing the web and they often run Opera or some other non-IE browser
      • Playstation 3 will be Internet-aware and will be used by millions to browse the web. It may run Mozilla, Konqueror or Opera, but it surely won't run IE.

      Every trend is hurting IE's usage.

      The fact that update cycles are getting longer (and thus IE7 will take a really long time to get noticed) isn't quite good for IE either.

      Also IE7 could actually hurt IE-marketshare: Assume you are a webmaster and you want to use transparent PNGs. What do you do? Check for operating system, service pack and turn users to IE7 and otherwise to Mozilla - or just recommend Mozilla for everybody because it runs everywhere, including Windows 98? (which is unsupported by IE7) Are you really willing to get hundreds of complaints by Windows 98 users who can't install IE7?

      I suppose most webmasters will just recommend Mozilla. It works everywhere. And downloading IE7 or Mozilla doesn't make much difference anyway. Also using Mozilla is much less risky than upgrading IE which is integrated into the OS and where a lot of things may go wrong.

      No. The browser wars aren't over yet, but IE is clearly losing domination and will never gain it back. IE will retain a large (maybe even a majority) of marketshare for quite some time, but without domination it's completely worthless for Microsoft. They can't set any standards without domination. They can't lock anybody into Windows without domination. They might as well bundle Mozilla themselves with Windows.

    16. Re:Downscale by ikkonoishi · · Score: 0, Troll

      A 100% increase however means that while the usage was at 100% it has now increased from that by 100% to 200%.

      1+1=2

      You should have learned that it kindergarden.

      As for ambiguousness the story said that they were up 237% not up [b]to[/b] 237%. They were very clear on the fact that this was an increase.

    17. Re:Downscale by masklinn · · Score: 1
      or just recommend Mozilla for everybody because it runs everywhere, including Windows 98? (which is unsupported by IE7)
      Well it's not just W98, i doubt IE7 will support W2K either since MS barely accepted making it avaible with Windows XP (and it probably won't run without SP2)

      BTW, Windows users unhappy with the current Firefox bloat (because Firefox is bugged & bloated, and even though it should be fixed with 1.1 it's annoying) should check the lightweight, lightning fast native Win32 "K-Meleon".

      It's clearly not for end users (text-editing browser config files thought) but it's stable and awfully efficient (when compared to FF at least) and runs the same rendering engine (gecko 1.7)
      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    18. Re:Downscale by masklinn · · Score: 1

      The Firefox Download counter is probably much more interresting

      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    19. Re:Downscale by RoLi · · Score: 1
      Well it's not just W98, i doubt IE7 will support W2K either since MS barely accepted making it avaible with Windows XP (and it probably won't run without SP2)

      Yeah, but I've heard that they changed their minds and might also support W2K with some SP and XP without SP. (But who knows...)

      But that's exactly the problem: How will you know wether your visitor has some SP installed? How will you know wether IE7 will even install or wether it will screw something up? What if Microsoft change their minds again and you now have to detect a different combination for IE7.1?

      Mozilla (and derivates) is here - and it works everywhere, on every version, with every servicepack, no stupid questions asked.

    20. Re:Downscale by Doc+Ruby · · Score: 0, Troll

      As for making up your own story, the actual story said "garnered a 237% spike". It's not clear whether that is growth by or to 237%. You took your interpretation, just like the summary writer, and you're sticking to it. But making up quotes is a kindergarten skill that also comes with slinging cheap insults to defend it. Now leave the adults alone before you get hurt.

      --

      --
      make install -not war

    21. Re:Downscale by ikkonoishi · · Score: 1

      A spike is an increase. If he had meant to he would have said "spiked up to".

      Also the linked article containing the data says.

      June 2004
      Unique Audience (000)
      795

      March 2005
      Unique Audience (000)
      2,679

      Growth
      237%

      2,679/795=3.3698113207547169811320754716981 or 336.9% of the original value.

      http://www.nielsennetratings.com/news.jsp?section= new_pr

    22. Re:Downscale by masklinn · · Score: 1

      Mozilla... or Opera, I find Opera to be a very nice piece of software, especially the 8th version (currently avaible as a beta)...

      I still stick with firefox because of my extensions addiction, though

      --
      "The way we can tell it's C# instead of Haskell is because it's nine lines instead of two." -- wadler
    23. Re:Downscale by Tetch · · Score: 1
      Um, I don't think I can be the only one who keeps a copy of the latest Firefox and Thunderbird on a CD, along with all my other "Windows-hardening" tools of choice, for deployment on the never-ending series of friends' PCs I get called to as PC Doctor.

      As a very rough estimate, I'd say I install each successive version of Firefox on around 5 PCs (2 of mine, and maybe 3 others) .... so that would inflate the installed base over and above the site-visit stats somewhat. That's not counting return visits to install updated versions for those friends who can't manage to do it themselves (I get a lot of free dinners this way).

      --
      If you don't pray in my school, I won't think in your church.
  14. Just be happy by Nate53085 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't understand why everyone is so angry. I think we should all be happy that there is a strong alternative to IE and that its gaining ground. Competition for IE means inovation, and regardless of how pissed off you are about whatever, thats a good thing.

    --
    So put that in your pipe and grep it
    1. Re:Just be happy by jbn-o · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Who are you saying is angry?

      I'm quite pleased that a GNU GPL-covered web browser is making so many inroads on so many desktops around the world. The FLOSS OS distributors are all doing fantastic work helping to promote its use, and of course the Firefox website is quite popular after every mention in the New York Times. I hope that people will use Firefox as a means to moving to a free software system someday.

    2. Re:Just be happy by Nate53085 · · Score: 1

      What I mean is that people are saying this and that about the worthyness of the statistics. They aren't concentrating on whats important to the article, more proof that there is competition in browsers again. Even if the stats are off a bit, they will still show increase. And even if they are EXTREMELY off, the numbers put neccessary pressure on Microsoft.

      --
      So put that in your pipe and grep it
    3. Re:Just be happy by gnarlin · · Score: 3, Informative

      Sorry to burst your bubble, but Firefox is not covered by the GPL. It's under the MPL (Mozilla Public License).

      --
      A bad analogy is like a leaky screwdriver.
    4. Re:Just be happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Sorry to burst your bubble... naw, actually I'm happy to.

      http://www.mozilla.org/MPL/

      At the moment, parts of the source are available under either the Netscape Public License (NPL) or the Mozilla Public License (MPL), often in combination with either the GNU General Public License (GPL) or the GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL), or both.
    5. Re:Just be happy by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't mean to burst your bubble but i think people are questioning the numbers because they want to ensure that the numbers being collected for Open Source are acccurate. This is because many believe the stats that microsoft have been releasing are poorly collected and if we use the same methods they use then we are no better then they are and that gives more credability to M$. However, that being said alot of people are mistaking the fact that the number of vistits to the web site are up to the number of poeple using FireFox are up which the article does not claim at all. This article just says that people are looking at FireFox not using or even downloading it. Though its a step in the right direction it really doesn't mean much. You will know that Fire Fox is beating out IE when M$ removes the features of running executables and downloading active X components. They have made some imporvments that allow you to block certain Active X components but its still no where near as secure. Its bound to happen but I'm betting M$ will just try to patch it rather then correct and remove the flaws. In that case they aren't gonna do to well and they will only open up more loopholes. However this is mainly for the home user because businesses can already block all of the spyware and popups through their servers so IE might last longer in that setting. Thats just my two sense so take its worth as a grain of salt. Fire Fox is definetly making a big splash but M$ will try to combat it by improving their product. Either way its an impovment and everybody wins. Thats whats important.

    6. Re:Just be happy by cyberblue · · Score: 1

      Go Firefox!

    7. Re:Just be happy by mrjb · · Score: 1

      For the last time - - I.... am.... NOT .... ANGRY!

      --
      Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
    8. Re:Just be happy by Logi · · Score: 1
      I don't understand why everyone is so angry.

      Eh? What are you talking about? Where is my "+1 Beautifully detached from reality" rating option?

      --
      Logi - I can do anything, but not everything.
  15. Consulting Firefox by qualico · · Score: 1

    As a consultant/techie, every machine that passes through my domain is converted to FireFox.

    For the slower win32 boxes I use k-Meleon.
    http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/start/

    1. Re:Consulting Firefox by ccharles · · Score: 3, Funny

      every machine that passes through my domain is converted to FireFox

      Nice! How'd you manage that, some funky new ActiveX control?

    2. Re:Consulting Firefox by x_codingmonkey_x · · Score: 1

      Maybe you should make your site standards compliant too :P

      The text goes over the picture of the monitor and keyboard in Firefox 1.0.2 on SuSE 9.2, which I assume was not your intended rendering.

      Here are some errors

    3. Re:Consulting Firefox by qualico · · Score: 1

      lol, I didn't intend the pun, honest!

    4. Re:Consulting Firefox by qualico · · Score: 1

      Didn't think anyone was really looking at my page :P

      Hey, at least Lynx works!

    5. Re:Consulting Firefox by Kent+Recal · · Score: 1

      But what a sweet idea that is.
      Anyone ActiveX savvy know if that would be doable?

      I'd be happy to host the site that displays a big banner "Oops, your browser was insecure, but don't worry, we've replaced it!"

      The basic procedure shouldn't be hard: D/L firefox, install (invisible to the user), apply some kind of "IE-theme", import bookmarks and replace all IE icons (tray, startmenu etc.) with lookalike firefox ones.

      So all we need is a way to remotely start the script on the client and maybe some minimal adjustments on the installer (do not pop up any windows, do the theme/bookmark stuff)... Anyone volunteer?

    6. Re:Consulting Firefox by qualico · · Score: 1

      Slashdot story:

      Netsky and Klez variants replace IE with Firefox.

      Why do all the work? :->

  16. Visits to mozilla.org/firefox up!! by hendridm · · Score: 1, Insightful
    ...started tracking the Firefox Web site in June 2004 and has announced 237% growth since then.

    So the people who visit the Firefox web site are increasingly users of the Firefox web browser. Simply shocking!

    1. Re:Visits to mozilla.org/firefox up!! by Golden_Eternity · · Score: 0

      Yeah, I saw that, too. Pretty poorly worded.

  17. It would be interesting... by Future+Man+3000 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    To see if spyware/virii infestations of Firefox has kept pace with its acceptance both as a way to see how much of Internet Explorer problems are nescient to the application as well as to get an idea of what the future holds for Linux security as the operating system gains traction on desktops (i.e., are these things attacked because they're vulnerable or because they're popular?)

    --

    I never vote for anyone. I always vote against.
    -- W.C. Fields

  18. Meaningfulness of "Site visits"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    With all the updates and patches and extensions and themes I'm sure my *own* traffic has gone up that amount. How about comparing the number of users instead of an unqualified percentage with very low relevance?

  19. Aha! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny
    I knew it! Sometimes when I (a man) am "surfing the internet" for my "internet photograph hobby", I often end up opening and closing lots of windows. I prefer to not use the tab feature for this because it's easier to find the X in the upper right without breaking my concentratio..

    Well anyway, I often miss the X an hit the firefox logo, which takes me to the Firefox home page. Aha! So lots of MEN have been going to the Firefox page, huh? I wonder why! We're missing the X in the upper right corner while looking at pictures on the internet!

  20. Really? by proteonic · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005."

    I didn't realize my browser reported whether I was male or female as part of the browser Id string!

    1. Re:Really? by plover · · Score: 4, Funny
      No, it's not in the User-Agent: header, it's in the Penis: header.

      Lucky for you it's a boolean, and not an integer!

      :-)

      --
      John
    2. Re:Really? by rovingeyes · · Score: 0
      I didn't realize my browser reported whether I was male or female as part of the browser Id string!

      Ya, isn't that cool!? Actually, the logs read like this - "prick" or "cutie".

    3. Re:Really? by Lehk228 · · Score: 3, Funny

      well most of slashdot only needs to be able to count to 1 anyways.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
    4. Re:Really? by Ziviyr · · Score: 1

      ...or a float.

      Wars would break out.

      --

      Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
    5. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Not to brag or anything, but I'm running WinXP 64 bit and just checked me User-Agent string and it says long long.

      Dunno what that means.

    6. Re:Really? by Sax+Maniac · · Score: 1
      Lucky for you it's a boolean, and not an integer!

      True. If you have more than one under your direct control, something's strange.

      --
      I can explanate how to administrate your network. You must configurate and segmentate it, so it can computate.
    7. Re:Really? by DrEldarion · · Score: 1

      I like how after they tell us that 71% is male, they find it necessary to say that there was 29% female.

      Slashdot: News for nerds who flunked math.

    8. Re:Really? by AndroidCat · · Score: 1

      You're forgetting about the large Other part of the population. Apparently they all use IE.

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    9. Re:Really? by AndroidCat · · Score: 1
      User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.1; en-US; rv:1.7.6) Gecko/20050317 Firefox/1.0.2 Male Single

      Damn!

      --
      One line blog. I hear that they're called Twitters now.
    10. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I'm a FF using hermaphrodite, you insensitive douche bag.

      Oh wait. I made a poopie.

    11. Re:Really? by clickety6 · · Score: 1

      Lucky for you it's a boolean, and not an integer!

      Mine's not integer - mine's real!

      --
      ----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
    12. Re:Really? by Kjella · · Score: 1

      Lucky for you it's a boolean, and not an integer!

      Yeah, it'd just overflow anyway.

      --
      Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
    13. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I don't know about you, but I try to not stare at my penis for more than 5 seconds.

    14. Re:Really? by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Sex: 0
      Sex: 1

      You figure out which is male and which is female.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
    15. Re:Really? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bad enough that girls lie to you, and now so does your broswser.

  21. Opera is more efficient. by rice_burners_suck · · Score: 1, Offtopic
    Firefox is a really nice browser, and I deeply appreciate what the Firefox folks have done for all of us. However, I currently continue to use the closed-source, proprietary browser that is Opera, mainly because it is a lot more efficient at certain things than Firefox:

    Most important to me, once a page is loaded, accessing it is instant in Opera. Say you click on several links. You can go "back" any number of pages and each one instantly appears, without reloading or any of that inconvenient stuff. No other browser currently does this, whether it be Firefox, Safari on OS X, or anything else I've tried. Opera is the only one, and incidentally, I use this a lot. Once you get used to a feature like this, it is extremely difficult to switch browsers, no matter what the advantages of the other product.

    Also, I like the keys you can push in Opera. "z" takes you "back", "x" takes you "forward"... This is a lot easier than remembering all those weird key modifiers, alt, meta, option, control, or whatever, with various arrow keys, to go back and forward.

    Like I said, it's an efficient browser.

    1. Re:Opera is more efficient. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative

      Most important to me, once a page is loaded, accessing it is instant in Opera. Say you click on several links. You can go "back" any number of pages and each one instantly appears, without reloading or any of that inconvenient stuff.

      That's because Opera follows the HTTP 1.1 specification, and other browsers, including Firefox, are non-compliant. RFC 2616 says:

      History mechanisms and caches are different. In particular history mechanisms SHOULD NOT try to show a semantically transparent view of the current state of a resource. Rather, a history mechanism is meant to show exactly what the user saw at the time when the resource was retrieved.

      Opera and Konqueror get this right. Firefox doesn't, and isn't standards compliant, because it checks for updates in many circumstances.

    2. Re:Opera is more efficient. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Informative
      And RFC 2119 says:
      4. SHOULD NOT This phrase, or the phrase "NOT RECOMMENDED" mean that
      there may exist valid reasons in particular circumstances when the
      particular behavior is acceptable or even useful, but the full
      implications should be understood and the case carefully weighed
      before implementing any behavior described with this label.
      To summarize: not following a "SHOULD NOT" in any RFC does not make something noncompliant.
    3. Re:Opera is more efficient. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Most reasonable people interpret "Should Not" as "Should Not."

      Firefox "Should Not" do that.

    4. Re:Opera is more efficient. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      My mistake. I should have said that Firefox was not unconditionally compliant. You need to comply with the SHOULDs in order to be called unconditionally compliant.

  22. Men versus women??? by jarich · · Score: 0, Redundant
    How the heck can they tell that w/o spyware??

    Does Nielson put boxes on people's computers (like they do w/TVs) to track where people go or are they using spyware?

    1. Re:Men versus women??? by SurfaceMount · · Score: 0, Redundant

      Women are better at multitasking, they tend to open more tabs on the webpage than men............

      Or just Spyware, people go to the Firefox webpage with their IE in order to download Firefox to replace the spyware infested IE.

      I wont be to happy if the Firefox page are supporting these web tracking companys, seems a bit hypocritical when a big point of Firefox is to avoid these people.

  23. Re:Validity of the article linked to? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Let's do a random sampling of 250k users via phone (to verify validity)

    The sample would be statistically significant at far, far fewer users than that...think 1500 or so.

  24. Then it's Official... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny
    Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005.

    IE is the "girlie browser".

    1. Re:Then it's Official... by poopdeville · · Score: 1

      I'm a FF using hermaphrodite, you insensitive douche bag.

      Oh wait. I made a poopie.

      --
      After all, I am strangely colored.
  25. Not too surprising by Bananatree3 · · Score: 1

    There has been a lot of news about Firefox's steady increase in the number of users. I personally wouldn't be surprised if it reached 15 percent by this time next year.

  26. Men? Women? by Rick+Zeman · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Since when did Firefox advertise the chromosomes of the user? Did I miss an extension or something?

  27. HOW DO THEY KNOW by WizardRahl · · Score: 0, Insightful

    How do they know whether it was a man or woman that visited their website?

    1. Re:HOW DO THEY KNOW by pohl · · Score: 2, Insightful

      They can probably use cookies and web bugs to establish useage patterns that they correlate to machine/browser combinations. While not perfect, it may allow you to make demographic estimates within some acceptible margin of error. You could combine that with other sources of data, such as samples of people that voluntarily answer demographic questions when asked.

      --

      The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...

    2. Re:HOW DO THEY KNOW by whitehatlurker · · Score: 1
      Or the fact that women can remember where they downloaded the FF binary to on their computer, and us guys can't remember where we put our pants last night. (Hon, have you seen ... ?)

      It's the same guys reloading stuff.

      --
      .. paranoid crackpot leftover from the days of Amiga.
  28. Bad Statistics by QuantumRiff · · Score: 1, Insightful
    How can they say that they've been monitoring for 9 months, and then state that it has 278% year over year growth?

    Besides, my web site had 1000% growth, I went from me viewing it to a few relatives looking at a picture I put up from them (40% female, 60% male), so, obviously, my website is faster growing that firefoxes!

    --

    What are we going to do tonight Brain?
  29. Close button placement... by venomkid · · Score: 3, Interesting

    That little "close" X is mere pixels away from a "visit firefox" button... :)

    Seriously I hit it by accident all the time.

    --
    vk.
    1. Re:Close button placement... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      It's not really that close unless you've not got great mouse control at that point in time for some reason or other. If it really bothers you, you can just remove it the same way you customize the toolbar (drag it away from the toolbar and it's gone).

    2. Re:Close button placement... by NeoSkandranon · · Score: 1

      I didn't even know that button did that until reading your comment and clicking it to see :P

      --
      If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
    3. Re:Close button placement... by eobanb · · Score: 1

      I use a Mac, you insensitive clod.

      --

      Take off every sig. For great justice.

    4. Re:Close button placement... by Headcase88 · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If you don't like it you can get rid of it. Right click an empty part of the toolbar or menu bar, pick "Customize", and do whatever.

      I put my bookmark toolbar into the menu bar, stripped my 30 favourite bookmarks of everything but their icon, and put 'em all in the toolbar, so the icons are on the same line as "File, Edit,...". Sucks if you go to a site that doesn't have icons though.

      Ok, that's enough OT for today :)

      --
      "When the atomic bomb goes off there's devastation...but when the atomic bong goes off there's celebraaaaation!"
    5. Re:Close button placement... by RabidMonkey · · Score: 1

      Me too! /aol

      --
      We emerge from our mother's womb an unformatted diskette; our culture formats us. - Douglas Coupland
  30. Re:Men? Women? by Sairret · · Score: 2, Funny

    about:config > user.chromosome.autodetect Boolean, of course.

  31. What about Netcraft? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Is Netcraft no longer good enough to provide such information?

    Or is Netcraft's information no longer good enough?

  32. Re:Men? Women? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    And then there are all those trannies who mark
    the space between M F;

  33. How!? by gaurzilla · · Score: 0, Redundant
    "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005."


    How do they know this? How do they gather such demographical information? Kinda weird since I usually consider my online activities quite gender free... especially if I'm not filling any forms.
  34. RTFA.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Did you RTFA?

    I guess not. Do it and see if you have qualified for the stupidest reply on /. .

    Fucking moron.

  35. Re:Validity of the article linked to? by remahl · · Score: 0
    Looks like 1% up to me. YMMV. See? Just as worthless...
    Actually, it looks more like 4%.
  36. Re:Men? Women? by animeshpathak · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I actually started a discussion on the sex determination of visitors sometime ago on my crazy ideas blog. You may want to read/contribute .... would be interesting though to figure out the gender of the visitor.

    Guess they just stole some idea from there for this statistic :-).

    --
    "- What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
    "- You ask a glass of water."[from h2g2]
  37. My stats are very high Mozilla percentage by winkydink · · Score: 4, Interesting

    At Network Mirror I'm showing 79.4% Mozilla, 18.9% IE. Since all traffic is Slashdot derived, it's probably a pretty good representative sample of the Slashdot population as a whole.

    --

    "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

    1. Re:My stats are very high Mozilla percentage by skingers6894 · · Score: 1

      18.9% of Slashdot users are using IE? That's got to be wrong... ePeer-pressure should have stamped this browser out completely ages ago.

  38. Women by Legodude522 · · Score: 0

    I call dibs I the women while they last.

    --
    Because I have low karma, I need pills.
  39. 71% of the men... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005."

    The study also reported that nearly 71% of the men were visiting sites promising 100% women.

  40. Privacy protection for Konqueror users by loqi · · Score: 5, Funny

    If you use Konqueror and you're bothered by servers tracking your gender, it's quick and painless to disable this reporting. Just click on:
    Settings -> Configure Konqueror -> Browser Identification
    ...and in the "Default Identification" panel, uncheck the box labeled "Add gender information".

    --
    If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
    1. Re:Privacy protection for Konqueror users by Brandybuck · · Score: 1

      You mean I don't have to browse with the user agent of "Mozilla/5.0 (compatible; Konqueror/3.4; FreeBSD) KHTML/3.4.0 (like Gecko) male (Y chromosome)."

      --
      Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
    2. Re:Privacy protection for Konqueror users by bluGill · · Score: 1

      Don't worry about it. I added a patch long ago to randomize gender information. Been there since KDE 2.0.1. It isn't cryptography secure random, but I don't think that matters because gender is not used in the seed.

  41. Gender? by LittleBigScript · · Score: 4, Funny

    Why is the sex of a computer user important? Is the next firefox update give a choice of pink or blue coloring?

    1. Re:Gender? by i41Overlord · · Score: 1

      Why is the sex of a computer user important? Is the next firefox update give a choice of pink or blue coloring?

      Demographics data is very important when trying to identify your audience and tailor your product to them.

      Let's say you made a TV show that was originally meant for middle aged men, but after gathering data you found that the show was a flop with middle aged men but fairly popular with young women. You could either waste a lot of effort trying to redesign the show to attract that minority of men, or you could tweak it just a little bit to increase your popularity among the majority.

      Also, despite being politically correct and saying that everyone's an individual, the simple fact is that the actions of large groups of people are very predictable. Sure, you'll get a few people who don't fit in, but on the whole the majority dictates the pattern they follow.

      Marketers have the act of predicting the actions of large groups of people down to a science. Talk is cheap, people vote with their actions. Everyone likes to say they eat healthy and stay away from McDonald's, but take a look at the sales (and the obesity level in the US). In fact, if you were to ask every American if they intended to be fat in two years, I bet nearly everyone will say they'll have started a diet and be in shape by then. But talk is cheap, and I believe that the obesity level will be in line with historical trends.

    2. Re:Gender? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      >Let's say you made a TV show that was originally
      >meant for middle aged men, but after gathering data
      > you found that the show was a flop with middle
      >aged men but fairly popular with young women. You
      >could either waste a lot of effort trying to
      >redesign the show to attract that minority of men,
      >or you could tweak it just a little bit to increase
      > your popularity among the majority.

      Or you could leave it alone. You didn't know what your target market wanted - which is why you got a different market. What reason to believe you can now accurately target the market you have got?
      Accept that fact that your aim is crap, and be happy that you got a market. Odds are that trying to tweak to increase that market will have the opposite effect...

    3. Re:Gender? by uncqual · · Score: 1

      Why is the sex of a computer user important?

      Perhaps the sex of the computer is important?

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
  42. men and women by potpie · · Score: 2, Interesting

    That's an interesting statistic. In my Cisco Networking class, there are no female students at all, though our teacher is a woman. The situation is similar in the other computer classes at my school. Does anybody know why this distribution happens?

    ...And I feel the compulsive need to point out TFA's incorrect use of "comprise."

    --
    Esoteric reference.
    1. Re:men and women by Lehk228 · · Score: 1

      could be biased Politically Correct hiring practices led to management deperately searching for more women to fill teaching positions, would strike me as odd in a situation like that but not unheard of.

      --
      Snowden and Manning are heroes.
  43. Women in the minority by tcatt · · Score: 1
    So... what _do_ women do on the internet, exactly? Pron, gaming, and illegal downloading is all (mostly) male dominated activity, but that's the internet... Yeah off topic I know, but that's the first thing that came to my inquiring mind.

    Well, anyways, back to your regularly scheduled mindlessness...

    --
    [I have no name!:/]# _
    1. Re:Women in the minority by Bongo+Bill · · Score: 1

      Anime, I'm pretty sure.

      --
      ...but is it art?
    2. Re:Women in the minority by One+Childish+N00b · · Score: 5, Funny

      My ex-girlfriend was a 1337 hax0r... or at least she thought she was. Basically her 1337ness boiled down to having a few 'hacking tools' (nukers and the like) lying around in a folder on her Windows desktop, all (or almost all) of which were clearly just trojans. She had Norton AntiVirus installed, and it did it's valiant best to warn her that her 1337 hax0ring 't00lz' were doing nothing but fucking up her own box, but to no avail. There was no telling this girl that she wasn't a 1337 hax0r. A conversation to try to explain the concept of trojans to her went, as far as I can recall, something like this...

      Me: You know those programs there are trojans, don't you?
      Her: No hun, they're my little proggies... and anyway, I've got antivirus, so can't damage my machine anyway!
      Me: You have antivirus? Surely that'd stop them running - how come you can still run them?
      Her: Oh, when I run them now I get a red box come up that tells me it's a dangerous program or whatever, but it has a 'Run Anyway' option so it's OK.
      Me: Umm.. you realise that choosing 'Run Anyway'... lets it do all the nasty stuff it was trying to do before the AntiVirus stopped it, don't you?
      Her: Yeah, but it's OK, cos it's AntiVirus!
      Me: Have you ever *run* a scan on it?
      Her: Yeah, but it deleted them all, and I had to download them all again! Then the boxes came back!
      Me: Because they're trying to tell you that they're fucking TROJANS!
      Her: But it's OK, I've got AntiVirus!
      Me: THAT'S WHAT THE FUCKING RED BOXES ARE! AND YOU'RE TELLING IT IT'S OK TO RUN THEM!

      This went on for a good 20 minutes, went nowhere, and in the end I just went into the configuration and 'turned the red boxes off'. She was happy with that.

      Her computer is fucked. She still thinks she's a 1337 hax0r.
      It's cute now I'm not the one that has to clean it up.

      --
      Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
    3. Re:Women in the minority by noamsml · · Score: 1

      actually, many people also use the net for reading news, reading email, talking in forums, writing (or reading) weblogs, researching info, and much more.

    4. Re:Women in the minority by Kehvarl · · Score: 1

      Great story! I would almost have believed it except for one little detail:
      " My ex-girlfriend ... "

      Slashdotters dont' have girlfriends, ex or otherwise.

    5. Re:Women in the minority by Kyrene · · Score: 1
      Depends on the woman as much as it depends on the man. I know men who don't do what you list as "typical" male activities, and I know women who do them on a fairly regular basis.

      Speaking as a woman, I spend most of my computer time gaming, chatting, surfing the web, blogging, or at /. And yes, I download mp3s and find nothing wrong with pron. ;)

      --
      Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
    6. Re:Women in the minority by Kyrene · · Score: 1

      I know equal numbers of men and women who are anime fans, though. I don't think it's female specific.

      --
      Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
    7. Re:Women in the minority by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      A few questions:-

      Is she hot?
      Is the computer in her bedroom?
      Does she have a webcam?
      What's her IP, AIM & MSN?

      Only reason I'm asking is that I have this super-new secret 1337 hax0r tool that needs testing and, err, it needs to use the GUI-API accelerator functions in the webcam and chat programs. Or something. Honest. ;)

    8. Re:Women in the minority by Bongo+Bill · · Score: 1

      That's true. However, there are far more male fans of just about everything else that has a sizeable Internet following. The equity in anime is primarily what causes the minority to be even as large as it is.

      --
      ...but is it art?
    9. Re:Women in the minority by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Did you try explaining what a trojan actually is, first?

  44. The women percentage.. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ..is of course derived from usage of the new browser Firefox for women. Only difference is that the default engine in the search box is www.femina.com

  45. Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln by dBLiSS · · Score: 1

    Just curious.. how do they know when man is surfing compared to a women? or a goat..

    --

    The Good Life
    1. Re:Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What would a goat see on the intarweb anyway?

  46. One more time! by fm6 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Please, please, please. No more "Firefox is gaining ground" stories until we have some solid numbers, not some contorted gee-whiz stats.

    1. Re:One more time! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      you cant have genuinely "solid" numbers.

    2. Re:One more time! by Che+Guevarra · · Score: 1

      Hi, it's gaining ground. It's installed on the classroom computers at my University right next to Internet Explorer and I see the people sitting in front of me using it every day.

      The Firefox website visits are through the roof. Do you think they're all just readers or are some of them downloaders?

      Learn to draw a conclusion.

    3. Re:One more time! by ravee · · Score: 1

      I use firefox for all the browsing and checking my Email. And let me tell you, I find this browser really top class. But some times, I am forced to switch over to Internet Explorer in windows. Especially when I want to log in to my ISP's site to check my bandwidth utilization (I have got a broadband cable connection and they offer time based and bandwidth based packages) because their site is coded in ASP and it says it needs IE 6.0 or greater to view the contents of the site - How frustrating.
      Also I have found that more and more cyber cafes at least in my city are giving a choice to the customer by installing both internet explorer and Netscape Navigator on their machines - which is a move in the right direction. But I have yet to see firefox on their machines. But individuals who have machines at home prefer using firefox over IE - I know atleast a few of them who have switched over to firefox. So even though firefox is an excellent browser and it is being downloaded millions of times, it has a long way to go to take over the web browser market. But that is not really a question mark on the quality of firefox because when firefox came into existance, IE was already being used by 95% of PC users. IE had the first movers advantage, so to speak, in the browser market and it didn't help even a bit that it came preinstalled with the windows operating system.

      --
      Linux Help
      for all things on Linux
    4. Re:One more time! by nickco3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's no such thing as geniunely solid numbers, all web-traffic figures are contorted gee-whiz stats.

      --
      -- Nick "Hallo this is Beel Gates, und I pronounce weendows as ... WEENdows"
    5. Re:One more time! by fm6 · · Score: 1
      If all stats are bogus, then why report any of them? But they're not.

      You're basically saying, "All the stats I see are bogus, therefore all stats are bogus." That itself is a bogus stat. It's an indication of your own subjective experience, nothing more.

      There are stats that mean something. Bogus stats predominate, because people are always inventing them to justify their own opinions. But some stats have an objective validity. If Google Zeitgest still included browser share, and Firefox's share showed a small but steady gain over a period of months, then that would be a stat worth reporting. It would be a stat from a heavily used web site with a broad range of users, and a solid trend. What I'm complaining about is stats from sites that don't have a small, unrepresentative user base and/or don't show any serious trend.

  47. Things are changing by ari{Dal} · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The website I work for, a very large, very traditional 'user-facing customer portal' for a telco, now officially supports IE6 and Firefox 1.0. The announcement came last week. A year ago, we couldn't even get them to acknowledge that firefox EXISTED, much less provide full support for it.

    And why did it happen? Tons of customer feedback directly on the site, and metrics showing that firefox use was climbing. Rapidly. And here i thought those 'feedback forms' wouldn't actually lead to any change.

    --
    Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo - H. G. Wells
    1. Re:Things are changing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yup, I had a similar experience from the other end recently; a site I usually visited had reinvented its design, and annoyingly added a big This page is best viewed on IE message and rendered a bit buggy in Mozilla.

      Following my old habit, I was about to stop going there, but then I came back a week later. And voila! The site had been fixed. No annoying message and it worked fine.

      That's when I knew FireFox/Mozilla had reached 'critical mass'.

    2. Re:Things are changing by Xarius · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Instead of "officially supporting" browsers, why not "officially support" web standards and be done with it?

      --
      C17H21NO4
    3. Re:Things are changing by sgtrock · · Score: 1

      Because IE sometimes won't properly render web standard compliant pages? :)

    4. Re:Things are changing by bogado · · Score: 1

      Well this would require a brain transplant in the site owners. :-D

      --
      []'s Victor Bogado da Silva Lins

      ^[:wq

  48. Re:Validity of the article linked to? by mlyle · · Score: 1

    Hi, Dr. Moron!

    You might have a valid point if the article was talking about market share being up 237%; or even if it said that Firefox usage was up 237%. However, it wasn't-- it was talking about visits to the firefox site. Oops.

    BTW, if we're talking about visits for your site, it looks like visits by firefox users are up 225% for your site in that timespan-- from 2293 to 7452.

  49. firefox colouring by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    This is the default for Firefox 1.1. I think da laydeez and da fellaz will be down with it.

  50. This is to be expected... by Mars+Ultor · · Score: 2, Insightful

    ...isn't it? Firefox 1.0 was accompanied by a big download push, where techies actively encouraged mom, dad, sis, gramps, dog, and everyone else they could think of to get and install Firefox.

    Thing is, Firefox defaults to the Firefox website! So you had a huge push to download and install firefox, and people being what they are (lazy), a whole bunch of firefox installs all pointing at the firefox website everytime they fire up. Let's see how this trend continues for another year or so before we get uber excited.

    --
    "Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
    1. Re:This is to be expected... by ozmanjusri · · Score: 2, Informative

      Thing is, Firefox defaults to the Firefox website!

      Not only that, but the default page on the Firefox site has a Google search field right in the middle. Most of the people I know (including IE users) have set Google as their start page. With Firefox, there's no reason to change. Smart.

      --
      "I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
    2. Re:This is to be expected... by asa · · Score: 2, Informative

      "Thing is, Firefox defaults to the Firefox website!"

      Have you used Firefox? It defautls to http://google.com/firefox.

      - A

    3. Re:This is to be expected... by Given+M.+Sur · · Score: 1

      http://www.google.com/firefox is not a page on the Firefox site. It's a google site.

      --
      nil
    4. Re:This is to be expected... by Mars+Ultor · · Score: 2, Informative

      Actually I have used it, thanks for asking. Since it was called Phoenix.

      I do realizet that the google page is now the default for firefox. but at least a year ago, it was still pointing here:
      http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/cen tral.ht ml

      In fact, I just installed Gentoo 2005.0 and the default for Firefox is still the mozilla.org site.

      --
      "Nokia is not a country, it's the capital of Finland!" -Moderated "Informative". Yeesh.
  51. That's it? by blunt+arrow · · Score: 1

    After comming out of beta and all that publicity... just over double? So it comes down to us geeks who've been using it since beta, plus one or two family members we convinced? Not even that if Neilson decided to count upgrades and theme/extention visits. For all I know of stats, they could've even included http://www.google.com/firefox

    --
    sorry for the bad handwriting
  52. How do they get gender? by mike5904 · · Score: 1

    I don't seem to remember anything in the HTTP browser string that would indicate it. Where is that information coming from, and how are they collecting it?

  53. Good Virus by bryan8m · · Score: 1

    Someone should to write a virus that exploits a vulnerability in IE and installs Firefox on the user's machine and sets it as the default browser. That would solve (at least temporarily) a major issue IE has with security!

    1. Re:Good Virus by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They've done this where I work, sort-of - the packet shaper on the firewall refuses IE packets (except for certain sites), opens an ActiveX control which opens Firefox. If firefox isn't installed on the users' PC, it spawns the install from an internal location.

  54. Impact of Firefox by shirai · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The biggest impact Firefox will have on web development is it will increase the cost of entry into run-almost-anywhere scripted websites.

    Note that I'm not saying this is bad or that there aren't good effects Firefox has (in fact, I believe it is a great browser). Just that the biggest impact on *development* is it will increase the cost of entry on scripted sites.

    This may be a good or bad thing. When the web first started, it was possible to be an "HTML Expert" by doing layouts with tables. I kid you not. This was advanced at one time and people had to figure out how to do it.

    With browsers having pretty much settled down (meaning that Microsoft stopped releasing new browsers and 90% market share belonged to Microsoft), the wealth of knowledge on HTML coding has grown considerably. It was hard to be an *expert* at HTML or Scripting because everyone had done it before. That said, there are some truly brilliant people at sites like QuirksMode.

    Now I feel that the new direction that uber-coders are going for is *useful* DHTML scripting (also known as JavaScript, Cascading Style Sheets and the Document Object Model to manipulate HTML live). By useful, I don't mean a cursor with a trail of stars. I mean things like popup calendars for date selectors, rich text editors, GMail and WYSIWYG page editors with live previews.

    DHTML is still hard and mostly poorly documented. Anybody who has made a rich text editor for MSIE knows that it isn't too bad anymore. There is more documentation on how to do it. Definitely not *a lot* but enough that you can find your way through it.

    Try this though: Make an iframe window that simulates a regular window. Okay. Now do it so that is supports MSIE, FireFox and Safari. If you want to (eventually) support more than 75% of the market, you have to support FireFox now and I'd throw Safari on the list as it is the default browser (I think) on the Mac.

    Some of the toughies are the event handlers for these browsers which are quite different. I've written code to make them both work with one code base but there is virtually no documentation on this. There are dozens of quirks not listed and the only way you can figure 'em out is through trial and error.

    Okay, I know I haven't covered all my bases in making this argument, but I think the smarts you will need to be an uber-coder for DHTML just got harder. This is good because there is room for new experts. If you are a great coder, there is a chance to be a brilliant cross-browser DHTML coder. If you are strictly average (nothing wrong with that), your job may have got harder.

    Ironically, code re-use on JavaScript seems to be very low.

    By the way, if you need evidence that cross-browser DHTML is hard, it even took Google a while to get Firefox compatible with GMail. Think how much cash they've got.

    Signing out...

    --
    Sunny

    Be my Friend

    1. Re:Impact of Firefox by Ziviyr · · Score: 1

      The biggest impact Firefox will have on web development is it will increase the cost of entry into run-almost-anywhere scripted websites.

      IE already made that impact.

      --

      Someone set us up the bomb, so shine we are!
    2. Re:Impact of Firefox by imess · · Score: 0

      afaik, you get wysiwyg editor free by making an iframe editable. na on opera i think

    3. Re:Impact of Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I have made a script which does iframe windowing exactly as you state.

      email brendy at gmail dotcom if interested.

    4. Re:Impact of Firefox by slriv · · Score: 1, Interesting

      You can take all the DHTML frankly and shove it. That is my biggest complaint with today's web is the incessant user-unfriendly and distracting 'extras' sites are adding. Since they've learned that pop-(up|down|under|around) ads are only 1% effective against the newer browsers they've started exploiting the features of DHTML.

      The new pop-ups which slide on top of virtually half the news outlets news articles are far more annoying and disrupting than the crap we used to have to deal with.

      What's sad is it doesn't do me or anyone any good to complain because marketers and worst still portal sites think it's their right to push that garbage on to my screen. Sort of like Scott Richter thinks he has a right to send me email I've never asked for.

      Speaking of google, I'm over the google adwords thing. It was kind of cute, but now it's annoying and needs to be tossed.

      While I'm ranting, I'm really over pdf. Some sites have just given up building proper web sites and gone to links to 100 page pdf files that take forever to download and have absolutely 0 rich content that would have required anything more than a pre tag. Most of these sites seem to also always be starving for bandwidth which shows just how truly informed these people were to begin with. And some actually think this is protecting their content somehow. What a sick sad world this has become!

      --
      All the worlds a stage, and I'm the guy running the lights...
    5. Re:Impact of Firefox by ptaff · · Score: 1

      Seems you weren't around in the late nineties when we had to support 2 different codebases when writing Javascript/Jscript. It was more trouble because in those days the 2 models were mostly incompatible.

      Now as Safari/MSIE/FF are DOM-based, its a lot easier - sure there are quirks, but it only means "Build it so it works in FF, then tweak for others" instead of "do a 'if (MSIE)' first and then rewrite everything in the 'else' for NN4".

      Feel ready to own one or many Tux Stickers?

    6. Re:Impact of Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I'd have to respectfully disagree. DHTML is like any other progamming language. It can be used well or it can be used badly.

      Have you used GMail? I hope you aren't telling me it would be better without DHTML.

      Also, I far prefer travel sites that use a DHTML popups for date selection than one that forces you to type the date.

    7. Re:Impact of Firefox by timealterer · · Score: 4, Interesting

      The plan is that it will actually drive the cost of web development down by forcing IE to get better.

      Right now a lot of web developers' time is spent working around IE bugs. A random one of thousands of examples is making a dotted border - a simple, common request. The CSS is "border: 1px dotted blue". Non-IE browsers happily obey. To do this in IE you actually need to make/upload 2px GIFs, and set them to tile in such a way that they look like dotted borders.

      If the popularity of standard browsers forces Microsoft to improve IE's standards support, and IE gets things like alpha transparency in graphics and a sane box model, the time/cost saved will outweigh that of having to deal with different event registering models.

      In summary, now that there's competition again, web development can actually start to improve once more - it could end up being cheaper even.

      --
      - Allen Pike
      Altering time, one time at a time.
    8. Re:Impact of Firefox by SoupIsGoodFood_42 · · Score: 1

      The other thing: It's not hard to make many DHTML sites backwards compatable.

    9. Re:Impact of Firefox by Phroggy · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On a site I'm developing for a client, I have a box at the left with username/password fields and a "Log In" button. Above the actual form fields, they're labeled "Username:" and "Password:". Nothing tricky here. Works fine in Firefox and Safari. Works mostly fine in MSIE/Mac*.

      But then there's IE/Win.

      The "Username:" and "Password:" labels don't show up. Actually, if I change the colors so I can see what's going on, they're actually getting drawn, then they immediately disappear, as if they're being drawn behind the background graphic. But get this: if you double-click the blank space where the text is supposed to be, the text appears! Click away (to de-select), and the text remains, looking just like it's supposed to. Select All, and the labels disappear again. Alt-tab to another application (not maximized), and the labels appear; alt-tab back to IE and they disappear.

      I did some research, and finally found it: this is known as the "peekaboo" bug, and the solution was to add a "line-height" definition to the CSS for the left sidebar div. Not the login box div, but the parent of that. It doesn't matter what you set the line-height to (so you can pick something that looks reasonable), but it just has to be defined.

      This took me a couple of hours to track down (since I didn't know what I was tracking down at first, and I had to experiment).

      By the way, apparently when I did the initial page layout, I ran into another bug; I don't remember why, but there's a comment in my HTML indicating that the peculiar spacing of a couple of tags is a workaround for an MSIE bug. I don't mean spacing as in where things appear on the web page, I mean spacing as in not putting indents and line breaks where you normally would in the HTML. I don't remember what happens if you don't do it in just that way.

      My only fear about IE7 is that it will introduce new bugs while breaking the workarounds for the old bugs.

      [ * In IE/Mac, the submit button is getting the width of a parent div applied to it, so the submit button is the same width as the login box. I might look into fixing this, but I really don't expect many IE/Mac users, and it's a purely cosmetic issue, so for the moment I don't care. Note that IE/Mac and IE/Win have virtually nothing in common; they have totally different bugs (and IE/Win has far more of them). ]

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
    10. Re:Impact of Firefox by moeffju · · Score: 1

      DHTML is very well-documented. For one, there's the ECMAScript specification (a standard), then there's HTML 4 / XHTML 1.1 standards with standardized DOMs, and there's a standardized CSS2. The interface are all quite clearly defined.

      The only thing that's lacking is enough browsers with good enough standards support - and that is why IE must get better or go away.

      --
      follow me on Twitter: http://twitter.com/moeffju
    11. Re:Impact of Firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      DHTML is still hard and mostly poorly documented.

      Perhaps it's hard for an HTML monkey, but it's not for the average programmer who has been doing it for a few months. It's extremely well documented, the only real difficulty is in knowing which parts are supported by which browsers.

      Try this though: Make an iframe window that simulates a regular window.

      Define "regular window". When I'm running Firefox on Linux, my close button is on the top left. When I'm running Firefox on Windows, my close button is on the top right. When I'm running Opera, it's inside the main Opera window.

      This has nothing to do with DHTML being difficult, and everything to do with a web developer trying to do something that is inappropriate for the web (since windows are operating system specific).

      Some of the toughies are the event handlers for these browsers which are quite different. I've written code to make them both work with one code base but there is virtually no documentation on this.

      Internet Explorer is documented on MSDN and Quirks Mode, and every other browser follows the DOM event model which is documented at the W3C's website.

      Ironically, code re-use on JavaScript seems to be very low.

      Look up the meaning of the word "ironic". You might have meant to use the word "surprisingly"?

      Code re-use is very popular with Javascript, although it's of the form of searching for a script that does something, and copying it to your website - something that only newbie scripters do, or scripters with no intention of learning.

      You don't generally build up giant libraries, simply because you have to be concerned about how long it will take to download them.

      By the way, if you need evidence that cross-browser DHTML is hard, it even took Google a while to get Firefox compatible with GMail. Think how much cash they've got.

      They may have lots of cash, but they haven't hired anybody who knows much about Javascript. They make loads of newbie errors. Even the maintainer of the comp.lang.javascript FAQ criticises them.

    12. Re:Impact of Firefox by xeno-cat · · Score: 1
      I thought that instead of continuing "I did some research..." you were going to say "And then I woke up screaming...".

      I won't even go into how much I loath IE and the hell spawns that are responsible for it.

      I will note that the original poster who stated that DHTML development just got harder is missing the big picture. It's harder if you only ever develop for IE. FireFox and the latest Mozillas, heck even KHTML and Safari are worlds easier to code for then they ever were. So much so that IE7 is do out even after MS said they were not going to improve IE. The world is getting rosier, or maybe it's just my glasses.

      Kind Regards

      --
      "A few great minds are enough to endow humanity with monstrous power, but a few great hearts are not enough to make us w
    13. Re:Impact of Firefox by Neoncow · · Score: 1
      From the report: Cassar warns that, with Firefox's penetration growing as quickly as it is, publishers need to be certain that their sites are compatible with the upstart browser. "It was looking as though Microsoft Explorer was in the process of establishing itself as the standard browser, which was great news for site developers. With Firefox on the rise, they have to grudgingly accept that they don't live in a one browser world."

      Would someone who agrees with sibling posts use your geek-fu and dig up Mr. Ken Cassar's contact information so all the pissed off web developers can remind him about these IE bugs?

  55. About the gender statistics... by Neopoleon · · Score: 5, Informative

    It looks like there's a lot of confusion about the gender data gathered, mostly along the lines of "How'd they do that?"

    I know it sounds crazy, but I went ahead and visited the the Nielsen site and read up on their strategy. I realize this goes against the techie tradition of never RTFM, but that's a risk I was willing to take.

    Turns out they use a "holistic" approach to their data gathering. Everything from "server side blabbity-blah blah blah" to conducting surveys, hiring people to browse, and tracking ad clicks.

    I'm guessing that the gender comes from the surveys, but I don't want to upset anybody who might be really excited about a new gender-aware version of HTTP.

    If you want to read up on this stuff yourself, you can check out some info here:

    http://www.nielsennetratings.com/mktg.jsp?sectio n= ps

    Click on a few products to see the range of apps/services offered. You'll see where all this data comes from.

    --
    - Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
    1. Re:About the gender statistics... by Spit · · Score: 1

      I'm guessing that the gender comes from the surveys, but I don't want to upset anybody who might be really excited about a new gender-aware version of HTTP.

      They use the FF memory exposure vulnerability to see what porn you have looked at, extrapolating from there.

      --
      POKE 36879,8
    2. Re:About the gender statistics... by dascandy · · Score: 1

      "... and tracking ad clicks"

      Ad clicks? You are implying that the firefox site includes ads AND adblock? What's the point of the ads?

      PS: should slashdot have ads? Can't tell that myself...

    3. Re:About the gender statistics... by Neopoleon · · Score: 1

      "Ad clicks? You are implying that the firefox site includes ads AND adblock? What's the point of the ads?"

      No - I'm not implying that.

      I'm saying that that's part of the Nielsen strategy for collecting usage data.

      Their system seems to be modular, so you only include the bits that make sense to you. Some customers might *only* want ad clicks, while others might not want them at all - you can pick and choose.

      At least that's the impression I get from actually having read the site.

      --
      - Rory [Microsoft Employee] | Free dirt: neopoleon.com
  56. Quality products rise to the top by Che+Guevarra · · Score: 1

    Damn straight. I was one of the doubters several years ago believing no open source project would ever have the resources needed to produce a product that could reach market acceptance. Not anymore. It's a full-on full-featured product. The university I attend has installed it next to IE on their classroom stations. To sum it up in several words, it kicks ass.
    The RSS integration is the biggest draw for me right now, Safari doesn't have it. (Mac user).

    1. Re:Quality products rise to the top by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Safari will have it.

    2. Re:Quality products rise to the top by harikiri · · Score: 1

      Safari has it in 10.4. :-)

      --
      Man watching 6 MSCE's around a sun box, looks alot like the opening scene's of 2001:space odyssey...
  57. Statistics... by merpal · · Score: 1

    Those statistics seem about right, considering the previous articles posted here:

    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/03/11/027 250
    http://it.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/26/193 215


    One day. :(

    1. Re:Statistics... by Kyrene · · Score: 1
      Speaking as the female minority in a wide number of fields, I will definitely say that I am very used to being either the only woman, or one of maybe two or three out of an IT development team. I find it to be a shame.

      But, hey, gives me an advantage in the dating game in finding a guy geek to go out with. ;)

      --
      Do not disturb. Already disturbed. http://www.teaaddictedgeek.com
  58. It's the name, stupid. by Jay+L · · Score: 0

    The gender imbalance is clearly caused by the stereotypical male value images in the name "Firefox". Fire: Destruction, rage, consumption. Fox: a wily, powerful hunter.

    Now rename it to "Feeling Sparrow", and you'll bag some chicks.

    1. Re:It's the name, stupid. by Che+Guevarra · · Score: 1

      My ex-wife was a fiery fox and she took everything. Free browsers are all I have left.

  59. Other genders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    So 100% of visitors were male or female? Firefox really needs to be promoted more amongst the androgynous, transgender and intersex!

    1. Re:Other genders by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      They did account for that. That's the minority who visited once during March 2005 :)

  60. Weird wording by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    or the minority population who visited in March 2005

    What exactly does this mean? That one group of say Latin Americans visited the Firefox web site some time in March, and none at all at any other time? It doesn't make a lot of sense to me.

  61. Google pre-fetch by morcheeba · · Score: 1

    I wonder if this has to do with Google pre-fetching from Mozilla and Firefox that begins to get the top search results before you click on it. I think that could easily significantly skew the results, especially because this isn't done with other browsers.

  62. Women game a *lot* by loqi · · Score: 1

    Actually, middle-aged women are a huge constituent of online gaming. You just hear less hype about online games that involve dominos and cards rather than the latest Q3 or EQ clone.

    --
    If other reasons we do lack, we swear no one will die when we attack
  63. Give me a break by InfiniteWisdom · · Score: 1

    How can they say that they've been monitoring for 9 months, and then state that it has 278% year over year growth?

    You can't. Maybe that's why they dont! So now you can just make stuff up, refute it, and get modded insightful?

    Besides, my web site had 1000% growth, I went from me viewing it to a few relatives looking at a picture I put up from them (40% female, 60% male), so, obviously, my website is faster growing that firefoxes!

    Yes, that's true. What's your point?

  64. Majority of Slashdot visitors use IE by bonch · · Score: 0
    From the infamous Slashdot IRC interview (granted, it's fron 2003, but Taco has stated since that IE is still the majority browser on Slashdot):
    [20:18:36] <Questions> theLinGer asks: What percent of website hits originate from Internet Explorer?
    [20:18:49] <CmdrTaco> Shit, I just looked this up an hour ago.
    [20:18:58] <CmdrTaco> 50% MSIE ish.
    [20:19:22] <hemos> CmdrTaco: I'll find it a second.
    [20:19:24] <CmdrTaco> 35% Moz, 2% Konq
    1. Re:Majority of Slashdot visitors use IE by winkydink · · Score: 1

      OK, then only the smart people use the mirrors. :)

      --

      "I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey

    2. Re:Majority of Slashdot visitors use IE by One+Childish+N00b · · Score: 2, Insightful

      That ignores the fact that Opera identifies as IE6 by default, and that seems to have a pretty big following around these parts. It also ignores the fact that Konqueror and the Mozilla babies can all, either through Preferences or extensions, identify as IE as well (unfortunately, I can't speak for Safari).

      It also ignores all the Slashdotters reading the site while skiving off work on a locked-down Windows box, where IE is the only option availible. That's not to say 'OMG NO1 ON /. HAS IE J00 TROLL LOLZ0RZ!!!', but just suggesting that user-agent strings aren't the most accurate way of assessing who's using what browser, and even if they were they'd still not be a 100% reliable source of information on people's preferred browser.

      --
      Dealing with lawyers would be a lot less tedious if they all looked like Casey Novak.
    3. Re:Majority of Slashdot visitors use IE by akadruid · · Score: 1

      That's interesting actually, since the only browser unlikely to be misrepresenting itself is therefore IE, and the only browser likely to used by force is also IE - so therefore IE represents at most just 18.9%, and likely less, and is partly used by those who would rather not.

      So, on slashdot, we can say that IE has effectively lost the race.

      --
      "Those who cast the votes decide nothing; those who count the votes decide everything." (attrib. Joseph Stalin)
    4. Re:Majority of Slashdot visitors use IE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Wow, some people will do and say absolutely anything to twist obvious facts presented to them that disagrees with their mindset.

  65. I'm confused... by Gothic_Walrus · · Score: 2, Funny
    "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005."

    What other populations exist, exactly? Transvestites? Monkeys? Martians?

    --
    Goo goo g'joob.
    1. Re:I'm confused... by yRabbit · · Score: 1

      Hmm.. In this case, if NetRatings only allows one to choose male or female, I guess women would be in the minority according to them.
      What about the intersexed, the androgynes or genderqueer, undecided, other? ;)
      I don't know of any monkeys or martians that use the internet..

  66. Re:Validity of the article linked to? by Che+Guevarra · · Score: 1

    why let that get in the way of an open-source victory party?

    But seriously, Firefox is fantastic and more accolades are coming soon.

  67. Zoo, Land, Er... by soloport · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Just be happy...

    Happy!!!

    Haaaaaappyyyyy....

    You must kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia!

    Just be happy...

    Happy!!!

    Haaaaaappyyyyy....

    You must kill the Prime Minister of Malaysia!

    1. Re:Zoo, Land, Er... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you just refer to him as "recalcitrant" , then that might do the job all by itself. Of course , one of australia's previous prime ministers tried this when Mahatir was late for some conference , and Mahatir responded by stabbing australia in the back every chance he got for the next 10 years or so..

      oh well , such is life.

    2. Re:Zoo, Land, Er... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Obey my dog!

  68. I knew they could see your OS and browser... by PsychicX · · Score: 0

    But they can determine your gender when you connect now? Damn, that's just slick.

  69. Who cares? by masterhackman · · Score: 0

    ...mozilla is dead, firefox is in-fighting.

  70. 29% women? wow by danharan · · Score: 1

    How many early technology adopters are women? I'd bet it's below 20 or even 10%. What percentage do you know are running a *Nix box at home?

    Just another indication that FF is going mainstream. Yay!

    --
    Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
    1. Re:29% women? wow by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      What percentage do you know are running a *Nix box at home?

      While women may not run all that many Linux/AIX/Solaris boxes, quite a few do BSD (Mac OS X).

  71. But... by BuddyJesus · · Score: 1

    How many of these people are using Firefox? How many go there to convert?

  72. related to an earlier story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Some of the aspects of the article pertain to this earlier/a
    story... While Internet exploiter aims to provide a 'defacto' standard tool for 0wning pcs, Firefox aims to be a Standards Compliant Browser, in the pdf, some sites 'have to accept that it's not a 1 browser world'. Gues the guys at opera must be pissed at this being a '2 browser' world of ie and firefox...

  73. Nice... by Marthisdil · · Score: 1

    Yet when you send in a report about a security flaw in OpenOffice that affects possibly everyone who uses it, the story gets rejected - woo! :)

    Love em.

  74. Yeah, so? by NotQuiteReal · · Score: 1
    I could very well be one of those Firefox/WinXP statistics. That matches my "main" platform (I have 6 computers in eyesight, right now, and more in the house that I can't see.)

    I program professionally, and so, I do what the paying customers want. Often that involves Windows. Don't worry, I am actively doing both x86 and ppc Linux stuff too.

    I book revenues programming whatever "they" want, and you know what? All computers suck.

    --
    This issue is a bit more complicated than you think.
    1. Re:Yeah, so? by kwoo · · Score: 1
      I program professionally, and so, I do what the paying customers want. Often that involves Windows. Don't worry, I am actively doing both x86 and ppc Linux stuff too.

      Okay, you're missing my point entirely. Just because I didn't expect to see a result doesn't mean I have a problem with it -- it means that I didn't expect that so many people would be running Firefox on Windows. Does that make me somehow anti-Windows or something?

      If you're looking to torque a Linux fanboy, look elsewhere.

  75. Percent... by AMDude · · Score: 0
    Firefox site visits up 237%

    Definition of percent:

    Out of each hundred; per hundred.

    1. Re:Percent... by mabinogi · · Score: 1

      that's right, what's your point?

      --
      Advanced users are users too!
  76. OK, be honest everyone by 3770 · · Score: 1


    Seing 237%, did you think that the traffic had doubled or tripled?

    The right answer, it more than tripled.

    --
    The Internet is full. Go Away!!!
  77. Think about... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Can someone tell me how these pseudo-analysts companies can determine how many male or females visits a site? That's is impossible to know if you don't conduct a special survey with your visitors, something that never happened as far as I know. So, this, at least the genre stats, is a blah, blah.

  78. What is this "Blogging" you speak of? by drfreak · · Score: 1

    Do people not keep .plan files anymore?

  79. mutual funds by Lord+Ender · · Score: 1

    I once looked at a list of mutual funds on Yahoo that had the highest YTD returns. I couldn't believe how all these funds had like 400% returns in a year when the indexes went down. Closer inspection showed that the funds went from $0.01 to $0.04 and the like. Stats like that don't necessarily mean anything.

    --
    A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
  80. More stats, but probably realistic by mjtg · · Score: 4, Informative
    As luck would have it, I went through my organization's web logs just the other day for info on browsers. Here's a summary of what I found, for anyone who's interested.

    12 months ago, IE accounted for a steady 94% of hits. Gecko-based browsers (Netscape 6+, Mozilla, Firefox) accounted for 3%. Netscape 4 had around 1.5% of the hits, Safari just under 1%, Opera about 0.5%, and Konqueror 0.1%.

    Firefox started registering in my logs around July, when the Gecko share jumped to 4.3%, rising steadily to 5.7% in October. In December Gecko jumped up to 7%, and is currently around 8.2% (March-April). Firefox now represents about 80% of Gecko-based browsers. The number of non-Firefox Gecko hits (ie. Netscape 6+, etc) has remained more-or-less steady.

    IE's decline matches Firefox's rise - by October, it was down to 92%. IE now rates around 87% of hits on our site.

    Safari has increased to about 2.5%. Netscape 4 has (finally) declined to virtual insignificance. Sadly, Konqueror has also declined steadily, maybe 0.03% in a good month (looks like a lot of Konqueror users have switched to Firefox too).

    These stats come from an Australian state government website that receives about 3 million hits per month. The site is not technology-oriented, and about half of the hits come from overseas, so I believe that this is a reasonably good sample of browser use.

    1. Re:More stats, but probably realistic by aav · · Score: 1

      And browser identification isn't taken into account, as usual... With Konqueror which makes it trivial to send a specific identification for each (sub-)domain, and considering that many web sites implement routines that kick you off unless you're IE or Mozilla, it's not surprising that many people simply set the default identification string to something more commonly accepted.

      Personally I think I am an exception, because I set the browser identification only for domains which I cannot access otherwise, while sending the Konqueror id to everyone who won't mind it.

      Along the same lines, I typically send a Firefox identification when Konqueror's won't do, and IE only when none of the other works. So, I suppose I'm kicking up the numbers for Firefox too, even when I don't actually use it.

  81. Men or Woman? by vdub12 · · Score: 1

    How the hell do they know if its men or women visiting. I guess adware running on those users systems. I think companys should be arrested just for publishing findings like that

    1. Re:Men or Woman? by i41Overlord · · Score: 1

      How the hell do they know if its men or women visiting.

      A user posted the answer above.

      I guess adware running on those users systems.

      Nope, not adware.

      I think companys should be arrested just for publishing findings like that

      Why should they be arrested for publishing demographics information? And how do you arrest an entire company?

  82. In Firefox we trust by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I can rely on FireFox when i visit a Pron site,is that a reason good enough ?!!!?

  83. Link it up.... by TrancePhreak · · Score: 1

    They should link this up to the information that Intuit provides on taxes... Or not... ;)

    --

    -]Phreak Out[-
  84. An even bigger increase! by earthbound+kid · · Score: 1

    Here's something even more astounding: Firefox usage is up more than 50,003.55% since 2001.

    It's also up more than 12.34% from 2000, but more than -111.00% from 1999.

    Hmm. What does ERR mean, and why does my calculator keep spitting that out. Oh well. Firefox is has more than 87,282,811.3% more users than they had in 1996!!

  85. So, women = sheep/cattle that take what's given. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The obvious response for the PC crowd is to cover up statistics like these. Perhaps try twisting it as another example of them being a victim. Hah!

  86. Of course, Firefox is the default home page... by kikensei · · Score: 1, Redundant

    on any release since 1.0. So all the people that tried out the browser, default to the Firefox google search page on browser launch.

    1. Re:Of course, Firefox is the default home page... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Not for new users who are now switching. Most import settings from their previous browser.

      The only time I see Firefox use a default homepage is on a clean install where IE was never used anyway.

    2. Re:Of course, Firefox is the default home page... by Compumyst · · Score: 2, Informative

      Just to let you know, the default start page is located on the google website, and would not be counted towards a hit on the firefox website.

      --
      What's done's in the past, forever shall last.
      Work is work; life is life; fair is not!
  87. my data points by mlas · · Score: 1

    I run an e-commerce beauty products site whose audience is about 80-90% women, and we get about 10,000 unique visitors a day. I am currently seeing about 4.5% Firefox users, and about 4.7% Safari users, Both of these numbers are way up, from 1.5% Safari and practically non-existent Firefox 1 year ago.

    Just some stats from the non-techie web world....

    --
    "Luck is the residue of design" --Branch Rickey
  88. That & women aren't innovators or leaders. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    The truth is anti-PC.

  89. Is it to be expected, or is IE losing ground fast? by WillAffleck · · Score: 1

    Thing is, Firefox defaults to the Firefox website!

    And where do you think IE defaults to?

    It sure as heck ain't the Firefox site.

    --
    Will in Seattle
  90. that sound you just heard? by vena · · Score: 1

    that's your joke going straight the f**k over every slashdotter's heads at mach 12.

  91. All Your Browsers Are Belong To MSFT! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Resistance is Futile! You must obey or we will issue a bug fix to corrupt your PC!

  92. Maybe if Mozilla had better documentation ... by MonkeyBoyo · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Maybe if Mozilla had better documentation I wouldn't visit it so often, hoping to find documentation to explain things. Firefox does provide local (F1) help but that often sends you to the web - which ups Moz's page hits.

    Also, Firefox has all sorts of neat hacking potential which dovetails with increasingly exposed hooks into Google things like Google maps.

    Sadly, some basic browser commands and options are poorly documented and advanced information (on hacking) is largely non-existant. Which kinda sucks because some people find it easy to extend Firefox with bookmarklets, extensions, and GreaseMonkey scripts.

    For example, a full Firefox contains a DOM (Document Object Model) Inspector which can help in traking down say how a page hid something in a style sheet. However there is no official documentation for this DOMi. Some outside web pages have helped by explaining what some of the buttons mean, but I have yet to see any discussion of "evalute javascript" and I can't seem to get it to work.

    I am someone well versed in programming in many languages, but professionally never learned javascript. Yet I have written a few bookmarklets by example (e.g. find some js code examples that do things similar to what you want and imitate them).

    I wish I could find a good discussion of javascript "namespaces" and Firefox hacking. My guess is that there is some contium. Bookmarklets only give you access to DOM stuff, GreaseMonkey exposes certain hooks into Firefox, Extensions expose more Firefox hooks, and hacking Firefox lets you do anything.

    1. Re:Maybe if Mozilla had better documentation ... by Phroggy · · Score: 1

      I am someone well versed in programming in many languages, but professionally never learned javascript.

      O'Reilly's "JavaScript: The Definitive Guide" is excellent, and will open your eyes to the power of JavaScript like you probably never imagined.

      --
      $x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
      $x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
  93. Theory proved wrong... by bayankaran · · Score: 1

    "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005."

    The study also disproved the widely held assumption - in the web no one knows you are a dog.

    --
    Tat Tvam Asi
  94. security by gumbi+west · · Score: 2, Funny
    My favorite reason for not switching (a short story):

    My wife downloaded the fox at her work and then the security person found out. Well, she was told that this new browser was 'a security threat.' And she has to use IE for 'security reasons.'

    That was supposed to be ironic, I hope you understand.

    1. Re:security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Doesnt that make you want to wring someones neck?

    2. Re:security by Ph33r+th3+g(O)at · · Score: 1

      More like a threat to the fiefdom of the "security person." The disingenuous in IT have been using security as an empire building tool since there have been computers.

      --
      I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
    3. Re:security by gumbi+west · · Score: 1
      I'm not so sure you have to motives right. Why would anyone want to build that empire? It is just an empire of telling people, "no, you can't do that... because of... uh...security! Yeah, security."

      I think it is just the natural reaction to being hopelessly lacking in time to specialize combined with a sense of duty.

    4. Re:security by Ph33r+th3+g(O)at · · Score: 1

      Because it pays pretty well and people in that position don't have many deliverables. I'm not saying all security people are that way, but there's lots of IT obstructionism and work avoidance done in the name of security.

      --
      I too have felt the cold finger of injustice.
    5. Re:security by gumbi+west · · Score: 1
      That's a good point.

      I was saying that sometimes it comes from having the title 'local computer person' tacked on to your already full job description in a small office, without resources for training other than 'intermediate microsoft word.'

  95. Adblock by buro9 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And who else here has Adblock installed and blocks tracking elements as much as adverts?

    I've installed Firefox on three workmates computers, most of my family's computers... and all have Adblock installed using my filters as a starting point... not one of them would load the Red Sherrif code.

    1. Re:Adblock by aslate · · Score: 1

      If i remember correctly, adblock just sets the property of the blocked area to hidden, or an equivalent. So all content is actually loaded, including the 1x1 gif and JS, it's just not shown to the user.

    2. Re:Adblock by Phisbut · · Score: 1
      If i remember correctly, adblock just sets the property of the blocked area to hidden, or an equivalent.

      There are actually two options... one is to hide the ads (loading it but not showing it), and the other is to block the ad (not load it at all). In the latter case, the 1x1 gif might not work.

      --
      After 3 days without programming, life becomes meaningless
      - The Tao of Programming
  96. Sex data by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    hey ppl do not that Firefox also automaticvally detect the sex of the user & send them to the web server as http header from that it is very easy to get it just like the getting the information about the machine & browser version.

    Anirban Biswas.

  97. most informative quote ever by ikea5 · · Score: 1
    "Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005."

    so, if thet are not men, they are women. 71% + 21%= 100%. and 21% by the way, is minority. GOT YA!

  98. 1x1 gif by IrishWonder · · Score: 1

    1x1 gif is totally unreliable as long as the users can turn the images display in their browsers - which can be done in any browser, anytime. JavaScript can also be disabled. Hence, both ways of tracking visitors are not 100% accurate.

    1. Re:1x1 gif by DavidTC · · Score: 1
      I adblock pointless tracking gifs if I notice them. And any pointless javascript at all.

      Granted, I don't go to adblock unless there's actually something I don't want, so I don't block them all. But if I'm there, I figure, what the hell, and adblock anything that isn't content, actual graphics, or code required to run the site.

      --
      If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
    2. Re:1x1 gif by IrishWonder · · Score: 1

      That's what I meant, and I believe every survey like that should also have data on how many users turn off the image display/Javascript and thus can't be tracked.

  99. The slashdot recipe by smallguy78 · · Score: 0, Flamebait

    Microsoft bad Firefox weally good Few science and Rights online stories in between Repeat daily

    --
    Nothing costs nothing
  100. Omniture by prockcore · · Score: 1

    As an omniture customer, I'm able to see browser stats for all of omniture's customers. This includes yahoo and intuit (as indicated by the other article about intuit tracking users)

    Here is what omniture says under Browser Types for it's customer average:

    Microsoft: 79.6%
    Mozilla: 7.4%
    Safari: 5.0%
    AOL: 4.8%
    Netscape: 2.4% (this is Netscape 4 and earlier.. netscape 6+ is counted under Mozilla)
    Opera: 0.3%

    Again, these are the averages for *all* of omniture's customers for April (so far).

    They also break it down to individual browser versions, but there are over a hundred of those.. including "Nutscrape 1.0" and HotJava. So I'm not going to bother with that.

  101. firefox eh by doofusdog · · Score: 1

    I'm the solo tech for a 500 pupil semi private school here in New Zealand and got wind of a "we want firefox" petition coming from the school geek patrol. So just to spite them I installed it on the domain before they could present the petition. Only browser I use myself so I'm curious to see how it goes with my users. Next up, Sunbird for the main office shared calendar. Doof

    --
    log out, go kiting.
  102. HTTP_USER_SOCKET by carlmenezes · · Score: 1

    boolean value. nuff said.

    --
    Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
  103. popsaurs your s0xaurs by 7Prime · · Score: 2, Funny

    I know that when I'm looking at porn, I already have more than enough to handle just from one big 'pop up'...

    ...oh, were we talking about windows, here?

    --
    Multiplayer Gaming (defined): Sitting around, discussing single-player games with my friends, at the bar.
  104. ok so it's gone up, but it appears to have peaked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details? &range=2y&size=medium&compare_sites=&y=r&url=mozil la.org

    i'm wondering if the recent improvements to MSIE have reduced the incentive to install firefox?

    p.

  105. Re:You learn something every day by SimonInOz · · Score: 1

    Gosh - how cool. Middle-clicking. I don't have a middle button so I tried clicking BOTH mouse buttons - lo and behold, there was a new tab with the site. A spurious menu, but basically very cool.

    thanks

    --
    "Cats like plain crisps"
  106. Use favicon picker and make your own favicons! by Velmont · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Make your own favicons for webpages without, and assign them using the favicon picker extension.

    I'm doing exactly the same as you, I've got a set of buttons for all my "popular" bookmarks. At the top. However, some sites doesn't have a favicon, then I just gimp one pretty quick (usually based on the logo of the page) and use that using the favicon picker extension. Normally I also send the webadmin of the site the favicon along with a description on how to use it. (If they want to use it)

    1. Re:Use favicon picker and make your own favicons! by MikeFM · · Score: 1

      Not having a favicon is one of the first things I see that tells me how poorly done a website is. If a lil icon doesn't popup in the tab, before I actually look at the page, then I can be pretty sure it's not a professional quality site.

      I wish I could do more with things like favicons using stylesheets. It'd be cool to make them match the stylesheet's color scheme.

      --
      At what price learning? At what cost wisdom? The price is a man's peace of mind, and the cost is his life.
  107. err... by renedox · · Score: 1

    did they account for the fact that mozilla sets their site as the default homepage?

  108. -1, I Have Too Much Karma by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

    Hmm, with less than 3% males I'd think that our civilization as we know it might not last very long... Our civilization is dying, Slashdot confirms it?

    --
    USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    1. Re:-1, I Have Too Much Karma by Neoncow · · Score: 1
      I for one, Welcome our English speaking male Overlords.

      Wait a minute..

    2. Re:-1, I Have Too Much Karma by uncqual · · Score: 1

      But those 3% will have an unprecedented amount of fun while the civilization swirls down the drain! Oh, wait, this is /. - never mind.

      --
      Why is there an "insightful" mod and why isn't it "-1"? If I wanted insight, I wouldn't be reading /.
  109. that's funny by noamsml · · Score: 1

    I didn't know that the user agent included gender.

  110. I think its' true by Xjavier · · Score: 1

    Everyone I know, I have told/helped install Mozilla, Firefox, and even Netscape before Mozilla/Firefox existed. I never Liked MS and their ways, so I did what could to show people MS wasn't the only one around. Now if there are more people around like me, then Mozilla/Firefox should be getting pretty popular.

  111. This just in - New New York Times Firefox ad by thenefariousone · · Score: 1

    Firefox - it gets you chicks!

    --
    http://hughgordon.com/
  112. Re:You learn something every day by DavidTC · · Score: 1
    Do you have a mouse wheel?

    If so, that's your middle button...you can click it.

    --
    If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
  113. Default Homepage? by Shuasha · · Score: 1

    Would this have anything to do with Firefox changing your home page to the Firefox home page by default when you upgrade? I always uncheck the box, but I'm sure most people just click through.

  114. Re:Validity of the article linked to? by DavidTC · · Score: 1

    For those not paying attention: 1% is 4% of 20%. Hence 4% more people using Firefox than were using it before.

    --
    If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
  115. Who _writes_ this stuff? by PMuse · · Score: 1

    Men accounted for 71% or nearly 1.9 mln site visitors, compared to the women who comprised 29% or the minority population who visited in March 2005.

    Did the writer suppose that there was some one out there that didn't know that 29% is a minority? Or did the writer just need help calculating 1.9mln / 71% * 29% = 0.78 mln?

    (The grammarian I married would also like me to point out:
    1. A sentence that says "the women" should have likewise said "the men".
    2. The parenthetical comment "or the minority population" should have been surrounded by parentheses, or, at least, by commas.
    3. Unless "March 2005" applies only to the women, at least one other comma is missing towards the end somewhere.)

    --
    "We reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals." --The American President (20.1.2009)
  116. evaluate javascript by headLITE · · Score: 1

    To get to know "evaluate JavaScript" in the DOM Inspector, try this:

    Open the DOM Inspector on a page containing a form.

    Select the form in the tree on the left side of the window.

    Click the tiny arrow in the title bar of the right display and choose JavaScript Object as display mode. A node called "target" should appear, which you can unfold.

    Now right click target and click execute javascript.

    Enter "target.submit()" to simulate a user hitting the form's submit button.

    To sum it all up, it's like the JavaScript console, only you can select an object in the DOM tree that will be known as target to your JavaScript code.

  117. pffft... statistics by iolaus · · Score: 1

    Anything can be proven with statistics... 40% of all people know that!

    --
    I find laziness to be an excellent motivator.
  118. Just goes to show... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    ...real men use Firefox!

  119. Not GPL-covered but still free. by jbn-o · · Score: 1

    You're right, I was thinking of the tri-licensed Mozilla Suite (which, I gather, is no longer being developed by the Mozilla Foundation). Fortunately the MPL 1.1 is a free software license. At the same time, the GPL is a far more practical choice considering how much other software is already licensed under that license.

  120. Re:You learn something every day by SimonInOz · · Score: 2, Funny

    My goodness, so it is! Gads, I've been in this business since 1971 and I still learn new tricks. Maybe I'm a bot sloooow ....

    thanks!

    --
    "Cats like plain crisps"
  121. Re:Men? Women? by Man+Eating+Duck · · Score: 1


    about:config > user.chromosome.autodetect Boolean, of course.

    Boolean values:

    0 = 46 chromosomes
    1 = 47 chromosomes

    -1 tasteless joke :)

    --
    Are you a grammar Nazi? I'm trying to improve my English; please correct my errors! :)
  122. Nielson surveys by agacat · · Score: 1

    I got a request to sign up with Nielson surveys but could not because they require Windows and I don't do Windows. I'm not sure if they also require IE. So, you have a group selected on the basis of running Windows and being willing to download and install the monitoring/reporting software. Hmmm....

  123. Microsoft doesn't need to respond by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    You used the word "forcing" and "forces" a bunch of times. As if Microsoft has no choice. Yet they do. If they lose a lot of ground to Firefox, you know what that means? It means nothing. They didn't lose any sales. No revenue lost. None.

  124. Stop with the popularity, vulnerability crap. by crovira · · Score: 1

    Vulnerability is a structural defect. If you write software that's invulnerale it won't get brought down by an attack. That's all that means however. Nobody will have heard of it.

    Popularity is a question of marketing having NOTHING to do with quality. You can sell hamburgers to vegetarians if you know how to market stuff (im)properly.

    --
    MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.