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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.
What I mean is, is there some valuable component or application of Firefox that can be used by product or service companies beyond the basic browser application? IE, for example, is a modular browser component that can be reused in private applications. Linux is useful in a broad range of products/services that aren't simply desktop and server operating systems.
Is Firefox modular enough to break out valuable, reusable parts and implement something new out of them?
I use Firefox on most of my computers, so I'm responsible for about 5 of those 75 million downloads. 30, if they are counting each patch too.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
I sincerely hope so, because I'm well and truly sick of this sort of situation.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
And guess what, Firefox is going to keep growing! Why? Because IE7 is a rubbish. Before you mod this flamebait, let me explain why. Here is a screenshot of IE7 beta. Examine it closely. Here are my issue with it:
Seriously, this looks like it was designed by an amateur software development team. This is meant to be the Firefox killer? Firefox is showing that a monopoly doesn't guarentee you a browser monopoly. Is IE7 going to stop the rot? I doubt it very much. Firefox looks and feels better. Hats off to the Firefox team.
Simon.
Where I am currently working at, they tried to get rid of all the firefox on all the systems. Even if you upgraded to current, they did not want anybody on it, unless you had a business reason. So what was the browser of choice? MSIE.
Funny thing is that in 6 months that I have worked here is the only time since 1993-94 that I have been on Windows. I have seen no less than 5 system be massively infected because of MSIE (in a group of 20). Huge amounts of work had to be discarded (can not have virus/spyware getting into this software), which probably cost this company no less than 100K (and that is just what I am aware of. I have heard that it happens here constantly).
Yet, they discard Firefox, which I heard that they can not prove infected even one system (but they can prove that those 5 system were through MSIE, and the sys ads think all the others were as well).
Insane.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
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...
Don't worry.
With a huge corporation doing everything they can to support Firefox, how can it fail?
The day MS changes its tactics I may start to worry.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
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
but also seem to use it more often. Downloading installing and then decide to not use it (IE is simpler/used to/plays my favourite spyware better) happens a lot too. However in januari about 10% of the pages was views with firefox on my webserver (mix of restaurants, IT, realestate, blogs ea companies use it), The last two months that has risen to about 15%. See http://totalweb.edusupport.nl/usage_200507.html for the stats (near bottom for browser stats).
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
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'm trying to look at your screenshot, but IE6 doesn't even say there's a picture there, what the fuck is png, everyone knows pictures are .jpg!
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
Firefox is built on xul, so any os that runs firefox can run your xul app.
l
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/xul/
http://www.xulplanet.com/
Also as to components you can use in your apps. There is the render engine:
http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/embedding/GRE.htm
Or the script engine, rhino
http://www.mozilla.org/rhino/
The Spread firefox community has helped to develop firefox download counters which can track the exact number of downloads in real time.
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
All the people who I've showed FF are superhappy as they feel their PCs perform better now they understand IE brings in most of their nastyware and they tell about it to their friends, or customers. (A friend at the Blackberry / 3G helpdesk of VodaPhone redirects now everyone having some sortof browsing probs to FF's website to get a copy as she herself feels FF has solved alot of her frustrations.)
I find it a fascinating statement, as were people ACTIVELY go out to find a browser even when there's one preinstalled.
It's a very strong statement...
I think we can keep recursing like this until someone returns 1
Latest data on Firefox market share and versions from a popular (100,000+ unique visitors/day) general-interest site I own, collected in the last 2 days:
Share of pageviews (including robots): 12.3%
Share of pageviews (excluding robots): 13.0%
Most popular versions:
1.7.8 on XP: 23%
1.7.10 on XP: 20%
1.7.5 on XP: 12%
1.7.2 on XP: 5%
1.7.8 on NT: 5%
1.7.x on OS X: 4%
1.7.7 on XP: 4%
1.7.9 on XP: 3%
1.4 on XP: 2%
1.7.3 on XP: 2%
1.7.10 on NT: 2%
1.7.5 on NT: 1%
1.7 on XP: 1%
1.7.8 on Win 98: 1%
1.7.6 on NT: 1%
1.7.10 on Win 98: 1%
1.7.10 on Linux: 1%
Firefox users running the latest version: ~25%
At my last contract we were not permitted FF, and had to use IE on the grounds that the IS team had not done a security review of FF, but they had of IE. The policy was simply 'better the devil you know'.
I could see their point, up till I asked when they were going to do a review of FF - and they said they weren't.
I think some people just like banging their head on the wall at work, for the feeling of pleasure they get when they stop and go home.
Justin.
You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
The Firefox team should just use the Windows Genuine Advantage© Program to validate users, allowing one download per licensed machine. That way, only Javascript hackers will be able to fudge the download numbers. Simple. I should be a marketing exec.
-William Brendel
#!/bin/sh
. 6&os=osx&lang=en-US' > /dev/null;
while true; do
curl -L 'http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-1.0
done
In related news: IE reaches 75 million security patches.
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.