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Firefox Share Slipped in July for the First Time
prostoalex writes "Between June and July of this year, Firefox lost 0.64% of the users, while Microsoft IE gained the same amount, leaving other browsers at their usual zero point something share. Could recent security problems and lack of stability, reported by some users, lead to the decline of the browser that just passed 80 million downloads?" I think the other thing to remember is that while ~8% seems a lot, there's a still a huge amount of ground to cover -- and a number change like this is statistical noise. I should point out that my issue with noise isn't the absolute numbers; it's the somewhat inadequate measurements tools for this.
Sheesh, you don't even have to RTFA, just read the /. summary correctly. Firefox didn't lose 8%. It lost 0.64%. It went from 8.71% to 8.07%.
"The legitimate powers of government extend only to such acts as are injurious to others." Thomas Jefferson.
One was a Win2k user - the security updates to IE6 changed his default settings. When he had to launch IE6 to access a bank site, IE6 became his default browser again, without prompting, and his shortcuts all changed to the little E.
I reproduced this effect on a test system.
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
This says that Gecko browsers overall have been growing in popularity every month. In fact, all major browser engines, including IE6, have been gaining share at the expense of IE5.
I have both IE and Firefox on my machine. Why? Because I can't access certain sites that are very MS specific with Firefox.
That being said, 95% of the time I use Firefox.
I'd like to see IE go away but it just isn't going to happen anytime soon. But remember, IE was once a marginal and buggy browser too.
For those that need a pointer in the right direction, it's call spellbound. Don't forget to add the dictionary(s) like it instructs or spellbound will silently fail to catch any mistakes.
I haven't had the issues he has, but here are some of the ones I DO have:
- Copy/paste is flaky and very frustrating. Especially when trying to paste into other applications (seems to be better pasting to itself). Particularly when trying to copy/paste URLs in the address bar. It seems I have to click the address, then click again to get a blinking cursor. Then highlight the entire string, THEN I can successfully copy it.
- Sometimes it just kinda disappears. Meaning the taskbar icon. I've had it just disappear. The first time it happened I thought I must've inadvertantly closed the program. When Alt-Tabbing a little later I noticed I had three FF icons when I only thought I had two open (as indicated in the taskbar). I switched to the mystery one and lo and behold it was the window that disappeared. And the taskbar icon even came back. This has happened several times.
- I don't like how it behaves sometimes when launching from other applications. When launching a URL (I tell FF to not reuse windows) from another app, it ALWAYS restores or brings to the front one of the existing FF windows and then loads a new one. This is just annoying and sloppy, especially for someone that relies heavily on Alt-Tab to move between applications very quickly (it really screws up your mental view of what order your windows are in).
- More of just a UI preference, I really like the Ctrl-O that IE has for opening WHATEVER. It's stupid to have two commands to open files. It shouldn't matter if they're on your local system or online. One box to put in a URI!
I can understand why people wouldn't want to use IE and choose FF. I do think it's amusing how some people ignore (forgive?) some of the real shortcomings just because it's "not IE". I guess I can't talk too much. I tried loading IE7 beta on my machine and now IE won't load (the full UI anyway, any app that uses the IE controls works fine) so I'm stuck using FF. It's growing on me, but still has a long way to go before I'd consider using it as my main browser.