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Firefox Downloads Reach 75 Million
WindozeSux writes "Today Mozilla Firefox has reached its 75 millionth download. The Mozilla staff find this a morale booster since recent security vulnerabilities have slightly lowered the browser's growth rate. 'We're beefing up the management on the project. The project is still very healthy. We're seeing continued corporate interest and have a lot of large organizations that want to do deployments,' said Chris Hoffman."
This is a Good Thing. Not because everyone has to use Firefox instead of IE/Opera/Safari/whatever, but because this forces authors to create more standard compliant sites which work on multiple platforms.
Good stuff.
.: Max Romantschuk
What is the relevance of the number of downloads? Someone might download it 4 times to install it at his 4 PC an another might download it once and install it on his company's 200 stations.
And when I install I from portage it is also not counted. In fact most Linux users are probably not counted, since most use things like apt-get, emerge, or whatever.
What is the relevance? It gives an idea of the popularity of the product. The number is big, and still increasing. That is all that matters.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
Keep it simple.
The biggest danger to Firefox is that you forget the key reasons people like this browser... compact, fast, and secure.
It's the "winamp" lesson.
My blog
So your saying that IE7 is rubbish because it doesn't look nice? It's still in beta FFS! I know a lot of people on Slashdot hate Microsoft but this is getting ridiculous.
Anybody can write a program, writing a program that is easy for a non-literate person to use is a real challenge.
We live in a world where people judge everything by the way it looks. People buy Ipods because they look and feel better than the competition even though there are high capacity, longer battery life alternatives.
Even if we discount the visual side of IE, it's still rubish. It's so far away from standard compliance that it might aswell be considered it's own platform. It delivered full PNG support half a decade too late. ActiveX needs no introduction. It's crap, and this version is no better.
Simon.
Firefox has been downloaded 75 million times. Many of these were upgrades from previous versions, which had already been counted.
Over 500 million songs have been purchased and downloaded from the iTunes Music Store. Many of these were purchased by the same person who had previously downloaded other iTMS songs (and often, the songs were part of an album and not purchased separately).
These really have nothing to do with each other, but it's sort of startling to consider the popularity of Firefox, which many of us depend on all the time and is free, compared to the popularity of something like the iTunes Music Store, which many of us never intend to give a dime to (draconian DRM and all that).
$x='S24;r)>63/* h@<5+oZ)32"5cz';$me='phroggy'x$];
$x=~y+ -xz+\0-Tx+;print$_^chop$me for split'',$x;
I suppose the most significant statistic for web developers would be: what proportion of browser requests to my site originate from browsers others than IE?
It is the growth of this number that will motivate the development of more standards-compliant web pages.
Problem is, browsers can "lie" about their identity (usually to pretend to be IE) - a practice that itself will only decline when IE is no longer the assumed "standard".
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I think the point the grandparent is trying to make is that IE7 is a beta product. We can discuss firefox's superiority to any UI shortcomings in a beta product of IE all we want, but it will become moot if the production release of IE7's UI is imporoved. Ditto for any feature of the IE7 beta. I'm speaking in general here, but I can't see any software project along the magnitude of IE7 making it to production without the developers and UI designers recieving tons of disgruntled feedback like you've already described.
In other news: That they got 75 millions downloads is great, but it doesn't tell you much. For example, it doesn't tell you how many people are using it as their main browser. I personally have Safari, Camino, Firefox, IE and Opera. I only use Safari regularly. I don't read too much into that figure.
Let me guess: you don't write software?
Minor interface issues like where to place buttons by default (which can probably be customized anyway) is the least of your problems when developing a browser. The big issues are things that you can't see without examining the code, like how the rendering engine decides which layout algorithm to use depending on the CSS display and float properties. Etc. etc. etc.
In short: You're reacting like you are saying a house is crap because it's ugly, at the stage the walls haven't even been painted yet.
.: Max Romantschuk
These other inferences are contentious:
1: Firefox has been installed on 75 million computers.
2: Firefox is in [regular] use on 75 million computers.
3: Those who have decided to install Firefox are using it on a daily basis.
4: And so many more.
I think the point the grandparent is trying to make is that IE7 is a beta product.
As the original poster stated, why did this take so long to make? Even if it's a beta, can't they have made it a bit nicer looking in the about-4 years since the last IE release?
"Your effort to remain what you are is what limits you."
Not really. ...
It may not be an exact number, but it can give a good indication. Others like me have downloaded it once and installed it in 12 computers or more, that accounts for your "extra 12 downloads".
Then you may add:
- Firefox added onto CD's (magazine, etc)
- Third party ftp sites not tracked
- Company mass installs
As I said... it's just a good hint at how many installs there are, it could be less as you claim, and it could be more...
How the fuck is this 'informative'?
He's knocking a product he hasn't even USED, on what information he coulld gleam from a fucking SCREENSHOT? And this is informative?
FYI, the menu bar is below the tab bar so it can stay contextual to the document being viewed in that tab, be it a PDF, a Word document or an Excel sheet. It's a simple switch that affords a great increase in versatility with no practical downsides, and you're knocking it simply because firefox does it differently and you don't like the look of it? Bitch please.
Why is it that everyone pisses and whinges at Microsoft for 'not innovating', and as soon as they do take a concept and add more functionality to it, they throw their hands up in the air and cry foul because it isn't how other program x does it?
Yet if anyone calls them on it and makes a flawlessly cohesive analogy that makes one of their favourite products/developers look bad, they get modded into oblivion? Fuck that. The only good thing about the Slashdot moderation system is that you can turn it off. This is why I browse at -1, Nested. I advise anyone who values contrary opinions and reading the other side to arguments do the same.
I use Firefox! Why? - is the question we should answer.
If a browser is going to embrace the market (open source or not) it needs to add value to the users of the browser. If it's named IE, Firefox or something else is a secondary effect. (I know a lot of us here on SlashDot might use it just because it's cool).
Firefox has in my opinion 3 major advances: Tabbed browsing (when you tried it, you will never live without it again), better security and customization/extras abilities. You may have additional advances, but these are the ones I favor.
When I say better security, its not only a question about how many security holes there are in the browser, its also a question in regards to how many browsers are out there. To target IE is much smarter than some "minor" browser. Of cause this benefit will slowly decrease as Firefox becomes more popular.
Customization is an other issue. You may adjust IE, but the extras for Firefox are really good. I'm not even sure they can be made to IE (at least they are not easy to make). My Firefox is loaded with extensions. And the ones I use are of my own choice (you'll probably have your own favorite list). This option is not available in IE in the same degree. Some likes themes as well. I use the browser daily, so for me it's important to have a very functionally theme rather than a fancy one. (I use a very tiny one to get better space).
When I first installed Firefox I went to my own website (www.rednebula.com), and was disappointed as the layout collapsed... but as I checked the html, I realized that it often was due to errors in my html code that IE simply ignored. Now my website has been tuned to both Firefox and IE, giving better and nicer html... a nice secondary effect.
-:) Oh no - not again.
www.rednebula.com
Perhaps interestingly, I think that would be one of the worst things to happen for the Moz family. Not because I hate on Microsoft (that was so 1998-present) but because the heterogenious nature of network tools is a strength. If you have multiple browsers there is an inherent defense in the fact that they are different and to some extend shove some of their interoperability off onto the servers who have to take care of the exceptions, or at least the top two rules. As they become more interoperable and able to use each others assets natively, that's diminished.
Ideally, one would want a heterogenious network that makes use of a variety of strategies, that's interoperable enough, but no so much that it's easily crippled.
User Agent Switcher (Only applies to geeks who want to misrepresent their User-Agent, like me)
Farkit (Only applies to Fark users, like me)
Certainly there are more mainstream plugins - Bugmenot has its own plugin now and it's likely more popular than either of my two examples above - but I think it's going to take a critical mass plugin to really make a splash. Greasemonkey might be that plugin, eventually; "the recent security issue may have temporarily impeded its penetration into the user base," say analysts everywhere. I for one have not installed Greasemonkey, although I find its potential quite interesting.
The cool thing is, Firefox provides the ability for anyone to create a plugin, register and host it "officially" through the Mozilla/Firefox update site, etc. And Firefox tracks each plugin individually, giving you the option to visit its web page, update it automatically, uninstall it easily and without the BS that accompanies IE plugin variants such as the dreaded (and often persistent) BHOs.
In short, Firefox has supplied a sandbox large enough for all of the neighborhood kids to play in, and they've even hired a referee to make sure that everyone plays nice. It's just a matter of time until someone brings the killer-app toy to the sandbox.
"BSD: Free as in speech. Linux: Free as in beer. Windows 10: Free as in herpes." --Man On Pink Corner in #52607549.
I agree that the User Interface is critical in a finished product. But that is not true of an alpha version.
Untrue.
The user interface is a fundamental part of the the design. If you haven't finished the design of the app when you've released a beta then there's something seriously fucked up somewhere. Tweaking is OK, but major UI changes?? No.
The purpose of an application is to do something that the users want, hopefully in the way they want it doing. Anything else is secondary, and the way an app looks is *very* important to users.
And not only that. The thing that drives me crazy is some sites that almost require pop-ups to work. It is so easy to disable pop-ups in FF that it appears to break those sites (although it really doesn't).
Improve at backgammon rapidly through addictive quickfire position quizzes: www.bgtrain.com
Surely one meaningful number would be the number of downloads via MSIE. This would be the minumum number one could safely assume that are converting.
Another would be the number of downloads from FF on Windows. That would be the approximate lower limit number of people continuing to use Firefox.
rewriting history since 2109
You should design the user interface THEN code the rest of the functionality around that.
No. You should determine the use cases for your application and THEN design the both UI and the funtionality around those.
.: Max Romantschuk
I won't argue your point, but why isn't it *packaged* as valuable, reusable modules?
I'm one of those folks still using the "classic" Mozilla, because my family and I spend a fair amount of time in each of the browser and mail clients.
First off, under Linux there's some non-trivial configuration to be done getting them to work together properly. (ie: send link)
Second, those valuable, reusable modules are not separately packages, and then used by Firefox and Thunderbird. Instead, installing Firefox and Thunderbird ends up installing 2 copies of those basics on disk, and dragging 2 copies into RAM. If you're going to be using both during a session, the classic client is leaner.
Plus, repackaging would go partway toward solving the security update problem. I also recognize that a heavily compartmented packaging of Firefox/Thunderbird would probably confuse the heck out of Windows users and annoy the heck out of rpm (not urpmi or yum) users. But for those of us on Gentoo (or urpmi or yum or apt) it would be great. Imagine a Mozilla-* update that no longer requires an overnight build on my aging k6-3.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Each employee running the installer first thing in the morning actually. Pretty simple.
The above scenario asssumes that each employee has local admin rights on their machine. No sysadmin worth his salt would endorse that policy.
Many people make the mistake of thinking that "look and feel" of any product is just some shallow cosmetic thing that only ADD afflicted 14 year olds care about.
:D
The thing is, on average, something like the issue of a 15 hour battery and a 24 hour battery only affect the user once or twice in a long period of time, but a horrible interface affects end users every single time they use the product.
I've seen people complain about how their "computer is broken and sucks", only to find out their trackball mouse is full of lint and needs to be cleaned.
Let me anticipate the usual flames: everybody who accesses your Babylon 5 fan site uses Firefox. Firefox is a much better browser. Anybody who cares about security should switch. We'll never have standards compliance as long as Microsoft is in the driver's seat.
All true. But face it, the big switch isn't happening. Time to figure out why and do something about it, and stop living in denial.