Firefox Momentum Slows

linumax wrote to mention an Information Week story about an apparent slowing of Firefox's usage growth. From the article: "San Diego-based WebSideStory released market share numbers for Firefox, IE, and other browsers that noted Firefox has crept up from April's 6.75 percent to September's 7.86 percent, a single percentage point gain in five months. During the first few months after its November, 2004, release, Firefox was adding another point each month. 'It looks like Firefox has hit the push-back point,' said Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. 'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'"

Comments

slows?

[Anonymous Coward]

So what if it slows. It still eats away at Micro$oft's market share. One thing going for Firefox at least they fix it's flaws quickly.

Re:slows?

[Anonymous Coward]

Use of a period instead of a question mark.
That is a sentence fragment.

Use of the aging term "Micro$oft."
Use of the aging term "Micro$oft". (Note location of period.)

And a poorly constructed sentence that uses "it's" instead of "its."
That's another sentence fragment, and you misplaced the period a second time.

Re:slows?

[Quevar]

The article wasn't indicating that Firefox was eating away at Microsoft's market share. The increase is coming from other browsers - people who had switched off of IE prior to Firefox being released.

I think this goes to show that Firefox is reaching it's high point of getting all the geeks to convert. So, from this assumption and the article, I conclude that 7.86 percent of computer users are geeeks.

It would be great if one of the computer manufacturers, like HP, would start bundling Firefox with their shipping computers as the default browser.

Re:slows?

[eln]

Use of the aging term "Micro$oft". (Note location of period.)

In the United States, punctuation marks are always put inside of the quotation marks. It's different in some other countries, like Britain, but for American English the GP had it right.

Re:slows?

[Kazzahdrane]

Pretty sure it's the same here in the UK actually. But then I got a C in English.

Re:slows?

[zootm]

Use of a period instead of a question mark.
That is a sentence fragment.

Poster was writing informally as one who is listing items. Correct usage, despite not being formal — but then again, this is not a dissertation.

Use of the aging term "Micro$oft."
Use of the aging term "Micro$oft". (Note location of period.)

Poster's original positioning of the full stop is correct in formal American English. Reference is available here. I'm not American, I've just come across this often enough to wonder what the deal with that is.

And a poorly constructed sentence that uses "it's" instead of "its."
That's another sentence fragment, and you misplaced the period a second time.

Both assertions are still wrong for the reasons listed above.

Re:slows?

[Anonymous Coward]

And we can see why you got a C.

Re:slows?

[petermgreen]

btw one exception to the normal punctuation in quotes rules is technical language where it is important to clarify if the punctuation is part of the quote or not

e.g. you always write "http://www.hotmail.com/". not "http://www.hotmail.com/."

Re:slows?

[RealityMogul]

I'm sorry, but I'm not adhering to your language specifications until W3C approves them.

Re:slows?

[Trelane]

E.g. you always write "http://www.hotmail.com/". not "http://www.hotmail.com/."

Though "http://www.hotmail.com./" should work (though it doesn't in many setups, unfortunately). Should also be much faster, since it usually avoids at least one local failed DNS request (and is more secure as well!).

Re:slows?

[Da_Biz]

So what if it slows.

That, and there's an apparent fetish for Growth-Growth-Growth! It's sad that when the stock market doesn't see 15% returns annually in a company, it's automatically assumed that they aren't successful.

It's not just about growth--it's also about quality of product and longevity. If Firefox maintains a steady percentage of the market, growth is implicit, as more people begin to use the Internet. I'd say the numbers they have now could be construed as adequate success, especially considering that Mozilla doesn't have the marketing buxxx that Micro$oft does.

The numbers (and growth in adoption of Linux in government and the enterprise) tell me that Firefox is here to stay.

Re:slows?

[petermgreen]

hmm not sure about your more secure point. If the sysadmin of the resolver you use has it in for you i don't see how there is much you can do about it. If he doesn't i don't see how its relavent

Re:slows?

[Trelane]

Good point. However, it does help avoid potential screwups/typos in a few corner cases.

Re:slows?

[Mozk]

Here's a sentence where puncuation is placed outside of quotes:
The correct usage is 'a lot', not 'alot'.

AFAIK, that is grammatically correct.

Re:slows?

[Anonymous Coward]

you are correct it should work as the true root of the internet is . with .com, .edu, .gov and all the other domain types being subdomains of .

http://slashdot.org/ really is http://slashdot.org./ however the last . is assumed and doesn't need to be typed. Just like how http :// (space added to prevent it from turning into a link) is assumed and typing slashdot.org into the address bar of your browser will take you to site.

Re:slows?

[Trelane]

however the last . is assumed and doesn't need to be typed.

Not really. Domain names ending in . are Fully Qualified Domain Names. If they don't end in ., the resolver should try your search list before falling back to the root domains.

Just like how http :// (space added to prevent it from turning into a link) is assumed and typing slashdot.org into the address bar of your browser will take you to site.

You can also type "slashdot" and, subject to certain conditions, you'll get to slashdot. That all is done in the browser; the FQDN question is lower level than that.

Re:slows?

[Ungrounded Lightning]

"In the United States, punctuation marks are always put inside of the quotation marks. It's different in some other countries, like Britain, but for American English the GP had it right."

That rule is from "Standard English", an attempt by the education establishment to standardize the language across the US.

(Some people, however, consider it an attempt by the power elites in the eastern urban establishment to depriciate the regional variants of the language and brand their speakers as unintelligent or lower class, thus depriciating their arguments in political debate.)

Other examples: The crusade against both "ain't" and the use of the double negative for emphasis (rather than in the mathematical sense of two inversions canceling).

But (unlike French) American English does not have a standards body empowered to enforce their usages by power of law. Instead the US has free speech. As dictionary authors have known since Webster published the first one, the language is what the speakers and writers speak and write, and their job is to research and document what they're actually saying, not invent and impose something of their own construction.

Educators do have a responsibility to teach their students a version of the language that maximizes their chance for social and economic success. But that's a different issue. Their classroom technique of claiming the desired dialect is somhow the only correct version of the language should not be mistaken for fact.

Meanwhile the roll-your-own aspect of the language speeds its evolution, empowering it for expressing thought in the face of rapidly advancing science and technology and rapidly changing social issues.

The "(American) Standard English" punctuation rules may have been convenient for typesetting. But technical people, especially those who deal with math or computer languages, gravitate to the use of balanced punctuation rules in their ordinary writing, as well as when writing programs or mathematical expressions.

And what sort of people do we have a lot of here on Slashdot? B-)

Punctuation flames against the balanced forms will fall on deaf ears here.

Re:slows?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right about the GGP using correct syntax, but your rule about punctuation is wrong. Take, for example, this sentence:

Alice said, "Roses are red"?
vs.
Alice said, "Roses are red?"

Both sentences are proper American English, and both mean different things. The first sentence means the writer is uncertain what Alice said. The second sentence means Alice is uncertain whether roses are red.

In American English, periods and commas are the only concluding punctuation marks that almost always fall inside the quotation marks -- and exceptions are made in technical writing to place the punctuation outside the quotation marks when it might otherwise confuse the reader:

If you'd like to simulate a curse in the form field, enter the value "#@%$!".

Re:slows?

[Anonymous Coward]

In the United States, punctuation marks are always put inside of the quotation marks

In the UK, that 'of' is redundant: "... inside the quotation marks."

Re:slows?

[wkitchen]

The numbers (and growth in adoption of Linux in government and the enterprise) tell me that Firefox is here to stay.

Agreed. If total size of the market hasn't changed, then Firefox's market share growth from 6.75% to 7.86% would translate to an absolute growth of about 16.4% in 5 months (more if the market itself grew any). Keep that up for another 10 months and it's over 35% growth in less than a year. That doesn't seem too shabby to me.

Re:slows?

[shellbeach]

In the United States, punctuation marks are always put inside of the quotation marks. It's different in some other countries, like Britain, but for American English the GP had it right.

You just said "In the United States, punctuation marks are always put inside of the quotation marks"!?

Are you really sure that it's "different in some other countries, like Britain"? I think you'll find it's the same everywhere ...

Re:slows?

[MasterB(G)ates]

My parents use FF and they surely are not geeks. How many of us have set up FF on a friends/relos pc? Geek percentage is less than you say methinks

Re:slows?

[HeroreV]

Not really. Domain names ending in . are Fully Qualified Domain Names. If they don't end in ., the resolver should try your search list before falling back to the root domains.

So are you saying that it's possible to have a site like "name." instead of "name.com"? That seems pretty interesting; I've never heard anything like this before. Got a link or something?

Re:slows?

[HeroreV]

Ok, I see what you're saying now. Wikipedia did a decent job of explaining.

Re:slows?

[andersbergh]

Getting "name." instead of "name.com" would just be like getting ".com"...

Nothing new.

[NorbMan]

Firefox was supposed to be serious IE rival But Microsoft was never worried. And it turns out they didn't have anything to worry about. According to TFA, most of Firefox's market share came not from IE, but from other Mozilla browsers and Opera.

Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers

All we have now is a new Mozilla browser. Nothing else has changed. As soon as the next third-party "IE-killer" browser comes out, Firefox will lose it's market share to the newcomer too.

Re:Nothing new.

[BladeMelbourne]

Close in numbers, but not close in the severity, or the number of unpatched exploits.

If MSIE had approximately 97% usage at it's peak, and FireFox is now close to 8%, how could most of FireFox's market share come from Mozilla browsers and Opera? 97% + 8% != 100%

Re:Nothing new.

[kgruscho]

As a sysadmin I switched the computers i am in charge of to firefox. I've been to labs where others clearly did the same. This is room for growth.

Also many webapps are bothering to support firefox. If that trend continues and firefox improves itself a bit to offer more features, then I think the growth trend will continue, albeit at a non-insane pace.

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers

But not in severity.

It beats me why people still think that counting the vulnerabilities is of any value in determining the security of different browsers.

Re:Nothing new.

[servo335]

Depends ont he quality of the browser. I tryed opera when it released the latest verison and switched back to firefox. I dont think firefox will lose users.

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not matter if it is new or not. Firefox as accomplished it's objective. It will eventually hit 9-10%, which is fine.

But right now no company in its right mind will ever make a site only for IE as it risks loosing 8-9 % of its potential market. The same is valid for plugins and add ons for the browser. FF is now a browser to stay, whether one wnats it or not!

Re:Nothing new.

[frodo from middle ea]

Umm,

Have you been watching IE numbers, for the first time in last 4-5 years, they dropped below 90%, what did those 7-8% percent users switched to, lynx ?

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

Easy people use more than one browser.

Re:Nothing new.

[marcello_dl]

Well maybe from an average windows-centric perspective. But firefox is an open and multi-platform browser, not a mere third party replacement for IE.

What if lots of people buy the ps3 with hd (good way to evade the console tax in some places of the world) and want to browse the web too? They're gonna get firefox. The next IE-killer might as well be gecko based, too, or derived directly from firefox.

Re:Nothing new.

[gowen]

Easy people use more than one browser.

That's probably why Easy people are more likely to catch viruses and other nasty infections. What about those of us who aren't easy?

Re:Nothing new.

[Idealius]

They switched to an abacus.

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers

If you compare numbers, please compare them correctly. According to Secunia, IE has much more OPEN security holes than Firefox has.
http://secunia.com/product/4227/
http://secunia.com/product/11/

I also suggest you to read this article about the "Fun with statistics", which is about the security holes in Firefox and IE:
http://reviews.cnet.com/4520-3513_7-6333507-1.html

Re:Nothing new.

[IDontAgreeWithYou]

I am going to lose my mind. My goose and my moose have both gotten loose.

Re:Nothing new.

[rsheridan6]

If MS was never worried about Firefox, why the public beta of IE 7? Originally, a new browser was supposed to be one of the selling points of Vista, and you would have to have Vista to get it. Now, while most of the other new stuff is too far behind schedule to make it into Vista, MS also had to release IE 7 to Windows 2000 users, leaving even less reason to upgrade. I don't see why they would do that unless they were worried. Justifiably so. Before Firefox, MSIE's market share was high enough that web developers would have soon abandoned standards and we would have had an MSIE only web (that process had already started). Now that won't happen anytime soon.

And of course they're going to say they're not worried. PR guys would only say they're worried if it's raining frogs and the sky is falling. Maybe not even then.

Re:Nothing new.

[alexhs]

If MSIE had approximately 97% usage at it's peak, and FireFox is now close to 8%, how could most of FireFox's market share come from Mozilla browsers and Opera?

97% + 8% != 100%

Seems they've used a bogus FPU :)

Re:Nothing new.

[compro01]

It beats me why people still think that counting the vulnerabilities is of any value in determining the security of different browsers.

because management tends to make decesions they should leave to people who know what they are doing, and management likes numbers.

"Don't bother with the facts! Just give me details!"

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

97 and 8 are integers...

Re:Nothing new.

[krewemaynard]

IE6 has also been around much longer (since Feb 2003) than Firefox (Nov 2004). You'd kinda expect the IE vulnerabilities to level off at some point. This guy picked one year to date, 2005. Come back when Firefox has the same maturity as IE, then we'll talk.

Oh, and 3 out of 24 unpatched holes is way less than 20 out of 86, especially when some of the holes are rated "Less Critical" as opposed "Highly Critical." I think I'll stick with Firefox, thanks.

Re:Nothing new.

[Zerikai]

Hey, do you have more lines like that one? For other common spelling and grammar mistakes...

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

.97 and .08 are not.

Re:Nothing new.

[Anonymous Coward]

Do the math on an early intel chip. it might give you 100 for 97 + 8.

Re:Nothing new.

[Bun]

Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers.

I'd like to see some stats regarding actual infections. I use FF almost exclusively, and SpyBot, AdAware and MS's AntiSpyware have nothing more than tracking cookies to clean on my computers. My girlfriend insists on using IE, and I'm regularly cleaning HotBot, Alexa, et. al., off of her computer, despite the fact that I keep it fully up to date with all of Microsoft's updates. As far as I'm concerned, those exploit statistics are a complete snowjob.

Re:Nothing new.

[EvilMonkeySlayer]

Minor correction, IE 7 isn't being released onto Windows 2000.

Microsoft want to force people onto XP and Vista.
It's a bit of a mistake if you think about it, all those companies and people who'll soon start needing a new browser as more fancy html, css demands it and they're on Windows 2000. They can either worry about installing a new operating system and paying n amount of cash for it or they can simply download Firefox or Opera for free.

Which would you do?

Re:Nothing new.

[sbrown123]

IE6 has also been around much longer (since Feb 2003) than Firefox (Nov 2004).

The only problem with your logic is that you have forgotten, or simply were not aware of, the fact the Firefox code base comes from Mozilla. Mozilla's code base comes from Netscape's browser. Netscape was around before Internet Explorer. So, Firefox is older and more mature than Internet Explorer.

Most of Firefox's recent "severe" security issues are from oddball features rarely used. I actually think its good to see these exploits since they are just hardening out the kinks.

Re:Nothing new.

[rsheridan6]

MS has a dilemma; the more they squeeze their customers, the more money they make, but they also risk their monopoly when they push people towards alternatives. They have to find the right balance (which they've done successfully).

Some people will upgrade their OS, and others will get rid of IE for Firefox. But losing a few more points of IE market share doesn't really matter to MS. They already missed their opportunity to dominate the web when it went from 97% to less than 90%, and going from 85% to 80% just isn't that big of a deal. Besides, a lot of Firefox users (the non-MS hating people who use it because it's a better browser) will probably just click the big blue E again when they finally do get a new computer (with Vista or Windows 2010 or whatever), assuming IE 7 isn't a total POS like IE 6.

Re:Nothing new.

[General Wesc]

If the total marketsize shrank, what used to be 3% could now be 8%.

Unlikely, though.

Re:Nothing new.

[JPyObjC Dude]

I am with you.

Another interesting point is trying to compare the number of bugs between two totally different development lifecycles.

IE has not had any new updates for years now with the exception of security patches. Yet, they still keep on finding bugs and flaws. Also, many flaws that were notified in the past are still not fixed. There are probably more of these in IE that Mozilla.

Mozilla is constantly having code improvements and features being added many times every year. Of course when you release new code, some security holes are exposed and sometimes they are missed in the initial releases. The important thing is that Mozilla group readilly puts out patches to fix the issues when they come out.

Mozilla is way more secure than IE no matter which way you slice it. Anybody who does not understand this simple fact is being just plain ignorant!

JsD

Re:Nothing new.

[patter]

Firefox was supposed to be serious IE rival But Microsoft was never worried. And it turns out they didn't have anything to worry about. According to TFA, most of Firefox's market share came not from IE, but from other Mozilla browsers and Opera.

Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers

All we have now is a new Mozilla browser. Nothing else has changed. As soon as the next third-party "IE-killer" browser comes out, Firefox will lose it's market share to the newcomer too.

How is this flamebait?

I know it's not 'love for firefox', but that's hardly flamebait..

Re:Nothing new.

[Nermal6693]

I find that this helps too :)

Re:Nothing new.

[vcv]

1) The vulnerabilities for Mozilla prior to Firefox coming out are not counted in the Secunia database 2) IE6 has been around since 2001.

Re:Nothing new.

[lemkebeth]

Yeah, there are other browsers (Seven alone on OS X, not counting FireFox and the dead IE) Not to mention that OS X's default browser is Safari.

On UNIX and Linux there is Konqueror, Lynx, Links, Firefox, and a couple more I can't remember.

Even if all together they only added up to 3 percent or so that would still not add up.

Re:Nothing new.

[HeroreV]

According to TFA, most of Firefox's market share came not from IE, but from other Mozilla browsers and Opera.

Bullshit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Browser_Wars.pn g

Re:Nothing new.

[sbrown123]

>>1) The vulnerabilities for Mozilla prior to Firefox

The vulnerabilities of IE5 are not included with IE6 in the Secunia database.

>>2) IE6 has been around since 2001.

Netscape 4, which Firefox is based from, has been around since 1996.

Re:Nothing new.

[vcv]

Wow. Ok, how to dumb this down for you. Netscape 4, which Firefox is based from, has been around since 1996. No, netscape4 was scraped. Firefox is based off of the Mozilla/Gecko code-base, which is more like 1998ish. Now. IE6 has been around since 2001, and all the IE6 vulnerabilities are included in the secunia database. Firefox has been around since May 2004 (0.x), and 1.0 since Nov 2004, and those are included in the database, and the Mozilla bugs prior to May 2004 are not. Do you get it yet?

Finite this, finite that

[program21]

Did they really need to say that there was "a finite number of early adopters ... and a finite number of Microsoft haters"? Did anyone really think there were an infinite number of either?

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, but I thought there was an infinite number of MS haters.

Silly me, not everyone has a computer.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[lpangelrob]

I don't get that slant on that particular comment... if he had said, "There's a certain number of early adopters... and a certain number of Microsoft haters" I wouldn't necessarily be responding with "Did anyone really think there was an irrational number of either?"

We picked up 3.14159 users this week!

Re:Finite this, finite that

[op12]

I think the intent was to say it was a finite, but unknown number of each of those. Now that Firefox has gained a share of users, that number is more known.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[sedyn]

You are correct, there are only a finite number of microsoft detractors and early adopters, like there is a finite number of microsoft fans. But the greatest quantity of people are those that don't care either way.

In my experience Firefox has a viral effect to anyone that uses it (mainly because of tabs). The average person doesn't care about security, because they typically aren't the ones who have to fix it. So, as long as IE doesn't have tabbed browsing Firefox will get more people.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[program21]

I think "limited" would be right word in that context. I also think that "certain" would have worked (pi is a certain number, despite being irrational). To say that there are only a finite number of users seems like you have to acknowledge that there couldn't be an infinite number of users, which seems like common sense to me.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

It's part of the trend of people using the wrong words to try to sound intelligent, but it ends up having the opposite effect. I've stopped counting how many times I've heard newscasters say something like "This won't affect you or I", instead of "This won't affect you or me", which is the correct way of saying it. Using the word 'finite' when they really mean 'small' or some similar word is even worse.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, but I thought there was an infinite number of MS haters.

It only seems that way on Slashdot.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[thc69]

Oh, but I thought there was an infinite number of MS haters.

If there was, then Slashdot would turn out the collected works of Shakespeare in it's comments.

Hey hey we're the Infinite Monkees/and people say we monkey around/but we're too busy typing/to shut our systems down...

Re:Finite this, finite that

[lightyear4]

From TFA: [There are] a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters.

Sure, there were plenty in those categories. However, every single person I have introduced to firefox has preferred it to IE and the IE wrappers (yahoo sbc browser, etc). Within a short time of their switch, many of them were comfortably and productively using the best features of firefox (tabs, search bar, etc). Interestingly enough, they have been primarily those of the majority, the computer inexperienced. Being unaware of an alternative this group predominantly uses internet explorer, but as they have been collectively experiencing the headaches associated with IE, I have seen a trickle of converts grow into a steady flow. The odds are good that the trend shall continue.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

So a "definite" number as opposed to an "indefinite" number? I agree TFA should have used better language...

Re:Finite this, finite that

[bhtooefr]

Well... what if it's a family member saving them from a $150+ spyware cleanup bill, and telling them that they must switch to Firefox or Opera, or they won't get any more free spyware cleanup?

They switch then.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[heavy snowfall]

I think new are added every day, as the graphs for my site (users more likely to use firefox, I'll admit) show a steady increase of firefox users.

Right now it's at 48,9%, which is pretty good. If the trend continues it'll break 50 in 2-3 weeks.

Firefox 48.9 %
MS Internet Explorer 25.8 %
Unknown 7.6 %
Safari 7 %
Mozilla 3.5 %
Opera 3.5 %
Netscape 1.2 %
Konqueror 1.1 %
Galeon 0.4 %
MultiZilla 0.3 %
Others 0.2 %

--
The best firefox extensions

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

I've stopped counting how many times...

Were you really ever counting? Or were you being imprecise with your language? Ah yes, the very topic of your complaint.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[nasch]

The opposite of "certain" isn't "irrational" it's "uncertain". And yes, there was an uncertain number of both.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[JDevers]

So limited and finite are not nearly the same word? So I guess infinite and unlimited are also different?

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

> Did anyone really think there were an infinite number of either?

My personal hatred for MS is infinite.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, I actually was counting. I stopped somewhere in the 20-30 range. Honestly. Nice try, though. Better luck next time.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, 'limited' isn't really an improvement. The word 'limited' implies an upper bound, which most people would assume is a finite upper bound (though, yes, you can have an upper bound that's infinite), which implies a finite number to begin with. A better word would've been 'small'. It would've been even better to use relative terms, like 'a small percentage'. But 'finite' definitely isn't the right choice, since there are only a finite number of users in the world anyhow. There never was a possibility of an infinite number of users, so the word 'finite' (or 'limited') doesn't tell you anything new.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[generalpf]

What site do you run, mozdev.org?

Re:Finite this, finite that

[xouumalperxe]

Hate to be a nag, but 3.14159 = 314159/100000, and therefore a rational number! Now, if you had said that we picked up pi users this week (or, for bonus style points, i users -- imaginary users indeed!) I'd have agreed :)

Re:Finite this, finite that

[billcopc]

If they're paying $150 to clean out spyware then I want a piece of that racket!

Hell, 'round here we do it for about 1/5th of that.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[njh]

FYI, I'm getting similar numbers for a knitting blog site I that sys-admin. firefox is only 45% for me though.

Re:Finite this, finite that

[bhtooefr]

When I say $150, I shit you not.

There are people around here who will charge that.

Granted, $120-130 is more common...

I would charge $60 AT MOST for a spyware cleanup... and that's a particularly nasty one involving the Offline NT Password and Registry Editor with manual deletion of registry entries and files...

Re:Finite this, finite that

[jp10558]

Check out the Geek Squad. $59 to take in a PC, $79 to do an OS Service (remove spyware).

Right but...

[TarrySingh]

But Firefox will find it difficult to move into the double digits of market share, and retain those numbers. "It's hard to get there," said Johnston. "To do it, Firefox has to go mainstream." It's time firefox is also bundled in the new PC's /laptops which are sold out there into the market.

Re:Right but...

[lolocaust]

Though I can see microsoft paying pc makers to not include firefox, or somehow fining them if they do.

Re:Right but...

[Anonymous Coward]

Why? My latest laptop came with iTunes, CD Burner Software and Movie Making software, along with Microsoft's Windows Media Player and Movie Maker. Don't see why they can't include FireFox or at least Netscape if they wanted. Heck the AOL PC you see at Tiger Direct comes running Windows, but also has StarOffice and Netscape on it.

Re:Right but...

[lolocaust]

oh, okay.

Re:Right but...

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right. Microsoft pull this stunt by rebate schemes for the big box shifters like Dell. They used to give discounts based on not including certain other packages from Microsoft rivals, but this was illegal and got them their convicted monopoly status over Netscape. The rebate gets around this anti-trust tactic, even though it amounts to the same thing.

Re:Right but...

[kancerman]

... bundle it in like AOL, etc etc is, on newly bought PC's/laptops/Macs(?) ... that would increase visibility

Re:Right but...

[kancerman]

... says Captain Obvious

Re:Right but...

[nachoboy]

It's time firefox is also bundled in the new PC's /laptops which are sold out there into the market.

Start catering to the scenarios that are important then... provide deployment tools and reference guides for unattended installation. Last time I was tasked with a (Windows) Firefox deployment, I found out that settings are stored in a random directory per-user. All pre-installation configuration had to be done by manually changing default values in the compressed original package. Settings and policies were just not available to be set via the registry (easy to script) or Group Policy (easy to manage).

Despite what you may think about Microsoft's business practices, they have got the scenarios down. Both Windows and Office have OEM Pre-installation Kits, and products are designed with corporate and OEM deployment scenarios in mind, not just as an afterthought. At the very least, they don't *actively resist* large-scale deplyments by so rudely thumbing their noses at admins with settings stored in text files in randomly-named directories. Ugh.

Re:Right but...

[Anonymous Coward]

because scripting the registry in linux is soooo easyyyy....

Re:Right but...

[jesser]

The randomly named profile directory is a security measure. Why does it make deployment harder?

Re:Right but...

[Anonymous Coward]

If you need to make per-user customization then it would be a pita. If personal settings can be deployed by some other means or if you can dig out the name of the directory from somewhere then, yes, it's no problem.

Re:Right but...

[Will2k_is_here]

You can hack the installation file to include whatever profile you want. This means you can make your own default installation file with extensions, settings, etc.

Re:Right but...

[mobets]

Why do we still have profile directories? They were nice back in the day with Netscape, but now each user of a computer has their own user. What good is that random user directory when there is only one of them? Why not give the option during instalation to not install that "feature"?

Re:Right but...

[Minna Kirai]

Despite what you may think about Microsoft's business practices, they have got the scenarios down.

As an OS-vendor, Microsoft would provide better service to its Windows customers if those auto-update mechanisms were available for any application to use, not just ones written by the same company as the OS.

On Linux, for example, there is no need for each application to include separate code to update itself to newer version. The distro takes care of all that.

by so rudely thumbing their noses at admins with settings stored in text files in randomly-named directories.

Although I don't enjoy random directory-names either, the fact that Microsoft's IE settings are in predictable places has worsened security breaches in the past.

Re:Right but...

[bedessen]

Uhhh, well for one thing it makes it easy and simple for one user to have more than one Firefox profile. I would be highly annoyed if I had to create a whole seperate user account (and log off and on again) just to have another firefox profile. Imposing a 1:1 mapping of user accounts and Firefox profiles would suck.

The random directory name is done to mitigate the damage should there be some kind of exploit that would allow an attacker to read or write files on disk though Javascript (or whatever). If the profile directory is the same stock name for every installation, then the attacker can just hardcode that path in the exploit and for 99.9% of users he will be able to successfully read their cookies / stored logins / etc. If the directory name is random then it makes it somewhat harder. But it's a double edged sword, since as others have already pointed out, it makes the life of the sysadmin who wishes to do something in the profile via a script harder.

Re:Fixed

[hcob$]

while ("fixed")
{
    new_firefox_user = new_firefox_user += 1;
}

There, all better

So just to review

[oni]

The only possible reasons why someone would use firefox are:
1. they are one of those annoying people who think they're cool when they have "the latest thing"
2. they are one of those annoying people who hold an irrational hatred of microsoft.

There's no other reason. No sir. Nobody in the entire world looked at each browser and made a sound, logical choice to use the one that best met thier needs. No, that would never happen.

Re:So just to review

[Rivendale286]

Actually that's not true. I love Microsoft so much, but my IE kept crashing my computer, and continued to even after a reformat... I was about to cry when I installed Firefox and thought of myself as a trader, but now I'm happy because it seems to work better in most ways that IE... But as soon as I can get a hold of an IE7 beta, I will definitely switch back over to good old MS...

Re:So just to review

[blechx]

Uh, How about Mac users? gnu/linux users, or free software-ethical people at all?
How the heck did this get modded up to 4?

Re:So just to review

[Tim C]

It's called sarcasm.

Re:So just to review

[Soul-Burn666]

To whoever not understood, the parent was SARCASTIC.

Re:So just to review

[oni]

How the heck did this get modded up to 4?

Maybe the post contained some kind of strange social custom that you don't understand.

Re:So just to review

[richlv]

because moderators can't tell "funny" from "interesting".
or they were participating in a joke.

Re:So just to review

[Rhoon]

There's no other reason. No Sir. Nobody in the entire world looked at each browser and made a sound, logical choice to use the one that best met their needs. No, that would never happen.

Ok, while the parent should probably be modded "Troll" (or I'm missing his sarcastic tone). I'll bite at this one.

1) Underdog supporter
2) built in pop up blocker -- I'm forced to use IE at my current job, I'm tired of stupid popups.
3) Tabs -- enough said
4) Faster bug resolution
5) IE Should change their icon to a giant bullseye instead of the blue E
6) Choice to use it... not forced adoption
7) Standards support .. while neither browser supports them all fully, firefox does it better
8) Extension support
9) ActiveX -- do I really need to comment on this?

I was aiming for 10, but I think 9 will do to disprove your troll-ish statements.

Re:So just to review

[oni]

I am shocked (shocked) that people don't get sarcasm. I should have quoted TFA in my post. Here, read this and see if it makes more sense:

from the article:
Geoff Johnston, an analyst with WebSideStory. 'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new

So, to paraphrase Mr. Johnston:
The only possible reasons why someone would use firefox are:
1. they are one of those annoying people who think they're cool when they have "the latest thing"
2. they are one of those annoying people who hold an irrational hatred of microsoft.

Re:So just to review

[BladeMelbourne]

IE 7 beta 1 is not that special.

When it is out of beta, it will still crash. It will still be the main target of ActiveX(TM) malware, spyware, etc.

It annoys me how there is no reload button in IE 7 beta 1. Also the tabbed browsing interface is damn ugly IMHO.

To each his own though. People are free to use whatever they like - choice is good.

Re:So just to review

[Yaztromo]

There's no other reason.

Yeah, like running some OS for which IE isn't available, like Linux, FreeBSD, or OS/2. Or running one for which the IE port is ages old and runs like completely and total crap (Mac OS X).

After all, we all know that people who run these OS's only do so because of irrational hatred for Microsoft, as every other rational person chooses their OS based on the fact that IE is available for it.

(I hope MS is paying these "analysts" well to make such boneheaded statements...).

Yaz.

Re:So just to review

[bedroll]

No, you missed the sarcasm. I don't quite know how, by the end it was laid on so thick that it oozed into the next post. Break it down to just one sentence and you can see:

Nobody in the entire world looked at each browser and made a sound, logical choice to use the one that best met their needs.

How, if not by sarcasm, could a ration person make such a statement? It's either +4 sarcastic or +4 insane, obviously sarcastic won out.

Re:So just to review

[Evil Grinn]

Actually that's not true.
Gee, here I was thinking that grandparent was being sarcastic.

Re:So just to review

[syrinx]

This quote seemed appropriate for this thread.

"Am I busy?" exclaimed Arthur. "Well, I've just got all these bulldozers and things to lie in front of because they'll knock my house down if I don't, but other than that ... well, no not especially, why?"

They don't have sarcasm on Betelgeuse, and Ford Prefect often failed to notice it unless he was concentrating. He said, "Good, is there anywhere we can talk?"

Re:So just to review

[Otter]

You're misunderstanding his point. He's not saying that no one else will EVAR! switch to Firefox, he's saying that the rapid growth earlier this year was into those two groups, and now that they've switched, further Firefox adoption is going to go more slowly.

Basically, his point is that the people who were still using Netscape 4 long after IE had kicked it around the block are going to be equally slow to switch away.

Re:So just to review

[Rhoon]

We get sarcasm, you just suck (suck) at expressing it.

Re:So just to review

[Surt]

Sadly, knowing an awful lot of people in the world, I can't honestly imagine a single one who would look at each browser and make a sound logical choice.

I think everyone i've ever met can safely be put into one of these categories:

1) IE comes with windows, and they don't care enough to ever switch
2) had some severe negative experience with IE, but didn't know enough about computers to fix, switched
3) hate microsoft in general, switched

Not one person I can think of made any sort of careful rational comparison of available browsers. That's just not normal lazy human behavior. I know your post was supposed to be sarcastic, but you're wrong if you think there is going to be any significant number of people who do a browser comparison and pick the best one.

Re:So just to review

[xtracto]

OMFG.
A comment stating that another comment was sarcasm moded 4,Informative??
Only in /. people will find that comment "Quite Informative"

Re:So just to review

[morgan_greywolf]

While, yes, you missed the sarcasm, #10 -- Speed. Firefox's Gecko engine renders pages much quicker than IE on the same box.

Re:So just to review

[bhtooefr]

Actually... how often do you need to be able to stop AND reload at the same time on the same tab? And, if you do, double-clicking the button is a lot faster than clicking stop, then MOVING to refresh and clicking again.

Opera's the same way, and I prefer it.

Re:So just to review

[Cro Magnon]

My experience differs. I know several people who switched, some on my advice, and they were not Microsoft haters. Some of them DID have a bad experience with IE, but that IS a good reason to switch. They made a rational decision and concluded that IE was teh suxor and switched to FF or Opera.

Re:So just to review

[Anonymous Coward]

Your point #1 is too restrictive, it should include people who don't know that they can/how to switch. It's pretty safe to generalize that people over 50 who aren't in IT really have no clue that there are alternative browsers, and beyond that, most wouldn't know how to switch if you paid them to.

Re:So just to review

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I too am using IE 7 Beta 1 and I have a reload button to the right of the address bar, directly left of the search box. It is an icon with an arrow pointing up and one pointing down, almost looks like a circle. Granted, the new reload icon took awhile to notice since i have been looking at the green recycling type one for 7-someodd years now. As well, F5 works wonders too

Re:So just to review

[Soul-Burn666]

GAH. I intended for it to stay 2, unmodded. I've written it after another comment replying thinking the OP was SERIOUS. That's why I didn't post as AC, I wanted it to be visible.

WTF is wrong with you modders? MY COMMENT WAS NOT FUCKING INFORMATIVE. /. is the only place where you mean one thing, get modded differently and then get modded again due to the original moderation.

fuck this.

Re:So just to review

[HunterZ]

Ah, so they snagged that idea from Opera and tabbed browsing from Mozilla? (or whoever Mozilla snagged it from if they didn't do it first either)

Re:So just to review

[userdefined]

i like having the stop/reload button change a'la opera also, but a wise friend of mine pointed out where it may be problematic (eg. waiting an overly long time for a page to load, decide screw it, click on 'stop' right as the page finishes loading and so hit reload instead ... ) I can see that being especially true for dial up users (do such creatures still exist?)

Re:So just to review

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, it's not sarcasm, it's irony. It's a common mistake in English to get these two mixed up. Irony is what you say, contradicting what you mean. Sarcasm is how you say it, in a particular tone of voice.

From Wikipedia:

Sarcasm:

[Sarcasm is] expressed through vocal intonations such as over-emphasizing the actual statement or particular words.

Irony

Irony is a form of expression in which an implicit meaning is concealed or contradicted by the explicit meaning of the expression.

Re:So just to review

[Anonymous Coward]

hahah, I am not ranting at you, you made a point and it's ok for you to get the mod points, it is just that /. mod system is so broken, I have seen really Informative posts that are moded down just because they do not share the /. pro OSS/Apple trend..

Re:So just to review

[EAB]

I believe there is a group called the MSN users?. Doesn't MSN require the use of IE to log into the netowrk? I am guessing the average MSN user doesn't know how to switch browsers, much less determine if one is secure or not. Which brings to mind another group, the AOL user....

    One need not fear superior numbers if the opposing force has been properly
    scouted and appraised.
                                            -- S. Bull

Re:So just to review

[Anonymous Coward]

I installed Firefox and thought of myself as a trader

What kind of things did you trade in order to get Firefox? Did you trade it in for IE? If so, how did you get IE off your computer? I may be interested in a trade like this. I use Firefox myself, but I'm just interested in this idea of trading goods and services.

Re:So just to review

[ramblin billy]

"No, you missed the sarcasm. I don't quite know how, by the end it was laid on so thick that it oozed into the next post."

So was it a Comedy Buffer Overrun Exploit or a Brute Force Crack-Up Attack? D(istinctly) D(evoid) O(f) S(incerity) maybe? I know it was too dry for Phishing.

billy - Karma Engineering?

Re:So just to review

[bmalia]

2. they are one of those annoying people who hold an irrational hatred of microsoft.

maybe its because you called slashdotters annoying.

Re:So just to review

[cbreaker]

No, I just think you're a dipshit if you missed it. It was painfully obvious.

Re:So just to review

[Himring]

Dude, you're making me deja vue....

Re:So just to review

[bhtooefr]

Opera snagged tabbed browsing from either NetCaptor or CrazyBrowser, but they were the first to apply it to MDI (all other browsers, except for one IE shell, only allow tabs that are full size. Opera and this browser have sub-windows that can be any size within the browser's area.)

Mozilla, seeing as they didn't implement MDI, didn't snag it from Opera.

Re:So just to review

[Citizen of Earth]

2. they are one of those annoying people who hold an irrational hatred of microsoft.

Hey, man—there is nothing irrational about my hatred of Microsoft!

Re:So just to review

[sunset]

2. they are one of those annoying people who hold an irrational hatred of microsoft.

So you're saying those who have a rational hatred of Microsoft would not use Firefox?

I humbly suggest that there are a great many counterexamples to that assertion.

Re:So just to review

[Tesen]

The only possible reasons why someone would use firefox are:
1. they are one of those annoying people who think they're cool when they have "the latest thing"

2. they are one of those annoying people who hold an irrational hatred of microsoft.

3. Blue, you hate blue things! Blue icons, blue cars (hahaha! My insurance is starting to clue in!).

Tes

Re:So just to review

[Bert64]

I beg to differ..
I tried a multitude of browsers, opera, netscape, galeon, dillo etc.. I settled on firefox mainly because of the extensions availability, and partly because my previous choice - galeon - deteriorated after version 1.2 when it was completely redesigned.

Bound to happen

[Stevyn]

There are only so many individuals you can convince that you are more likely to have a better and safer web experience with Firefox than IE. Not guaranteed, but more likely. What should now be a focus for people concerned about this is convincing large businesses and universities to consider it. Any large switch is painful and expensive, but the reduced support costs down the road should be considered.

Re:Bound to happen

[tobiasly]

I have a "private blog" set up for me and about 5 other college friends that we use to keep in touch (we are now very geographically disperse). I am the only one you could call "technically literate" by any means.

Earlier this year, I put a link to Firefox on that blog, and put up a quick post about how insecure IE was and why they should switch. But I just assumed they would read it, think "whatever Toby, you geek" and move on.

So the other day I was checking my web stats, and looked at those for that blog. ALL of them are now using Firefox (one has a Mac w/ Safari), with just one that uses IE sometimes.

Then when we got together a couple months back, one particularly non-tech-savvy friend was telling me how much she loved Firefox. She had several bad experiences with malware in the past and had to pay to get her computer fixed. She was just thrilled that ever since switching to Firefox, her security and malware problems are gone.

What's more, she told me she now recommends it to all her friends and family and has gotten several of them to switch. The only time she uses IE, ironically enough, is to get updates for her virus scanner, because its update site requires IE. She told me that "it just makes me nervous" whenever she has to open IE just to get updates, and asked me about what virus scanners don't require IE that I might recommend!

It's moments like that which make this geek proud. To have such a non-geek friend become proactive about her own security and educate herself on the dangers of using poorly-designed software and actively seeking alternatives is very encouraging that maybe "the masses" aren't the lemmings we assume they are sometimes.

Let this be a lesson to other geeks: your friends are willing to listen, if you take the time to explain to them why they should!

Re:Bound to happen

[supremebob]

Face it... Firefox is never going to be a marketshare leader until it starts being bundled with new PC's. Most folks aren't going to bother switching if they need to do the install on it's own.

Re:Bound to happen

[mikefe]

Try AVG

Re:Bound to happen

[Anonymous Coward]

She told me that "it just makes me nervous" whenever she has to open IE just to get updates, and asked me about what virus scanners don't require IE that I might recommend!

Anyone who thinks they don't need to support anything but IE should read the previous sentence about 10 times. Whether or not you believe what she says, whether or not she represents your target market, you are losing her business.

One problem is that once people have checked it out and found that nothing works, they leave and don't come back. That 10% then goes out, finds a competitor that does work and recommends them to their friends. If your business is extraordinary, those people may go through the trouble needed to get in touch (or will phone their orders in) but you had better be very confident before putting your store at the end of 5 miles of dirt road.

Re:Fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

Why be so rude?

Microsoft haters?

[LiquidCoooled]

Its not about being a Microsoft hater.
Most people I know who use firefox still use and prefer MS Windows to the alternatives.

Software compatibility is important and being able to go into a shop and buy any software for Windows means Windows will remain for a while.
When the tiny Apple or Linux section in computer shops grows and software is generically released for more platforms things will change.

My local PC world (in England) is already being taken over by Apple Macs so its only a matter of time now :)

It's having an effect, I think

[Kazzahdrane]

IE 7 finally has tabbed browsing, no doubt to try and win back users who have dumped IE for Firefox and the other feature-superior browsers. I'm a big fan of Firefox, I love the small footprint and the fact that the menus etc take up very little screen space so I can see much more of a webpage than with IE. However, I'll be checking out IE 7 and if I like it more I'll switch to it. As an aside, it's hard to recommend Firefox to some friends/family when they can't comprehend how useful tabbed browsing it. I've successfully converted a few people though and they all comment that they'd hate to surf the web without tabs now. Maybe they should rename them iTabs or something to make them trendy.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Evil Grinn]

. As an aside, it's hard to recommend Firefox to some friends/family when they can't comprehend how useful tabbed browsing it. I've successfully converted a few people though and they all comment that they'd hate to surf the web without tabs now. Maybe they should rename them iTabs or something to make them trendy.

I converted my wife to Mozilla (before Firefox existed) because IE was fucked up on her computer, and it was easier to install Mozilla than to figure out was wrong with IE. Only then did she "get" stuff like tabbed browsing and text resizing that works. She's got a new PC since then, and Firefox was the first thing installed on it.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[daranz]

Tabbed browsing is just one feature that FF has. It's not the only thing that's good about it... take the extension manager - it's better than IE's "let's just let anything slap stuff on here" attitude.

Problem is, the casual user probably won't be bothered to learn how to use extensions, and Adblock will be more of a problem than a useful tool for them. That's why that user will stick with IE.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Kazzahdrane]

Tabbed browsing is IMO the best feature Firefox has for instantly grabbing a user's attention and showing them it has something great in 10 seconds. "You know how your taskbar gets crushed up once you have more than 3 or 4 IE windows open?* Firefox fixes that."- makes people listen. *XP lets you stack windows from the same app (IE, MSN messenger). However, I'm using XP Pro and have never found out how to enable this feature, if it exists in Pro. Of course with my browser only ever taking up a single slot on the taskbar this is almost a non-issue for me.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm a big fan of Firefox, I love the small footprint

Was that sarcasm again? This is getting confusing.

Of the many reasons I love Firefox, and the many reasons I use it, "small footprint" is not one of them. It's a memory hog, and nobody can deny it. I use it because it's fast, powerful, and as feature-filled as I want it, not because it's slim...

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Anonymous Coward]

small footprint?

Have you ever looked at FF's memory usage!?!

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Anonymous Coward]

Right click on the task bar and select properties. There's a checkbox there for "group similar taskbar buttons". It's there in home and pro.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[dioscaido]

IE6 already has tabbed browsing, just install the msn search toolbar. Even so, tabbed browsing won't make firefox users switch back. It should be interesting to see what exactly is compelling about IE7.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Kazzahdrane]

Ack, I meant the size of the downloads. Looks like I tried to be clever and used the wrong terminology. Anyway, I'll set up the stocks so you guys can start throwing the cream pies and rotten fruit.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Kazzahdrane]

Thank you, my anonymous hero!

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Anonymous Coward]

However, I'll be checking out IE 7 and if I like it more I'll switch to it.

That's quite short-sighted for two reasons.

Reason one: you know from past experience that if Microsoft dominates the web browser market, they are quite willing to let their browser and their browser's users rot. Why would you subject yourself to that?

Reason two: you like features on websites, don't you? Wouldn't you prefer it if web developers spent their time making them instead of working around Internet Explorer's faults?

By being an Internet Explorer user, you are part of the problem. You contribute to the decline of alternative browser market share, which is likely to lead Microsoft to letting Internet Explorer stagnate again in the future. You hold back the web by using an inferior (even with the Internet Explorer 7 updates) browser that forces web developers to waste their time on trivialities instead of coding new features.

I realise it's a little arrogant to suggest that you use software other than your first choice, but there's negative consequences to doing so that aren't immediately apparent.

As an aside, it's hard to recommend Firefox to some friends/family when they can't comprehend how useful tabbed browsing it.

In the past week and a half, I've converted dozens of people to Firefox just by writing a Greasemonkey script they found useful. Tabbed browsing really isn't that great. Actively enhancing websites they are already familiar with offers a compelling advantage to using Firefox, especially when they see other people on the sites talking about how great the script is and they feel left out because they use the backwards Internet Explorer.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[lav-chan]

Like you said, this is a non-issue for you, but just in case you're curious anyway.

To enable taskbar grouping, right-click somewhere in the taskbar, go to Properties, and then make sure 'Group similar taskbar buttons' is checked. You won't see it until your taskbar starts to get pretty full, but it'll do it.

If you don't like the default behaviour, like how many windows need to be open for it to start grouping or whatever, you can get the free TweakUI tool (which you should have anyway, because it lets you fix a lot of the retarded problems that Windows has by default) from Microsoft's Web site, and that'll let you change it.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Kazzahdrane]

You're right of course, and it's a conundrum. If I like IE 7 better than Firefox do I use the browser I find best or the nice open source one in the hopes that it keeps MS keep enhancing and updating their browser, which I won't actually use... Of course I'll just be a Mozilla fanboy and say this won't matter as Firefox pwns all.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[hendridm]

I agree. I've had a hard time convincing die-hard IE users to switch to something that more closely follows web standards. What do they care?

I wish people would have the same animosity towards web pollution as they do towards polluting the Earth, but that probably won't happen for a long time, if ever.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Himring]

However, I'll be checking out IE 7 and if I like it more I'll switch to it.

Tell me, friend, when did Kazzahdrane the wise abandon reason for madness....

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[marcosdumay]

People don't have an animosity towards polutting the Earth! Just a few more interested on the subject (early adopters).

It is also a bit arrogant to think that they sould be as concerned of internet polution as they are about phisical one. Phisical pollution can put their lives at danger.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Matt Perry]

and the fact that the menus etc take up very little screen space so I can see much more of a webpage than with IE.

Huh? Right click on the toolbar and choose customize. Remove the items that you don't want. Unlock the toolbars to rearrange them. You can even put the toolbar buttons and address field in the same section as the pull down menus. I have more screen space in IE at work than I do with firefox at home.

As an aside, it's hard to recommend Firefox to some friends/family when they can't comprehend how useful tabbed browsing it.

I think for some people it's a matter of using it to understand it. Personally I don't like tabbed browsing and I think it makes my browsing experience worse rather than better (I have to manage windows in two places instead of one). I gave up on tabbed browsing after several months of trying to get used to it. Not everyone is going to see tabbed browsing as an advantage.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Kazzahdrane]

I'm not sure what you're trying to say...that switching to IE would be madness or that I am not in fact wise? Regardless, I never said I was wise. Just great in bed.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[bohemian72]

He was being cute and paraphrasing Gandalf from the movie The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring. Gandalf the Grey says this to Sauroman the White when it becomes clear that the head of the wizard's order has abandoned doing what is right in favor of siding with the truly evil Sauron.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Kazzahdrane]

That's interesting as I can't understand how someone would find tabbed browsing worse than untabbed. But I've been using it and loving it for over a year now, it's a huge part of my browsing experience. I applaud you though, if everyone loved tabbed browsing nothing new would come along and there'd be no point in crafting the Next Big Thing in browsing.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[radish]

Agreed. Usually at least once a day my computer starts really grinding and swapping like crazy, which is when I realise Firefox has eaten up over a gig of ram, ground to a halt, and needs to be killed. It's a shame, because I love everything else about it - but it just isn't stable or lightweight.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[nickos]

Thanks for that tip. I just tried it but, when used with the google toolbar, thought it took up too much vertical space. This seems to do the trick though.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Himring]

It's a LoTR quote....

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[Yrrebnarg]

But it'll also lead to atrocities rivaling the tag that netscape so callously unleashed upon the world way back in the 90s.

It might just not be worth it.

Re:It's having an effect, I think

[vanka]

I don't think that too many people will switch back to IE when IE7 comes out. Firefox is not all about tabs, it is first and foremost about security. I do spyware cleanup for people and I have switched over quite a bit of people by telling them that Firefox will reduce the occurace of spyware. I remember one spyware clean I did, the spyware was so bad that I had to reinstall Windows. So I installed Firefox, got rid of all visible icons of IE, and told them to use Firefox to avoid popups. I myself have gone from doing several spyware scans a week to one every couple of months after switching to Firefox. And even then the scans find mostly cookies that I haven't deleted yet. Another reason that I think users won't switch is beccause IE7 butchers the classic IE interface. Firefox enhances and extends the IE interface and is more intuitive while the IE7 interface just sucks.

Most Likely

[hcob$]

They started seeing a slow down cause of all the other options that are cropping up; Opera(free) being one of them. Just a thought...

Re:Most Likely

[mixtape5]

But opera is not a new browser, it has been up even before alternate browsers started gaining large amounts of users.

Re:Most Likely

[L. VeGas]

Opera is exploding right now. My logs show an increase of Opera over the past week of about 500%. After the buzz of "free Opera" dies down, who knows if it will maintain?

Most geeks love Firefox extensions (I do), but Joe User just isn't interested in dealing with that stuff. Opera offers more functionality straight out of the box, and almost nobody outside the tech community cares at all about open source.

I think Firefox might have reached market saturation. I wish it weren't the case, but I fear it may be true.

There was a fluff piece I wrote a little while ago about Opera vs. Firefox that addresses some of this.

Re:Most Likely

[giorgiofr]

I think Firefox might have reached market saturation. I wish it weren't the case, but I fear it may be true.

Actually, I think the best situation would be one where many browsers compete more or less on the same levels of features, security, usability etc. and each one of them has about 10% of the market. That way, standards would be naturally enforced and appreciated and we wouldn't risk another browser war, just healthy, maybe even friendly (see Opera vs Firefox vs Konq) competition. It would do no good to anyone if FF just became the next behemoth.
Comments from slashdotters? What do you think of this situation?

Re:Most Likely

[lav-chan]

Um. I don't understand the thing you wrote.

You said that 'Joe User' doesn't care about open-source and extensions, so logically instead of Opera you should put them on... Firefox... uh, what.

I mean, i don't care which browser some random guy thinks i should be recommending to my grandma either way, but you basically go out of your way to say that Opera is better for 'Joe User' (who doesn't really care that Firefox is open-source or that it has extensions), and then at the end without any other discussion you act like that logically leads to the conclusion that you should recommend him Firefox. Doesn't really make sense.

Re:Most Likely

[pv2b]

While it's true that any monoculture is a bad situation, a monoculture of Firefox would be much less bad than a monoculture of IE.

Now, it's very unlikely that such a monoculture would arise. But since we're talking hypothetics here, bear with me for a few paragraphs.

First of all, the Firefox rendering engine, unlike Internet Explorer, is cross-platform, which means that it's not restricted just to Windows users. The Mac version of IE used a different rendering engine from the Windows one, for example. So it's a monoculture, but not one that shuts out people using different operating systems.

Second, it's open. Bugs can be fixed quickly from identification, much quicker than the closed processes of many proprietary software developers. (I don't want to single Microsoft out here, take a look at the security records of many other closed software hourses.)

Third, it can be forked, if the "original Firefox developers" stagnate, since it's open source. There's no real vendor lock-in here, because you don't have to build the software from the ground again. Look what happened to XFree86. It was the de facto standard for X servers on Linux, and probably very popular on other platforms as well for god knows how many years. Now who still uses it and hasn't switched over to X.org? Since it'll be a fork of the original software, people will be less reluctant to switch, since there will be incremental changes, rather than a complete sidegrade which would break all kinds of stuff and require retraining. Also, the psychological factors of Firefox not being a part of the system shell on Windows, not to mention not having a generic name like "Internet Explorer" makes it easier to dislodge in people's minds.

Finally, I don't think the situation of a Firefox monoculture is very likely. Microsoft is not going to abandon their Internet Explorer any time soon, and I don't see Firefox evaporating in the near future either. It's gained a pretty firm foothold in the browser market. What I see as having happened, and what will probably be the status quo in the near future, is the emergence of Microsoft IE and Firefox as the two real main competitors, the two great "giants in the playground" if you will. Firefox may gain some market share, and IE will fight back, but that doesn't really matter. As ironic and as contradictory as it may sound, the emergence of a single alternative browser as the main competitor to IE as a direct benifit in the battle against browser monoculture. The fact that there is one "alpha alternative browser" rather than a disorganised infighting mass of small alternative browsers gives the entire alternative browser movement a lot more credit. How do you design your web pages to cater to IE plus an amorphous blob of alternative browsers? You don't, so you just ignore anything that's not IE. By giving webmasters two distinct targets to focus on, you're forcing them to make pages that aren't IE-specific, and most of the time, that means the pages will work great in other web browsers too, which is the real and major win we want to accomplish.

I reap the fruits of this ongoing battle for browser supremacy every day. I use OmniWeb for my daily web browsing, which in my opinion is the best web browser out there for any operating system. It uses a fork of Safari's WebCore (or whatever it's called) to drive its rendering, which all in all, is a comparatively small player in the browser market. On the vast overwhelming majority of sites, it Just Works. Not because they were designed for OmniWeb or Safari, but because web developers design less and less specifically for IE.

Let the browser wars rage on!

Re:Most Likely

[hkmwbz]

"But opera is not a new browser, it has been up even before alternate browsers started gaining large amounts of users."

I don't see the relevance. Opera had ads, which put a lot of people off. Especially the advanced users who would otherwise have recommended Opera to their friends. With the ads out of the way, more people will recommend Opera to their friends. The #1 complaint about Opera all over the place was the ad bar in the free Opera.

not surprising

[Nex6]

I am not surprised, most users think "internet" Explorer" is the internet, so the fact that a "normal" user
does not go out and download / install firefox. does not surprise me.

on the otherhand, 7% + market share in such a short time is pretty good. and has firefox improves, (use less memmory) you will see improvments in the marget share. firefox has to be much better then "IE"

for a normal user to switch to it, so the rapid marget will slow down and will creep up slowly...

-Nex6
-nex6.blogspot.com

Re:not surprising

[artemis67]

It's tough to compete against a browser that's preinstalled on every Windows PC out there.

I think it's safe to say that Firefox has saturated its core market of tech savvy, security-conscious users. At this point, they need to reevaluate who their target market is and adjust their marketing strategy accordingly. After all, they were never going to get 95% marketshare simply by virtue of *not* being Internet Explorer. At this point, they need to get their foot in the door with one of the major PC vendors (Dell, HP, Gateway, et al) and get Firefox preinstalled on all new machines, and set up as the preferred browser. That's a tall order, considering the amount of influence MS has over these companies.

Re:not surprising

[holy zarquon's singi]

Actually, applying the mother-in-law test (my mother in law), it would appear that people think that Google is the internet.

Most people can't be bothered, partly because they're hard to understand, partly because of all the crapware and crippleware available on a default install of windows, and partly because they can't be bothered.

Will Opera affect FF's usage?

[Anonymous Coward]

Now that Opera is ad-less, maybe FF useage will drop.

Did anyone really think that FF would cut into IE much? When you buy a Dell/HP/Sony/etc, that little blue E on the desktop is very convenient and it's not like you get many browser exploit reports on CNN or the local news.

MS haters vs enlightened users?

[Jugalator]

'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'

So you have to be a "MS hater" to see the disadvantages with IE now?

Anyway, yes, it is expected something like this will happen, but I think not for that reason, but rather because there's a finite number of people willing to change browsers when there's already one part of the OS. Firefox being more secure? Sorry, they don't even read computer news sites.

Maybe..

[G4Z]

Im really not sure that what they adoption will slow down completely. Firefox doesnt have the same marketing machine promoting it that Microsoft have and it doesnt come bundled with the OS but it does have many evangelists (I have friends who install it on any PC they work on and allways tell the owner to use it). I think the adoption might well be determined by the users awareness as much as anything else and that seems to mostly happen by word of mouth. I can see the point of view many users have that IE is just not broken but as a tech that wasnt my experience, I heard many IE tales of woe for users. I think in the end most users want somthing to just work so they might use firefox or Opera or IE it just depends if somebody else takes care of installing it for them, in most cases IE is first there.

next step

[timtwobuck]

So...whats the next step?

Obviously the current marketing effort led by the Firefox team has reached, or is soon to reach, the most people it can. There now needs to be a second push to help promote this browser up past 10% market share. Once one in every ten users is using Firefox, then maybe the 'word of mouth' changes will begin to increase more-so.

Personally, I have installed it on my parents' machine, all my tech-saavy coworkers, and I promote it every chance I get. Once we hit the 10% mark, all the people that were too lazy to do it might just say, hey, well, everyone else is doing it, why not me?.

Re:next step

[Flying Purple Wombat]

Part of the next step is convincing web site developers to support Firefox. There are a lot of sites out there that require IE to work. For some of them, like one of my financial service providers, there is no workaround - I must run Windows and IE (vmware does the job without requiring extra hardware). I don't like it, and I have complained, but it's not a big enough problem to make me switch to another provider so I doubt that my complaints will be acted upon.

Re:next step

[doombob]

I think what you're looking for is this:

The Hundredth Monkey

Re:next step

[Threni]

Why? Urban Myths aren't going to help with the adoption of FireFox. You'd be better off threatening to remove IE user's kidneys while they sleep in baths full of ice cubes, or using subliminal advertising like the coke and popcorn ads which (didn't) help to shift units in American movie theaters in the 1950s.

Re:next step

[Anonymous Coward]

Next step? One word:

DISTRIBUTION

To get web developers to write for Firefox, they have to see a large percentage of FF users showing in their logs. To get users, the browser needs to be immediately available to more users.

Mozilla.org needs to start bundling Firefox with mass market hardware and software so that it is installed automatically and available for people who would otherwise never use Firefox.

It's that simple. Take that money that Google has been giving them for the start page and search box and buy their way into as many big channels as they can.

It's that, or be relegated to a fringe market share that only survives as long as Microsoft decides not to enter it.

Its also got more unstable

[doormat]

FF 1.0.7 has locked my laptop and desktop more times than I care to recall. No BSOD, no crash, the entire system just freezes up. The mouse wont move, nothign responds. I've been tempted to switch to Opera lately - FF quality is going down the drain....

Re:Its also got more unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

Never happened to me. I've installed it on 1000 computers in our lab, and yet to have seen it freeze up a system. Occassionally dies on a particularly bad webpage, true, but not taking everything with it. I think you have hardware issues.

Re:Its also got more unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds like a hardware problem to me or possibly a driver issue. The only thing that Firefox does to me is leak memory.

Re:Its also got more unstable

[doormat]

On both my laptop and my desktop? Everything else runs fine, without errors....

Re:Its also got more unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

The lock up of your computer is most likely the modified
TCPIP stack that has been put in place through some other
program on your system (LimeWire? MSN Messenger? etc)

The scope of Firefox is pretty limited.

However, bad press is what MS is counting on.

Try another browser (operasoft.com) and if the same results
happen, i'd run Adaware and Spybot to see what else you have
going on before slamming specific apps.

Re:Its also got more unstable

[Anonymous Coward]

If the whole system freezes, it's not a problem with Firefox, it is a problem with the OS or hardware. OS&hardware should not allow any software to freeze the system no matter how crappy it is.

Re:Its also got more unstable

[rainmayun]

While it doesn't take down my system, it DOES crash quite a bit lately. I am running 1.0.7 on Win2K. I wonder sometimes if it is a plugin that is causing the issue, but I have the same version and same plugin set on a WinXP laptop, and I don't see the issue there. I always know when it is going to coredump, because opening new tabs takes much longer than it should.

Re:Its also got more unstable

[Algan]

Make sure you are not experiencing a hardware problem. As far as I know, Windows XP, in it's latest incarnation, is pretty stable and an application like FF doesn't have the ability to crash the system. The symptoms you describe might be related to data corruption due to either bad memory, bad mobo or cpu overheating. I experienced all of them, so I'm kind of familiar with these issues. You can try to run memtest86 for 24 hours, to see if it's a memory issue and then something like seti@home or prime95 to check for heat problems.

Re:Its also got more unstable

[arkanes]

Firefox itself uses no APIs that can do this. It's possible it's an obscure bug in some video or mouse driver that happens to be triggered by an odd sequence of events, but it's more likely that it's a bug in a media player or other plugin that does use some of the low level access APIs where it's more possible and likely to lock up the machine.

Even then, there really aren't that many ways to lock up a modern OS in the way you describe. That means that bugs causing it are either very trivial to find, or almost impossible because they're actually caused bugs within the OS itself, and are only expressed by obscure and often apparently totally unrelated things.

In short: a bug that does this is the OSes fault, and while it's possible theres something that Firefox or a plugin developer can do to work around it, it won't happen unless you can provide information, like a reliable test case.

Stupid conclusions

[Bogtha]

Opera, for instance, now has to steal users from Firefox, not IE, since the pool of IE users willing to change has dried up.

No, even if you accept the numbers, it means the pool of IE users willing to change to Firefox has dried up. It's pretty damn arrogant to assume that if Firefox isn't acceptable to somebody, nothing is. I use Firefox myself for the time being (roll on Konqueror 3.5 with Adblocking built in), but I'm not going to claim that it's perfect.

One thing I can never find with these stories is how they come up with the figures. Examining httpd logs and using Javascript tricks is about as accurate as guessing. Do they conduct proper surveys or are they just another snake oil vendor? The fact that their website is broken in Firefox isn't exactly a ringing endorsement.

Re:Stupid conclusions

[HermanAB]

"The fact that their website is broken in Firefox isn't exactly a ringing endorsement." Well, yeah, that would contribute I guess. On my technical site, FF use is more than 50%. On a lawyer web site that I host, it is around 22%. That is according to Apache logs which is as good a statistic as one is going to get.

Re:Stupid conclusions

[rk87]

..and there's also the odd user that switches _away_ from Firefox. Been using Opera for 6 months, 100% happy.

Re:Stupid conclusions

[Anonymous Coward]

By default, Opera reports itself as "Internet Explorer" to web servers.

The 2 million Opera 8.5 downloads this month will be characterized as users "going back" to Microsoft after trying Firefox.

October/November 2005 will be flooded by pro-Microsoft reporters that will spin this to bash Firefox. And no, they are not irrational Microsoft supporters--it is perfectly rational to say good things about your customers.

Re:Stupid conclusions

[Greg@UF]

I agree, totally inaccurate conclusion.

One of the things that bugs me about Firefox's advertising is they base some of their growth figures on the number of downloads. They don't release patches to their code, though, so every time they release a fix, it's time to download the whole program again.
Before I stopped using it, I'd downloaded it at least 5 times. Way to fiddle the numbers!

Anyway, Opera went free, and I changed in a flash.
I also moved over several friends and family members to Opera, where before, I told them not to go to firefox, because it just wasn't good enough yet. IE's market share just dropped a bit, right there.

Love tabbed browsing, hate the clunkiness of firefox, and the missing features, and all those sites that just won't display properly.
With Opera, the only browser flaw I've found so far is the htmlarea in zencart doenst' display. Oh, and of course, activeX controls don't go, - so MS have ensured I'll keep IE around a while longer. There's only one website that's causing me a problem with, so now I'm pretty happy.

Re:Stupid conclusions

[jp10558]

Please give us info as to whether sites begin blocking Konq because it has built in AdBlocking...

Re:Stupid conclusions

[hkmwbz]

"That is according to Apache logs which is as good a statistic as one is going to get."

If you only count the number of different UA strings from different IP addresses, you aren't taking into account things like Opera caching a lot more than Firefox (and IE), and therefore not downloading images, style sheets, etc. again and again like other browsers often do.

Re:Stupid conclusions

[Bert64]

IE has a habit of poorly caching, and causing additional hits... Firefox does this a lot less, and opera less still... This tends to inflate the statistics somewhat.
As for different IP addresses, a lot of large isp`s use proxies which may have many thousands of users behind a single IP or dynamic ip addressing. It`s very difficult to identify multiple unique users from a large isp.

Version 1.5

[shic]

In my experience it is the Mozilla innovations which encourage people to switch... the better the features the more compelling the motivation to switch.

Recently the released improvements to the Mozilla suite in the release products have slowed. I strongly suspect that version 1.5 will bring yet more people on-board. I'm using the Thunderbird 1.5 beta for my email right now and it is a fantastic improvement over the current release version.

[Minor whinge] I wish I could print an email without all the irrelevant headers... preview what will be printed and (optionally) change the format.

Re:Version 1.5

[4of12]

it is the Mozilla innovations which encourage people to switch

Exactly.

I've often felt that if Mozilla/Firefox gave users an easy way to compose and publish precise SVG using a WYSIWYG interface, including international language support, across platform, that usage would increase markedly.

Re:Version 1.5

[jxyama]

For the majority of Internet users (the 80+% using IE), those "innovations" you speak of are invisible and inconsequential. They don't use them, they don't care about them and worst of all, they don't know about them and have no way of finding out about them.

These are people whose daily Internet use consists of Hotmail, Amazon and CNN. They are not on the fence, waiting for the next batch of innovation from Firefox to switch

Re:Version 1.5

[starwed]

Well, one of the improvements in 1.5 is to make it easier to install in a corporate enviorment. That and the mere fact that it's not 1.0 anymore could well help it's adoption by buisness.

Also, the bare fact of a new release will still garner (positive) press coverage, and this will probably create a bump in use.

Re:Version 1.5

[Anonymous Coward]

In my experience it is the Mozilla innovations which encourage people to switch...

Which innovations would these be? Native SVG, tabs, RSS reader, BitTorrent built-in, popup blocking, aural CSS, <canvas>, XMLHttpRequest object, Greasemonkey/UserJS, built-in download manager and practically every other new feature available in modern web browsers appeared somewhere else first (usually Opera). In some cases, not only does the current version of Mozilla and Firefox not support some features, but the next planned version doesn't either.

About the only innovative thing to come out of Mozilla.org is Firefox's extension mechanism, which is basically RAD for plugins, and severely broken (end-user applications shouldn't break extensions on every upgrade). Everything else is just copying. Which isn't to say it's bad of course, merely that Mozilla and Firefox don't deserve the innovative label everybody is using to describe them.

Re:Version 1.5

[owlstead]

A lot of innovations are programmed as Plugins for firefox. Although this is great, there should be a distribution (like in linux systems) with a default set of *compatible* Plugins. Currently it is very hard for most users to get a rich feature set for firefox. And even if they do, they run a very big risk of loosing functionality (and getting mindless popups about incompatible plugins on startup in the beta versions) if/when they upgrade the browser. Maybe they can ship it with a welcome page listing the major features of their new browser and letting them choose to enable/disable the Plugins (default "off" of course).

And for crying out loud, create a list of trusted sites that can do anything. Yes, my bank is allowed to create pop-ups, run scripts, load images from their unsecure server and whatnot. Now I have to configure that at about 10 different places. Think how users think, then design, then implement.

Re:Version 1.5

[pipingguy]

Does "whinge" sound like "hinge"?

Re:Version 1.5

[benoe]

THX shic. I will not try Tbird 1.5 beta. The most silly thing was the useless print message in 1.0.x. Minus one tick for WebSideStory counters.

FYI: Different situation in Europe

[zerojoker]

http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement7.asp
I'm just wondering why the market share in Europe is so much higher? I mean, I doubt that there is such a different user basis?! (The linked article talks about 20% market-share in Germany and Poland...)

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[clickety6]

lamebait>
We're just more intelligent here in Europe ;-)

And better looking too!
lamebait>

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Those are obsolete stats. These are the current ones: XiTi.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[nitot]

Actually, things in Europe are quite different from one can read from the aforementionned report. See http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/18773 .

Germany is at 24%
Finland is at 34%
Czech Republic is at 23%
Poland is at 22%
France is at 16%

These numbers are measured by independent French firm XitiMonitor, which publishes a monthly report on browser market share.
In a related note, see also http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=node/view/18802 , which demonstrates a steady monthly growth for Firefox in Europe, with a rough estimation of more than 37 millions users in the Old continent.
Disclaimer: I am a Mozilla Europe employee.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[dos_dude]

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,

Pony trekking or camping,
Or just watching TV.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
It's the country for me.

You're so near to Russia,
So far from Japan,

Quite a long way from Cairo,
Lots of miles from Vietnam.

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I want to be,

Eating breakfast or dinner,
Or snack lunch in the hall.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.

You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored,

A poor second to Belgium,
When going abroad.

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I quite want to be,

Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.

Finland, Finland, Finland,
The country where I quite want to be,

Your mountains so lofty,
Your treetops so tall.

Finland, Finland, Finland.
Finland has it all.

Finland has it all.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[learn fast]

It also seems to be higher among Democrats.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[shudde]

To my mind the difference in adoption rates between Europe and the United States (which I'm presuming is the inferred basis of comparison) boils down to the respective mind-sets of their populations.

Many European countries have a reputation for fast adoption of new technologies in the last century. While America remains the most powerful consumer nation, I believe there's a profound difference in the way technology is used. Putting aside the geek community, many more of the Europeans I've dealt with seem to view internet usage as a social/recreational experience. Comparatively the non-technical Americans I've known, seem less inclined to 'play under the hood'.

Disclaimer: I'm Australian so if you think I've got a facile understanding of these cultures, feel free to call me on it.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Disclaimer: I'm Australian so if you think I've got a facile understanding of these cultures, feel free to call me on it.

You are Australian so you have a facile understanding of culture.
Yours, A Limey, esq

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[NotoriousQ]

I will call you on this.

I think it is not that Americans do not like to tinker, it is that they do not like tinkering in the computers. A lot of this comes with where the people grew up, and what do they know. People like tinkering in what they can modify and show off. Because the computer here is not synonymous with communication or bragging rights, very few try to know and learn about them. (Notice how those that do, i.e. the gamer community, modify the crap out of theirs, and a lot of these stories seem to come out of US).

I bet you will be interested to find that there is a huge car modding and tweaking community (people who replace and tweak engines, not tailpipes), which thinks that Europeans are completely ignorant about cars. I would guess that more Americans would now the difference between a carburator and fuel injection than Europeans. (I myself am not of that community, and have only a slight knowledge of carburator/fuel injection systems, I just heard of them)

Different cultures, different interests, different results.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

... except for mountains. Up north we have tall hills (known as fells) but nothing like mountains. On the other hand, there are hundreds of thousands of lakes.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[NotoriousQ]

There are also more violent criminals among Democrats.

Being a democrat has nothing to do with firefox, it is all about the fact that there are more firefox users in the cities, and there are more democrats in the cities.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[m50d]

The flamebait answer would be that europeans are smarter (anyone who doubts it can go look at the global warming threads. Regardless of whether you believe in it, 3/4 of the arguments being made by americans are so stupid you wonder how the people writing them keep breathing). I think it's also that Europe is less ultra-capitalist and more in favour of community things, like open source. A lot of OSS is written in Germany, and of course Finland being the home of Linus it gets more attention there too.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, I don't think the country you were born in has anything to do with anything. Generalisations are bad.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you saying ALL generalizations are bad?

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Finland is at 34%

I wonder why? Most of my geek friends do use Firefox, but there would have to be some big companies standardizing on Firefox to get to those figures.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably alot of Finns are using Swedish or Englisch copies of Windows XP, and have to use Firefox over Internet Explorer to have a Suomi language browser.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[NotoriousQ]

No, but it has everything to do with the country you grew up in, and the environment you live in now.

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[blake3737]

We all knew France would surrender to firefox one day. Whats surprising is that they's never surrendered befo..... wait a second...

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

I live in Finland. Just to clear this up: you can get Windows, Explorer etc. in Finnish, too.

Older people tend to get their Windows, Office and Explorer in Finnish, younger people don't give a rat's ass whether it's in English or Finnish. Pretty much everyone under the age of 30 or 40 speaks English well enough to use software in English.

A figure of 34% for Firefox sounds pretty high, though. I work in helpdesk in a very busy location in the center of Helsinki, and I doubt there's that many people using Firefox even there. Then again, I haven't really paid _that_ much attention - it's a job, after all :p

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[hemabe]

I've added a live statistics-page for my website. I sit in germany and we have actually 20,89%, IE has 71,93%. You may see the picture here: pie. This pic is a little bit more interesting, it shows the distribution of the browsers for each day. Surprisingly I see a loss for firefox in the last days, dont know why. Here ist this picture last 7 days

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Anonymous Coward]

Windows, Internet Explorer, Office and so on is of course available in Finnish. What are you talking about?

Re:FYI: Different situation in Europe

[Bert64]

But you need to install a seperate version, you can`t just install the language packs and change the language in a snap.. Most people in finland can speak english, swedish or both.. and a lot of foreign workers may not speak finnish, so a computer locked in the finnish language is useless in a large company with english speaking employees.

Fighting the monopoly

[Henriok]

This is what happens when one try to fight the reigning monopoly. Microsoft is effieciently killing complete markets with their marketing strategy. Microsoft knows this, and they know that they are getting away with it. Everything that they bundle with their operating systems is going to be standards eventually. EVERYTHING!

The only way to counter this is to make Microsoft not do this. DOJ tried (and failed), EU tried (and failed) and the justice department in Japan tried (and failed). So.. if the three most powerful governements on Earth is so weak that they can't make Microsoft stop killing competition and annexing markets, then who or what can? I really think this is a very frightening development.

This isn't necessarily a bad sign

[dacarr]

Just because people don't download Firefox as much as they have been doesn't mean that interest is flagging, it might just mean that people aren't upgrading directly from the site. This also doesn't count the Linux mirror networks such as that found with Debian, Mandrake, Redhat, or maybe even Gentoo - they provide a copy of Firefox in the appropriate packaging scheme, and Mozilla won't count those because they don't come from Mozilla.

As such, just because downloads are flagging doesn't mean interest is.

Re:This isn't necessarily a bad sign

[Armando_Mcgillicutty]

I was under the impression that websidestory was counting usage statistics, not downloads of the program.

Re:This isn't necessarily a bad sign

[dacarr]

Depending on who you ask, it's the same thing.

Re:This isn't necessarily a bad sign

[Armando_Mcgillicutty]

Maybe...but not if you ask me. Or (I bet) if you ask websidestory. I would consider usage stats to be stats gathered from counts of page hits, having nothing to do with how many times something has been downloaded. Between all my different computers, all the computers I work on, and the many different versions of firefox I've installed over the past year or so, I've probably downloaded the thing 80 times. But that doesn't mean anything when it comes to useage. If someone is trying to compare number of times downloaded to any type of market share, they're wasting their time.

Web Developers

[mysqlrocks]

"For many, IE is just not broken," said Johnston in explaining the small dip in Internet Explorer.

Yes, but for many web developers IE is broken. It's annoying having to write one set of code to run in the non-standard IE environment and then another set of code to work in the standards-based browsers. Take for example Alpha Transparency for PNG images. You can get it to work in IE by using Microsoft's method but you can't just slap a PNG in with alpha transparency and expect it to work in IE.

Re:Web Developers

[ziggamon2.0]

And this is why the current "slowdown" of adoption doesn't matter.
Firefox has reached that ~10%.
Other browsers (Safari + Opera + Konqueror) have maybe 5%.

Which means that IE is down to 85%, and web developers can no longer create IE-only web sites, and apply pressure at Microsoft to be more standards compliant.

Which caused the come of IE7, which has fixes for many of the reasons we web developers hate IE, such as CSS, the box model and the PNG problems you are talking about.

So - it's ok that the adoption rate doesn't increase. The microsoft 99% dominance on the browser market is broken, probably forever, and now we can once again experience that development in web standards that has been away since Netscape was crushed by MS.

So - you're looking at the wrong place.
Firefox has already succeded. It created better web browsing for everyone.

Re:Web Developers

[Evil Grinn]

Yes, but for many web developers IE is broken.

End users don't care what makes a developer's life easier. Businesses who have to pay for the extra time you waste futzing around with all that stuff might possibly be convinced to care, but end users for whom everthing is free anyway have no reason to care and they never will. Until the entire open source world realizes this, Microsoft doesn't really have anything to worry about.

Re:Web Developers

[slashdotnickname]

Yes, but for many web developers IE is broken. It's annoying having to write one set of code to run in the non-standard IE environment and then another set of code to work in the standards-based browsers

No offense, but I question your experience in the real world. On all web development projects I've ever worked on, whether we liked it or not, IE was the standard. We always made sure that a site worked/looked-best on IE first since, obviously, that's what the majority of the clients were using (especially in the 90s). Of course, with most of us having *nix backgrounds (I personally use FF now), we also wanted other clients to work too so we'd try to avoid many IE-specific features. Overall, cross-browser support was a pain though, especially with the different event models and DOM support, and non-IE support would usually not be as good because of time/effort constraints. Bottom line, from an honest commercial development perspective, it's kinda hard to think of IE as "non-standard".

Re:Web Developers

[Pr3d4t0r]

You can get it to work in IE by using Microsoft's method but you can't just slap a PNG in with alpha transparency and expect it to work in IE.

If you can get this to work with backgrounds and the like in style sheets then I haven't found it.

Re:Web Developers

[Xugumad]

This is why I tend to ensure my web applications are functional in IE, and the eye-candy works in Firefox. There's no question of not being unable to use my stuff in IE, but it'll look better (and in several cases, be easier to use) in browsers that actually follow the standards.

Re:Web Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

It does not even have to be "broken" for people to switch. Did people switch to Excel because 1-2-3 was "broken"? No, it simply served people's needs better, and enough barriers to entry fell that it was worthwhile to switch.

Why has Firefox adoption slowed? Because about as many people have switched for whom it is worthwhile to switch to Firefox 1.0. When Firefox 1.5 is out, expect a few more to switch, because it's a little better. Firefox 2.0 will bring another level of people. If (when?) HP or Dell or Apple start preloading Firefox, it'll grow by even more.

Don't forget that it's the primary browser for lots of Linux users. Linux usage is still growing, and every Linux user has a good chance of being a Firefox user -- and a 0% chance of being an IE user.

And remember, Any technology that surpasses 50% penetration will never double again (in any number of months).

Re:Web Developers

[Kjella]

No offense, but I question your experience in the real world. On all web development projects I've ever worked on, whether we liked it or not, IE was the standard.

On all web development projects I've ever worked on, whether we liked it or not, it had to function flawlessly in IE. That doesn't mean by any rate that IE was a standard. There's no documentation anywhere I've seen that describes its infinite number of quirks and bugs. Even when you were forced to use IE-specific code, you wrote to a spec of how it was supposed to work, then made it actually work afterwards. That is the same I do now. I code to W3C standards, then make it work in IE, because there's simply no fscking standard describing how IE works.

Kjella

Re:Web Developers

[mysqlrocks]

If you can get this to work with backgrounds and the like in style sheets then I haven't found it.

Yes, I have gotten Alpha PNGs to work in both IE and standards-based browsers. First, you need to detect the users web browser. If they are using IE you need use IE's AlphaImageLoader otherwise you just use the plain old PNG. The problem is that the AlphaImageLoader will set Alpha transparencies on all of your content, not just the background. To get around this you need to place your content into layers and play around with the z-index. I forget exactly how I got it working but if you want more detailed info just reply to this and I will check my code to see how I did it. I would post the URL here but the site is under construction so I don't think the customer would appreciate me posting it on Slashdot.

Re:Web Developers

[mysqlrocks]

No offense, but I question your experience in the real world.

I run my own web design/development company and have built many web sites for both myself and customers. I am the webmaster for sites that get thousands of unique visitors a day. I have built web applications using several different server-side and client-side technologies including PHP, MySQL, ASP.NET, MS SQL, Java, JavaScript, XML, XSLT, CSS, and AJAX.

Bottom line, from an honest commercial development perspective, it's kinda hard to think of IE as "non-standard".

Yes, IE is the de-facto "standard" as far as what people use to browse the web. This does not mean that it adheres to standards such as those created by the W3C. I am not suggesting that it is possible as a web developer to create web applications that are strictly standards-compliant and do not work in IE. Obviously if 85% (or something like that) of people use IE then web sites I build need to work in IE.

Re:Web Developers

[Himring]

This is in answer to random posts I've read throughout this thread. I usually get enough and have to rant:

The fact of the matter is that windows will continue to lug along and the computer still works albeit like a sedan going through a mudbog. People don't get serious about "fixing" a computer -- or having it fixed -- until it simply doesn't work anymore. They'll keep closing the popups and dealing with the idiocy as long as they can eventually go where they want to go today.

Most people, also, have no clue what a web browser even is or that they're using it. They call that icon "the internet" and they click on it to go here and there. IE vs FF? Come on. These threads contain post after post of "people will begin to realize and then they'll...." Blah, blah. No they won't. Why? Because people are stupid.

Also, I doubt FF or any browser will come close to 50%, heck, even 25% as long as windows is THE OS and comes with THE Browser.

Businesses using FF? Big business? Not hardly. At my place -- we have 30k employees at 400 sites across the country with a corporate office and half a dozen divisions -- all our "intranet" apps have been written with IE in mind. We got too much other stuff going on -- considered "real stuff" -- to put any amount of time into coding stuff to be FF friendly. Team Services, and any other MS-based thing that companies run, only plays well with IE. You can try FF (heck I do), but forget it. Something eventually doesn't play right and so you go to IE. I basically use FF for all public browsing but when time to look at something at work I fire up IE. And if I made a serious effort, again, to promote FF it'll cost me politically.

I have presented FF as part of a computer security plan, but it'll never go beyond a memo.

Stop thinking from the aspect of your experience, your one computer, your view of things and realize that there's a great, wide world out there full of dumb people. They don't know their dumb.... /rant

Re:Web Developers

[Malizar]

Stop thinking from the aspect of your experience, your one computer, your view of things and realize that there's a great, wide world out there full of dumb people. They don't know their dumb.... /rant

Ah, so it is far better for business to spend days or weeks down patching the latest bug to exploit IE, than to spend a little time developing in a reasonable manner. My fault, assumed business was to make money, guess why our businesses are failing and the overseas markets are taking over, politics have no place in business.

Re:Web Developers

[slashdotnickname]

On all web development projects I've ever worked on, whether we liked it or not, it had to function flawlessly in IE. That doesn't mean by any rate that IE was a standard. ... I code to W3C standards, then make it work in IE, because there's simply no fscking standard describing how IE works.

That sounds good if you're working on a school project, but real-life projects have a notorious tendency of being late and over-budget. So I'd love to see you tell a manager that... A) you're first going to code a site so it's broken on the majority of clients, then B) you'll go back to patch it at a later point in the development cycle.

You'll inevitably be asked why you didn't code it to work with most of the clients to begin with, thereby saving development/testing time. Remember, this is a manager you're dealing with so their thought emphasis is not on code "correctness" but on meeting schedules and budgets, which sometimes is a flaw in itself. Your reply that the site will comply with standards will not impress them, given the fact that most clients don't fully comply with those standards.

Meanwhile, Jim, who codes quick and dirty will out-produce you. This will impress managers that don't know (or care about) the difference between your code and Jim's. Watching work that you deem as crap get praised (while your own ideas are passed over) will then make you disillusioned with the corporate world. Finally, one rainy day, police will be gathered at your home and some detective will lift a note up from a chalk-lined body. In that note will be your professed hate for Microsoft, followed by a Shinning-like repetition of WC3, WC3, WC3, WC3, WC3...

Re:Web Developers

[Anonymous Coward]

My friend is using the following, simple CSS sheet for his page. It doesn't render right in IE. The bar at the top is supposed to be centered and stretch almost the whole the width of the page, and IE doesn't render it that way. IE also spaces things slightly differently. Opera and Firefox work perfectly. Why? Is IE so broken that it can't handle this simpleness without some crappy hack solution?

body { margin: 0pt; padding-left: 0pt; padding-right: 0pt; }

#header {position: absolute; top: 0px; ; left: 10px; right: 10px; background-color: FFFF00; padding: 10px;}

#left {background-color: B22222; position:absolute; left:10px; top:95px; width: 125px; }

#center {; background-color:800000; margin-left: 145px; margin-right:10px; margin-top:95px;}

A:link { text-decoration: none; color:#F0F8FF; }
A:visited { text-decoration: none; color:#0000FF; }
A:hover { text-decoration: none; color:#BCEE68; }
body{ background-color:FFE4C4; }

Re:Web Developers

[wolf31o2]

politics have no place in business

This is absolutely wrong. Politics are vital in most business. In fact, it is politics that keeps people from building sites that are friendly to non-IE browsers. Management wants something done fast more than they want something done right. Besides, corporations are so hell-bent on the short-term that they can't see far enough into the future to realize when they're screwing themselves. Who cares if we'll save $100,000 in labor costs over the next year if we can save $20,000 on next quarter's bottom line? Sadly, this is the short-sightedness prevalent in most companies. The worst thing is that the guy that makes this "brilliant" choice for the company will probably be promoted, and allowed to make even more "brilliant" choices in the future.

Re:Web Developers

[Pr3d4t0r]

I appreciate the offer, but I don't design professionally, it's just a problem on my personal site so don't go out of your way. My solution: Deisgn so that it looks nice (such that it is) on a decent browser and but just ok on IE. If it bothers people enough they'll either switch to Firefox or stop coming to my site.

All that being said if you want to post your solution just for instructive purposes that would be great.

Re:Web Developers

[Azghoul]

I'm sorry you work in such a shitty corporate environment.

We find that it takes us much less time to code something correctly, the first time, then hack in IE-only fixes as needed. This as opposed to doing some garbage work "quick and dirty" - because you know 6 months down the road you'll have to to go back and tear into spaghetti because a requirement has changed.

If your managers don't understand that "quick and dirty" now equals "more expensive" in the long run, I feel sorry for you.

Re:Web Developers

[lidocaineus]

Which caused the come of IE7

Disturbing image.

Re:Web Developers

[Dan Farina]

Seriously; the point that there "is no published standard" for IE's quirks is a good one. It's like trying to plan around a mine field. You may try to guess, and you may know where a few of the mines are, but to plan your architecture around avoiding specific mines is insane. You'd be better off just making sure your design is simple and robust enough to take the occassional mine explosion or light enough not to trigger them.

Re:Web Developers

[lemkebeth]

An Anonymous Coward wrote:

If (when?) HP or Dell or Apple start preloading Firefox, it'll grow by even more.

Why would Apple bundle Firefox when they bundle their own browser?

As for HP or Dell it depends on their relationship with MS.

Re:Web Developers

[Minna Kirai]

The microsoft 99% dominance on the browser market is broken,

Not quite. IE is unseated, but Windows is not. The browser itself becomes free, but the client-side OS isn't safe yet. Increasingly, websites are relying on Windows x86 binary plugins (or sometimes ActiveX) for important parts of their content, and equivalents for other OSes and CPUs aren't necessarily extant functional.

Firefox will need this help

[bogaboga]

The help will be in this form:

That some major government mandates the default installation of a browser that meets W3C standards to some debatable extent, (say 90%), on all computer systems purchased. Within this restriction, vendors would be required to meet some standards on a 100% basis. With OpenDocument, Massachusetts has done its part. Now, they should extend this to browsers.

If that happens, Firefox will take off.

Re:Firefox will need this help

[Anonymous Coward]

Um.. No. No one has business telling me what browsers get put on the computers I sell or buy.

Portable Firefox

[kidtux1]

Even though firefox is said now not to be more secure and things of that nature because it is open source it has and will become better faster. I use my flash drive to carry around a copy of portable firefox with me where ever I go so I always have my prefrences, extensions and bookmarks. I wouldn't give it up for the world. This is only possible because they have made it open source. =) -- http://www.kunae.blogspot.com/

Doy

[Apreche]

Of course the momentum has slowed. Everyone who is smart enough to switch to Firefox already has. And some people are using Opera, konqueror, safar, epihany, etc. where applicable. There wont be firefox growth again until someone finds a way to push all the stupid IE users. If you find that way, you will become very rich.

Why change browsers?

[green pizza]

I have recommended Firefox to all of my coworkers, friends, and family over the past year. So far I have not personally heard of anyone who has fully switched to Firefox ever switch back to MSIE.

That said, I do know of MANY people who have zero interest in even trying Firefox. They don't care about tabbed browsing, they already know the ins and outs of MSIE. Generally these aren't the people who actually have to remove their spyware and virii, so they don't fully understand security issues and associated pains.

I think it boils down to this: Most geeks like Firefox and have already switched. Joe Sixpack and Ted the PHB have in interest in learning how to use a new browser, or even learn how to click on a different icon.

(And then there's the camp of newbies that think "the internet" is built into their "computer" and is only accessed by clicking on the magical blue e)

Re:Why change browsers?

[kiveol]

I think it boils down to this: Most geeks like Firefox and have already switched. Joe Sixpack and Ted the PHB have in interest in learning how to use a new browser, or even learn how to click on a different icon.

So how about an IE Skin and an icon change?

Re:Why change browsers?

[green pizza]

So how about an IE Skin and an icon change?

Smells like a lawsuit. Microsoft will claim that someone is trying to harm their spitshined MSIE image by making a "shoddy clone" of it.

Re:Why change browsers?

[UtucXul]

they already know the ins and outs of MSIE

One minor correction to that. At least based on my experience, the people who don't want to change because they "know the ins and outs of MSIE" actually know no such thing. They are just stuck on something and too lazy/stuburn to learn new things. Web browsers aren't like a lot of other software. Most people do a very very small number of simple things with it and could probably do those same things with almost any browser. The forward and back buttons work the same on pretty much everything. Same goes for clicking on links. And that covers a lot of people (with some bookmarks thrown in maybe). They just do not like even having the chance of learning something new.

That being said, I do know Windows users who have completely switched to firefox over IE (my parents have done it on my advice for example). So not everyone is as bad as I make it sound above. (And to be totally fair, I still use pine for my email, so I'm not always at the front of the curve for picking up new programs either).

Re:Why change browsers?

[green pizza]

And to be totally fair, I still use pine for my email

Whoa, I'm not the only one!

I've been using Pine since about 1993 when my sysadm removed elm from the machine. I still haven't even tried Mutt yet.

I have monkeyed with NeXTmail and Claris Em@iler, but I'm mainly a pine dude.

Re:Why change browsers?

[CarbonPath]

Don't forget the sheep factor. Everybody wants what everyone else has (ipod, anyone?). Modern people don't have time to research, especially technology. I try to talk people into switching to FF when I fix their boxes, but I often get the fear response.... The numbers just show that the experimenters, early adopters and product researching types have made their choice. The numbers will change once FF and the others get the "cool for everybody" flag.

Re:Why change browsers?

[angrykeyboarder]

My sentiments exactly. The majority of users aren't geeks (nor have they ever heard of /.). They are generally perfectly content with the defaults on thier computer.

Heck part of the reason they'd never switch to Firefox is because they would actually have to install software.

Re:Why change browsers?

[size1one]

Its also a comfort thing. People know that "the magical blue e" will give them the web. They know that windows means they will have things to click on. I recently removed IE completely from my windows machine. When my fiancee went to use it she complained that she couldnt get on the internet despite the firefox logo that was now in the same place the E once was. I explained that she could use firefox but she still went in search of the E every time till she realized it was gone for good.

It was the same thing when I built the spare computer into an ubuntu box. kubuntu? Hoary hedgehog? she just looked at me like i was straight off the funny farm. For the simple things she does (web browsing, aim, word processing, etc) it is not any harder than windows it just looks different.

unfortunatly most people are just unwilling to try something new when they already have a solution that works enough for thier needs.

Re:Why change browsers?

[greg_barton]

Well, most of us are the geeks in our family/friend circle, and thus end up helping people with their computer woes. Why change? Just say, "I won't help you unless you use Firefox." That's usually a good motivator.

Re:Why change browsers?

[dos_dude]

Let's forget about that blue-e camp for a moment.

Whenever Firefox is mentioned here on Slashdot and elsewhere, it won't take long until somebody says something about security issues and gaping holes in IE.

While this is true, I doubt that it will ever make people switch.

Tell those people that using Firefox is more fun. That IE treats its users like shit and that alternative browsers (including Opera) are much more fun to work and play with.

Just shutup about the security issues. If people, given their level of expertise, took those seriously, they would have to disconnect. Now.

Re:Why change browsers?

[real_smiff]

mod this baby right up. to most people "security" is about locking physical doors and such.. mention it in relation to computers and they just say things like "theres nothing interesting on my computer anyway". don't even go there - unless the person has already expressed concerns with security. "FUN", put in the right, non-condescending way could work. show them some themes and maybe (simple) extensions and now you're talking. just resist the temptation to get into any underlying tech reasons why FF is better/IE sucks, unless they ask.

Re:Why change browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see this as an either/or argument. I have no choice at work but to use MSIE (AFAIK). But at home, I do use Firefox for reading news and much of my general web browsing. I have not stopped using MSIE even at home because I use it for secure sites (like my bank) or to watch videos where I have had problems in Firefox. (I did just d/l the latest version of Ff, so I'll try it again on the "problem" sites.) But I do still use both browsers. I use Firefox because I really like having 7 tabs as my home page, especially with my cable internet connection at home and I'm also not the biggest Micro$oft fan in the world.

Generally, if it doesn't work in Ff, it does in MSIE. And that's how I browse at home. Perhaps I have not played enough with Ff to "fix" the problems I'm having, but I don't have to "fix" much when using MSIE.

Re:Why change browsers?

[binary paladin]

That's pretty much what I do. "Okay, here's how it works. I just did a clean install of Windows on your machine. All the spyware is gone. All the viruses are gone. The thing has all the newest drivers and is fully updated. The first rule of Fight Club is you do not use IE. The second rule of Fight Club is you DO NOT use IE. "Here's Firefox. I've installed Java and Flash for it. You will use this browser. If you return to using IE and there are more problems, plan on paying me to fix your computer next time it breaks. I won't do it for free again." It works every time. I also delete all IE shortcuts. For the kind of people I generally deal with, that's enough. Even people that aren't friends, I let them know that return calls will be more expensive if they use IE. I hate dealing with this kind of crap. At least most people seem to use webmail these days. It sure does beat having to also replace Outlook Express.

Re:Why change browsers?

[owlstead]

Aunt: My computer is broke.
Me: Yes, you got IE/Outlook related spyware and viri.
Aunt: So what's to do?
Me: I'll help you reinstall, put a safer browser on it, and give you a gmail acount.
Aunt: OK.

Good thing about infected computers is is that they stop working as they used to after a while. My tech savy friends still use IE, but they never get infected and don't care. The ones that do get infected are much more likely to switch. They don't know the ins and outs anyway, and frankly, some would not even notice (except for the print icon that is suspiciously missing by default).

Re:Why change browsers?

[FreshFunk510]

I've recommended some friends/family to switch over to FireFox. The people who don't are usually those that either 1) love Microsoft with a passion and wouldnt' use anything otherwise or 2) too lazy to try something new. Typical the group in 2) are also people who still use Hotmail (wtf?!). But you can't blame people for sticking with something they know.. no matter how horrible it is. :\

Re:Why change browsers?

[CargoCultCoder]

I do know of MANY people who have zero interest in even trying Firefox. They don't care about tabbed browsing, they already know the ins and outs of MSIE.

They already use Opera.

Re:Why change browsers?

[lidocaineus]

I still use pine for my email

Newb!! The pine power users all switched to mutt. You're using the IE of the email world! :-P

Re:Why change browsers?

[geneticmemory]

I run windows 2000 on a five-year-old computer, and firefox takes like three times longer to load than IE does. I switched back.

Re:Why change browsers?

[Anonymous Coward]

(And then there's the camp of newbies that think "the internet" is built into their "computer" and is only accessed by clicking on the magical blue e)

That's when you go into their system's and change the IE link to FF and proceed to tell JSP and Mr. PHB that this is the is the new version of IE :)

Re:Why change browsers?

[poofyhairguy82]

I run windows 2000 on a five-year-old computer, and firefox takes like three times longer to load than IE does. I switched back.

I love my Firefox, but you sound like a prime candidate for Opera.

Re:Why change browsers?

[Niggle]

An alternative method...
Install FF for them and make sure you include the adblock (with a good set of rules) and flaskblock extensions. Show them how much faster some of their favourite sites now load.

Re:Why change browsers?

[letdinosaursdie]

Joe Sixpacks and PHBs will die eventually, and they'll be replaced by an ever-growing percentage of technically savvy youth. As ignorance of technology wanes, so too does Microsoft. They rely on consumer ignorance, like all of the intellectual "property" cartels... you'll see.

Plataeu is not a bad thing

[MyDixieWrecked]

I mean...

the number of web users is still growing rather rapidly. Even if their marketshare stays steady for many months, especially this time of year (I'll get to that in a sec), it still means that their userbase is growing.

This time of year, school is starting. people are getting new computers or their first computers for themselves (finally, a computer that's not shared by the family!). There's a distinct spike in computer purchases around now. Firefox's 1% gain this month is a very good thing. it means that even though their marketshare growth is remaining constant, they're making up for it in volume.

also, does their marketshare count only for windows installations? or does it count for all platforms? I mean, I know a bunch of mac users who , for some reason (usually because they're coming from windows), prefer firefox over safari.

personally, I use firefox for testing on the mac. but that's about it. I still think safari is leaps and bounds ahead in terms of just the usability factor. firefox just feels like a windows app. Camino's ok, but feels a bit strange sometimes.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[ninja_assault_kitten]

We're talking about percentages...it doesn't matter if you have more or less web users...10, or 10,000,000, 7% is still 7%.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[middlemen]

Has the survey taken into account the fact that the number of people using the internet is increasing day-by-day ?
Another thing that I have seen is, that in a company for which I am a consultant, they have blocked all kinds of downloads or email websites etc. So, even if I as a user want to use Firefox everyday, I still have to make use of IE. And now multiply this with 1000 people in the company, and then multiply this with 100s of companies who do this.
So the survey is not accurate or even close to accurate.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[anaesthetica]

Try OmniWeb. It's based on Safari, only the user experience is far far better.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[MyDixieWrecked]

if you've got 7% of 10,000 users and the userbase grows to 10,000,000 and you're marketshare grows to 8%, that's still a tremendous gain.

talking strictly a 1% marketshare increase doesn't take into account the 100,000% increase in users during the same period (using my example above).

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[Aim Here]

The trouble is, the people who aren't on the internet yet are likely to be complete newbies who are the people least likely to download and install and use firefox, so that's not really good news.

On the other hand, the IE monopoly might be offset by projects like the cheap linux PCs being dished out by the Brazilian government which will hopefully put non-IE using n00bs on the net for the first time.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[Blakey Rat]

If Firefox supported the OS X spell checker, I'd have no reason to use Safari... both browsers are good, but the spell checker is the deal-maker for me.

(Unfortunately, Safari doesn't support the rich text entry fields used by Blogger.com and some other site... so you get a choice between editing rich text easily, or having a spell checker. Crappy choice.)

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[MyDixieWrecked]

yeah, the main reason I don't use firefox normally is that the cross-platform consistency causes you to lose some platform-specific features.

some of those features really don't matter (like, who really cares if the buttons or scrollbars use the OS's decor or whatever)... but what about editfield behavior (ie- spell checking and text drag/drop)?

of the problematicness in firefox, my main peev is that the tabs don't have exclusive closebuttons like safari does. I understand you can rightclick and say "close tab" but I wanna click the tab to close it in one shot.

does Camino support rich text in input fields? I don't know of any sites that use it, so I can't test it out, myself.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[ninja_assault_kitten]

Sure, but the point is that Firefox growth is slowing... not that their userbase is increasing. If the percentages remain the same it's likely that IEs userbase increased to 100,000% as well. Also, when you consider the type of users which make up the vast majority of Firefox supports (not just those who installed it once but those who use it), I think you'd find that they aren't *new* web users. It's safe to say that at this stage in the game, new web users are probably not savy enough to prioritize browser security high enough to find and use an alternative web browser.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[backspaces]

I've bounced from Safari to Firefox, but then with the Tiger Safari fixing several problems, I've bounced back. (For sure, like most, I use both 'cause some web sites are still browser-picky).

The switch to FF was due to wierdness in Safari's UI (search popup vs search bar, menu bar buttons vs menu behavior) and performance (large number of favicons apparently slowed menus way down, page rendering faster in FF)

But eventually, once Safari fixed some of the above, the UI/desktop integration brought me back to Safari. Full-size window button is smart in Safari: goes to just wide enough. Bookmark search and editing better in Safari. Weirdnesses with which app a download should use. New PDF in browser window. EMacs key bindings. (Yes, there is a fix in FF for that but ...) Way better form fill-in. And tens of tiny UI incompatibilities which started to drive me over the edge.

So back to Safari, using FF when needed.

My hope is that FF eventually gains enough Mac integration and I again switch back to FF. I really do like it a bunch.

Re:Plataeu is not a bad thing

[MyDixieWrecked]

you're defining growth as an increase in marketshare.

I'm defining growth as rate of increase of new users.

my point is that even if their marketshare growth slows, it doesn't mean that their growth is necessarily slowing. this month's lower marketshare growth percentage could be affected by the sharp increase in (detected) web surfers this time of year.

it's possible to have the rate of new users (growth) increase relative to the past month(s), yet have their marketshare growth appear to decrease relative to the past month(s).

There can be only one

[Dogtanian]

Firefox is the biggest piece of shit I've ever used. I hope all users of it die !

That's quite probable; Firefox is a nice browser, but I don't recall seeing "confers immortality on all who use it" as a listed feature (unlike Internet Explorer, obviously).

Perhaps they'll add that in the next release. Then we'll see who's laughing.... forever!!! Muwahahahahahah!

Re:There can be only one

[xtracto]

Perhaps they'll add that in the next release.

Haven't you seen it? it is an already issued bug

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=31046 3

Could it be..?

[Splork2]

Could it be that IE is part of the OS and therefore people tend to use what is there or more importantly what they're used too? Case in point. I've been trying to get my wife to switch to Firefox for over a year now. I've removed all the icons on her desktop, start menu, etc., but yet everytime she turns on her laptop and jumps on the net she finds her way to IE. I guess you can't teach and old dog new tricks.

Firefox Slowing...

[TorontoImporter]

In response to the Firefox slowing I think that although the percentage increase is slowing there will still be growth to around 20 percent. It is important that we keep "Browsers" which are becoming increasing important, as transparent as possible. This is why I'm a believer in Firefox ever since my brother "converted" me. I make a very strong effort to get my friends to use Firefox. I have even converted my Indian business partner to use it. All you really need to do is show someone how to work "Tabs". After this they have a reason to use it instead of IE... other than hating Microsoft. I think it's important that people recommend Firefox as I believe Microsoft's interests to be extremely controlling and Pro-Microsoft(which is to be expected). The data mining out there is getting out of control so the least we can do is keep it as transparent as possible.

Switching to Firefox

[Netssansfrontieres]

Good point ... and an indication of how far a product can go against the awesome marketing might of MSFT without a big counter marketing campaign and the budget that implies.
Or, at least, how far one can go in the first phase of deployment. Phase 1: early adopters/self-described cognoscenti/MSFT-haters. Phase 2: what? Is there enough viral momentum to double the installed base?

Stats match reality

[Anonymous Coward]

Those numbers match what our (middle-sized financial) company has seen almost exactly. Several months ago Firefox users had reached maybe 6.5-7.0%; now they've grown to maybe 7.5-8.0%, but that's it. Netscape usage has gone up a bit in six months; Opera usage has not.

Numbers?

[ValourX]

I doubt these numbers. The Jem Report gets about 3k visitors per day, and no more than 25% of them are using a version of IE. Mozilla-based browsers are almost twice that number.

Looking at two other sites I have that have much less traffic, IE's numbers are around 20% or less. Two months ago it was the opposite -- IE was around 50% of TJR's traffic, and certainly more than 20% on the other sites. Something big happened in the past two or three months that drastically changed browser numbers. I think WebSideStory's data is old or just plain inaccurate.

Re:Numbers?

[Xepherys2]

That's sort of a ridiculous way to look at it. I'd imagine that even less users on /. are hitting it with IE. But that is not even national marketshare, little well global. Most website hits take place during business hours and are B2B, people surfing or people checking banking info, buying plane tix, and so on. The majority of businesses still run IE as their browser of choice (or in some cases browser of force).

Re:Numbers?

[utexaspunk]

I doubt the people who visit your page, which appears to be oriented toward the OSS/Linux/Geek community, are a representative sample of the entire web. They're exactly the kind of people who wouldn't be using IE, either because they're using Linux or a Mac, or because they're Windows 'power users'. Methinks WebSideStory's data is a lot more likely to reflect the mainstream web viewership.

Re:Numbers?

[ValourX]

Yeah, but how do you know that WebSideStory's numbers aren't taken from sites that attract mostly Windows-only users? For all we know, some of the sites that they monitor could exclude all non-IE browsers.

Where there's smoke, there's mirrors. To believe any numbers, I need to know all the details of the data collection, including and especially demographics, site requirements, and the target readership of the monitored sites.

From what I see from WebSideStory's website, they are online marketers. They appear to sell software that monitors traffic. So if you are not a WebSideStory customer, your data is not counted. This seems to be the software they got the data from, and there is no mention of what web servers are supported. What if it only runs on IIS? That would exclude a HUGE number of Mozilla-based browsers, because Apache sites wouldn't be able to report anything.

Re:Numbers?

[ValourX]

oops -- the link didn't take, for some reason. This is their browser/OS data collection program:

http://www.websidestory.com/products/web-analytics /datainsights/statmarket/overview.html

Re:Numbers?

[utexaspunk]

Yeah, but how do you know that WebSideStory's numbers aren't taken from sites that attract mostly Windows-only users? For all we know, some of the sites that they monitor could exclude all non-IE browsers.

That seems highly unlikely, given that many of WSS's customers are large global corporations that have big, professionally-created websites- Disney, Best Buy, Fox News, Bank of America, Freddie Mac- a wide range of clients in a variety of sectors. Surely some of their sites exclude non-IE browsers, but they are unlikely to make a significant difference in WSS's numbers.

But my point was not that WebSideStory's numbers are accurate, although by the fact that it is their business to know this kind of stuff and they seem to have been around a while I tend to believe them, but merely that the visitors to your site are not likely to be anywhere near a representative sample of the internet at large. There's lots of info out there that seems to corroborate WSS's numbers. Your little window on the world is nowhere near the big picture that WSS is seeing.

Google used to list this stuff in their zeitgeist, but they seem to have stopped that. Too bad...

who is WebSideStory?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've been in the business for some time but have never heard of "WebSideStory". Without a statistically large enough sample base (>500 sites, >10,000 hits each) you can't make statements like they do. To my knowledge and based on our data the marketshare of Firefox continues to slowly increase.

You are correct, sir

[green pizza]

The sad thing is, you're spot on. Desipite the huge number of computer users these days, the computer world enjoys more of a monoculture now than ever before. People use software because it is "THE software to use" not because they've tried a few options and picked the one that best fit.

MOD PARENT OFFTOPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm thinking of adding an extension to Firefox that removes fake signatures containing misleading links to ads, such as the one you copy and paste on the end of every post you make. It's a form of spam. What do you think?

Oh...

[Frac]

Wait. Does that mean we're not taking back the web? Can my hand let go now?

Just like Bukkake, the novelty wore off

[kianu7]

FireFox was all the rage when it first came out. But, like Bukkake, the novelty just wore off.

Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[khasim]

Firefox was supposed to be more secure than IE. But exploits for both browsers are close in numbers

But because FireFox is not "integrated" with the OS, the vulnerabilities aren't as severe as those found in IE.

Finding 1,000 different "vulnerabilities" that cause the app to crash does not equal 1 vulnerability that gives remote admin access to the machine.

And that story only shows FireFox's adoption rate to be slowing. You can interpret that any way you want to. But if your interpretation is correct, then why is Microsoft introducing FireFox-like features in the next release of IE?

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[Praxx]

But because FireFox is not "integrated" with the OS, the vulnerabilities aren't as severe as those found in IE.

Finding 1,000 different "vulnerabilities" that cause the app to crash does not equal 1 vulnerability that gives remote admin access to the machine.

What difference does it make on a Windows machine? 99% of Windows users are running as "root" anyway - give me a vulnerability in FireFox, and I will get "remote admin access".

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[dioscaido]

Sigh... IE isn't integrated into the OS.

It runs just like any other user level process and is restricted as such. You have the same rights to the system running Firefox as you do IE. The real problem is that IE was too trigger happy at installing active-x and other ridiculous security flaws. The same effect as if Open Office suddenly decided to install random extensions from the web. With SP2 things are significantly better. It remains to be seen what we get w/ IE7.

Confusion might lie in the fact that IE is also available as a library so that you can have web browsing through in your own application. But it is still subject to the same security restrictions of the parent process.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Finding 1,000 different "vulnerabilities" that cause the app to crash does not equal 1 vulnerability that gives remote admin access to the machine.

A vulnerability in IE will only grant admin access if the local user was running it as an administrator. (which happens a lot, but the same can be said for Firefox)

The extent of the integration is that its components are in dlls that can be reused by other programs. There are no elevated priveleges and it does not run in kernel space.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

Why is Microsoft introducing FireFox-like features in the next release of IE?

What next release? Oh, you mean you fell for that old trick.

Whenever MS feels threatened they immediately announce a new product with all the features of the threatening product, only better. Please don't confuse MS product announcements with reality--present or future.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Firefox is not secure uninstall it.

If Internet Explorer is not secure uninstall... oh wait.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

>But because FireFox is not "integrated" with the OS, the vulnerabilities aren't as severe as those found in IE.

This has nothing to do with the severity of the vulnerability. The severity comes with the permissions level, to the system, that the user has. All software runs within this context, including the explorer shell and some other stuff, which is the common code you are talking about.

If you run as root(administrator) on any box, that box is vulnerable to anything the browser wants to do, firefox or not. Since most windows users run as administrator, either browser could potentially do a great deal of damage. Sometimes even not running as administrator will help if someone exploits a buffer overflow to run code as the superuser. This could happen in firefox or IE.

Firefox's real strength is the open nature of the source code. Any researcher in the world can probe that code at a level that's simply not possible with IE, and they do. They find more vulnerabilities for this reason. IE depends on security through obscurity, so not as much stuff is found. That doesn't mean it's not a sieve, but nobody but microsoft really knows. The researchers have to work a lot harder to find stuff.

The fact that the bugs are close in number, indicates to me that this is just the tip of the iceburg for IE, since the bugs are a lot harder to spot and mozilla is an open book.

l8,
AC

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[Anonymous Coward]

The confusions lies in testimony given by Bill Gates under oath. You want to call Mr. Gates a liar, go right on ahead as I am sure you know more about IE than he does.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[justsomebody]

Really? Do you talk about software that interfaces the engine or engine. Software part is running in user mode, while its engine starts during services. Whole Windows VFS is based on Explorer modules. HTTP modules loaded for IE are nothing but extensions to VFS.

real problem is that IE was too trigger happy at installing active-x and other ridiculous security flaws.

Here is a proof that your comment is flawed. If IE would really work as you say, it wouldn't have the privilege to do so.

Another example of the same nature.

Go to safe mode as Administrator. Try to get in any other users home directory, clearly security prevents you doing that. That's what I call a good security:) Well, NOT!!! Now put Knoppix and mount NTFS drive. Go to the same directory. How can Knoppix do that? Well, as most of MS security it is click prevented not prevented in the lower system layer. If you can avoid clicking trough the MS GUI interface or avoid MS API calls in libraries you can get past the security measures anytime (this clearly does not mean everything, but a lot of security settings in Windows is click or API based and not even connected to kernel).

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[dioscaido]

real problem is that IE was too trigger happy at installing active-x and other ridiculous security flaws.

Here is a proof that your comment is flawed. If IE would really work as you say, it wouldn't have the privilege to do so.

Log in as non-administrator, IE will not be able to install active-x, or otherwise affect system files. IE does not automatically have the priviledges to modify the system. The problem is that everyone runs as root, so even when you run notepad you have access to the whole system. This is a different issue altogether.

Go to safe mode as Administrator. Try to get in any other users home directory, clearly security prevents you doing that. That's what I call a good security:) Well, NOT!!! Now put Knoppix ...

I'm not sure what your point is here... I can do the same in reverse. Boot into linux and setup all the directory protections I want for my user directories. Then, boot into windows, mount the drive w/ apps that recognize ext2/ext3/reiser/etc... and bingo, I can read all the files!

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[justsomebody]

Log in as non-administrator, IE will not be able to install active-x, or otherwise affect system files. IE does not automatically have the priviledges to modify the system. The problem is that everyone runs as root, so even when you run notepad you have access to the whole system. This is a different issue altogether.

C'mon, I come from a linux world, where running as root is a scrutiny and I think that there exists even death penalty for that in some countries.

All my users that use XP are non-administrators (and they don't know administrator password either). My only job is constant cleanup of spyware and viruses (if you support advertising agency it can't be avoided, there's just too much mail usage), funny thing, some spyware installs it self even under Administrator (which is never logged, but registry result shows so).

It is true that problems are not so frequent as they were (to my missfortune first 3 machines had to have administrator login, at least until I haven't won my fight with some software company to get some changes done and after that format and reinstall), but still far from not existant. 3 machines are still used by same users as they were as administrator. It took 3 (and another 3 so they implemented it) months arguing from my side to get some software changes done to be able to run as common user.

I'm not sure what your point is here... I can do the same in reverse. Boot into linux and setup all the directory protections I want for my user directories. Then, boot into windows, mount the drive w/ apps that recognize ext2/ext3/reiser/etc... and bingo, I can read all the files!

Maybe my bad for badly pointing it out.
Not the same. root under linux can do that anyway. On Windows you can't. What I tried to describe is example of point-click case of false security feeling. Something looking secure more than really is while having huge gaps from non-visible sides. And that is far from being lonely case. This with home folders is not a bug if you ask me, but same problem with IE installing everything (even though it is secured as possible) using gaps like that is unacceptable.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[ezweave]

You are not familiar with the capabilites of IE through things like ActiveX controls. It is not part of the OS, perse, but with Active X I can wreak havoc on your OS. I can get hooks back into your OS... that is not so easy to do in another browser.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[NetCynicism]

FireFox is not "integrated" with the OS

Ie isn't integrated into the OS. What it is, which is important, is "integrated" with Group Policy. I work for a large company that aggressively deploys Open Source. But my Desktop Engineering department is not (yet) ready to deploy Linux because we have far too many customized Windows apps. And they won't deploy Firefox on Windows because it can't be hotfixed by group policy in ways that are transparent to the user - it has to be either completely re-pushed with each new version, or the users have to be given the ability to update their own with untested patches and risk breaking something else by doing so. Not to mention that the fact that some things our users need access to are IE - only means doubling the workload for keeping up with security vulnerabilities and such.

In the real world, huge barriers to adoption are created by problems like these. And if they don't see it at work, many non-techie people won't think of deploying it at home.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[dioscaido]

All my users that use XP are non-administrators (and they don't know administrator password either). My only job is constant cleanup of spyware and viruses (if you support advertising agency it can't be avoided, there's just too much mail usage), funny thing, some spyware installs it self even under Administrator (which is never logged, but registry result shows so).

If you are a limited user, spyware *cannot* install itself under other user accounts or affect any system files (i.e. - c:\windows, c:\program files, registry hkey_local_machine). It can muck up your user settings, since the user has access to it, but that's about it. Unless you want to point me to this spyware you came across, which would have to be using a previously unknown elevation of priviledge vulnerability.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[justsomebody]

If you are a limited user, spyware *cannot* install itself under other user accounts or affect any system files

Would be nice...

Well, spyware I have to clean from the system doesn't think so. And I know for a fact that only limited users are logged on.

You can try to say anything, reality speaks for it self and I doubt you could proove otherwise by telling "How it should be"

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[dioscaido]

Please provide me w/ the name of the spyware you are cleaning off of these limited user desktops. Otherwise, I can assume you don't know what you are talking about.

P.S. - Power User != Limited User

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[justsomebody]

I mostly use Ad-Aware, Microsoft Windows AntiSpyware and SpyBotS&D. In some drastic cases few others.

P.S. - Power User != Limited User

As I said all users are part of group Users (and only that one). Where did you get intention that I would use Power Users?

I can assume you don't know what you are talking about.

Now, this sounds insulting:) My other part (besides desktop >> win,osx an linux) of the job is server administration. That would be about 50 linux servers and 1 Windows server (had to install that one on windows because of proprietary software that runs on it MSSQL).

Most of the servers have all services either completely built (and all are managed on my own personal scripts) or even coded from me. Now coding for 17 years, out of this last 5 years I develop heavy duty C/S services.

If you go trough my post history you can see that I'm cynical to complete computing industry and not windows only (but OSX is the most hated for the problems it causes, when it causes tham. There are few of them but repairing them is a complete bitch). I don't care which and where, but if there is a bug I can't stand not to start bitchin' (You get completely different point of view when you code heavy duty 365/24). Otherwise to admit, personally I don't use Windows on my personal desktops, except on 2 where I first test things before I start using them (that includes my software as all other like spyware, antivirus, etc...)

Do you still assume???

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[justsomebody]

btw. forgot to ask you now for the 3rd time:) You're MS guy as it seems.

Are you anyway involved in .NET?

To be honest first, I tested app compiled on Mono not .NET on Windows (but tested it on both). (however as I talked to some people MS.NET is not anything better in this)

If you are, one answer would've been appreciated. Is there any way to avoid sloppy memory handling and get instant free of some desired objects? As I tested GC works fine, but when OS is overloaded all the memory freeing seems to regress to almost 0 (as it would like to optimize performance for the job, which is probably good in some cases, but not in mine). All I got was memory consumption until even swap was overtaken, after that everything went to a crawl and that is a problem because I need constant performance. This was the one and only reason that I dropped C# for current project.

Now I just hope that you won't say again that it is impossible, well... you can say that I don't know what I'm doing. I was more or less exploring .NET for the first time.

btw. (on previous topic) checked on few computers (the only problem is that they use 99% ffox and IE for some sites only, before we agreed on this it was a real hell for me) and found only local MRUs created by Alexa. on both admin and administrator(SM) (not even one logged between the last clean check and now) filed under home dir, but I don't really know if MRU is actualy a file that resides on that location or not. As I remember while I was coding strictly for Windows (it was long ago, since I moved to crossplatform, I had to leave system specific details), MRUs were registry based.. Hopefully I'll go to another company tommorow, that is if I will have the willpower to do my regular checkup.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[dioscaido]

I'm an indeed an MS guy, is it that obvious. :) I'm a developer on Windows Vista.

On .Net, I've only done a bit of it. You may find these msdn articles useful: mem optimization, auto mem manage 1 and auto mem manage 2. One thing that bit me in the ass was the use of Strings. In .Net you have to be careful how you work with them because .Net keeps strings around for re-use. So if you execute aString+="1" ten times (where aString starts as ""), it will allocate and keep around "1", "11", "111", "1111", "11111", "111111", etc... They will eventually be garbage collected, but in a high stress environment this can be real bad real quick. The trick is to use StringBuilder for string management, which will be very efficient with memory use.

As for the spyware issue, I would be legitimately interested in any spyware you find that bypasses user protection. If you are only a member of User, then the following resources will be blocked from modification: C:\windows, c:\program files, c:\documents and settings\(any user other than yourself that doesn't explicitly give you access), and registry entries in HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT, and HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE. So in this scenario spyware can litter your user's folders, and whatever other folders are on the drive that aren't ACL'd correctly, but with the correct ACLs you should be able to reboot into any other account and not be affected by the spyware (and cleaning is easy, just nuke the user account, and re-creat it). Spyware can set itself to auto-start for that particular user (since the registry is in HKEY_CURRENT_USER), but it cannot set itself to auto-start for any other user (since that registry is in HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE).

I'm very familiar with the internals of the platform, so at least in this case I can vouch for the robustness of the resource protection mechanisms in windows (ok, 2000, XP and SP2 at least). If you are seeing different behavior than what I describe, I would double check the security settings on folders. If someone came around and added 'Everyone Read/Write' to C:\windows, then yeah you could have issues.

Re:Counting vulnerabilities is stupid.

[justsomebody]

I'm an indeed an MS guy, is it that obvious. :) I'm a developer on Windows Vista.

Not that it is so obvious, but I always check history of the parent (before) I'm answering to know with whom I talk to. It is a double edge sword, either parent sees that he's been wrong or he prooves you wrong (upside of this is that you learn something new, or learn where your assumptions were wrong). As I said. I'm cynical, but I do not play favourites unless my personal desktop is involved (on my desktop linux is the boss, and basing on my history with windows or osx it is not gonna change. not that I'm a freak for freedom, but I somehow consider completely open much friendlier than closed, nice example is why I choose fpc over delphi or gcc over MS-VS (below)). Any other desktop than mine? It doesn't take a rocket scientist to know which OS would be best for some needs, it only takes enough willpower not to enforce your own preference (and it took quite a lot of work in my case). Which means I deploy WindowsXP and OSX without bad karma, and I will deploy Vista if needs will say so (again witout bad karma)

On .Net, I've only done a bit of it. You may find these msdn articles useful:

thanks for these, but...
mem optimization
Tried unmanaged memory handling and it bit me in the ass, mixing managed and unmanaged is not something one would like to try. Not that it doesn't work, but it is error prone. You have to constantly switch between two principles and you can be sure that code will be far from perfect.
auto mem manage 1 and auto mem manage 2
Covers
- Finalizing the object
Still happens when garbage collector says so.
- Direct GC control
This one was probably the best I tried. But having a lot (and I mean a lot) of small chunks causes garbage collector to be the biggest consumer of system resources.

As I was selecting tool for the current project, fpc was the best option to get the things I needed, It needed a lot of work on compiler (but most of my work went in inline preprocessor which fpc really lacks) to get the things I needed, but now everything is working like a charm. I have complete memory control and instant GC called by the object for the object (with a lot of other features I could only dream of in standard fpc, I even plan to put it out as free project someday when I find time. Now just doesn't seem right, because I could not afford my self to waste time on maintaing that project. It is maintained as my needs say so). This is the reason why I choose free tools over proprietary, if something doesn't work as I need I can tweak it. And by carefull tweaking your patch can be applied on any new version without change (or just few small ones). This is also the reason why I tried Mono over MS.NET as I said in my previous post (I only ended up once without further support and I hope it won't happen' anymore, at least with free and open I can maintain it for my self after the project is gone)

You might say I could use C++:) Yes I could but I find it a lot easier for maintaing small projects (for big??? well... compile speed is terrible in C++, code is not something really clear and readable as C# or pascal for example, etc...). And somehow aesthetics in C++ and my personal opinion have a lot of disagreements:) So every time I start using C++ I need a month or so to get around and fix my brains so they can think without aesthetics:)

One thing that bit me in the ass was the use of Strings. In .Net you have to be careful how you work with them because .Net keeps strings around for re-use. So if you execute aString+="1" ten times (where aString starts as ""), it will allocate and keep around "1", "11", "111", "1111", "11111", "111111", etc... They will eventually be garbage collected, but in a high stress environment this can be real bad real quick. The trick is to use StringBuilder for string management, which will be very efficient with memory use.

Know th

auto install, auto pain

[green pizza]

The automatic flash plugin install ended up hanging firefox.

You know, this is one common complaint that really bugs me. I've heavily used computers for over two decades and I still don't trust a web browser to auto install plugins. There are at most maybe six browser plugins that most people would ever really need. When I set up a machine I install a few plugins right out the gate and don't bother with it later.

Success!

[DaHat]

It looks like the folks over on Spread Internet Explorer have been successful in their goals. Viva la IE! After all, true patriots use Internet Explorer

A very simple explanation for a chunk of it

[ShatteredDream]

A lot of normal users I know use Firefox, Opera or Safari because they got fed up with having to worry about security holes that can easily compromise their entire system. Yes, Firefox has security problems, but not as bad as IE can offer. However, many IT groups I see around here in town still push IE because it's easy to lock down. If the Firefox developers would come up with an administration kit that would do things like lock down certain settings, bar certain plug-ins from being deactivated or removed and stuff like that, it'd be REALLY cool and good for their marketshare.

Let's also be realistic about something, though, and that is that until security becomes a liability for John Q. Average Citizen, people will continue to blindly accept what is pushed on them. If I were running a company, I would fire that little ol' secretary or bean counter who couldn't be bothered to read the "don't click on attachments" policy. No mercy, nothing. I'd fire them on the spot if they spread a worm throughout the company and shut down the mail servers by not following the policy. One of the things we do need is a law that says that if you run software that is exposed to the internet that is consistently attacked and used to attack others, you by law must take reasonable steps to secure your software by at least patching it. The way things are today would be akin to not requiring even basic safety inspections for vehicles so that when they fall apart at high speeds and kill someone, the owner gets to shrug and say "whatever."

But seriously though, let's stop BSing ourselves here. When patched properly, IE is "good enough" for the average user. What will cause people to stop using IE is if some l33t h@x0r writes an ActiveX control that puts people in danger of a felony. It'd have to be something damn serious too like a P2P ActiveX control for sharing kiddy porn and classified documents so that anyone who doesn't take their security seriously gets a shot at having armed G-men pay them a visit with a warrant for their arrest for distributing extremely felonious materials online. It'd have to be something that big to make "good enough" turn into "too dangerous to consider." Until then, Firefox is going to have to be clearly a lot better.

Re:A very simple explanation for a chunk of it

[bheer]

If I were running a company, I would fire that little ol' secretary or bean counter who couldn't be bothered to read the "don't click on attachments" policy.

Really? I bet they get loads of legitimate attachments every day they HAVE to open to do their job. Why don't you run server-side antivirus (and client-side antivirus too)? Or remove unsafe types (coupled with a mimetype sniff?) If I were a CIO I'd be thinking of firing YOU instead, your attitude of "it's all the user's fault" and refusal to think of alternatives is really quite unprofessional.

Here's a clue: most well-managed networks don't have virus problems anymore. The key word is 'well', which implies some expertise on the part of the IT person in charge, as opposed to a characteristic urge to vent on /.

No mercy, nothing. I'd fire them on the spot if they spread a worm throughout the company and shut down the mail servers by not following the policy.

If John Q Public didn't make computer mistakes, we could get by with far fewer IT people. Especially arrogant ones like you who somehow think they're running a lab in MIT.

Oh, and I like how firing people for making computer mistakes is modded Funny. Ha ha. Let's outsource these arrogant geeks to India. Ha ha. Equally funny?

Different kind of significance

[dpilot]

Is this perhaps a natural step in "commercial" evolution?

Vermont being home to a lot of small, home-grown industries, and not a lot of big ones, I've noticed something. Companies start small and (hopefully) grow. At some point, many hit a critical point where they're no longer small enough to work the same old way they used to. They have to take on some aspects of bigness, in order to continue growth. (At this point, some companies also say, "Big enough, I don't want to take on the changes necessary for further growth.") I've seen this be an awkward point, and frequently quite troubled. Some companies don't survive the transition, perhaps due to losing market focus while preoccupied with internal issues. Some companies are changed beyond recognition. (The jury has been out for *years* on Ben & Jerry's on this one.) Some get through, and move on just fine.

It's possible that Firefox is in a similar position. It just got big enough to start getting significant bad press. The test will be their response, and their ability to get their vision out to users and potential users. It's time to move on, and keep working toward a better and more secure browser.

The difficulty is that Microsoft never plays fair. I'm not saying a word about their software. I'm talking about their corporate behavior. They don't compete fairly, never have, and until someone gives them a meaningful slap, unlike the US DOJ, I doubt they ever will. By unfair competition I mean bundling, AARD, astroturf, EasyKeys for OS/2, media shills, etc.

Seasonal shift

[Cyphertube]

Part of me wonders if this isn't simply a seasonal shift, as well, as I've noted before regarding other numbers.

Many students heading off to college just got new machines which, for the vast majority, run Windows and had IE on them right away. Until they've been at college for a while and have been burned by spyware, malware, or otherwise, this will be a factor.

Additionally, this is the time of year when a number of job changes happen. I know that I moved into a corporation where IE is the browser. Yeah, I work in IT, but I don't have a say on the corporate policy (yet!), and so I'm stuck without Firefox or Opera. Previously, I was working as a web developer, so all the sites I visited in the day would note a Firefox visitor, and then in the evening, I also use Firefox. However, now I spend a lot more time at work, stuck using IE.

Honestly, I hated coding for IE. Will IE 7 be better? I hope so. But as long as so many companies force IE usage at work, we won't see a major change in those numbers. Does this mean Firefox is going to 'lose'? Not at all. There are two kinds of web developers out there, those that like to code to features, and those that like to use Microsoft tools. The vast majority of developers I know hate IE currently, and so that may be the shift. Business may still require IE, and home usage may shift to Firefox, Opera, etc.

Given the corporate trend of keeping people at work too many hours a week (it's called mismanagement), chances are IE will not drop under 85% until another OS starts to make serious inroads into the corporate workplace.

Google and Europe

[Psionicist]

That's weird. Last time I heard, 30% in Finland used Firefox, and 25% or so in Sweden, and it's increasing every month. In fact, Firefox is very common in Europe.

Most statistics are useless however, until Google show theirs.

Commercial interests don't like free software

[Anonymous Coward]

Any free alternative to a commercial enterprise scares the begeezuz out of many corporate types. So they make no effort to make their websites look good in Firefox. This scares off the non-techy types (like your grandma) who don't understand why everything looks screwed up on the screen and run back to IE.

Interesting

[DaPoulpe]

Would be interesting to know if Firefox has somehow started a trend (even a small one) that make people looking for other alternatives to IE
Like Opera that just got Free (as in Beer).
That could be part of this slowdown on Firefox's spread.
Tough to spot precisely though as Opera has it's user agent set on IE IIRC...

Hilarious

[Anita Coney]

The setting: A study is conducted which shows that the use of Firefox is still growing.

"Well, the study shows that the use of Firefox is still growing. Microsoft is really in trouble."

"I don't want to piss off Microsofot, how can we put this in a negative light?"

"I know, let's say that the growth is slowing!"

"Yeah, that's the ticket!"

This is funny!

[Kylere]

'We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.'"

What an interesting quote, it shows a good deal of bias and is factually inaccurate at the same time but I love the assumption that you have to hate MS to move to a better product. The lag in Firefox adoption is not due to people preferring IE, it is due to many reasons:

1. Users who do not understand that that AOL is not the internet
2. Lazy IS departments and lazy IS techs (heck I temped at a Hospital chain that was "upgrading" from Windows 3.1 with Novell as a Network to Windows95 with Novell as a network, and it was 2002!)
3. Choosing a browser requires thought
4. Half the systems I see are so badly overran with autoupdate checks (Umm where do Sun, Real, Apple QT, etc get off thinking they can abuse processor usage), adware, and spyware that it takes 15 minutes to boot them, I can understand why people do not want to install software at that pace.
5. Most basic users do not even know there is a difference, Microsoft used an excellent route to stomp out Netscape and did it so well that the "integrated" browser has obtained a large lock on the never do anything but look up recipes crowd.

Free Ride Market

[Doc Ruby]

I wish that after 10 years of the Web, marketers had learned something about the market. How to characterize it into segments. Instead market researchers just stand by the sidelines, repeating stats they see flash across their spreadsheets without noticing any persistent context. Sure, Web tech, applications and businesses change rapidly: that's their essential nature, what makes them popular and valuable. But the people in the market don't change that quickly. Tech and bizmodels haven't changed much in the past 5 years, not enough to change people's adoption habits, on which purchase patterns are based. Engineers are pulling miracles out of our workstations all the time. Are there any market researchers along for more than just a free ride? Anyone drawing a map?

Try 1.5 beta

[green pizza]

I hate to jump on the "try the latest nightly" fanboy bandwagon, but I really have found the 1.5 beta to be much more stable and much faster.

Ever since version 1.0 came out, the FF development focus has been on what will be version 1.5 All of the 1.0.x updates have been for security... and you can only patch an application so many times before further patches starts to degrade and break the original code.

Version 1.0 is getting old and crusty, 1.5 is where the action is.

People seem to forget

[zappepcs]

that there are more people in the world than the fanatics. See my journal (if you care to) as I have decided to rip MS products out of my home network, not because I hate MS (I have used MS since win3.1) or because I feel F/OSS is infinitely better than not-free software. I didn't make the change because IE is insecure, or more insecure than other browser(s), but because the licensing and costs issues simply do not make sense in view of equally usable software that I can decide how much its worth to me. I have also tried Maxthon, which was hugely better to use than IE.

I find that Maxthon and Firefox are similar enough that most users wouldn't know too much difference. Having experienced the joys of wanting to move my XP license to a different machine, it was not difficult to make the choice to quit MS products wholesale.

I'm not a fanatic, I'm not a MS hater, I am simply someone that wants to use my hardware and resources in the way that I want to without being hobbled by someone else's idea of how I should do that. Add to that the joys of having to pay someone to show me how to use my computer resources and you have all the ingredients needed to feel completely insulted.

Sure, each OS has its place. Each has issues to resolve, including security, interoperability, and open standards. I know how to crash Firefox, and several other of the main applications that I use. I also know how to crash them on Windows systems. If you push a computer hard enough, you'll find problems somewhere.

In the long term, it will slowly dawn on the computer users of the world that there are people out there with equally usable software that costs very little, and is based on open standards that will allow them to interact with other people's computers and data in ways that closed standards (MS?) would never allow since they would not make any money on it.

While it might be true that adoption of Firefox may have slowed, there is no need to hit the panic button yet... or even at all. I seriously doubt that IE7 will ever catch up completely. The issue here is not that MS isn't losing ground fast enough, or at all, the issue is that F/OSS is gaining ground. In the 70's, not many people had VCRs, but now you probably won't find a house in North America without a VCR and/or DVD player.

All the F/OSS community really needs is enough support to make it through the 'ohhh, I didn't realize' time span while the rest of the computer using world comes to the realization that you don't have to have government officials in your pocket to produce good quality software. That usually takes awhile for the realization to happen.

Its just a matter of time...

Usage still increasing

[Anonymous Coward]

Not where I am. I work as a consultant for smaller organizations, including nonprofit. Everyone Ive dealt with in the last 2 years is now running firefox, getting them to switch was hardly difficult, and they all used IE before that. Currently that stands around 100 people, and Im sure it will be 200 by next year. Ive never even heard so much as one complaint about it the whole time.

People can talk about momentum and critical mass all they want, but to me, as long as firefox stays as solid, free, high quality browser, it will erode away usage numbers of IE over years, not months.

1.5 coming

[Englabenny]

No need to worry, in short time 1.5 is back to re-thrill the community at large again.

Re:Nothing new.... well.. actually

[Anonymous Coward]

What this fails to account for is large companies like ours that switch hundreds of machines enterprise wide to Firefox. The other issue is that MS has a VERY bad habit of not telling the world about all the security issues with their products. They simply wait until the number of exploits gets to be so serious (or so public) they have to address it. I far prefer Mozilla's approach, which releases security updates often and as soon as the exploit is reported. The MS appologists are quick to pounce on every security flaw that's identified and fixed by the foundation, but how many hacker sites are there with lists of 'known vulnerabilities' for IE software that just arent getting fixed because 'Bill and the boys' can't be bothered? Sure, maybe there's a similar figure in the total vunerability column for each browser over some given period, but if you add up the total amount of time users had to wait for all the fixes I think you'd be pretty amazed at how much longer IE users have to wait for updates which eliminate these vulnerabilities. It's just not a realistic way to look at the overall issue of browser security. ElR

Not necessarily

[Anonymous Coward]

I do part time teaching for the San Lorenzo (California) Adult School, and with all of the new machines they are getting DISTRICT WIDE, the new school image uses Microsoft Windows XP and includes Mozilla Firefox 1.06 by DEFAULT. No other browser has ever been endorsed by this school district, so Firefox has more staying power than other non-Microsoft browsers in this situation. San Lorenzo Unified School District recently got a grant (measure E), which allowed them to buy several thousand new machines, to be spread all over the district.

Germany Way of Life

[Uukrul]

(The linked article talks about 20% market-share in Germany and Poland...)

They have begin 2 world wars, it isn't such a surprise that they are going to leader the first World Wide Web War too.
I think that Pologne is going to be the next...in reach 20% mark-share for Firefox.

Re:Germany Way of Life

[Anonymous Coward]

I agree with you for the most part, although I might not have put is as tersely. As evil as Microsoft is in the U.S., I can imagine it's even more so across the pond. They have an additional incentive not to support the evil empire.

Why I switched to opera

[Caffeinebot]

I switched to opera simply because firefox is a damn memory hog and is clearly not optimized. I believe the same is true for thunderbird. Take alook at dillo (granted it adheres to a very strict html standard). The source for dillo is around 500kb and is the fastest webrowswer that I have compiled. I am sure that it is possible to make firefox much leaner than what it is now. Thunderbird vs sylpheed is similar (only comparing bloat vs basic functionality). The source code size for thunderbird is about 30mb while sylpheed is significantly less. Why are these programs so big? I might be wrong but it seems to me that there is alot of unecessary code in either mozilla products. Opera on the other hand starts in about half the time firefox does and feels much leaner. The mail client really stinks though, hence sylpheed.

Re:Why I switched to opera

[VelocityBoy09]

Ever since they made Opera free, I'm stuck in limbo.

There are Firefox features I love (extensions, typing "google foo" in the address bar, many others) and Opera features I love (seems smaller & lighter, I prefer it's implementation of tabs, many others).

Now, instead of having one browser I was perfectly happy with (Firefox) I have two, neither of which I'm completely satisfied with (Firefox and Opera). When I'm in Firefox, I miss Opera features and when I'm in Opera I miss Firefox features. I'm a less happy browser user.

Re:Why I switched to opera

[Anonymous Coward]

"google foo" is "g foo" in Opera.

Re:Why I switched to opera

[VelocityBoy09]

Huh. If it's true that you learn something new every day, I guess I can go home now. I've only been using it a couple weeks, so I'm sure I'll pick up on other things.

thanks!

Re:Why I switched to opera

[MukiMuki]

"There are Firefox features I love (extensions, typing "google foo" in the address bar, many others) and Opera features I love (seems smaller & lighter, I prefer it's implementation of tabs, many others)"

You can type "g foo" in the address bar and it works the same way. There's a program called Opsed that makes it really easy to edit Opera's search bar, including those "keys". (for me, e does ebay, n does newegg, p pricewatch, a AniDB, i IMDB, it's really nice)

Also, you can get Opera's tabs to work EXACTLY the same (close icon, no close icon, depending on how you prefer it, and you can get the tabs to dissappear if there's only one active at the moment). Check this out :

http://emonville.com.nyud.net:8090/opera_starter_p ack.zip

Has an IE and Firefox exe. The IE one is close, the Firefox one is pretty spot-on.

Re:Why I switched to opera

[piper-noiter]

Here use this site, VelocityBoy: http://nontroppo.org/wiki/Opera

It's THE site for people just starting to use Opera. It shows you how to block ads, add search sites like wikipeda to your custom searches, set Opera to identify as IE on specific sites only, Heck you could even learn to edit your Opera6.ini and add an "Open Firefox" to your File Menu.

And don't forget to install spell check: http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/opera/spell check/

So you don't look like a spelling moron on Slashdot. ;)

Re:Why I switched to opera

[VelocityBoy09]

Great! Thanks a lot!

Re:Why I switched to opera

[VelocityBoy09]

Thanks!

I wish Apple would get behind Mozilla.

[Anonymous Coward]

If Apple would make it their default browswer, Moziila/Firefox could pick up another 1% market share easily. I sometimes wonder about Apple's commitment to open source as a way to establish standards.

People said it was more secure

[JPriest]

And as soon as Firefox gotto maybe 5% market share people found as many vulns in it, as in IE. Maybe they were not exploited as often, but they were still there.

Maybe a simmilar experience would be had if Linux started to make hedway into the desktop?

Me too.

[bigtallmofo]

I am shocked (shocked) that people don't get sarcasm.

I too am shocked. Subtle sarcastic humor always goes over so well on Slashdot.

Re:Me too.

[lurch_ss]

I disagree. Subtle sarcastic humor almost NEVER goes over so well on Slashdot.

Oh wait ...

Never mind.

Re:Me too.

[Viper Daimao]

what are you talking about? No it doesn......OHHHHH!

Re:Me too.

[Rakshasa Taisab]

Any sufficiently sarcastic post is indistinguissable from flamebait.

Re:Me too.

[BrianPan]

Well, how can we tell it's sarcasm until it gets modded funny for us?

Re:Me too.

[blazerw11]

There are a finite number of slashdotters that recognize sarcasm.

firefox takes more microsoft share

[asa]

Apparently taking yet another percentage point of market share from the strongest monopoly in the desktop space is a sign of failure. OK. Whatever.

- A

Re:firefox takes more microsoft share

[Foofoobar]

mod parent up

Marketing Effort

[t_man13]

I'm no hacker, nor do I move in hacker circles. I'd be willing to bet that 99.9% of the people I know haven't even heard of Firefox, or Opera, or any other IE alternative. They use IE because it's the only browser they've known about for years. FF growth isn't slowing because people aren't deciding to switch from IE. FF growth is slowing, because the overwhelming majorty of web users don't even know that they can switch, that there's something else out there. Thus far, the markting effort has been successful in targeting those people who keep an eye on technology. The way to increase the adoption rate for FF, is to target marketing towards those people who otherwise wouldn't hear about it.

What's up with these "trend" stories?

[IntelliTubbie]

It's amazing how almost any change can be constituted as an important "trend". Either:

1. The number of users is shrinking! or
   
2. The rate of increase in users is shrinking! or
   
3. The rate of growth rate increase is shrinking! or ...
   

What's next? "The 5th derivative of FreeBSD growth is negative! Netcraft confirms it!" God forbid anything should have less than exponential growth.

Cheers,
IT

wrong.

[dAzED1]

We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new, but we didn't know what that number was. It looks like we're approaching it.

Most people feel like they're lucky to be able to even log on. Very few understand what a "web browser" even is - they may have heard of mozilla/firefox, but they don't know how to install it, they don't know where to get it (yes, it should be obvious, I agree) and they don't feel confident enough to do things like that. Oh, they'll click next->next->next and install some weatherbug crap, but...it's a happy weather icon that tells them if it's raining outside! Who can argue with that?

First, there's the install base that is in corporations where users aren't even allowed to install things on their systems. That's a large chunk. Of those that are left, there's only a small percentage that can accomplish the "complicated" task of installing firefox. As more and more of that group actually install firefox, frequency naturally slows as a direct relation to the amount of appathy someone has.

Staticstic effect ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Hi!
It's a mathematical issue. It's like a curve of mature in a bussiness.
More bigger you are more difficult to grow.

I'm not pushing it till v1.1

[Qwavel]

Personally, I've stopped promoting FF until they get auto-update working.

Security issues are a fact of life so they need a way to roll out security fixes to users. The current system sucks.

When I look at the system of a friend for whom I've installed FF, I invariably find that they have not upgraded at all. No surprise really.

Sadly, I think this is inevitable

[TintinX]

I've always thought that FF would have a tough time being a serious contender.
With Safari on the Mac, IE7 just around the corner and now the free Opera, it certainly does seem that FF will remain a niche product.

Re:Sadly, I think this is inevitable

[Corson]

I've been using Firefox ever since it has become available -- that is, when it's possible to do so. The problem is, many web sites are incompatible with FF/Mozilla. The fact that FF is "standards-compliant" is irrelevant insofar as those are the sites I visit most often and their webmasters don't care about FF/Mozilla compatibility since IE dominates the market and virtually all of their clients use IE. Besides, IE under XP SP2 in conjunction with the Google Toolbar has eliminated most of the previous security concerns and annoyances. These are the reasons why, in my opinion, FF is losing ground and will continue to do so. For FF to be widely accepted, industry-wide support would be required.

Re:not surprising? -a little experiment...

[xirusmom]

What happens to most begginners is that they just get "addicted" to click on the IE icon. I was having a hard time convincing my mom to use Firefox and Thunderbird, because she says she does not see a difference and she "forgets" and clicks on IE icon instead.

Just for fun,I got rid of the link for IE in her desktop and made the IE icon to point to Firefox, same with Outlook icon and thunderbird. Told her to try the new versions, she liked!

The truth is, most users (who usually don't know what they're doing), will click in the first thing that looks like a browser and be happy.

I still think FF and Thunderbird in particular, are not only safer but also better to use than Microsoft's versions.

I disagree with you.

[bigtallmofo]

Whoever modded this guy Flamebait is a moron. While I disagree with what he says (almost completely) I fail to see any flamebait in it.

Thank god for meta-moderation.

Re:Fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

That may well be the most convoluted way to increment a variable that I've ever seen.

The English translation fo your link

[linumax]

This is much more readable now, at least for those who don't know where eiffel tower is! :-D

Be more specific :)

[marcello_dl]

For example, my 1.0.7 version, see below, is stable as a rock. Wait a minute, no firefox has ever crashed on me in the last year or more.

It's quite unlikely that, on my debian desktop, firefox can crash the OS, but that's another matter ;D

I must add that I never cared to install flash, as there's nothing more annoying than having those animated banners around webpages. Maybe the flash plugin is unstable and gives you all those problems.

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux ppc; en-US; rv:1.7.12) Gecko/20050923
Firefox/1.0.7 (Debian package 1.0.7-1)

Mod parent up!

[egghat]

There are still a lot of non compliant sites which stop users from switching especially in corporate environments. But the number is coming down rapidly. Web developers are aware that there are other browsers out there. And they are aware that there is more than IE and Netscape. So we will see more and more compliant sites. And we will even see more and more compliant browsers. IE 7 will be a small step in the right direction. Only a small step, but hey, 10% loss of market share seem to be enough to make the giant move ...

I guess sth. similiar would happen to .doc et al if .sdc et al would get more than 0.01 percent market share as well.

Bye egghat.

And we've had no firefox newspaper ads

[DFJA]

The big ad campaign was in the New York Times - fine if you live in New York. But in Europe we've got greater uptake of Firefox without having these ads. I suspect this is partly in line with the higher uptake of Linux in Europe - which I've heard is the case but don't have any figures to back it up at the moment. Anyone got these figures?

Re:And we've had no firefox newspaper ads

[Arthur Dent 75]

In Germany the local Spread firefox campaign launched an ad on 12/02/2004 in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, one of the most respectable newspapers in Germany.

Part of this is due largely in part...

[HerculesMO]

Because Firefox hasn't innovated in their browser with anything spectacular in some time. However with the upcoming 1.5, I think there will be yet another 'surge' of people flocking to Firefox yet again. Easy updating with some nifty new features will get some more market acceptance from would-be Firefox users.

Microsoft has largely made amends on a temporary basis with the MSN addons that allow for tabbed browsing built into Internet Explorer. However given the fact they are STILL not innovating and waiting for a 7.0 browser release to do so, Firefox has time yet to build up steam.

When Firefox releases proper corporate deployment and support tools for its browser, then we will see a HUGE shift. Right now however, my company won't change because the idea of running around to 400+ PCs doesn't thrill them, if something screws up in Firefox or there's an update to be deployed. It would be nice if Mozilla developed everything using the Microsoft Management Console (MMC) at least for use in Windows so that everything has a familiar and EASY look about it.

Even with Internet Explorer you need to pay a boatload more money to get SMS Server (which I admit is pretty damned useful) to get updates done properly, so this is a nice path Mozilla could follow just to nip at the heels of Internet Explorer. Besides with the heavy hitters making more and more progress ala Google, Yahoo, IBM, Sun, etc, and using Firefox so religiously, they give credence to what Microsoft dismisses, and also code their web applications (all of which are NOT .NET based) to function to *standards* (repeat it with me now!). Thus Firefox has no problem displaying them and *most* of the time, neither does Internet Explorer which means that the medium of a browser is going to be one that works fastest, and works best. Right now that's Firefox, and Internet Explorer has catching up to do. And given the nature of Firefox (open source, unlimited developers and bug testers), the development process is one likely to be more invigorated with ideas, and more likely to fix bugs on a timely basis.

That cannot be said of Microsoft as a whole, nevermind a single product they produce.

16%, not 1.1%

[Anonymous Coward]

Looking at the numbers like that is a bit misleading. Going from 6.75% to 7.86% of total marketshare may be one thing, but it's a 16% increase in users.

How about packaging a version with some extensions

[Blimey85]

I really like Firefox but I'll be the first to tell you that the real power is extensions. Until I get my favorite extensions installed and configured, Firefox to me isn't much better than IE. I install a nice them, 38 extensions (that's how many I have installed right now), and then I'm pretty damn happy.

What about having a prepackaged version that has maybe a dozen themes and 15 or 20 of the most popular extensions? Maybe even have something that comes up when you run it for the first time that walks you through enabling some extensions that are preinstalled. That would make it much easier for a new person to become familiar with the true power of Firefox.

A lot of people don't know what Adblock is. They've never heard of WeatherFox, or FoxyTunes, or CuteMenus, or Linkification, or DownloadStatusbar or any of the other really cool extensions. Some of these are extensions that most users would probably use if they new about them. You and I have no problem because we are geeks... but what about the Average Joes out there that don't know the first thing about installing extensions or changing themes? Lets walk them through it visually and give them some choices right up front.

I think this would go a long way to ensuring that the people who do give Firefox a try, never look back.

On a similar note, is there way I can package my installation for friends? I'd like to be able to make a copy that I can email to a few people so they can have the exact same setup I have... and I'd also like to be able to set it up on one machine and copy it to my other machines without having to manually install each extension on each machine. Anyone have a link that details how to do this or some directions/tips/whatever? Thanks!

That's not all that's slowing about Firefox

[Snufalufagus Prime]

I'm not sure if it's all the themes or extensions I have, but Firefox take forever to load sometimes. I've actually had better luck switching back to IE on occasion.

Re:next step: BUNDLING!

[acroyear]

IE wins because IE is already there. Its the trick they learned from Netscape when OEMs bundled Netscape (because Netscape realized it worked because M$ did exactly that with MS Office for business PCs).

So to gain the momentum to be treated as permanent, Firefox evangelists have to work on Gateway, Dell, Compaq/HP, and Toshiba (still a strong player in the laptop market) directly. Get Firefox side-by-side with IE, on the desktop, and remind Microsoft that any move to block this in their OEM contracts technically violates the terms of the DoJ settlement (even though the current DoJ is doing nothing to enforce it).

Now to make this work, Firefox needs to have automatic security updates that don't require uninstalling/reinstalling by hand. It needs to "just happen". Hopefully, the 1.5 will finalize this feature.

Firefox is an unqualified success

[tjstork]

Capturing nearly 10% of an entrenched rival's market share is a considerable success. How many of us would like to have 10% of Microsoft's market share for even Paint Brush.

10% of a billion users is a pretty big number in its own right. Toyota did not come to rival GM overnite. They have enough of a critical mass to hang in there, a business model that will allow them to do so, and, most importantly, they have a significant investment advantage as anyone investing in open source systems have a huge commercial upside in terms of the amount of growth that is possible, where as MS can't really grow because it has everything already. MS is a flat and dying company, but all of its rivals have room to grow wildly.

That May Be True

[Ranger]

But thankfully the dupes show no abatement in their momentum. Here, here, here, and here.

Black and White thinking

[ink]

So, only two groups use Firefox: Early adopters and Microsoft Haters.

I use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Firefox has achieved many of its goals regardless, with 10% of the web not using Internet Explorer (Firefox + Opera + Safari + Konq) websites are no longer able to simply plug Microsoft technology into their websites and run with it. I can't remember the last website that I visited that didn't function properly in Firefox -- which was a very common problem in the bad-old-days of IE5/ActiveX (again, through no supposed hatred on my part). Microsoft is a better netizen today than they were five years ago. Their development is more open, and their technologies are more cooperative. There is much more of a free market in webspace now, which is a good thing.

Re:Black and White thinking

[Quixotic137]

I use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Well, you could run IE on the PowerBook. I don't know why you would though.

Re:Black and White thinking

[sedyn]

"Microsoft is a better netizen today than they were five years ago. Their development is more open, and their technologies are more cooperative. There is much more of a free market in webspace now, which is a good thing."

Tell that to this guy.

Re:Black and White thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

Well, you can run IE on your Mac, but not a version that doesn't suck air. This is the same situation us Windows users are in.

Of course, I understand what you meant though. IE on Mac is about as useful as using Microsoft Word for editing web pages. I just wanted to get an extra dig in on IE...

As a web developer, I really don't care what web browser people use, as long as it's not IE.

Re:Black and White thinking

[Delphiki]

Wow, way to post a link that has absolutely nothing to do with the article or the parent post. Congratulations, you added absolutely nothing to the conversation. That's the hallmark of a true slashdotter.

Re:Black and White thinking

[Fishstick]

>only two groups
>I use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook

Ok, there is a third, fourth and maybe fifth group. They are just really, really small. ;-)

Re:Black and White thinking

[marcosdumay]

There is another objective, to make it possible to write a standard compilant web page and have it suddenly work on almost all browsers out there. This one could be reached by Firefox dissemination, but is still far from real.

Re:Black and White thinking

[Himring]

So, only two groups use Firefox: Early adopters and Microsoft Haters.

I use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

It's simple. If you use Linux you are in the "Microsoft haters" group. Therefore all people who use Linux -- or who do not use Windows and/or IE -- are Microsoft haters. Hey, don't kill the messenger....

Re:Black and White thinking

[pthomsen]

I can't remember the last website that I visited that didn't function properly in Firefox

Just yesterday, I went to http://www.intuitmarket.com/ with Firefox, and got booted for not using

• Safari 1.0 or higher
• Netscape 7 or higher"

Wouldn't even let me in with FF...

Re:Black and White thinking

[gordgekko]

Firefox has achieved many of its goals regardless, with 10% of the web not using Internet Explorer (Firefox + Opera + Safari + Konq)

Interesting, I thought its goal was to simply make a better browser. I had no idea we were fighting an ideological war at the same time. And here I left my Little Red Book at home...

Nice of you too, by the way, to include three other browsers in Firefox's objectives considering most, if not all, have been around longer than Firefox.

Re:Black and White thinking

[waamaral]

In fact, it even comes with OS X (and OS 9 also, IIRC) by default...
Of course I know that because I have a mental note to uncheck it on the install process.

Re:Black and White thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

Just so you know, the page works when you spoof to IE6 using the User Agent Switcher extension.

Re:Black and White thinking

[jlorenzen]

This was a really nice response. Life online has become a lot better for us *nix/mac users. Regarding the IE %, the bulk of the people online today probably got IE with their PCs and don't know there is anything else and would not know how to change if they did. That has to be driving the numbers for IE some.

j

Re:Black and White thinking

[TiMike]

Actually, they don't bundle it with OSX anymore...

Re:Black and White thinking

[Anonymous Coward]

use Linux on my desktop and I have a PowerBook. Which category does that put me in? The last time I checked, I couldn't run Internet Explorer... but someone please correct me if I'm wrong here.

You are wrong, at least with the powerbook... they make IE for the mac

Re:Black and White thinking

[ink]

Interesting, I thought its goal was to simply make a better browser. I had no idea we were fighting an ideological war at the same time.

I suppose you could call it an "ideological war" if you wanted to stigmatize it. I prefer to call it "superior open standards" myself.

Re:Black and White thinking

[lemkebeth]

Only if you consider something that has ceased development years ago and no longer ships with the OS as made for the OS.

Mac IE is dead.

Re:Black and White thinking

[tduff]

It runs perfectly on linux under wine.

Re:Black and White thinking

[bearinboots]

Are you serious? I drive a Jeep Wrangler. Does that automatically make me a Ford-hater?

Re:Black and White thinking

[Himring]

You missed that whole, "don't kill the messenger" part didn't ya?...

Re:Black and White thinking

[bearinboots]

You're right. I did. Apologies.

not integrated into the OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh yeah? Uninstall it then.

Re:not integrated into the OS?

[Anonymous Coward]

iexplore is just a wrapper ;\

can browse the web from explorer.exe just as well as iexplore....or even control panel

Re:not integrated into the OS?

[einhverfr]

can browse the web from explorer.exe just as well as iexplore....or even control panel

Exactly. 90%+ of IE's functionality is integrated into the OS. You can't reasonably uninstall it without breaking tons of crap (like the html help viewer). When we say IE, we don't mean iexplore.exe. We mean the entire web browser.

Of course Konqueror is integrated into KDE in the same way.....

This being said, I take issue with the fact that "Microsoft Haters" are switching to Firefox. Most real Microsoft Haters are already using alternative operating systems and IE isn't available to them anyway. Anyway, real Microsoft haters would probably have switched to Linux or OS X by now....

Early adopters OTOH, is a different matter.

Re:not integrated into the OS?

[Mancat]

http://www.vorck.com/remove-ie.html

What about users that have a choice?

[Quill_28]

I would be curious to know how the % would rise when there was a reasonable choice involved.

For instance many people have to use a certain browser at work, or with a certain ISP(thinking AOL, ok I know you don't have to but few aol users realize this)

I would think subtracting these users out of the equation would yield different results. Though I doubt these number would be easy to come by.

HO HO!

[GoClick]

Way to stick the proverbial "it" to him!

I've installed Firefox on TONS of computers.

What I've found is most people don't care.

They don't care about tabs, they don't care about security and they don't care about speed.

They do care that most of the games the liked to play at work no longer load.

They do care that they still get popups.

They do care that it takes longer to load the browser (not pages tho) than IE

That said, there are SOME who love it to bits, and now I realize I should have shown them all how to install it on other people's computers.

I've found people love Thunderbird until their blue in the face tho. I've switched many people to it and their tickled with it.

Re:HO HO!

[jp10558]

I've found that people are more receptive to trying out Opera or FireFox after they've just paid the Geek Squad $59 to tell them they have spyware and an additional $79 to fix it for them.

Firefox is very popular

[gflores]

Has anyone seen its market share in Europe. They're staggering! Many countries have over 30%! With Opera becoming free, IE's share may drop below 80% which is still a lot, but considerably less than the 95+% they had before.

corporate and university adoption

[nbahi15]

I agree with the articles premise that most of the early adopters have been converted. The rest will be slow going but I believe Firefox can still achieve at least 25% of the browser market.

At UNT College of Business, my school job, the lab group is just now rolling out firefox to all the lab computers. This represents a sizeable exposure for Firefox in a demographic that may soon make personal or corporate decisions about open source and browsers. I think it could be a good idea if the Mozilla foundation worked to get Universities offering Firefox as an alternative on every lab or kiosk machine on campus.

I would also venture to believe lots of large corporate IT departments are just as slow to adopt new software, even when it works. I have also wondered how thorough the enterprise deployment software is for Firefox. Does firefox have adequate support for corporate or large scale installations?

Re:How about packaging a version with some extensi

[HerculesMO]

Some ISPs are already doing this. They add their logo, add a few extensions and toss it into an installer and release it to their clients.

Besides the *power* of the browser is only as good as its quality. And there are extensions that have caused havoc with Firefox before, I'd rather leave them out and make it easier to find and install them.

FF Dominance myth

[shudde]

While I'm a happy Firefox user, I tend to think it was a naive presumption that Firefox would ever directly battle IE for market-share dominance. People who thought it was a serious contender in this regard fail to understand the nature of the average internet user.

I believe firmly in the technical superiority of Firefox. The developers have shown they take security seriously and the open-source model is continually proving itself with this application, not to mention the lack of integration into the OS which solves a number of IE woes. The extensibility of Firefox is another strength, allowing an element of customization to the non-technical user.

Where I disagree with many, is claiming that Firefox will become dominant. Gone are the days when the internet was primarily composed of scientific/technical people. We're now a continually shrinking percentage of the population, which, as much as I decry certain aspects of the 'dumbing down', is as it should be. Mass adoption has brought down connection prices, broadened the services offered to us and released a flood of new information and technology.

Firefox will continue to go from strength to strength, however the majority of new users and non-technical existing users will follow the Microsoft bandwagon. While the choice of a competing and IMHO superior browser is important to many of us, to the vast majority it's completely irrelevant. They have web access implemented in their operating system hence they see no need to even research browser alternatives.

The real benefit of Firefox for the masses, is the adoption of it's strengths (tabbed browsing, etc.) into IE. For the rest of us, we can sit comfortably and support our own preferred browser.

Re:FF Dominance myth

[runderwo]

The real benefit of Firefox for the masses, is the adoption of it's strengths (tabbed browsing, etc.) into IE.

Well, or simply having a choice in the matter, which in turn forces Microsoft to make IE a competitive browser to avoid losing users. And having browsers out there that actually implement the W3C standards gives developers a reference platform (if they care about that sort of thing), which was sorely missing in the old days of IE4 and NS4. I think a better WWW is one that is designed and coded to standards first and only hacked to appease broken browsers as an afterthought, so having non-broken browsers around helps in that regard quite a bit.

Why change? trust the mechanic!

[fantomas]

I agree. My dad equated the Blue E with the Internet, click on it and you can get the football scores. I moved him over to Firefox - the alpha geeks were saying its much better for Windows users to be using this, I got some of the arguments, seemed to work, so fine: less patching up for me to do on my dad's machine. My dad - well he just took my word. He's heard of viruses and security problems, doesn't really understand them. Most users don't - see the latest Pew report on users understanding of technical terms: he's just like me and the mechanic on my car:

Mechanic: you should change from a wiggley-diddly carb thingy to a blargy -wargy one, it works better and has less problems

Me: ok.

Same difference for most end users I think.

Re:Why change? trust the mechanic!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Less patching"

You're kidding right?

FF has had more security holes in the last 6 months than IE. You sure as hell had BETTER be patching your father's machine and far more often than you'd need to for IE! Not to mention that you STILL have to "patch" windows regularly and that IE patches are rolled into the "Windows" patch releases so you normally wouldn't even know the difference. Patching FF requires a TON more work than patching IE does.

Nothing bugs me more than people that don't know how to do the simple config steps that keeps IE safe from all spyware problems and instead do a cut and run install of FF on other people's machines believing that it'll prevent all computer problems forever and instead merely leave them open to an entirely new attack front :(

Firefox SLOWER than IE based browsers

[Yo Grark]

I have to admit I tried several times to convince customers to switch. In the end, the ability to not "set and forget" was a killer for me.

Avant & Maxthon just WORKS based on IE. No compatibility issues, no mess, no fuss. Has tabs, clean and fast. Blocks bad ads and scripts.

I might get back to firefox one day, but for all it's cool addons and flexibility, it was just too slow for simple webpage loads and views.

Yo Grark

Reason #10: Firefox updates are a pain in the @ss

[TheHornedOne]

I know a lot of Windows users (and even me as a Mac OS X user) are annoyed by the fact that Firefox cannot auto-update itself, in place. If we assume that the mozilla.org servers are pretty secure, there is NO reason why Firefox can't download the necessary updates to patch this week's security vulnerability, install them in place while the browser is running, then pipe up when finished and ask the user to restart the browser. Hell, when it restarts, it could come back up to the same page the user was browsing when he/she quit a few seconds ago. This is a major flaw in Firefox and one that will invariably lead to people still surfing with Firefox 1.01 in 2007. It also just looks stupid, in contrast the the slickness of Apple's Software Update or even (gak) Microsoft's Windows Update.

Firefox devs... any comments?

Tabbed browsing?

[sixteenraisins]

...it's hard to recommend Firefox to some friends/family when they can't comprehend how useful tabbed browsing it.

Don't forget that tabbed browsing is only one feature of Firefox that IE doesn't yet sport - and for some, that feature alone isn't enough to sell a browser. I've adopted Firefox myself, but I've never taken to tabbed browsing. Instead, I use Firefox for its stability, its download manager, user interface (particularly the text search bar), better protection against popups, and much leaner use of system resources.

Tabbed browsing might be enough to get some less technologically savvy users to convert, but if it isn't, try selling some of Firefox's other features.

Opera

[ToyKeeper]

Duh. Opera goes free (as in beer), firefox adoption takes a dive. Opera got several million downloads in the days after its free release...

Given the problems Firefox has with stability, speed, and memory use, I bet a lot of users switched. Opera doesn't have as many features, but it's much better at the basics.

Meanwhile, the average IE user probably still doesn't know there are other browsers...

Re:How about packaging a version with some extensi

[niall2]

Making users install stuff is a recipe for failure. The whole reason people are using IE is its there and it works. They know about all the bad stuff but they fear installing stuff on their computer enough that they are willing to risk it.

No I would say what FireFox should do is, rather than make a single installer and then all the extensions is to make an installer builder web application. This could ask the user questions (not "Do you want firefoxy which sounds like a great pR0n extension") and then make up an installer that will install firefox, and bundle it with the extensions (all tested and approved by the FireFox quality assurance folks).

And how about having an option for auto updates that just happen. No little icon trying to guilt you into doing the right thing....do the right thing and then tell them about it (with a pref to turn this off for the rest of us).

No the reason IE is doing so well is user lethargy and no amount of virus infection or media hype is going to cure millions of years of lethargic evolution. So take an example from Bill and improve on it (e.g. make it work without forcing a full restart ;) ).

Microsoft haters?

[Beer Moon]

I didn't switch because I hate Microsoft, I switched because FireFox is modular and it's convenient for what I need to do. I think it's silly to paint people who want more functionality and only want to see what they need in their software interface as Microsoft haters. I would call us power users. I've tried to show my friends and family what's out there. Half of the people I show it to (somewhat un-savvy internet users) adopt it after seeing the tabbed browsing and installing a few extensions here and there. I think one way to market it to less tech-savvy people would be to create packages with some of the most popular extensions already installed.

Why is this surprising...

[suman28]

As the article suggests, all the early adopters are already running Firefox. Now it is up to these folks to spread our little fox, because it does not have the advantage of coming preinstalled and tied into the OS, and besides, who's to say these numbers are accurate. Who is this WebSurf whatever...what is their motive, how much analysis have they done, and why. So, many questions.

I don't use Firefox

[Muramasa]

There's no reason to. There are much better browsers on every platform. Firefox (on linux especially) is ungodly slow when compared to Opera or other available browsers. Opera is faster on any platform. KDE users have a better browser in Konq. Gnome users in Epiphany. Mac OS X users have Camino and Safari. Windows users have K-Meleon and Opera.

WebSideStory on the low end

[mattbrundage]

Let it be known that WebSideStory's Firefox numbers trail other browser-monitoring firms' numbers, such as OneStat and XiTi. A marketshare graph detailing these numbers can be found here. As you can see, Firefox is still trending upwards, by no stretch of the imagination. We're still in good shape.

firefox usage still growing at my site...

[uccemebug]

FWIW, my humble home page shows continued growth in Firefox usage every week. It seems to be growing by about 0.3% per week. Right now it's pushing 9%. But then again, it's designed for Firefox and nags at IE users.... http://emuu.net/cgi-bin/hits2.cgi Incidentally - I use the "User Agent Switcher" Firefox plugin to flag my user agent's otherwise normal name to prevent my own review of the site from being counted.

Aspies?

[tepples]

I am shocked (shocked) that people don't get sarcasm.

Geeks don't tend to have a higher incidence of Asperger syndrome, do they?

NASA - JSC installed Firefox this week...

[bmwatm]

The Johnson Space Center IT department has installed Firefox this week. They will also be regularly patching it as required. Some odd 15000 people work at JSC.

Neither MSN.com nor MSN broadband needs IE

[tepples]

Doesn't MSN require the use of IE to log into the netowrk?

I just used my hotmail user/pass to sign in to My MSN on the MSN.com web site using Mozilla Firefox 1.5b1, and nothing ill happened. My aunt's ex-boyfriend has Verizon Online DSL "with MSN" and he can still get a routable IP address through DHCP without running any more of IE than what Windows Explorer uses. Which MSN did you mean?

Re:Neither MSN.com nor MSN broadband needs IE

[EAB]

It just seems that the 'average' user, who I believe is the majority of users who use MSN, AOL, and other all-inclusive ISP packages, where your sign-in, email, etc. are somewhat tightly integrated together, just use whatever default applications are available/given to them. They do not upgrade or change their browser. I use DSL with a local ISP, so I do not have much experience with MSN, AOL, etc. This is just my observation.

Two stories that say Firefox use still growing

[sgtrock]

Both from September:

From Xiti, a French Web monitoring company.

From NetApplications, a US Web monitoring company. Both say that while FF is growing, it's not growing as fast as some of the other alternative browsers. Of particular interest is that both say IE is still slowly losing ground.

the corporate issue

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't know what Firefox's total market share will be but I strongly suspect it won't get much higher than about 10%. The reason for this is that most large companies are using the browser for more and more in house developed apps. They generally have IE and web developers are a lazy bunch and will generally use IE specific features, sometimes without realising it. So a lot of corporate intranet apps rely on IE features and so switching to Firefox is just too expensive even though the browser itself is free. MS. As evil as you always suspected (TM)

Popularity

[rabid_sith]

I for one am happy with what Firefox has already. If it starts getting very popular then we're going to start seeing more and more script kiddies running around with their ripped Perl scripts and 'toolz' doing who-knows-what. I mean you know how popular IE is, and how many exploits and such there are for it.

Do you honestly want that to happen to Firefox?

Microsoft Haters?

[Sj0]

Interesting choice of words. I suppose it could be 'Microsoft hating' to dislike getting attacked by spyware over half the internet, or to enjoy full PNG support. I bet that those users who are using the integrated popup-blocker are 'Microsoft haters' as well. Superficial people who like having skins on their browser? 'Microsoft haters'. Power users who appreciate about:Config? 'Microsoft Haters'. People on broadband who crank up the pipelining features? 'Microsoft Haters'.

After all, any practical reasons not to use a certain piece of software fall under the umbrella of hating the company that makes it, right?

Why I think Firefox will increase eventually

[ZachPruckowski]

How are multiple browsers counted? Because I have 4. Safari, Opera, IE, and Firefox. Does it go by use? Because I almost never use IE, I mostly use Firefox and Safari. I just haven't around to deleting IE yet. Do I count as a user of IE? Because, in that case, the market share of IE is drastically overrated.

If I use Firefox ~60% of the time, Safari ~30%, Opera ~10%, and IE 1%, do I count as one user for each? Or just as a Firefox user (which is what I'm using right now)? How about if I never use IE, and just have it on my computer?

If I count as a user of IE and a user of Firefox, it doesn't do justice to Firefox.

This new IE flaw should help

[Anonymous Coward]

CNET reports that a new flaw in Internet Explorer could be exploited to launch spoof-based attacks, or access and change data on vulnerable PCs, security experts have warned.

The vulnerability could be exploited with specially crafted code. An attacker could spoof a legitimate Web site, access data from the Web browser's cache or stage a so-called man-in-the-middle attack, which taps into traffic between a user and another Web site, according to Klein's write-up.

Fully-patched computers running Windows XP with Service Pack 2 and Internet Explorer 6.0 are vulnerable to this issue, security monitoring company Secunia said in an advisory.

Zonk is a Microsoft's shill, I think.

Analyst?

[MerlinTheWizard]

Looks like this kind of analysis about Firefox hits Slashdot about twice a month, lately. Some "analysts" have too much time on their hands...

Anthropomorphism...

[Knara]

"push-back point"

Anyone else find it weird when people use phrases that imply conscious actions to describe processes? Seems they use this a lot with financial markets, as well.

Take a look at the Netscape vs IE history

[theurge14]

If anyone has this on record, taking a look at the historical adoption rate of Internet Explorer over Netscape Navigator might shed some light on Firefox vs IE.

I know for a fact it didn't happen overnight. As a matter of fact, I continued to use Netscape Navigator through version 4 up until Windows 2000 came out.

How does momentum slow?

[JourneyExpertApe]

Check your metaphores. Momentum is not synonymous with velocity.

http://www.websitestory.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Would you seriously trust any browser statistics from a company like this?: http://www.websitestory.com/

Of course Firefox is continuing to gain in share. Everyone knows that.

graphs?

[idlake]

Rather than magazines making lengthy arguments about when double digit and single digit growth rates occurred, what about making a graph and an extrapolation? They'd be a little more informative and easier to interpret, and would save the proverbial thousand words.

(I couldn't find any good, recent graphs of Firefox growth, otherwise I would have posted them myself.)

Hate?

[miffo.swe]

So according to this schmuck if you dont like Microsofts products youre a Microsoft hater? I have a hard time imaging anyone being called a Linux hater if they dont prey to Linus Torvalds.

I think the down in uptake is because of all the FUD being slung around touting Internet Explorer as safer than Firefox on the internet. I suspect security was one of the reasons for Firefox uptake on the Windows platform. That makes security a selling point for the Firefox developers to aim for.

Firefox lacking sex appeal

[Coward Anonymous]

The best, easiest and cheapest way for Firefox to boost its popularity into the stratosphere is to bundle free access to porn.
To avoid being labelled as smut vendors, an "independent" developer can come up with a plug-in to do this.

Re:not surprising? -a little experiment...

[2short]

Have you considered the posibility that your Mom is running her own experiment to answer the question: What do I have to do to get him to quit screwing with my computer and bugging me about which of two indistingusable programs I use? Aha! Pretend there is a difference I care about and assure him I like it.

"The truth is, most users (who usually don't know what they're doing), will click in the first thing that looks like a browser and be happy."

If what they do gets them the results they want, what basis is there for saying they don't know what they are doing?

Need to target the PC manufacturers

[Geist]

It's tru that Firefox adoption will only go so far if we rely on people to find out about Firefox, and have them download it.

If we wish Firefox to dethrone IE, then Firefox needs to be installed, with an icon on the desktop, on new PCs.

What is needed is for all supporters (users, spreadfirefox, supporters [mozilla org, companies like sun and IBM, Redhat etc]) to start putting pressure on PC companies to ship the PCs with Firefox on it.

Until this happens, we will have a hard time getting bigger numbers.

Negotiations with mozilla.org need to take place with these companies. Users need to start contacting and requesting that Firefox be preinstalled, stating they will choose another brand if they do not. You need to hit them in the pocketbook. Show that it's important to their customers, if you wish change.

Ryan

yea - and what about my multiple computers?

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to add to your example:

I have two Win2K computers at work. Both have IE and Firefox. I use Firefox a majority of the time, but some corporate apps require me to use IE. So... I am an IE user... and a Firefox user.

At home I have a Win2K computer with IE, Mozilla Suite, and Opera. I use IE and Opera mainly to test the rendering of my new webpages. I use Mozilla Suite for everthing else. So... I am not a Firefox user.

At home I have another computer with Xandros 3 on it. It has the Xandros browser and Firefox. I use both about equally. So.... I am a Konquerer user and a Firefox user.

Hmmmm. So I am really 3 IE users, 3 Firefox users, 1 Mozilla Suite user, 1 Opera user, and 1 Konq user. Gee I wonder how much of *any* web browser share percentage is made up of *just* a user + a browser.

Oh, wait! Let's go by logs from webservers. Hmmm. Which webserver provides unbiased markets?

Can't be MSN or AOL - too much MS love. Can't be Google - too nerdy. Can't be Yahoo - too much MS love.

Can't be CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, ESPN, Discover Channel, Playb0y, National Geograhic -- so much video and flash you have have IE to make it work smoothly.

Can't be any .gov website -- webmasters are too clueless.

Can't be Democrat or Republican party websites - too much IE love there too, especially for all the John Kerry folks.

Um, wait! I got it -- use weblogs from religious websites. No! that would provoke the anti-Bush crowd.

Gee. Now what?

Re:Reason #10: Firefox updates are a pain in the @

[Junior J. Junior III]

Hell, when it restarts, it could come back up to the same page the user was browsing when he/she quit a few seconds ago.

My Firefox *does* do this, thanks to an Extension I use, called SessionSaver. It's an indespensible, must-have extension as far as I'm concerned. Go download it and give it a try.

Here's my anecdotal contribution to the numbers.

[Leviathant]

Since the 9th of this month, my Nine Inch Nails fan site shows 63.4% of our traffic comes from IE, and 23% of the traffic comes from Firefox, with 6.2% of our hits coming from Safari users. That's from 4.1 million hits from 97,000 unique visitors, courtesy awstats.

9% of our viewers use Mac, 87.3% Windows, 0.6% use Linux. Tada.

Adoption rates are not linear

[Infonaut]

There's been a slowdown in adoption. Maybe it will kick back up again, maybe it won't. There are all kinds of variables here that we're only really guessing at. Ultimately what matters is that Firefox has shown it is not a flash in the pan, and that it is possible for browsers to take marketshare from IE. I understand that in the Internet age we're supposed to assume that rate of growth is more important than actual growth, because "momentum" is the new Holy Grail, but I don't buy that line of reasoning.

Firefox doesn't have to beat IE in order to win. Forcing Microsoft to get off their ass and make a better browser, showing users that there are valid alternatives to IE, and encouraging the development of new browser capabilities are all valid goals.

Re:Fixed

[hcob$]

you... point... grasped.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[animale]

Firefox is not slowing. It's users are getting better as manipulating the browser. One of the first Firefox extensions many of us add is User String Agent, so we can get into "IE only" websites. Many of us use Webwasher or anon-surfing products, many of which also change the user string. To a webstat gathering firm, I'm an IE user whether I'm using Firefox or Opera, and I don't want to be counted as using IE for anything except Windows Update or badly written websites.

I didn't give up on Firefox, it's my primary browser. But I'm not counted by the web statistic collection firms, so their data is a fraud. These firms must develop better data-collection methodologies or be exposed as frauds and face legal sanction.

Leveled off, but not at 7%

[silverbax]

I was reviewing usage stats yesterday and I noticed the same 'leveling off', but with W3schools it's 18%, not 7%.

Firefox exploded from 5% in January 04 to 21% in May 05. Now it's crept back down a bit off that high.

Don't really have a reason to offer, but here's the stats:

http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.a sp

Re:Leveled off, but not at 7%

[horza]

Seems a co-incidence that Firefox is apparently levelling off the same time that Opera suddenly releases their browser for free instead of nag-ware. Does Opera still spoof the IE User-Agent string?

Phillip.

Re:not surprising? -a little experiment...

[xirusmom]

It does get what she wants at that time.... Then I will have to rush to fix it when she gets a virus.... So yes! I have something to say about it, because I will be the one wasting my time later. Sounds fair?

Re:Fixed

[rk87]

Funnily enough, it's valid. Dontcha love C?

Let's face it: IE and Firefox are very similar

[Junks Jerzey]

Firefox has always had the following noticible benefits:

1. better security
2. tabbed browsing
3. pop-up blocking
4. more polished UI for certain things (like the options dialog)

#2 and #3 are in IE. #1 is a big deal, but you've always been able to get the same effect by changing security settings in IE. With Microsoft switching to those settings, the difference is negligible. #4 I like, but it's just a tweak; it's not like MS couldn't do this.

So, in all honesty, Firefox has always been, more or less, IE+. The key point is that open source developers managed to get something that worked as well as IE, then add some nice bonus features. In regard to the bonus features, it's not like Microsoft (a) wouldn't borrow good ideas from Firefox, and (b) would have a tremendous amount of trouble adding some additional features to an existing application. From that perspective, anyone who expect Firefox to blow IE out of the water was fooling themselves. There was a nice lull in IE development which allowed some catch-up time, and it's good that the Firefox team could take advantage of it.

But now we're at the stage where FF and IE are essentially equals. Microsoft engineers could very easily have significant improvements to IE in the works; something that could become the standard for web browsing. If that happens, it's going to make the FF team look out of touch, spending all that time just to clone a previous generation product and make some improvements to it. True vision is something that FF development is lacking.

Re:Let's face it: IE and Firefox are very similar

[Geist]

Your analysis of #1 is completely flawed.

IE is no where near as secure. When iy fails, the results are generally much worse, a lot more often.

Changing settings doesn't make the code base more secure.

Most often changing settings may make IE unusable.

Re:Let's face it: IE and Firefox are very similar

[shudde]

I agree with certain of your points, there are obviously a lot of similarities between Firefox and IE. That comparison could be applied to virtually every browser out there, as few large differences exist between any of them. However I think you've missed the single point that differentiates the two browsers the most, extensibility.

For the geek, Mozilla offer documentation on how to develop your own Firefox extensions. The average user then has the option to pick and choose from the cream of other peoples work. UI enhancements, tabbed browsing, pop-up blocking and to a lesser extent, security improvements can, and have, been picked up by IE.

The fact remains that Microsoft have never demonstrated a culture that would be supportive of end-user 'hacks' to the browser, hence I think it would be a long, cold wait before we see true extensibility in IE.

Re:Let's face it: IE and Firefox are very similar

[Anonymous Coward]

Does w3c, CSS and HTML web standards say anything to you? What about extensions? How about open source?

To the managers out there, 10% is acceptable.

[crovira]

If a web page can't be displayed by 10% of the people, its no biggie.

The fact that they are 'artsy' types (OS X users) or 'propeller heads' (Linux users) just makes the decision that much easier if you'd selling socks or food or something.

Never underestimate the power of 'saving a buck by screwing somebody' (somebody using the other browsers) when it doesn't really cost them anything.

The sales figures are going up anyway. Or the site is just advertising and that's an expense regardless, and nobody ever got fired for saving a buck.

I've got FireFox installed on all my boxes (1 AMD64 running Linux, 2 Macs running OS X and 1 old Win2k box crawling along,) but that's because I am paranoid and I really don't like IEs pop-ups.

But that's just me.

Re:To the managers out there, 10% is acceptable.

[Vellmont]

If a web page can't be displayed by 10% of the people, its no biggie.


I guess I'd have to disagree. 10% is somewhere around the time where you need to be concerned about people not being able to see the page. This is especially true in a market with tight profit margins. Losing 10% of your customers is a major hit when you only have say a 5% profit margin anyway. It wouldn't kill the business, but I'd say it's enough to justify the often minor work of making sure your website works on Firefox as well as IE.

Re:To the managers out there, 10% is acceptable.

[Khaed]

I saw this quote somewhere, and I can't be sure where so I can't source it, but:

"Designing for 90% of browsers is like answering ten percent of sales calls with 'Hello, could you please fuck off?'"

(I realize you aren't advocating the position so much as explaining it.)

Quality is an issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox has never been a high quality software. Just hyped. It has horrible memory leaks, lots of bugs and ugly default interface. I would think personally that it deserves to vanish.

Konqueror's KHTML passed ACID2 and the browser is fine as well. As is the presently free as in beer Opera!

Firefox Team: Fix the Firefox Killer CPU use bug!

[Futurepower(R)]

The most severe problem with Firefox is not a vulnerability. The real Firefox killer is that it has a huge, huge bug: After you have opened a few windows and tabs, it begins consuming huge amounts of CPU time, even when it is idle. Eventually it either crashes or slows the computer to the point that it is unusable.

Right now, as I write this, Firefox is consuming 21% of the CPU time of my computer, and Mozilla is consuming 4%. This is with NO activity. If I ignore the problem, eventually, when more windows and tabs have been opened and closed, Firefox or Mozilla will crash. Or, Windows XP will crash. I spent several hours verifying this bug on other computers on both Windows and Linux, and reported it on Bugzilla.

The latest version of Firefox, 1.07, is worse than 1.06. Mozilla is just as bad.

THAT could be why people are abandoning Firefox. It's really a hassle when you have to re-boot because of the bug, and you have numerous windows and tabs open.

I've reported this bug numerous times. I have not posted links below because Bugzilla doesn't accept traffic from Slashdot. Take out the spaces in the URL inserted by Slashdot.

For example:
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=204 668

I first reported this problem with version .8 of Firefox.
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222 660

Plenty of people have this same problem. I posted links to their Slashdot comments. See comment #34 of the Bugzilla report just above, for example.

All I've gotten over the years is time-wasting replies, such as comment #36: "please no more ideas. build mozilla or firefox debug and crash it. do yourself a favor and run them from a |screen|d session so that you can get back to them later, i'd suggest running gdb from another terminal, also in |screen|d, generally i do: (ps aux|grep mozilla-bin);./mozilla -g -d gdb attach [pid from ps output]. you may need to use |c| to continue, eventually when you crash, use |bt|."

Want Karma? Report this bug on Slashdot. Almost every time I post my problems with this bug on Slashdot, I get modded to +5.

One Slashdot commenter said that he had stopped reporting bugs in Firefox because they didn't fix them.

Someone commented that he found that the bug occurs because of incorrect handling of plug-ins, such as the Adobe Acrobat plug-in. I don't see any way to disble that in Firefox.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Infinitly Stupid

[Anonymous Coward]

"We always knew there was a finite number of early adopters out there and a finite number of Microsoft haters who would switch to something new"

Ah yes, but there are an infinite number of idiots out there.

Firefox suffers due to it's own failures

[Offwhite98]

Firefox was great and all, but my problems with it seem to increase every day with each new micro release. It chews up too much memory, kills the processor, causes me to install new extensions all the time and all of that is generally distracting and leads me to think IE 7 could potentially better altogether. Afterall, we are now seeing Firefox has had some security issues despite the early claims which seemed to draw many over to the Mozilla ranks. Once you lose that trust it is pretty much impossible to get it back. Just ask Microsoft. Perhaps Opera will fill the void a bit, or perhaps a Windows port of Safari. That would be most welcome.

WebSideStory ...

[Mansing]

... is, of course, the ultimate source of browser usage. NOT!

Re:Firefox Team: Fix the Firefox Killer CPU use bu

[mrtivo]

I agree they don't seem to fix the showstopper bugs. I've had a tab switching bug since day one of using firefox. When I switch tabs after opening a new tab, firefox hangs. Mozilla does not, which is why I'm using mozilla now.

~5 More Years Until Global Domination!

[Anonymous Coward]

Firefox is at 7.86% of marketshare today according to these guys and they say its growth essentially sucks. Excuse me? Since when is an annualized growth rate of >33% slow?

At the current "slow" growth rate, Firefox will be the dominant browser in a mere five or six years!

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[IllForgetMyNickSoonA]

I keep hearing about these "IE Only" sites for a long time already. However, I yet have to find one. My primary browser is Konqueror, backup (for the case Konqueror barfs on a given site) is Mozilla. Could somebody point me to an "IE only site"?

I suppose those would have to heavily depend on ActiveX or some such stuff, which is (AFAIK) only supported by IE. Am I correct?

Firefox.....it has ADBLOCK. End of story.

[gallwapa]

Adblock is the #1 extension for Firefox in my mind. I dont have a billion extensions, I dont have a billion themes, I dont have excessive memory use. Firefox has NEVER crashed on me (save for java locking it up!) and I haven't seen an ADVERTISEMENT, banner or POPUP, in over five months. My filter list is less than 15, but it blocks 99.999999999999999999% of all internet ads.

Porn

[Anonymous Coward]

Some people switch to FireFox, others just don't browse for porn.

Even more impressive

[bufalo_1973]

I can check hotmail with FF and Konqueror. And my computer still works :P :)

PNG of Death - OT

[shotgunefx]

Kind of off topic but...

It was around 2000, I had used a PNG for a search label instead of a GIF on a customer site by accident. The only reason it came to light is that anyone on Win NT4 would lock solid. Nothing to do but pull the plug. Took awhile to figure that one out. I was pretty skeptical at first when during testing, complaints of the store freezing computers. Quite a bitch to figure out too as the machine locked hard as soon as a page was loaded.

It should be the other way around!

[Anonymous Coward]

If it were REALLY mainstream and important, you bundle PCs with Firefox, not the other way around:

Buy Firefox Gold(TM) for $999.95 and get a FREE laptop!

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[gordgekko]

I've been using Firefox for well over a year and have only hit *one* web site (Interland's support web site) that refused to work. I have no doubt there are others out there but this IE-only web site BS really has to end soon.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[crontab]

For both my banks (http://wachovia.com/ http://affinityfcu.org/) https links don't work in Firefox or Opera for that matter. The most annoying thing in the wachovia case is that you can do all but the last step while paying bills; and then hitting submit simply doesn't work. No extension conflict either as this is true even with no extensions installed. All the way from 0.7 to 1.5 beta.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[cagle_.25]

I tried to do some research about Maryland criminal law. I went to the www.maryland.gov site and eventually landed here. Even with Java enabled and the latest run-time environment installed, I got the message "Java must be enabled to use this site" when attempting to view it with FF. By contrast, IE6 shows it just fine.

Wow! Journalists get it wrong!!!

[geekwithsoul]

From the TFA: "Much of Firefox's gains, in fact, have come not at IE's expense, but at that of non-Firefox browsers from the Mozilla code (including the Mozilla suite and the stand-alone Netscape), as well as browsers by others, such as Apple's Safari and Opera Software's Opera."

First of all, it wasn't clear from the article what operating systems were being looked at. Since IE isn't available on anything but Windows, are they also looking at the number of non-Windows OSes and what browser they are using? (other than the mention of Apple) Any news story that doesn't tell you how the numbers were gathered, what controls were in place, etc. is pretty much useless.

Also, while this may be a "slowing," what it appears to be is a consolidation, which is a much bigger story. Now that Firefox has unified the non-IE users, they can start moving forward on making real in-roads into the great unwashed masses. Since Firefox couldn't have directly competed with IE until that happened, I would say this is just the milestone that marks the beginning of the end for IE.

Redundant article?

[chrisnewbie]

Didnt this same article or something close to this appear like 2 months ago here on slashdot?
Anyways it's not because it's not popular it's juts because it's not new anymore so growth is slowing down,,,at the begining 1000 new downloads a day was incredible but after getting 1 million + to use this software a 1000 download a day seem quite small.

Funny Story...

[eklitzke]

Your post reminded me of a funny (in a very geeky sense of the word) story. My sister has a friend who lives in a household (she's in high school) that basically doesn't understand technology and is frightened by it. Their computers are full of spyware and adware, probably lots of viruses. So my sister was over at this friend's house one weekend, and their computer was almost completely unusable. Besides the fact that they get popups every few minutes (even with IE closed), they have an older computer and they're still using dial-up, so all of the spyware, popups, and banners are just making their computer even slower, and probably eating up a lot of their bandwidth. My sister was totally apalled and implored her friend to install Firefox. She tried explaining how they would get less spyware, and you can install extensions that get rid of ads, and be safer against viruses. Her friend totally refused to install it, because she was afraid that it was "probably going to come with lots of spyware and stuff."

In a totally unrelated story, I work in a computing center at school, and its amazing how many people there are who think that "the internet" is built into their "computer" and is only accessed by clicking on the magical blue e. A lot of the time when they're having problems getting things to work in IE, I ask them to use Firefox, and they get totally bewildered at the concept that there's another way to get onto the internet. When I ask them to try accessing the internet, but without clicking the magical blue e, they look at me like I'm dumb.

WebSideStory is Crap

[Dracos]

Didn't they change their metrics a couple months ago to favor IE?

"Finite number of Microsoft haters" translates to "people who have used something else and/or read any web standards.

When OneStat agrees with this drivel, I might buy it.

I think the point on security is...

[ebyrob]

When Firefox first came out, it was widely perceived as "a fully secure browser" that you could "install and forget". Cleary both IE and Firefox have now had vulnerabilities in the last year. Just as clearly IE's track record isn't as good. Still, to really buck the establishment and start pushing hard for a switch to Firefox I'd like to see a security record you can eat off of, and that just hasn't happened yet.

When Firefox becomes the OpenBSD of browsers, then maybe I'll start flogging it again. Until then, I just assume people are going to catch viruses and exploits when browsing the web on Windows no matter what browser they use (except maybe Opera but that costs either $$$ or ad-time).

Re:I think the point on security is...

[JonnyCalcutta]

Actually, Opera is now permanently ad free. http://www.opera.com/

Web Side Story has an interest in Firefox slowing

[DanCentury]

My company uses Web Side Story's HBX web analytics service. They have a tool called the Active Viewer which allows you to browse to a web page and view the stats for that page. The Active View tool does not work for Firefox (or Netscape, Safari, Opera). So you could assume that they would want to play down any of Firefox's sucesses, since thelr products don't play well with it. It's a shame because it's a very cool tool.

Also, IMHO, only the most corporate and boring sites use massive services like HBX -- so, in other words, IE users. I want to see Google's web stats -- then we'll see the true browser stats.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[legojenn]

Try http://www.aircanada.ca/.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[globring]

Not really an 'IE' only site, but at least its currently a 'non-Firefox' site, is Proctor & Gamble.

When I try to access it using Firefox 1.0.7, it tells me to upgrade my browser and provides image button links to Microsoft and Netscape to do so. And as far as I can tell, without changing my client ID info, I can't get to the site using Firefox, in other words, it doesn't give me the option of going there anyway.

best estimate yet for number of active web users

[ubiquitin]

This 5 to 8 percent of marketshare is the number of people who have a clue enough to be willing to switch. How many of the internet explorer "users" are really licenses that are sitting on a machine that isn't being used regularly by anyone? I'll bet around 92% to 95%. Bloated market numbers are to be expected from any of the Fortune 500. So finally what we have is a realistic look at the number of real browsing public.

that annoying memory leak issue.. still

[reidspice]

tabs aside, it's hard for me to recommend firefox to anyone when even the 1.5 beta 1 still has a *horrendous memory leak*. i really can't quite understand how this enormous (and well-documented) problem continues to plague firefox.

yes, i have tried the workarounds (changing variables, installing flashblock, uninstalling all other extensions, etc.) and none of these fixes work for me. i'll use firefox for about an hour, check its memory use, and see that - sure enough - it's up to 170 mb. that's ludicrous when you have only two tabs open in a single window. the worst situation is when i use another app for a while (so winxp swaps the firefox ram out to the page file) and then i switch back to firefox. i will open up the task manager and watch as the memory use for firefox goes from, say, 70 mb back up to 150 mb (at ~1 mb/sec) while the hourglass spins and spins. once it finally gets all of its ram back it will let you use the browser again. so yeah, wait 60 seconds and you can hit the back button. intolerable. this machine has 512mb ram - not ideal but should be adequate.

i feel like even more of a sucker because i've convinced everyone in our office of 25 to switch to it, only to now recommend that they restart their browser every few hours so that it will clear out its memory-hogging ways and release some ram so that other apps can function.

someone mentions this problem each time there is a firefox article and it's well-documented all over the web. so why hasn't it been resolved? it's far and away the #1 problem with firefox and why i still can't strongly recommend it.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[wampus]

Works for me, FF 1.0.7 + Sun JRE on WinXP. Do you possibly have an extension installed that is getting in the way?

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[cagle_.25]

FF 1.0. That may be the problem. I'll pursue it, thx. Regards, Jeff Cagle

Re:Reason #10: Firefox updates are a pain in the @

[jrutley]

I'm not a Firefox dev, but I can tell you that the upcoming 1.5 version has incremental update support.

The FEMA aid request site was one.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

I keep hearing about these "IE Only" sites for a long time already. However, I yet have to find one.

How about the FEMA site section for online claims requests, which explicitly requred IE 6.x. Slashdot article here.

This was particularly a problem since the volunteer-provided internet access tended to be donated older computers running free software, often from a "live CD". But not being able to use it to fill out the aid forms massively reduced its usefulness.

The telephone alternative to online signup was even worse: It didn't let you sign up, only triggered the mailing of the form - to your address in the flood zone.

corporate support

[cyberbob2010]

One thing slowing its growth is an inability of today's companies to program in a way that supports anything other than IE
For ex. I work for a certain distributor of medical products.
This company has been heavily promoting a new web based service which does not support firefox. For the record this new service supports six digits worth of users.
Also , I noticed that most of the websites that I visit that have very complex web based services also do not support the firefox browser (even with the most recent versions of plug-ins etc...)
Without corporate support firefox ill never gain more than a handfull of users because love it or hate it when it comes to compatibility the only browser who gets attention is IE

Two things that hold up Firefox in institutions...

[netsrek]

Exactly right, the two things that are a problem for me deploying Firefox in my institution:

1) No auto-update service.
2) Random-directory-per-user preference location.

Sure, I have scripts that can work out the directory most of the time, but I shouldn't have to jump through these kinds of hoops.

What a piece of F.U.D.!

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey guys, do you know something? Firefox is going to be downloaded 100.000.000 (one hundred million) times in less than a year. Not bad at all IMO.

I also think that Firefox is one of the pillars that we the users can resort to in order to escape M$ absolute dictatorship, the other being maily OpenOffice and the third one Linux.

Intsall the first into your windowized pc, then the second one. By the way you will be already saving about 300$ with that and getting rid of tons of spyware and security holes leading directly to your OS.
Once you are confident at using these two, you can go and have linux installed in your pc, and you will feel at home cos'Ffox and OpenOffice are also readily available for the Linux OS, and you will be ready to get full soft freedom and get rid of insecure and expensive microsoftware

So Lets support Firefox as the first step towards an unlimited computing world!, and stop posting these FUD, misleading posts!

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[DCstewieG]

Works fine for me with the Firefox 1.5 Beta 1

Re:Two things that hold up Firefox in institutions

[robolemon]

Firefox 1.5 (now in beta) will have auto-update.

Reference: http://www.techspot.com/staff/38/thoughts-on-firef ox-auto-update/

Sarcasm on Slashdot?

[doublem]

There's Sarcasm on slashdot? I'm shocked, shocked to hear...

Oh no, the sky is falling!

[xgamer04]

My thoughts:

-Any growth rate within a finite system cannot continue indefinitely. Think bacteria in a petri dish.
-Firefox has not released any major updates to its browser since 1.0 (which was released on 2004-11-09, a little over 11 months ago).
-Internet Explorer is still "good enough" for Joe Average, even if his PC is slowing to a crawl because of all the spyware.

i get 50% firefox hits

[Anonymous Coward]

i run a fairly hip web site that gets over 1,000,000 page views/day and believe it or not, i get just over 50% firefox users. perhaps it's pre-fetching tho, eh? yea

Well, duh ... www.squarefree.com/pornzilla/

[ankhank]

Pornzilla: Porn surfing redefined. Pornzilla is a collection of tools for surfing porn with Firefox. These bookmarklets and extensions make it easier to ... www.squarefree.com/pornzilla/

I'm seeing more Firefox than ever

[deeny]

Granted, I do get a lot of non-MSFT OS users to my site, but here's my stats (from mint): Browser stats and Platform stats. As you can see, even most people visiting my site on Windows must be using Firefox.

Re:Well, duh ... www.squarefree.com/pornzilla/

[Coward Anonymous]

Browsing enhancements dedicated to porn surfing are commendable but what you need to really free the lizard is free, high quality, FireFox only porn material.
MS would have a hard time matching move like that.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[lemkebeth]

Interesting.

I clicked on the browser requirements link on the page and guess what? The Mac requirements reguire:

MacOS 9.0 or later
MS IE 5.0

Notice that IE has been discontinued for the Mac a while back. They they do say they "support"Netscape 7.2 but, that seems to be Windows only versions.

FWIW, you have the following on MacOS X:

iCab, Mozilla, Netscape (don't know if they still maintain it), FireFox, Comano, Safari, Opera, OmniWeb, and Shaive(spelling?).

Math agrees with Firefox

[cnerd2025]

My /. commrades, we must consider the mathematics of it. At first, FX was used by such a small percentage of people that it didn't deserve any distinguishment from the Mozilla Suite. Then, around version 8, the geek world truly adopted Firefox. In fact, I know no geeks or nerds (/. type fodder) who don't prefer FX to IE. It has better features and is standards compliant. OSS also improves it.

I consider security an issue, but I also think that because OSS inherently allows for ubiquitous bug-checking, the problems with FX are being ironed out early, whereas IE has had problems since its inception, and the rate of change of the new problems is greater than the rate of change of the problems solved (in a given time duration). So, we can infer that because Firefox is still growing, the people who analyze the code is growing as well, and the more bugs will be ironed out earlier. The number of users is directly proportional to the number of bugs found and fixes implemented. With IE, the more people who use it (and do not have access to the code), the fewer chances there are for a given user to fix the code. Therefore, the debugging base is a small (constant) contingent at M$ (who probably doesn't really debug all that often until a flaw is actually announced on cracker sites.) And at that, M$ has had a few (about 8) years to debug IE whereas Firefox has been in existence about 2 (correct me if I'm wrong). Do the math. The new bugs in IE should be far smaller than they are at this stage. Firefox is doing well at eliminating its bugs early on. But security is just one of the mathematical issues.

Another would be the "growth rate." Knowing calculus, the growth rate can be defined as the derivative of function f where f(x) is number of users at a time t. d/dx[f(x)] would be the growth rate function. d^2/dx[f(x)] would give the rate of growth rate function. This is what WSS is trying to say. What they don't do, however, is give valid reasons. They assume that most of us are ilnumerate -- that we are incapable of doing math. What they fail to realize is that math is only a model of the real world and that with the correct stats we can then predict what will likely happen. Obviously there is a continuum of web users from those who know the on and off buttons to those of us who know what the difference between a client and server is to those of us who know the different requests HTTP can transmit. The geekiest of the geeky were the first to adopt FX. That is a fact. It followed a regular exponential growth model. At first, the number of users was incredibly small. Then as WoM started spreading, more downloads came. And these downloads compounded, much like interest on your mortgage payment or rabbits whose sole task is to multiply. The population was really booming. The second derivative, d^2/dx[f(x)] was very very positive. Now, it seems, the geeks are still downloading it, but the second derivative is now negative, because the rate of change of growth rate is actually decreasing. I believe once Firefox reaches that 1st precentile of geekdom, possibly sooner, firefox will begin to catch on with the mere mortal web-users and the corporate users. I would venture that the corporate users would come on first and then the personal users, but who knows. Obviously the aforementioned security is an issue too, and it plays into our mathematical model. The main point is that we can fit data to various functions, but the function is only part of the model. We can say "well, the total number of firefox users has increased at a declining rate." This is just a statistic; it is so misleading that it follows lies and damn lies. One wouldn't analyze what their expected server load would be using the prior load as the sole determinant. Organization 'x' may decide to roll out its full website on some day during the month, and users begin flocking there. Using the old data for the "page under construction" page and extrapolating the next month's usage would be futile. Statistics is very useful, but I fin

surprising

[DarkProphet]

I guess I am maybe a little surprised by this.

Actually, what I have found surprising lately is the number of casual acquaintences that I know (several college-age co-workers and such) that use firefox without me prompting them to! Crazy. Even totally non-techie students seem to be riding the firefox wave lately. Perhaps this isn't so surprising in that demographic, but I've also come across a good many non-tech oriented people age 40+ that have also switched to firefox.

The growth has perhaps slowed, but that its maybe good for firefox for now as it gives the dev team more time to fix some things and incorporate new features before they have so broad a user base that any changes (or lack thereof) are critisized much like the problem IE faces. I think there are many legitimate complaints about IE, but to be fair some of them are exacerbated by the sheer size of the user-base.

I'm just waiting for fellow slashbots to proclaim (in jest or otherwise) that firefox is dead. Especially on BSD ;-)

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[Enahs]

You're fortunate. And it's not just IE-only. You have these AJAX weenies producing content that does include Mozilla-based products, yes, but excludes Safari users, and I'll not mention blind people who can't use AJAX-dependent sites at all.

Imminent Death of Firefox Predicted, FA11

[Hosiah]

Re: "Microsoft-haters"
Listen, if I loved Microsoft to little bitty pieces and hated every other system, I think I'd still use Firefox. It's the only user-friendly web-browser I've ever encountered. It has skinnable themes. It has plug-ins. It has extensions from the useful to the frivilously fun. And so simple to download/install all of the above, Aunt Tillie and Joe Sixpack can handle it. It adds a whole new dimension to the entire web experience, which is something that never even occured to me to say about a web browser before - before the web browser was just a random window to interact with the internet through.

Extra gee-whiz naive enthusiasm provided for your entertainment.

How about Firefox bugs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe Firefox has some serious flaws. For example, printing. Check out bug #154892. This bug has been around for years, it's getting worse (more content that triggers it), and it makes Firefox unuseable in many environments. Yet there is no sight of it ever getting fixed. This sucks.

It's also why I use Opera & Safari. We print too much. Until this is fixed I can't make Firefox the default browser in my organization. It's as simple as that.

These kind of problems can also turn people away from open source software.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[Anonymous Coward]

Wait... You're intentionally spoofing your browser as IE, and then WHINING that the stats companies count you as IE!?!?

You CAN'T be serious.

innerHTML

[Whumpsnatz]

I ran into a technical detail that would definitely deter some companies from moving to Firefox. I was disappointed to discover that I can't use innerHTML the way I want for my site. It works fine in Safari, as well as in (gack!) IE, but not in Firefox. I don't see any other decent way to provide the dynamic characteristics I need, so I'm left with telling people that they'll have to use IE when on Windows. (And what do the Linux folks do?)

Not that any companies are likely to be affected by _my_ website, but I also noted the use of innerHTML in a commercial product I was just working with. I'd love to see Firefox changed, so I wouldn't have to point people to IE. Too bad I'm clueless when it comes to the programming for Firefox.

Re:innerHTML

[jp10558]

Does innerHTML work in Opera?

It's Simple

[catprog]

It is simple.

When you have 10,000 users you only need 1,000 users to increase by 10% but
When you have 100,0000 users you only need 10,000 users to increase by 10%

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[MaGGuN]

This is wishfull thinking. The effect of this is very limited, the only difference worth noticing would be if firefox was distributed with User String Agent set to Internet Explorer by default. Or do you have actual numbers to back up your claims, other than the fact that you have choosen to change it. You changed it to get in to windows update? Give me a break, why on earth would you need firefox to visit windows update?

Not just early adoptors or msft haters.

[walterbyrd]

I know msft lovers who use firefox, and wouldn't dream of using anything else as their primary browser.

The reason, of course, is security. Firefox takes it seriously, msft does not.

A brief break for the obvious.

[timothykaine]

A slowdown does NOT always lead to a stop. I may slow down when approaching a red light (the release of IE 7), but when it turns green again (the disappointment in IE 7 after it hits the streets) I keep going.

Im okay with a 1% every two months as opposed to every one month. Progress is progress, regardless of whether or not its at a break-neck pace. The numbers wont be shrinking anytime soon.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[cagle_.25]

Yep, 1.0.7 works fine.

Firefox ranked #1

[silverbax]

In the new PC World ranking of the best 100 products of 2005:

http://www.pcworld.com/reviews/article/0,aid,12076 3,pg,12,00.asp

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[animale]

No wishful thinking. The number of downloads of the extension "User Agent String" should give a sense of the number of folks who have felt the need to pose their browser as something else. While not everyone who downloads the extension is using it at any one time, or posing as IE -at any one time-, that may be offset by the large number of folks who use proxy or proxy-like anonymity software like Webwasher, which changes the User Agent String on demand, and IS set to IE by default. Whether this business affects ten thousand or one hundred thousand users, my point stands. Claims made by web data collection firms are statistically flawed, and companies promoting flawed data surely know it. This is like selling drugs with hazardous health effects, and making snake oil claims their vendors know are flawed. It's up to our critical reasoning skills to recognize flaws, bias, and outright payola.

BTW, I never claimed to have changed FF "to get in to Windows Update". I won't ask anyone to reread what I wrote. It wasn't that important to begin with. Just another plea for critical thinking.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[bearinboots]

Safari has excellent AJAX support. If an AJAX app isn't working on Safari, it's because it's badly written -- not the brower's fault.

Avant Browser

[Anonymous Coward]

pwnz all others... the mouse shortcuts are amazing...

firefix suxors

MSFT will solve this

[farble1670]

unfortunately for firefox, i think the issue of "safe browsing" is getting so well known and serious that MSFT is going to solve it before it becomes necessary for users to switch. i have complete confidence that MSFT will throw whatever's necessary at this problem and that IE 7 will provide a safe enough web browsing experience.

maybe it's not unfortunate really, since if IE 7 is safer, that's a good thing for everyone.

so maybe ... firefox's niche is now as a cross-platform browser.

Percent this, percent that

[Atario]

At least there's not an infinite number of IE users. From TFA:

Internet Explorer's market share as of Friday, Sept. 23, said WebSideStory, was 88.46 percent

So we know that not more than 88.46% of people take whatever is put in front of them. My worry is that it's not much less than that. Which might explain a lot of recent election results.

Firefox growth slows

[Oshkoshjohn]

Firefox growth is slowing because a VERY large market segment doesn't know or care about Firefox. I frequently help my friends to use their computers, and my experience is that most people who buy computers are not highly skilled computer geeks. The usual experience is to take everything out of the box, plug it all in, and run it until it breaks. It is entirely common to find the user's ISP Website as the browser homepage. It can be dial-up or cable, but the browser doesn't get changed from whatever was set up at the purchase. I believe this may be a good thing. My take on matters is these unskilled users believe their new computer is an appliance, not unlike their refrigerator or toaster. Isn't this the outcome for which all we geeks were hoping?

Great quote

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn, I wish I had mod points.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[MaGGuN]

If we are generous enough to say that 10% of the firefox user base changes their user agent string, you can according to current statistics add another percent. Not a exactly a big effect, even with generous assumptions. And I disagree with you that your point stands, unless you come up with something better. Statistics are always flawed in one way or another, this is common knowledge. However, it can give you a good indication on the general makeup or composition. And remember, statistics can misrepresent some or all variables compared to actual, real life values, i.e. firefox numbers might be too high. Nedless to say, comparing claimed bad web user agent statstics with selling drugs with hazardous health effects, in any respect, is just FUD.

Huh? (Obl. Family Guy)

[zonix]

Microsoft is a better netizen today than they were five years ago. Their development is more open, and their technologies are more cooperative.

Brian: Can I buy some pot from you?

:-)

z

Re:Useless

[instarx]

I keep hearing about these "IE Only" sites for a long time already. However, I yet have to find one. My primary browser is Konqueror, backup (for the case Konqueror barfs on a given site) is Mozilla. Could somebody point me to an "IE only site"?

secretshopper.com The initial page is ok for any browser, but trying to go into the site to register or train gets you a message that only IE will work, and they mean it - no amount of trying to fool it works.

Re:slows? Webstat data collection is flawed.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.toiletpaperworld.com/
No joke.

Firefox on all student terminals at UW

[WillAffleckUW]

It's kind of hard to grow from 100 percent penetration.

According to TFA

[ink]

According to TFA, that's exactly the case. It's a very simple logical fallacy, so I suppose that shines some light on "the bar" that they employ to hire people at WebSideStory.

Because, you know... if you don't use IE then you must hate Microsoft. ::Bill the Cat ptppppts to him::

Opera, anyone?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm surprised no ones mentioned Opera as a big part of this. I mean, Opera Software offical made 8.5 ad-less and completely free as the full version. I hear their downloads jumped into the millions after that.

Its obvious that Operas that extra %. So no worries, they aren't going to IE...

CHAoS_NiNJA - Opera user