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Firefox Achieves 10% Global Market Share

sebFlyte writes "ZDNet is reporting that according to OneStat's latest figures, Firefox has passed the 10 percent market share mark. At 11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent, but it's heading in the right direction. The report also mentions some odd geographical variation: Firefox's market share is almost three times higher in the US than UK, for example." From the article: "...other companies have noticed a decline in Firefox over recent months. Last month, Web applications provider NetApplications reported that the open source browser's share of the market dropped by 0.7 percentage points from August to September. Although this wasn't the first time that Firefox' share has dropped, RedMonk analyst James Governor said he believes the overall trend for Firefox is upwards."

405 comments

  1. Firefox is on the up!! by Bongoots · · Score: 5, Informative

    Download Mozilla Firefox!

    Mozilla's browsers global usage share is still growing according to OneStat.com

    Amsterdam - November 2 2005 - OneStat.com (www.onestat.com), the number one provider of real-time web analytics, today reported that Mozilla's browsers have a total global usage share of 11.51 percent. The total usage share of Mozilla increased 2.82 percent since April 2005. Microsoft's Internet Explorer still dominates the global browser market with a global usage share of 85.45 percent which is 1.18 percent less as at the end of April.

    "The global usage share of Mozilla's browsers is still growing and it seems that Netscape users and some Internet Explorer users are switching to the Firefox version. It also looks like that browser users of Internet Explorer for Apple's Mac are switching to Safari because the global usage share is still growing. It is also interesting to see that Microsoft's Internet Explorer has less global usage share in the USA as in the UK. Mozilla's browsers are more popular in USA and Canada as in the UK" said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat.com.

    The most popular browsers on the web are:

    1. Microsoft IE = 85.45 %
    2. Mozilla Firefox = 11.51 %
    3. Apple Safari = 1.75 %
    4. Netscape = 0.26 %
    5. Opera = 0.77 %

    Source: http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox40_bro wser_market_firefox_growing.html

    Nearly 17% of Canada, over 14% of the USA and just under 5% of the UK use Firefox!!

    1. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by GoodOmens · · Score: 5, Interesting
      I just can't wait until we see sites declaring "Page will not render correctly under Microsoft IE".

      Too many pages require IE for Firefox to be 100% usefull (although thankfully thats declining).

    2. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by stecoop · · Score: 3, Interesting

      4. Netscape = 0.26 %
      5. Opera = 0.77 %


      I don't think I would trust statistics from someone that puts .77% below .26%. Talk about making the number look like you want huh?

    3. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Pichu0102 · · Score: 1

      I have seen some sites that declare that IE will not work on their sites. I tried them in IE and they worked fine, tried them in Firefox, worked fine. Most people that put "Will only work with IE" most likely don't know if it will work or not, or use ActiveX anyways.

    4. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Bert64 · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Well, www.ev6.net is one such site.. It renders perfectly in every other browser, including ie5 for mac.. Any version of IE on windows screws it up (tho i didn`t try the beta of 7).
      There is a notice on the site saying that you need a modern browser with support for CSS, this notice uses a CSS property to mark it non displayable which broken browsers like IE ignore.
      Navigation of the site works perfectly in any browser however, even lynx.. The layout looks screwed in IE for windows, and obviously any graphical elements are lost in lynx.

      Why is it like this? Well, i wrote the site by following standards, the result works perfectly in mozilla/safari/opera/etc, just not in IE.. My attitude is that it`s the browser that`s broken, not my site, and i won`t modify my site to cater to buggy browsers.

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    5. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by pmike_bauer · · Score: 5, Informative

      The order is alphabetical!

      1. internet Explorer
      2. Firefox
      3. Konquerer
      4. Netscape
      5. Opera

      --
      I read /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
    6. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by colorado_coder · · Score: 1

      Innacuracy through and through.. 4. Netscape = 0.26 % 5. Opera = 0.77 % c'mon this is enough right here, but this study suggests exclusivity. There is no indication of people like me that use _both_ browsers daily and for different reasons. CC

    7. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Cute, except #3 is Safari, which shares a code base with Konquerer, but is not the same app.

    8. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by stecoop · · Score: 5, Funny

      The order is alphabetical!

      I am going to start an initiative to recommend that Firefox immediately change the name to Airfox making it the #1 browser on the net.

    9. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by IAmTheDave · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Personally, I find zealotry towards any browser annoying. Fact is that people use different browsers. It's not rocket science to code cross-browser and still be standards compliant.

      I mean, yeah, Firefox is vastly superior to IE, but I wouldn't make a website that was incompatible with either.

      --
      Excuse my speling.
      Making The Bar Project
    10. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Wellspring · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Agreed, that's all we need. We go to all the trouble of promoting a superior alternative that makes the market competitive again, and what do we do? Push for a new monopolist? No way.

    11. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I hadn't even read the GP post...couldn't be bothered.

    12. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by B3ryllium · · Score: 4, Funny

      But then Microsoft would rename IE to AE - Aardvark Explorer.

    13. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Rename it to Ø (null) - the browser formerly known as firefox.

    14. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 4, Funny

      Then we add a star or a underscore or something to the beginning of Airfox, therefore coming ahead of them again.

    15. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Then we add a star or a underscore or something to the beginning of Airfox, therefore coming ahead of them again."

      With inovative ideas like this, M$ is d00md.

    16. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by eMartin · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's pretty lame.

      All it really shows is that you can't do what most other sites can, which is design a website that works at least pretty well in most browsers, and by making the message large and bold, it seems more important than your services and you just come off as either too arrogant or too lazy to find a few little workarounds.

      After all, at first glance, the only things that seem to be "buggy and broken" are a few alignment problems that anyone who spent a few days learning HTML and CSS1 could have fixed.

      If there is actually some part of your site that simply doesn't work, I'd understand if you put a small note on that page, but telling people that the web browser that came with their brand new computer is old/obsolete just makes you look as foolish to them as the sites that tell me I don't have the required browser/plugins installed when I know my version of Firefox and installed plugins can handle the site do to me.

    17. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      There's always \0Internet Explorer. But that would make the string terminate before the name, so they'd just disappear! It's win/win!

    18. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1
      Just wait until IE7 is released with the next version of Microsoft Windows. There will be a barrage of advertisements, such as:

      Tabbed browsing - it's nothing new, Internet Explorer has had it since version 7!

      Browse for Sure - Internet Explorer is the only browser that can render all the websites that are written to accommodate Internet Explorer rendering bugs!

    19. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I like your thinking about your site, but for people who are using a standards compliant browser but who CHOOSE to use their own stylesheet (for accessibility reasons etc) they will get this big dopey message.

      I wonder how it would work for blind access? Will the screenreader need to go through this block everytime unless specified?

      I personally think a small footnote indicating "Built to standards, click here for more info" would be more professional (after all, you made space for the firefox and validator icons)

      One other small note, you may actually be putting people off looking at your site by displaying such a big notice - I am lucky, I get to choose my own work browser, many others in a work environment are locked to the company default.

      You might just be losing business because of it.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    20. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by trepan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Since when did 10% marketshare become anything close to a monopoly?

    21. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Gumph · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I disagree, why should the coder HAVE to do work arounds/fixes just to get his site to work with non standards compliant browsers?
      Standards are there for exactly this reason, the only reason why people NEED to do work arounds etc, is because IE is so damn entrenched on the internet.
      I aplaud the GP for his firm stance and I hope it doesn't affect him economically, although maybe a change of phrasing could make his IE visitors less put out.

      cheers G

      --
      'By the pricking of my thumbs, something wicked this way comes'
    22. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by jisatsusha · · Score: 2, Insightful

      There's a difference between declaring that your site doesn't work in one particular browser, and declaring that your site requires one particular browser. Fact is, IE is seriously flawed, from security to basic CSS, and the sooner people realise it and move to better browsers, the better it'll be for the web as a whole.

    23. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ahh so what you are saying is IE is NOT the Standard? Sorry, but when something has 85% of the market share( whether you like it or not ) it *IS* the defacto standard.

      As wierd as it may be to you, Firefox is the NON Standard browser until it gains the majority marketshare.

    24. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by SComps · · Score: 1

      personally, were I a customer, I would just sorta chuckle to myself and move along. Then again I never thought whining to potential customers about their choice of software was a viable method of increasing profits/page hits anyhow.

      Just me and my silly opinions.

    25. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by theborg1of4 · · Score: 3, Informative

      "I disagree, why should the coder HAVE to do work arounds/fixes just to get his site to work with non standards compliant browsers?"

      Because the coder typically doesn't have the last say in such matters. It is up to the customer requesting the web site to decide what will be supported and how. Your militant stance would not be well received, seeing as you would be asking them to alienate upwards of 85% of their own possible customer base.

      If you're developing for your own pleasure and don't care who uses your site, then it's of course a different scenario. But if the coder makes his livelihood off what he constructs and wants to eat and make car payments, then snapping to his customer's requirements is probably a safer bet.

    26. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Keeper+Of+Keys · · Score: 1

      This reminds me of the composer Charles Ives, who wrote piano parts unplayable by human beings. When challenged about this, his response was that that was how the music was meant to be, and it wasn't his fault that pianists only had ten fingers.

    27. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by bjason82 · · Score: 1

      I would love to see a state by state analysis of the United States because I am from California and I would have to say that almost everyone I know uses firefox, and that is no exaggeration. I am originally from northern california and I am currently attending college in southern california and Its all the same, from my perspective I rarely see anyone using internet explorer anymore. Does anyone have the same experience?

    28. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by imsoclever · · Score: 1

      Alphabet lol!

    29. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by P0ldy · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Agreed, that's all we need. We go to all the trouble of promoting a superior alternative that makes the market competitive again, and what do we do? Push for a new monopolist? No way.
      No, that's EXACTLY what needs to be done. And do you know what that "monopoly" will be? Web standards. So, that doesn't promote Firefox over IE; it promotes standards-compliant browsers* over non-standards-compliant browsers.

      * Firefox, Opera, Safari, Konqueror, Mozilla/Seamonkey, Netscape, etc...

    30. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Steve+Cowan · · Score: 5, Insightful

      >As wierd as it may be to you, Firefox is the NON Standard browser until it gains the majority marketshare.

      It's not "the" standard browser, but it is based on published "standards". The contention is that MS takes standards, then deviates from them just enough so that they can control and dominate it. If you have a browser in a dominant position, such as IE, deviating from established standards make those standards meaningless in the first place. Suddenly instead of having a democratic body determining how the web "works" with technologies like http, html, java, css, etc., MS takes their majority marketshare and uses it to their advantage by implementing those technologies, but just a little differently than they're supposed to.

      Lazy web designers who only bother to ensure their page works in IE are not doing the world any favours.

    31. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by eMartin · · Score: 1

      "why should the coder HAVE to do work arounds/fixes just to get his site to work"

      Why should his viewers HAVE to install extra software just to get his site to look nice, when most other sites work fine?

      Look, I respect his ideals, and I am a Firefox user myself and recomend it to others, but this guy is suggesting that what is probably a large percentage of his visitors go and download and install another browser just so he doesn't have to change a few lines of code.

      That isn't going to get them to switch to Firefox. It'll just get them to switch to another hosting service.

      And even if a few do as he suggests, they probably still won't use it for anything other than his site, but now they'll have yet another desktop icon and folder in their start menu, and they still won't understand what the problem was in the first place.

      Web standards aren't there for users, and they shouldn't have to care about them at all. They are there to make the coders jobs easier (as you implied), but my point was that it's lame when the coder basically tells his users to go out of their way becaues he couldn't be bothered to take a step beyond the "easy way" and get the site to work for them, his customers.

      If I didn't know better, all I'd see is a hosting company that can't seem to make a working web site that would have been possible back in 1996. I work with computers to make content for "normal people" and I wouldn't dream of putting diclaimers on my work to excuse the fact that I didn't find a way to make it work as they expect.

    32. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by byolinux · · Score: 1

      Except that putting 'click here' on anything is really lame.

      Try using a screen reader and you'll see why ;)

    33. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Which browser is it that refuses to support the W3C DOM? Which browser is it that chokes on transparent PNG's and runs really slowly when you provide the workarounds?

    34. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Steve+Cowan · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think you miss the GP's point: the site makes a statement by adhering to standards and subsequently not working with IE. Imagine how much of a better place the web would be, from a standards perspective, if all web designers did this.

    35. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by eMartin · · Score: 1

      "Lazy web designers who only bother to ensure their page works in IE are not doing the world any favours."

      How is that any worse than this guy, who doesn't bother to make sure his site works in IE even after he clearly to the time to find out that it doesn't and write a disclaimer about it.

      Heck at this point, I'd go as far as to imply that he's intentionally making it NOT WORK in IE.

    36. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by GuildPort · · Score: 1

      Tell us more about this geeky utopia.

    37. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by eMartin · · Score: 1

      I didn't miss the point, and yes, I look forward to the day when things work as you'd like them to, but today, I just expect sites to work in my browser of choice (as long as it's a current verison of one of the handful of major browsers), and I certainly prefer when websites don't preach to me or expect me to do more work than them in order to see their site.

    38. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by at_slashdot · · Score: 1

      "The order is alphabetical!

      1. internet Explorer 2. Firefox 3. Konquerer 4. Netscape 5. Opera"


      Really?! What happened with "Apple Safary" in that list? Do you like to twist facts?

      --
      "It is our choices, Harry, that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities." -- Prof. Dumbledore
    39. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by jonadab · · Score: 1

      > I just can't wait until we see sites declaring "Page will not render correctly under Microsoft IE".

      I've seen a site (melonpool.com) that suggests that if certain things don't render properly, it's time to upgrade to a better browser. IE is not mentioned at all, but one supposes, since it's not one of the three suggested upgrade options, that presumably IE users are supposed to upgrade if they have issues with the site's layout.

      I haven't looked at that site in IE to see how it renders, though. The only sites I look at in IE are my *own* sites (to ensure they render okay), our vendor's customer extranet, and Windows Update.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    40. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      > just so he doesn't have to change a few lines of code

      Change that to "just so thousands of web designers don't have to change a few lines of code on millions of web pages"

    41. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by pmike_bauer · · Score: 1

      It is a joke. I do that.
      The only reason I can think of for it being modded insightful/informative is...well...what site are we on again?

      --
      I read /. for the (Score:-1, Conservative) comments.
    42. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Kelson · · Score: 1

      My attitude is that it`s the browser that`s broken, not my site, and i won`t modify my site to cater to buggy browsers.

      Yes, it's the browser that's broken... but it's still the most-used browser out there, and most people aren't going to switch to a new one just to visit your site. They'll just go somewhere else.

      If you want the visitors, you're better off spending the time to put in workarounds for that buggy browser. Eventually few enough people will be using IE6 that you can just write them off (like most sites can write off Netscape 4 today), but we're not there yet.

    43. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by slugstone · · Score: 1

      And on the flip-side.

      replace IE with Firefox. Now say that again.

    44. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by bunratty · · Score: 1

      The stats show how much each browser is used, not what percentage of users use each browser. For example, Opera is used on 0.77% of visits to websites. Because you can only use one browser on a particular visit to a website, of course the percentages are exclusive.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    45. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by mobets · · Score: 3, Informative

      Why should his viewers HAVE to install extra software just to get his site to look nice, when most other sites work fine?

      They shouldn't. Microsoft should fix it and release the fix with the rest of the updates on tuesday. Then the users won't see this message any more. If every website had a similar message, Microsoft might get tired of hearing about it from their users (or the PC makers that are more likely to get the phone call) and fix the problem.

      As long as web developers are willing to bend over backwards for MS, why should MS take the time to fix something that is more than likely helping them hold their dominance at the moment?

      --

      It was me, I did it, I moved your cheese
    46. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by LiquidCoooled · · Score: 1

      I'm sure a very small foot note about the readability of the page is infinately better than a big message at the header of every page.
      At least with screen readers you can go through the entire page before coming across the usability message, and may even have selected the option before coming to the "click here" message.
      The current method would force the user (who may be using a standards compliant browser) through a rant for every page.

      --
      liqbase :: faster than paper
    47. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by falsified · · Score: 1
      I disagree, why should the coder HAVE to do work arounds/fixes just to get his site to work with non standards compliant browsers?

      Because that's their job. If I paid someone a significant amount of money to create my presence on the internet, and I found out that my presence was coming in a garbled or incomplete form to 12% of my audience (or 85%, if we're talking about noncompliance with IE) then I would know the designer did not do his/her job. Simple as that.

      That said, however, it will be nice once the web browser that (mostly) conforms to the standards everyone agreed to becomes the prominent browser, and people dump (or augment) the Microsoft-created standards.

      --
      HI, MY NAME IS ISAAC.
    48. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Tarwn · · Score: 1

      While I am usually the first (here at work anyways) to complain about IE's innumerable issues, it also is not really that difficult to make a standardized page that displays correctly in multiple browsers (including IE).
      There is the occasional extra line break that shouldn't be there, or an extremely minor difference that is only viewable when switching rapidly back and forth between browsers, but overall the simple layout you have chosen should easily be implementable in all major browsers...especially with the tables you have used for your layout.

      I was going to post a quick fix until I actually saw more of the source. You do realize that about 20% of your CSS is just increasing the download time and just being overridden when you redefine the same attributes a few lines lower, right?

      And it actually looks like you have, in several cases, used errors in Firefox rendering and are now complaining that IE didn't make the same errors.

      And right now a co-worker is laughing at me for what he sees as a defense of IE.

      Look, it's not hard to make a simple layout that works in all browsers. You attempted to over-complicate it, couldn't manage to hack it into working on multiple browsers, then gave up and simply made a stand against IE. My advice weould be to rewrite the layout from scratch. Dump the repetitve CSS, dump the tables, dump everything. Then from scratch build up the layout.

      --
      Whee signature.
    49. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by byolinux · · Score: 1

      I think my point is more that having a link with "click here" as the link text is a really bad idea. Links should be on relevant text...

      ie. More informationis available
        instead of
      Click here for more information.

    50. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by jesser · · Score: 1

      The grandparent is suggesting zealotry *against* a specific browser. Does that annoy you too?

      --
      The shareholder is always right.
    51. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by eneville · · Score: 1

      That would imply that my browsing in linux is not 100% useful. In fact, it's too 'useful' I have to use DNS to prevent adverts now that FF supports more kinds of crap. I dred the day it supports vbscript, that will mean further crap. BRING BACK THE WEB damnit, I want less crap and more plain text.

    52. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Tim+C · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Like it or not (and I certainly don't), IE is the de facto standard. We can whine about standards compliance until we're blue in the face (and believe me, I have), but the fact is that if your site doesn't work in IE, upwards of 85% of your potential visitors are excluded. Now, that may well not matter if it's just a personal vanity site, but for companies that's not a good idea.

    53. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah but saying that it isn't standard is factually untrue.. because regardless of how it came to be ('by extending existing democratically decided standards') , it is still the standard when a majority of websites conform to its "deviations" as you call them.

      Just because the standard was not democratically decided does not make it any less a standard. (Which is often what the fine nerds here on /. try to portray.. which logically makes no sense). It may not be a standard you LIKE.. but it is none-the-less the standard.

    54. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by lasindi · · Score: 1

      I just can't wait until we see sites declaring "Page will not render correctly under Microsoft IE".

      Already true of my website (though I just ask if my website looks white and ugly, which is true in the case of IE, so that I can rant about the incompliance of IE with W3C standards).

      --
      I have discovered a truly remarkable proof of this theorem that this sig is too small to contain.
    55. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by drsquare · · Score: 1

      It'll end up like IRC, and soon people will be loading up

      !!!!!!!!!100%INTERNETEXPLORER
      or
      !!!!!!!!~f1ref0x

    56. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're right. A de facto standard. Say that again. A de facto standard but that doesn't make it a real published standard. Are forgetting that the www in url line means World Wide Web, not Microsoft Wide Web?

    57. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I am forgetting nothing.. I am pointing out reality. The reality is it IS the standard ; I did say defacto standard and you are right I didn't say "published" (all though I could since Microsoft *has* published their standard and the majority of the World Wide Web conforms to it). You are arguing semantics of the way things should be, while I am arguing cold hard facts.. I am sorry if that's hard to understand.

    58. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Wellspring · · Score: 2, Insightful

      LOL, I got "insightful" and "flamebait" modded.

      You're right: it isn't anywhere near a monopoly. I use Firefox myself and love it.

      What I'm referring to are people who set their servers and code pages that to try to break IE on purpose. Most of IE's problems stem from Microsoft's monopoly status. Anyone on the monopolist throne will start to exhibit these flaws.

      So 'defeating' IE isn't the goal, creating multiple browsers that are all solid, established competitors and are all innovative and standards compliant is the goal. You advance Firefox by helping contribute to its features and functionality, and by educating people about its advantages. Not by breaking the other guy's browser, as a couple on this thread have suggested.

    59. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by expatsoftware · · Score: 1

      For simple HTML marketing pages, you're right. It's not all that hard to get Firefox to display something close to IE.

      But for application development where there will be plenty Javascript manipulation of the Document Object model, I always budget exactly 100% extra for anything that needs to work in Firefox as well as IE.

      A Firefox application is a completely different thing than an IE application. It's as different as programming in C++ for Windows vs. C++ for the Macintosh. The only difference is that you generally only ship one codebase on a browser, containing those two applications intertwined.

    60. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Bloater · · Score: 1

      > I just can't wait until we see sites declaring "Page will not render correctly under Microsoft IE".

      http://maihem.org/

    61. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by kuom · · Score: 1

      Because the coder typically doesn't have the last say in such matters. It is up to the customer requesting the web site to decide what will be supported and how.

      True that! There are an amazing number of people out there who can't make a web page if all you gave them were a text editor and an image manipulation program. I recently had to work with some of these people. My company is consisted of geeks, and while we can all write HTML, CSS, and PHP, we are not the most artistic bunch. So we decided to hire a "professional" web designer + marketing consulting company to help us make our sites prettier. All I have to say is, what a WASTE of money. It is obvious that their marketing person knows absolutely nothing about web technology (and they are supposed to be "consultants"?), because we gave her some pretty detailed specs, and asked her to turn in a better looking web page for us. It is just a simple HTML form, and we wanted to look nicer, with our company logo, and some better looking images for banner and background. Days later, she gave us an 5 MB JPEG file, a screenshot of the web HTML form. This went on literally for weeks, she had kept sending the page back in various formats, PNG, PDF, GIF, *except* HTML!

      Finally, we asked her to let us have direct contact with her web developer, and he as well, sent us fat image files. We had repeatedly told them that we need to have the HTML formats back, because there are some buttons on the page that our users click on, and it's not going to work too well when the whole page is just one huge image!

      We eventually gave up on this company, and went to an old personal friend who did a little graphics on the side, and he had the page fixed up in 30 minutes.

    62. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by XO · · Score: 1

      Wow, other places say that Opera has a 6% marketshare.. so.. that's a pretty significant difference.

      I'd bet that 11%+ is way exaggerated.

      --
      "Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
    63. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Really? When did "I" move in front of "F" in the alphabet?

    64. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Abominable Explorer could be enough.

    65. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Or like it's done in the Yellowpages: xFirefox where x = A*n

    66. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by ishnaf · · Score: 1
      What? It's alphabetical?
      1. Microsoft IE = 85.45 % 2. Mozilla Firefox = 11.51 % 3. Apple Safari = 1.75 % 4. Netscape = 0.26 % 5. Opera = 0.77 %
      I always thought that 'a' came before 'm'. Even if you got rid of 'Microsoft', 'Mozilla' and 'Apple', you'd still have 'i-nternet explorer' before 'f-irefox', unless you dropped 'internet' as well, and changed 'safari' to 'Konqueror'. You could then change 'Firefox' with ' bat', 'explorer' with 'ant', 'safari' with 'cat', 'netscape' with 'dog' and 'opera' with 'egg'. Then it'd be alphabetical and all the words would be one syllable.
    67. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Dirtside · · Score: 2, Funny
      Then we add a star
      *fox? :)
      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
    68. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Except of course that standards compliant is a relative term...

    69. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Ambush+Commander · · Score: 1
      Too many pages require IE for Firefox to be 100% usefull (although thankfully thats declining).

      That is simply not true. Not only do I get by with Firefox: I also get by with JavaScript disabled.

      :gasps:

    70. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      Well, if the site depends on errors in firefox rendering it also depends on opera, safari, konqueror and ie5/mac etc, making the same errors, because it looks identical in all of these browsers..
      As for testing with IE, i did, on a mac, and it worked.. I had no access to a windows system at the time and didn`t expect the windows version to behave differently to the mac version, seeing as they`re supposed to be the same product. The notice was actually supposed to target users of netscape 3/4 etc, which were cropping up occasionally in the stats and which wouldn`t render the site at all.

      As for the repetitive CSS, yeah i know it needs cleaning up, but at the time the site was designed it worked on every browser i had access to (even lynx, and yes you do get the css message), and validated on the w3c validator which was good enough for me.

      As for a quick fix, i did try the "ie7" javascript kludge pack at one point, but it still didn`t correct everything... the image backgrounds were still grey (should be transparent with anti-aliasing to transparent round the edges) and it made it much slower..

      But at the end of the day, i spent more time trying to kludge it to work in the windows version of ie than i did actually making the whole site in the first place and eventually got sick of doing so.

      Maybe IE7 has actually fixed these issues, could someone post a screenshot of how it looks if they have access to this browser?

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    71. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Bert64 · · Score: 1

      One more point..
      The main problem with the site right now, is the bar at the top.. This is meant to be fixed position, so that on some of the sub pages when you scroll down the bar stays put..
      I couldn`t find any way of doing this in IE other than using frames (nasty) or floating javascript iframes (nastier, since they still scroll down and then get snapped back up by the javascript)

      --
      http://spamdecoy.net - free throwaway anonymous email - avoid spam!
    72. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Steve+Cowan · · Score: 1

      Are you saying it's better to author for MSIE than Firefox, or are you digressing?

    73. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Steve+Cowan · · Score: 1

      When sites don't work properly in IE, maybe Microsoft will fix it.

      How is it that Firefox is rapidly gaining marketshare, even though many sites still don't work in Firefox? Why haven't the Mozilla developers been working on making IE-coded pages display properly in their browser?

      Some of us do in fact have agendas. While I doubt they will ever "take down" Microsoft, I support web developers who attempt to reclaim standards which were once open, so that we might one day have web development tools that actually work. Who knows - maybe Microsoft might actually fix IE.

      Nobody should care about my "browser of choice", because the difference between browsers should have little or nothing to do with rendering and more to do with features (UI, security, speed). Web developers should be more worried about content than compatibility.

    74. Re:Firefox is on the up!! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The order is alphabetical!
      erm. except Firefox DOES come before Internet Explorer... (abcdeFghI...)

  2. Not much further to go by saskboy · · Score: 4, Funny

    Once websites start working better with the standard adhering Firefox browser, IE use will begin to drop off as it will annoy users by not showing pages correctly.

    "11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent"
    It only needs to make it to 50% + 1%, at least that's what Quebec Seperatists would have us believe.

    --
    Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
    1. Re:Not much further to go by garcia · · Score: 1

      Once websites start working better with the standard adhering Firefox browser, IE use will begin to drop off as it will annoy users by not showing pages correctly.

      Take my bank for instance. Their online banking doesn't work all that well in any other browser than IE. I don't use Firefox but I do use Safari and a mobile browser. It doesn't work in either... Their response? "Use IE."

      So, just because the market share is there and growing, doesn't mean that all sites are going to code for it. I switched away from a bank that had usable online banking for mobile devices, Safari, and Firefox. You know why? Because they charged $2.95/mo to use it.

      The rush just isn't there. I'm certainly not going to switch to Firefox anytime soon. Not until IE just doesn't work at all on any site. I just don't see it coming to that though.

    2. Re:Not much further to go by MiliusXP · · Score: 1

      It's not 1% but 1 vote like all democratic votes

    3. Re:Not much further to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Personally I want to see Firefox at a stable 33% with two strong competitors each holding another third of the market. The last thing we need is another phase of single browser dominance, even if it's an open source one.

    4. Re:Not much further to go by LTC_Kilgore · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The only reason I can't use Firefox 100% of the time is Yahoo! Stattracker. I know I am a fantasy football nerd, but this app WILL NOT run under Firefox.

      I agree with the parent; if more sites (especially the larger ones) offered proper compliance, it would be much easier for people to give up IE entirely.

      I think that part of the problem in getting web developers to support firefox in addition to IE is that IE exists in addition to firefox on 90% of these machines. The logic is probably something like, "Why should we bother re-writing all our code when they can just fire up IE?"

    5. Re:Not much further to go by schon · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Take my bank for instance. Their online banking doesn't work all that well in any other browser than IE.

      Not all banks are like that, and you can always switch banks (or threaten to switch.)

      I bank with TD/Canada Trust. I use their internet banking every day, and it works perfectly in Firefox.

      Let them know that "Use IE" is not an acceptable answer.

    6. Re:Not much further to go by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 2, Interesting
      Banks charging for internet usage ? What is this 1996 ?

      Banks should encourage more and more people to go paper less and use online banking from what ever device the user prefers.. it saves them paper, time and money.

      I have used quite a lot banks' online banking without any problems in firefox, on rare occasion I have to set the user agent to IE , but never actually have to use IE.

      --
      for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
    7. Re:Not much further to go by bahwi · · Score: 1

      First IB works fine, has 1.26% interest on their checking to boot! NetBank isn't bad either. C'mon, you're on Slashdot, you're probably a geek, go with an Online bank. If you're paranoid like me, do both online and brick and mortar. (Oh? I lost my checkcard. Damn. Let me transfer my money and use my other checkcard while waiting for the other to arrive. Sorry paranoid+bad luck).

      Not the best interfaces though, it's really lacking compared to most banks, but you can do everything you've ever needed on it. Bank One/Chase works too. Bank of America(ugh, not that I'm saying to ever get them. Just google for "Bank of America Fees" I've never had so many fees as with them).

      On Topic though, I think a lot of places will be increasing support if they did not before, banks don't have to, but stores are easy, if one doesn't work right, there's 50 other places selling that same item normally, and losing 10% of your customer base is really bad no matter how you look at it.

    8. Re:Not much further to go by nine-times · · Score: 5, Insightful
      I don't foresee web developers dropping support for IE for as long as IE has a substantial install base. They'll start supporting Firefox in addition to IE.

      However, this still might be bad news for Microsoft, and may lead to a drop in IE use anyhow. The reason is, if they're supporting Firefox, then they're more likely to be following real standards, and paying attention to their cross-browser incompatibility. This means fewer pages will be IE only, and pages developed for Firefox (and therefore more towards real standards) are very likely to work in any standards-compliant browser.

      10% might be enough that poorly-written IE-only pages will be viewed as a problem. Once there's no penalty for using a non-IE browser, we may see more people switching.

    9. Re:Not much further to go by saskboy · · Score: 1

      Sadly even TDCT isn't Firefox compatible yet. It may work for most things, but I've had it throw Firefox a few errors. During the Spell a word promotion contest, it forgot to display my free letter after a transaction. And I've had it tell me that it couldn't log in and to call the bank. I used IE instead, right away, and it worked no problem, then Firefox started working again.

      --
      Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
    10. Re:Not much further to go by astralbat · · Score: 2, Funny
      For many many people out there I'm sure that there are many more important factors to decide on when choosing a bank rather than your favourite browser just not working on it.
      My bank (Barclays, UK) happens to work fine with Firefox, but I would fire IE up through Wine if I had to.

      The fact is everything works in IE and I can understand the UK not having as many Firefox users as people in the UK just don't seem to care that there might be something better out there. I've seen really bad Windows XP desktops that are ridden with popups and spyware. Us British just keep a 'stiff upper lip' under these conditions and try and work around them!

    11. Re:Not much further to go by jepe · · Score: 1

      "It only needs to make it to 50% + 1%, at least that's what Quebec Seperatists would have us believe."

      Well thats what any democratic society wants you to believe...

    12. Re:Not much further to go by mspohr · · Score: 1
      Get a better bank. Yours obviously is clueless.

      I use Bank of America... works great in Firefox.

      --
      I don't read your sig. Why are you reading mine?
    13. Re:Not much further to go by Helios1182 · · Score: 1

      National City (mostly Michigan and Illinois I think) works under every browser I've tried.

    14. Re:Not much further to go by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 1

      On the other end of the spectrum, I was able to access First Union's online banking system with Lynx, the text-based web browser. This was a couple years ago before the merger with Wachovia. I don't use them anymore, so I'm not sure if it can still be done.

    15. Re:Not much further to go by 99BottlesOfBeerInMyF · · Score: 1

      The last time I was looking for a new bank, browser compatibility was an issue for me. I rejected three banks out of hand for not supporting anything but IE. I attempted to e-mail all of them to let them know why they lost my business, but one of the websites did not list an e-mail address anywhere and their "contact us" link was an invalid javascript that did not work on any browser at all. That sort of incompetence is enough to make me avoid them forever.

    16. Re:Not much further to go by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      Since you're forced to concede defeat until Yahoo gets their act together, might want to look into one of the Firefox addins for Windows Firefox that will allow you to launch IE in a tab, instead of loading the IE interface.

      At least then you can spare yourself the full experience. :)

    17. Re:Not much further to go by gmack · · Score: 1

      Canadian financial sites I have used lately: Bank Of Montreal renders perfectly fine in firefox and they don't charge extra for the service. CertaPay.com (email interac) works fine in firefox (my roomie pays me his rent this way) Canada's Employment insurance website now works fine now that they removed the silly OS check from their website. (it worked with firefox on windows but locked out Linux)

    18. Re:Not much further to go by TheSpoom · · Score: 1

      My bank, PC Financial, has always worked in Firefox, as far back as I have used Firefox (and that's since around 0.6). They also have no service fees for any ordinary banking, including Interac (no transaction limits either). Just FYI.

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
    19. Re:Not much further to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The banks should get with the program. Even Revenue Canada, (A slow to respond organization, except in the case of trying to get more money from us), support Firefox. I discovered this this past April when I had to file my Tax Return.

    20. Re:Not much further to go by Hosiah · · Score: 1
      you can always switch banks (or threaten to switch.)

      Or shock them by working around their petty issues, which is, after all, what Linux does best. My ISP told me flat out that they didn't support Linux. So I researched it, figured it out, wrote the ten-line shell script that would allow Linux to talk to the internet, and then emailed their tech support just to say: "Guess what - you DO support Linux!" I wonder how many Linux customers they've turned away because they didn't know how?

      Linux users are first-hand experienced in making things work in a Windows-world. Ask in a forum and you might be surprised!

    21. Re:Not much further to go by jrock-jr · · Score: 1

      Let them know that "Use IE" is not an acceptable answer.

      No Kidding. What happens if I use linux on my home pc? that kinda rules out the internet banking for me. I wonder if they'd suggest I run down to the local internet cafe and use one of the public terminals .....maybe save a few passwords while im at it.

    22. Re:Not much further to go by freeweed · · Score: 1

      Would I choose a bank solely based on browser support? Damn right I would. I've stayed with RBC for many more years than has been healthy for this very reason. Their online banking worked (mostly, there was a very minor issue with small fonts) with Opera for years before Firefox (Phoenix) even existed.

      I pay a fair bit more in service fees than I might at another bank, but sometimes you have to put your money where your mouth is. It's worth it to me to pay good money to not have to use IE or Windows.

      Shocking, because us OSS folks are supposed to want everything for free :)

      --
      Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
    23. Re:Not much further to go by sexyrexy · · Score: 1

      Bank of America (my bank) gives me an interest-rate boost on savings and money market accounts, as well as other nice little things, for agreeing to do everything through their website and forgo mailed paper statements.

      --

      Rex is 09 F9 11 02 9D 74 E3 5B D8 41 56 C5 63 56 88 C0
    24. Re:Not much further to go by freeweed · · Score: 1

      Banks should encourage more and more people to go paper less and use online banking from what ever device the user prefers.. it saves them paper, time and money.

      So do ATMs and Interac (or other debit card systems). They still charge a fee for these sorts of services.

      --
      Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
    25. Re:Not much further to go by speculatrix · · Score: 1
      My bank (Barclays, UK) happens to work fine with Firefox, but I would fire IE up through Wine if I had to.

      IE on wine works well, however, I've never gotten the java plugin to work; I now use qemu, and problem is solved.

    26. Re:Not much further to go by B1ackDragon · · Score: 1

      "Us British just keep a 'stiff upper lip' under these conditions and try and work around them!"

      Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way... -- Pink Floyd

      Coincidence? Hmmm. :)

      --
      The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches. -- ee cummings
    27. Re:Not much further to go by ThJ · · Score: 1

      All Norwegian banks I've had an account in seem to support Firefox just fine and have done so since Firefox came. I think they just keep their pages simple enough to not create any compatibility problems.

    28. Re:Not much further to go by jonadab · · Score: 1

      > Why should we bother re-writing all our code when they can just fire up IE?"

      Why should I bother firing up IE when they can just go to Gaza? Google will take 0.2 seconds to show me another website that meets my needs. What do I need their crocked-up browser-specific site for?

      Incidentally, the same logic applies to sites with a Flash-based frontdoor. I just go find another site; it's faster than bothering to re-enable Flash (only to disable it again in 4 seconds when it annoys me).

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    29. Re:Not much further to go by GigsVT · · Score: 1

      Wachovia works great in firefox too. And when I write their webmaster about a rendering problem in firefox/opera, it gets fixed! Pretty amazing for such a large company.

      --
      I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
    30. Re:Not much further to go by Secrity · · Score: 1

      So I researched it, figured it out, wrote the ten-line shell script that would allow Linux to talk to the internet, and then emailed their tech support just to say: "Guess what - you DO support Linux!"

      Guess what - they still DON'T support Linux! You just figured out how to configure Linux to start a PPP session. Most ISP's don't support any OS other than MS Windows, and most ISPs don't care what OS you are using. Erols (now RCN) didn't support Linux on it's dialup network but it used to have a section on it's webpage on how to configure Linux to start a PPP session using Erols' dialup. I know of one ISP who's helpdesk will send users the documentation and software needed to set up PPP on Solaris, FreeBSD, and some flavors of Linux; even though the ISP doesn't support anything other than MS Windows. Beyond some pages on a website or the ISP sending docs and software, you are on your own if the ISP doesn't support the OS that you are using.

    31. Re:Not much further to go by VJ42 · · Score: 1

      Here in the UK AFAIK no bank charges for online access, also no fees for credit\debit cards are charged to the customer (although many shops have a minimum purchase before they'll let you use it to buy somthing; usually ~£5) and the only ATMs that charge are indipendant ones, only a few (so I'm told, I've never run into one) that are maintained by Banks do.

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
    32. Re:Not much further to go by Mad_Rain · · Score: 1

      I'll just add on the list of "good" banks and mention Washington Mutual. I'm sticking with them, despite a lack of local branches on the East Coast, because they have had good service, and their online banking runs just fine with Firefox.

      --
      "What do you think?" "I think 'What, do you think?!'"
    33. Re:Not much further to go by kurtmckee · · Score: 1

      A friend of mine actually cancelled his account at LaSalle Bank - their incompetent website programmer made browser sniffing fail on step 5 of 6 of their online banking registration form. It's a well-known problem at LaSalle, but they refuse to fix it (they offered to register for him, since it works fine after registration).

      He cancelled his account, a move I've considered. Banks are commodities.

    34. Re:Not much further to go by Hosiah · · Score: 1
      Guess what - they still DON'T support Linux!

      My point was, instead of telling people flat out "Our service won't work with Linux" they could augment it to "Our service can work with some configuration with Linux, but you're on your own." After all, I'm the geek who insists on running Linux; I blew off the concept of "support" years ago (didn't find it all that "supportive" in the first place).

    35. Re:Not much further to go by jp10558 · · Score: 1

      HSBC USA is also a nice midrange fees + internet support for Opera at least. The fees are a little higher than some, but not crazy either. IME they are also very customer supportive, so worth a little money for that.

      --
      Opera, Proxomitron-Grypen,GPG 0x0A1C6EE3
    36. Re:Not much further to go by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Bankofamerica seems to work just fine with FF.

      Also, I guess they have policy to support most of the browser - or something.

  3. Great by Da+Fokka · · Score: 4, Insightful

    At 10% FireFox is starting to become interesting to malware producers. I guess I'll switch to Opera.

    1. Re:Great by eln · · Score: 4, Funny

      If you're worried about malware, you should switch to a browser that has little chance of ever becoming the dominant browser. While you might think Opera is the obvious choice for this, I think there's a better one.

    2. Re:Great by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 1

      Yes but how easy is it for these malware producers to actually put that malware on your PC...not as easy as IE me thinks.

      --
      for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
    3. Re:Great by Ilgaz · · Score: 1

      I am afraid of Java 2 recently. While browsing on mac with my licensed Omniweb, I had couple of Java 2 installation/trust requests. I was extremely busy and I couldn't investigate what the heck was that.

      I remember "searchbar" and/or "search technologies" signed by thawte.

      As a guy interested in Java 2 applications, not stinky applets, I know Java can do a LOT if trusted.

      Remember what they could do with JVM 1.1 from Microsoft, TopMoxie spyware. Now, imagine Java 5 and the stuff it offers.

    4. Re:Great by ShecoDu · · Score: 2, Funny

      No one would ever bother using lynx if they were trying to use a non-dominant browser, the obvious choice is telnet on port 80, I render html in my head, yeah!

    5. Re:Great by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      If you're that affected by viruses and malware, why not switch entire operating systems? Perhaps the software is not the problem, as it seems any software is exploitable if popular enough on your OS, software security features don't even seem to come into play when defending against malware on your system. Perhaps the underlying OS is the problem? At least switch to a less popular OS so attacks aren't targetted at you.

    6. Re:Great by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

      Gah, if recommending a text based browser, please at least recommend a decent one! Lynx has aged rather poorly IMO, and is massively surpassed by elinks and especially w3m. In fact, w3m is good enough that sometimes I can't be bothered starting up X on my (very) aged laptop - though the lack of Unicode support in the Linux virtual console layer is annoying.

    7. Re:Great by eln · · Score: 1

      Lynx has aged rather poorly

      Which is part of the reason it wouldn't have much chance of becoming the dominant browser, hence my post. It's a joke, you see.

    8. Re:Great by kbielefe · · Score: 1

      Unfortunately, since the brain can only hold about 7 objects on its "stack" (immediate conscious memory), it is highly vulnerable to buffer overflow. The good news is, no exploit has ever been seen in the wild, unless you believe that the Threshold TV show is a documentary.

      --
      This space intentionally left blank.
  4. Donations accepted? by BrentRJones · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Don't the "makers" of Firefox need cash?

    If NPR has pledge drives, shouldn't the Open Source movement?

    Just asking.

    --
    Help end the use of Sigs. Tomorrow
    1. Re:Donations accepted? by dasil003 · · Score: 4, Informative

      Of course they need donations:

      Donate Today!

    2. Re:Donations accepted? by dslauson · · Score: 2, Informative

      They would be more than happy to take your donation.

    3. Re:Donations accepted? by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 1

      A lot of open source projects accept donations and feature donation icons on their web page. While I don't think it is necessarily true, but it would seem that there is danger in creating the perception is that open source is beggarware.

      It does take a lot of time and energy to make a useful program and I do think that financial support can be a good motivator, though there might be weaknesses.

    4. Re:Donations accepted? by nine-times · · Score: 1
      I think the key is to be low-key about the donations. Mozilla has a little text-link at the bottom of the page. If they got in your face about it, and claimed that they really needed your donation or they wouldn't be able to survive, it'd run counter to the goal of appearing stable, reliable, and professional.

      But indeed, they take donations.

    5. Re:Donations accepted? by eln · · Score: 2, Funny

      If NPR has pledge drives, shouldn't the Open Source movement?

      How, by cutting to a boring guy going on and on for 20 minutes about the great service Open Source is for every 5 minutes of web browsing?

      I can just see it now: I'm watching a porno^H^H^H^H^Heducational video online, and suddenly it cuts out and is replaced by a voice saying "Open Source software provides you with access to a variety of interesting and informative content. But we couldn't do it without contributions from our viewers. We have a challenge grant going from Joe's Automotive right now, and they'll pledge $5,000 if we can get 15 pledges from you, our viewers, in the next hour. Please, click this link now."

      I know I'd love it. Just like I love NPR's pledge drives, otherwise known as "listen to another station for a week" drives.

    6. Re:Donations accepted? by XxtraLarGe · · Score: 1
      While I don't think it is necessarily true, but it would seem that there is danger in creating the perception is that open source is beggarware.

      It would only be begging if they weren't supplying something of value in the first place.

      --
      Taking guns away from the 99% gives the 1% 100% of the power.
    7. Re:Donations accepted? by ScottyH · · Score: 1

      OT, but because of your post, I finally understand the significance of ^H. It's a backspace!!!

    8. Re:Donations accepted? by mOdQuArK! · · Score: 1
      I'm watching a porno^H^H^H^H^Heducational video online,

      It occurs to me that the Open Source movement & the porn industry have some commonality: attracting eyeballs by showing _everything_. Maybe some Open Source projects could be financed by investing in porn :-)

    9. Re:Donations accepted? by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      We already call that Nagware.

    10. Re:Donations accepted? by BlueCodeWarrior · · Score: 1

      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%5EH -for further enrichment. Also see '^W'

    11. Re:Donations accepted? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      SeaMonkey gets all of my donations. I wouldn't give a dime to the Firefox people. Might as well start donating to M$ and Adobe too eh?

      Let's all hope Firefox dies a quick death!

  5. FF is winning, who is losing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I think an important bit of data would be to have been told in the synopsis whether FF's growth comes at the expense of IE, or the other smaller browsers (Opera, etc). If it's simply killing off the weaker browsers, then the news really isn't that good, but if it's really taking share away from IE, then that really is important.

    1. Re:FF is winning, who is losing by oscartheduck · · Score: 0

      Given that IE was at 89.5% 6 months or so ago, I believe the answer becomes self-evident. Let's see if I can find some data to back that up, though:

      Here is one.

      --
      How to use coral cache: http://slashdot.org.nyud.net:8090/~oscartheduck
    2. Re:FF is winning, who is losing by Ossifer · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I think this is the wrong attitude for proponents of open source software.

      OSS is not in competition with closed-source software and thus we shouldn't care about market share. We should simply be happy that our products are useful and successful in general.

      If anything, the real reason to enjoy an increased market share is that it implies an increased total usage, and that this in turn implies that more people will be willing to participate actively in its development and extension.

      (Not that I don't enjoy seeing the evil empire[tm] shudder in fear...)

    3. Re:FF is winning, who is losing by fendragon · · Score: 1
      It's not in the synopsis as you suggest, but at least the information is there in TFA:

      Mozilla's browser now has a global market share of 11.5 percent, an increase of 2.8 percentage points since April. Some of this growth is at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which has declined by 1.2 percentage points since April

    4. Re:FF is winning, who is losing by Py+to+the+Wiz · · Score: 1

      I would say that the majority of users who switch to firefox came from IE. But as users realize there are more browser options than just the one that came with their computer, they will begin to pick and choose between them. Personally, I switched to firefox but then realized that Opera loaded much faster and had a more intuitive (to me) user interface. Now it doesn't have all the crazy extensions firefox has, but I don't really use those and I wouldn't imagine most users would either. Of course I must admit that I soon switched back to firefox because Opera still has a few bugs in it, specifically one that keeps me from using personalized google (it tells me cookies have been disabled, but they haven't!). BTW, if I'm simply doing something wrong and it's just a fix in the options, let me know. Anyways, as more users migrate away from IE, firefox will have to step it up if it wants to retain all of its users. I think in the end we will see a distribution that looks something like ~70% IE, and 30% other browsers, with the 30% divided according to the most useful third party browser.

      --
      Fight the fall of slashdot by supporting PlayfullyClever in your sig.
    5. Re:FF is winning, who is losing by nine-times · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I think this is one instance where we should care about total usage (which is what I think they mean here). The real reason is that there's no pressure on web developers to code according to W3C standards (as opposed to Microsoft standards) unless their users are using non-Microsoft browsers. Likewise, Microsoft feels no pressure to make their browser compliant with W3C standards until web-developers demand it.

      Therefore, if we want a free web where any browser can allow users to interact with any page properly, we, as customers, need to choose non-Microsoft browsers for our daily needs. The point isn't to run MS out of business, but to gain enough hits on major web sites to force Microsoft into standards-complaince.

    6. Re:FF is winning, who is losing by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IE used to be at over 90% market share, and since it is losing market share, one would think that all browsers are being affected. Who's to say only Opera users would like Firefox, for example? I used to use IE and never used Opera, and switched to Firefox. Another friend who used to use Opera a lot switched to Firefox as well. I guess it just has to do with preference.

    7. Re:FF is winning, who is losing by reanjr · · Score: 1

      I use personalized Google in Opera all the time. I am not sure what may be causing it, but perhaps you can try deleting any opera cookies you have (Ctrl+F12, Advanced, Cookies). Also, hit F12 and check to see if it says cookies are enabled there.

  6. Apple's Safari Is Up Too by skrysakj · · Score: 5, Interesting

    And Apple's Safari, supposedly, just hit roughly 3%. Are these percentages
    better indicators of OS market share than actual purchase levels which don't
    take into account pre-existing machines already in use?

    1. Re:Apple's Safari Is Up Too by Golias · · Score: 1

      Are these percentages better indicators of OS market share than actual purchase levels which don't take into account pre-existing machines already in use?

      No.

      --

      Information wants to be anthropomorphized.

    2. Re:Apple's Safari Is Up Too by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 2, Informative

      It would be, except that not everyone with a Mac uses Safari. For instance, I have Safari, but I mostly use firefox. There are people with Macs who use Internet Explorer (the older ones that had mac support), and there are even people who still use OS 9. So I think we can assume that anyone using Safari uses a Mac, but that doesn't give us an upper bound of who uses macs, just a lower one.

    3. Re:Apple's Safari Is Up Too by RedWizzard · · Score: 1
      Are these percentages better indicators of OS market share than actual purchase levels which don't take into account pre-existing machines already in use?
      No. The definition of "market share" is "share of sales over a period". Total share of users is something else entirely.
    4. Re:Apple's Safari Is Up Too by leoxx · · Score: 1

      Not every computer is used to surf the web. For example, I have 5 Linux systems in my house and only 2 of them are used to surf the web.

  7. Sad thing is... by rAiNsT0rm · · Score: 5, Interesting

    A guy in my company was chastised for having Firefox on his computer. He tried to explain he was *helping* but they made him remove it and gave him an earful. Later, I explained all of the features and benefits... they still didn't want it on any company PC's and have no clue as to what it even is. Pretty sad.

    --
    http://teasphere.wordpress.com - A little spot of tea
    1. Re:Sad thing is... by ninja_assault_kitten · · Score: 4, Insightful

      No, it's not sad. Allowing employees to install unsupported/unmanaged applications is a critical mistake from a security perspective. By doing so, if and when vulnerabilities are found they must leave it up to the employee to make sure they've applied that patch. Clearly not a good idea.

    2. Re:Sad thing is... by shish · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Allowing employees to install unsupported/unmanaged applications is a critical mistake from a security perspective

      And forcing them to use IE isn't? :p

      --
      I mod down anyone who says "I will be modded down for this", regardless of the rest of their comment
    3. Re:Sad thing is... by Nate+B. · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Based on conversations I've had with some that work in our corporate headquarters, the Software Business Alliance (SBA) apparently has them convinced that FF, OOo, and friends are "licensed for personal use only" and these people believe the company will be billed a significant sum for such "improperly licensed software".

      Perhaps the SBA is carrying on its excellent work in your company as well.

      --

      "Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
    4. Re:Sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      ...that is because they can't control it... so they can't spy on your surfing...

    5. Re:Sad thing is... by maxume · · Score: 1

      Yeah, if that is the perspective they have. If it is just some guy in a little shop and the boss doesn't worry about security anyway, not allowing firefox is silly.

      --
      Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
    6. Re:Sad thing is... by jawtheshark · · Score: 2, Interesting
      FF, OOo, and friends are "licensed for personal use only" and these people believe the company will be billed a significant sum for such "improperly licensed software".

      And the SBA is right of course! They will be billed the gargantuous amount of 0$/seat!!! On top of that they will have to pay a 150% fine on the total amount! Better stick to the Free Internet Explorer and the properly licensed Microsoft Office 2003 (Latest version is not optional says SBA!)

      Of course, I'm sure that neither OpenOffice.org or the Mozilla foundation will object to higher amounts per seat (like 1$/seat...)

      --
      Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
    7. Re:Sad thing is... by PoprocksCk · · Score: 1

      Forgive me if I'm wrong -- but don't you mean the Business Software Alliance (BSA)?

    8. Re:Sad thing is... by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 2, Interesting

      On the other hand, making people use known problematic software isn't a bright idea either.

      Firefox can and does self-patch automatically. That update system even works in the Deer Park nightlies.

    9. Re:Sad thing is... by PornMaster · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Not that it'd be the sanest way to secure anything, but if IE is locked down to use a proxy, but port 80 is still open outbound, then Firefox is getting around the security policy, as flawed as it may be.

      Alternately, if the user can set up a proxy of his own, SSH tunneled outbound, having the ability to use that proxy in Firefox vs. a locked down IE means that he can violate the security policy as well.

      Managing risk is the company's business. Part of managing risk is knowing what the risk is, and accounting for it. If the company's done that and is still using IE, that's the company's choice.

    10. Re:Sad thing is... by miffo.swe · · Score: 1

      Well a quick look at secunia will tell them that Internet Explorer sure looks unsupported and should be banned from the network. ;D

      --
      HTTP/1.1 400
    11. Re:Sad thing is... by Nate+B. · · Score: 0, Offtopic

      Yeah, I guess so.

      Hey! I'm allowed one gross error on Slashdot in every eight years, right?

      --

      "Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
    12. Re:Sad thing is... by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I don't think the GP was sad that the guy was not allowed to install FF. what he was sad about was that the sysadmins at the workplace had never heard of what firefox is, let alone know that it is much much more secure than IE., which shows not only lack of knowledge on their part as well as poor software auditing practices.

      I onced worked at such a place, IE/Outlook only and had to remove FF/TB when I installed it. The problem is , every time a worm was on the loose, these guys would lose half the pcs in the network and kept sending emails about not opening emails containing so-and-so subject.

      Having a strict software control policy is good if only it helps in achiving the target goal of a secure and stable network. Otherwise it preety much works like DRM, locks out honest folks and the pirates are not even affected by it.

      --
      for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
    13. Re:Sad thing is... by malsdavis · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I had this happen to me also when I installed Firefox on my work machine some time ago. I was called into the M.D.'s office to explain why I had committed a 'serious breach of office protocol' in installing a program I think the computer guy had told him was some sort of internet game!

      I stated how I simply prefered the cleanliness of tabbed browsing and alerted hime about the constant security threats associated with Internet Explorer and within a week the whole company had Firefox installed on their computers!

      Browser based security threats may not be the biggest issue for a small company but it certainly seems to make your typcial clueless manager listen.

    14. Re:Sad thing is... by Hal_Porter · · Score: 2, Insightful

      If you get IE it work, it's most likely locked down so that all Internet sites run with ActiveX disabled, often up to the point where it pops up that damn dialog when you go to a flash site. It gets patched regularly, especially recently, so it's pretty tough. Also, most of the dodgy sites get blocked by some intranet content filter, as to phishing emails by a spam filter. All this is assuming a competent network admin of course.

      It's the people running it at home, with all sites in the lowest security zone, no patches and no filtering that tend to get screwed.

      --
      echo -e 'global _start\n _start:\n mov eax, 2\n int 80h\n jmp _start' > a.asm; nasm a.asm -f elf; ld a.o -o a;
    15. Re:Sad thing is... by TheSpoom · · Score: 2, Interesting

      If your security policy relies on Internet Explorer-specific system policies, then you already have worse problems. Security at the firewall and server, not so much the workstation.

      --
      It's better to vote for what you want and not get it than to vote for what you don't want and get it.
      - E. Debs
    16. Re:Sad thing is... by rbarreira · · Score: 2, Informative

      Here is the solution for that - Portable Firefox. It doesn't require installing.

      --

      The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
    17. Re:Sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      IE can be controlled under the Group Policy system of a Windows domain, setting proxies and controlling access to sites. It would be good if FireFox integrated into the Group Policy, it would speed its adoption.

    18. Re:Sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      Alternately, if the user can set up a proxy of his own, SSH tunneled outbound, having the ability to use that proxy in Firefox vs. a locked down IE means that he can violate the security policy as well.

      Heh, this is exactly what I do at work. Mind you, it wouldn't work for most users, since only port 80 is open outbound on most machines. However, since I'm a developer, I requested (and was granted) opening of all ports to me. Although, I mainly use it for goofing off and not being logged by the proxy, but this is supposedly changing soon - they want to implement a client-based tracking system that logs which applications you run and for how long.

    19. Re:Sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yep, that's the kind of managerial foolishness one has to deal with in IT. Good point. Pretty typical unfortunately.

    20. Re:Sad thing is... by ninja_assault_kitten · · Score: 1

      Firefox isn't known to be problematic?

    21. Re:Sad thing is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Problematic means "doubtful, uncertain, questionable". It does not mean "filled with problems".

    22. Re:Sad thing is... by Jesus_666 · · Score: 1

      Damn, when the BSA visited me they told me they were the Badass Superheroes of America! I mean, superheroes wouldn't lie when they tell you that the Mozilla Foundation was founded by Doctor Nefarious, would they? They also told me about how OpenOffice.org is an evil trojan developed by The Haxxor (a being half man, half computer, half counterstrike kiddie) that would eventually turn me into a mindless zombie. I was so glad when they installed their special monitoring software that enabled their supercomputer at the Billcave to remotely scan my system for evil software. It even came with a talking office clip.

      It's good that there still are superheroes like the BSA valiantly protecting us from Doctor Nefarious and the like. People can sleep in peace, knowing that Badass Superheroes are out there protecting them. I know I do.

      --
      USE HOT GRITS WITH STATUE OF NATALIE PORTMAN (NAKED AND PETRIFIED)
    23. Re:Sad thing is... by 4of12 · · Score: 1
      Alternately, if the user can set up a proxy of his own, SSH tunneled outbound, having the ability to use that proxy in Firefox vs. a locked down IE means that he can violate the security policy as well.

      Anyone who is capable of doing this is probably much less a risk to the corporate IT assets than the harried manager hooking up a laptop to the network that has been hooked up to 5 hotel WiFi hotspots collecting spyware.

      In the case of the knowledgeable user, risk is probably better mitigated if the heavy-handed policy is laid aside and the user politely informed that the company appreciates everything he can do to reduce risk, don't open exploitable inbound tunnels, we can't afford to support your exotic system, etc. Needlessly pissing off knowledgeable people by forcing them to graze with the rest of the sheep for the sake of lower cost herd maintenance doesn't seem necessarily like a good strategy.

      --
      "Provided by the management for your protection."
    24. Re:Sad thing is... by PornMaster · · Score: 1

      If the company policy can address the needs of the knowledgeable user, then so be it. Violating the IT policy means that their risk becomes your risk.

  8. Higher for some websites. by HugePedlar · · Score: 5, Interesting

    My website doesn't render properly with IE, and I get quite a few visits from various tech sites. Firefox's market share for my site is therefore around the 20-25% mark.

    I'd be interested to see how the content and target audience affects the browser distribution at various websites.

    P.S. Please don't visit my site. It's rather dull, and I'd prefer not to break it.

    --
    Argh.
    1. Re:Higher for some websites. by PoprocksCk · · Score: 1

      Heh, nice going -- I bet you're on the brink of a Slashdotting right about now.

    2. Re:Higher for some websites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Purposefully breaking IE is just as stupid as building for it exclusivily. It's really not that hard to write A-grade, valdid HTML and CSS that runs fine on IE, FF, Opera, etc.
      Then I had a look at at your site... You sir, are a fuckwit, too.

      First one to point out why I think he is gets a nice posting from me telling him he's right :-P

    3. Re:Higher for some websites. by NtroP · · Score: 1
      I'd be interested to see how the content and target audience affects the browser distribution at various websites.
      I'd be interested to see the distribution for Slashdot. I have a feeling a lot of the posers here talk the talk but don't walk the walk of Open Source, alternative OS's, etc. D'ya think IE is less than 50% here?
      --
      "terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
    4. Re:Higher for some websites. by evilbuny · · Score: 1

      CAcert.org has had about 50% netscape/firefox usage for the best part of 1-2yrs...

    5. Re:Higher for some websites. by mgpeter · · Score: 1
      I'd be interested to see how the content and target audience affects the browser distribution at various websites.

      This is a very interesting subject, the media could sway any numbers any way depending on what sites they monitor. For instance, I am sure you would get much higher numbers of people using IE if you monitor msn.com - which is the default home page for MS-IE (anti-trust practices anyone ??). Alternatively I bet if you went to monitor netscape.com the numbers for netscape users would be high. On the same token a site offering content for Windows would have a higher IE ratio than one offering content on Linux or OSX

      Until a study monitors impartial generic sites these surveys are mostly meaningless.

      As for your site not rendering properly with IE, this is totally normal for any site using CSS - MS's CSS implementation is not very standards compliant (Go Figure).

    6. Re:Higher for some websites. by Irish_Samurai · · Score: 1

      Is it because he has a copyright attributed to software released under the GNU GPL?

      Or because he uses #999999 as his grey text copy on a black background instead of the prefered #CCCCCC which is alot easier to read?

      Or perhaps because he's a spelling Nazi who has no concept of "culteral connotation" and wants to bitch about Americans speak, the whole while he uses a mainly British spelling of the word Peddler in his title. Talk about being a hippocrite.

      Gimmie my prize!

    7. Re:Higher for some websites. by zlogic · · Score: 1

      Saying "don't visit my site" sounds like "please please slashdot my site" :-)

    8. Re:Higher for some websites. by Robert+The+Coward · · Score: 1

      I have seen the number and so can you they make them public. It is likely not very high as many of us are stuck using windows / IE from work I was for 6 Years straight. I now use linux / firefox at work because I am the linux admin everyone else uses Windows for the most part. Linux as a corp. desktop is still not there yet and so is firefox in most of corp. America.

      Robert

    9. Re:Higher for some websites. by Dan+East · · Score: 1

      From your website:
      I just posted a comment on Slashdot talking about Firefox's market share. I asked that no one bother to visit my site, on account of its general dullness and for fear of it breaking under the weight.

      I've now had more visitors in the last half an hour than I've probably had in the last two months... Go figure.

      Maybe it's time to add some new content.


      Nah, don't bother. None of us will be back. Sometimes I like to visualize Slashdot as a massive crowd of people in a museum. Instead of taking our time and moving around in small groups looking at exhibits, we all crowd and push to look at one single thing. We all talk about it intensely for a little bit, then it drops off the radar never to be revisited (until the story is duped).

      Dan East

      --
      Better known as 318230.
    10. Re:Higher for some websites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      "Please don't visit my site. It's rather dull, and I'd prefer not to break it."
       
      /. translation: "Please don't press the big, shiney, tempting red button!"

    11. Re:Higher for some websites. by mixenmaxen · · Score: 1

      On my website the marketshare of firefox is 100%. Of course it has only ever had one visitor.

    12. Re:Higher for some websites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Nope, while they were good ones, it was his stupid rant about "terrorism", that, while not showing utter panic, still shows him as having swallowed media coverage of government press releases hook, line and sinker. Rather unreflected.

  9. Good news but... by squoozer · · Score: 3, Interesting

    ...how much can we trust those figures? Not a lot I would say. In particular I find the 3* as much FireFox usage in the US compared to the UK disturbing. I would expect the two nations to have roughly the same uptake rate since they are braodly similar. I would also expect other European nations to have a slightly high uptake rate (as has been shown in other result). Perhaps the figure is absolute rather than per 1000 people or maybe there is some error in their recording which causes people browsing from unknown countries to get lumped in with America. Either way without an explanation it casts doubt, in my eye, on the validity of the results.

    --
    I used to have a better sig but it broke.
    1. Re:Good news but... by Professional+Heckler · · Score: 1

      Its always been like this. New software begins its life either in Japan/China/ Or the United states. It then makes a jump across the Atlantic in variable time. Think MSN vs Google. The United States has the largest percentage of Google users per computer owner. Then Uk then japan. The Uk will catch up, just give it time and promotion. (Not to mention that this story will most likely help spread the goodness that firefox represents.) Prof.

    2. Re:Good news but... by Nate+B. · · Score: 2, Interesting

      This is anecdotable "evidence" at its worst:

      I belong to a web board that has a number of European members. Sometimes the topic of web browsers comes up and a couple of them have stated time and again they are sticking with IE. Exactly why, I am not sure, but it's interesting to speculate on the reasons, for me at least.

      Is there a cultural attitude at work here? Are Europeans more easy going and North Americans more willing to try new things? Perhaps since we Americans tend to cheer for the "underdog" we are more apt to give an up and comer a try. Maybe because Bill Gates isn't generally revered, we on this side of the pond have an easier time giving his competition a go.

      Maybe NA IP addresses are more apt to be attacked thus IE is a more evident security hole here than in Europe. Maybe it's just a lucky coincidence.

      --

      "Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
    3. Re:Good news but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

      Uh, they were talking about the United Kingom's low uptake - the uptake of Firefox has actually been stellar in Poland, Germany and Finland, and far higher than in the USA.

    4. Re:Good news but... by nine-times · · Score: 1

      I don't understand. Why isn't it possible that the US just happens to be taking Firefox up more quickly?

    5. Re:Good news but... by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 1

      From OneStat's site:

      Methodology: A global usage share of xx percent for browser Y means that xx percent of the visitors of Internet users arrived at sites that are using one of OneStat.com's services by using browser Y. All numbers mentioned in the research are averages of last week and all measurements are normalised to the GMT timezone. Research is based on a sample of 2 million visitors divided into 20,000 visitors of 100 countries each day.

      So, who are OneStat's service users? Are there as many of them in the UK as there are in the US? This could easily have generated the discrepancy you refer to.

      Interestingly, the BBC claim that something like 12% of their visitors use Firefox.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    6. Re:Good news but... by D4MO · · Score: 1
      --

      Rocket science is easy. Neurosurgery, now *that's* difficult.
    7. Re:Good news but... by evilandi · · Score: 1

      squoozer: I find the 3* as much FireFox usage in the US compared to the UK disturbing

      I wonder if this is related to bundled services by ISPs? The UK has a very agressive competitive ISP market. There are thousands of ISPs vying for dial-up and ADSL customers, and pretty much the only way they can differentiate their product is by bundled services which invariably only work properly under Internet Explorer.

      Is the US market this competitive? Do US ISPs rely so heavily on bundled services? I'm wondering whether the US market is led more by calling plans and cable.

      Also could heavier broadband takeup be a factor? I understand that the UK has more broadband users than dial-up users, which I believe isn't the case in the USA (although common sense says that broadband users would be more likely, not less likely, to try Mozilla's large downloads, which doesn't match with the facts).

      --
      Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
    8. Re:Good news but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Firefox market share in Finnland is >30%, >20% in Germany. Who's playing catch-up?

    9. Re:Good news but... by arkhan_jg · · Score: 3, Informative

      Actually, it doesn't suprise me in the least. According to symantec in march, 25% of the world's PC zombies were in the UK. (strangely though, the UK has only a handful of the direct spammers)

      Both the high zombie rate and the low firefox use shows that computer literacy in the UK is somewhat lacking, despite the high broadband uptake. I do a lot of work on people's computers privately, as well as being a sysadmin for my day job, and virtually all of them wouldn't know what firefox was if it bit them on the ass. If it didn't come installed on the computer when they bought it, with a thick manual, then they're not interested. They also tend to hang onto computers for a looong time. I was fixing a windows 95a machine only last week.

      They regularly call internet explorer 'the internet' - as in, "it doesn't work when I click on 'the internet', it just says some message which I don't remember. Is it broken?" It's no surprise to me that most people haven't investigated firefox here, they don't even install a firewall, spyware or virus checker.

      --
      Remember kids, it's all fun and games until someone commits wholesale galactic genocide.
    10. Re:Good news but... by benbread · · Score: 1

      There seems to be a huge amount of variation in UK stats. For example at the Spreadfirefox website statistics regulary show UK uptake near/higher than the US, at around 12/15%, and many countries with 25% plus (in the EU, for those who mentioned it). It seems overall the market share is about correct, but the values for specific countries is a little to be desired (how for example, are they determining the users country, by useragent? ;))

    11. Re:Good news but... by Deliveranc3 · · Score: 1

      The U.K. has lower broadband penetration.

      And a lower percentage of people with internet access.

    12. Re:Good news but... by paving-slab · · Score: 1
      Oh dear, you seem to be mistaken.
      ...The US is now in 13th place overall in broadband penetration after being passed by the UK in Q3 2005... http://www.websiteoptimization.com/bw/0510/
    13. Re:Good news but... by Kroc · · Score: 1

      Yes, and we live in castles, and are all named keith. Get off our fscking high horse and use google before perceiving yourself as an authority on the subject.

      America is *behind*. And on topic for this article, UK Firefox usage is >12%. The onestat figures are grosely americentric; here's a google link, so you can research your reply too. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&q=UK+Firefo x+Usage&btnG=Search

    14. Re:Good news but... by squoozer · · Score: 1

      It's certainly possible. I am just really supprised by the size of the gap. Yes America is a little more technically advanced (broadband is more widespread for instance) but I don't think that difference is great enough to account for the radically different uptake levels. Perhaps it is a cultural thing but I struggle to believe that as well since the two groups of people are more alike than they are different.

      --
      I used to have a better sig but it broke.
    15. Re:Good news but... by squoozer · · Score: 1

      There are some really good ideas there. In particular I hadn't thought of ISP DSL bundles almost forcing people to use IE. I should have as I have switched numerous such machines over to using FF.

      --
      I used to have a better sig but it broke.
    16. Re:Good news but... by nickos · · Score: 1

      "Yes America is a little more technically advanced (broadband is more widespread for instance)"

      Nope, that's not right - see here

      "More Europeans than Americans had a broadband internet connection in the first three months of 2005, according to a new survey."

    17. Re:Good news but... by Bogtha · · Score: 1

      ...how much can we trust those figures? Not a lot I would say.

      Not in the slightest. Every time a story like this comes up, I try explaining how web statistics are worthless, but people continue to believe in them so long as it shows Firefox gaining market share. I've since resigned myself to the fact that this is the geek equivelant to astrology - complete nonsense, but tell idiots something they want to hear and it'll make them happy.

      --
      Bogtha Bogtha Bogtha
    18. Re:Good news but... by fixmyship · · Score: 1

      Honestly, I would say it's the other way around. Almost everyone I know use either firefox or mozilla here in Sweden.

    19. Re:Good news but... by squoozer · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I have always thought I could probably make a lot of money out of snake oil but I just can't bring myself to sell it.

      --
      I used to have a better sig but it broke.
  10. There are still too many non standard websites.... by jawtheshark · · Score: 5, Interesting
    And writing emails to these guys doesn't help. Just in the last week I came across two websites: Audi Belgium and ALS Verlag . Both sites majorly fuck up on navigation.

    The first one pissed me off because the .de and .com versions don't seem to have problems. The second one was problematic because my wife wanted to order something and didn't understand why the website was broken (Firefox is mandatory at my home). She blamed the website though, but I had to show her Internet Explorer so she could order the stuff she needed.

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  11. Re:Really by Anita+Coney · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I disagree. It's very rare but every so often I come across a site that requires the use of IE. The larger the marketshare of Firefox grows, the less that will happen.

    --
    If someone says he and his monkey have nothing to hide, they almost certainly do.
  12. Browser use by smokeslikeapoet · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If I were to guess I would say that people who use Firefox spend a whole lot more free time on the web that people that suffer with IE.

    This figure does not take in to account browser choice. I would also surmise that most people who use a web browser at work are forced to click the big blue "E".

    At my computer labs at school we do have a choice between IE or Firefox. The IE icon is in it's default desktop location underneath My Computer and My documents. I imagine this is clicked out of habit rather than preference. The Firefox icon is on the bottom of the desktop. It will take years of habit changing before Firefox is the preferred browser for a majority of users.

  13. And why exactly? by ninja_assault_kitten · · Score: 1

    Are you purposely trying to reject 85% of the potential visitors to your site? Is this your little way of sticking it to the man?

    1. Re:And why exactly? by HugePedlar · · Score: 1

      Not really. I just cobbled together two different css templates, which causes my news items to render very badly in IE. If I knew anything about css I'd probably try to fix it, but it's a personal website and I don't really care if strangers can't read my boring news.

      --
      Argh.
    2. Re:And why exactly? by aconbere · · Score: 2, Interesting

      *chuckles* actualy... if you knew anything about css you would probably rewrite it and then discover that very little of CSS's features work in IE and then you would have to retrain yourself to not know anything about css and break all your code to make it work properly.

      Web Design was where I first learned to hate Internet Explorer.

      ~Anders

  14. More like 50% here... by tcopeland · · Score: 2, Interesting

    ...of course, that's on a rather technical web site, RubyForge. Numbers are here.

    1. Re:More like 50% here... by ilyaaohell · · Score: 1

      A "rather" technical website? That site looks more specialized in "nerds" than even Slashdot, which at least has SOME content on it for the average person.

      This information is about as useful as the webmaster of www.kernel.org announcing that most of that site's visitors don't even have Windows installed.

      --
      UNIX: A computer user is defined as a programmer. WINDOWS: A computer user is defined as a consumer.
  15. Obligatory FG Quote by NilObject · · Score: 1

    Oh stop it stop it, look here, you can't become a bloody fiscal hermit crab every time the Firefox undergoes a self-correction. Firefox's market has no where to go but up.

    (With apologies to Family Guy)

  16. A ways to go. by dasil003 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    For web developers the important thing is that we've passed the first inflection point: that is, companies can no longer afford to ignore Firefox.

    But we're still a long way from the second inflection point: where can stop hacking to support IE (6, maybe 7). That's not happening for a long time, but if you look back 5 years, supporting IE 6 is really a piece of cake compared to IE 5, NS 4, etc.

  17. An interesting side note by OneSeventeen · · Score: 4, Insightful

    According to somefakewebsite.com, which was created just a few moments ago as an imaginary source of invalid figures for the entertainment of others (or isifeo, as we like to call it here at randomslashdotcomments inc.), The number of windows viruses has decreased by another 1% due in part to the decreased use of web browsers that let websites install software on your computer, and also due to Norton's virus writing labs not keeping up with their anti-virus labs. (but marketing is right on schedule!)

    It is also interesting to note that the linux virus ratio has increased to an estimated 0.01% this month, which is partly due to the windows users that recently switched to linux and installed the Bonzai Buddy via Wine, and the number of pop-tarts in my office has just decreased by 1 serving. ... make that 2 servings.

    On a more serious note, I wonder what the market share ratio would be like if Internet Explorer wasn't part of the windows operating system.

    --
    "Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
    1. Re:An interesting side note by RingDev · · Score: 1

      "On a more serious note, I wonder what the market share ratio would be like if Internet Explorer wasn't part of the windows operating system."

      What good would it serve the consumer to get a machine that doesn't include a web browsing application?

      People who complain about Microsoft's bundling remind me of people who complain about Wallmart. Wallmart provides an excellent variety of products at an enforced quality level for a very low price. They are giving consumers exactly what the want, and they do it very well. I'm not saying that either company is NOT evil, just that both companies are serving the needs of a large portion of the consumer population extremely effectively.

      -Rick

      --
      "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    2. Re:An interesting side note by cortana · · Score: 1

      In case you hadn't noticed, Microsoft don't actually sell PCs to the end user. OneSeventeen said, "if Internet Explorer wasn't part of the operating system". If OEMs were free to install whatever software they wanted on PCs they sold then we would see some machines coming with IE, some with Firefox, perhaps some with Opera. Bigger OEMs like Dell could take the Mozilla source and build their own custom browser, and so on.

      As it is, the default browser is IE. IE will occasionally override user preferences and make itself the default browser again. Many applications such as mIRC and MSN Messenger hardcode the use of IE for handling links. This would merely be annoying if I could just remove IE from my PC--but because it is part of the operating system, this is not possible.

    3. Re:An interesting side note by RingDev · · Score: 1

      "If OEMs were free to install whatever software they wanted on PCs they sold then we would see some machines coming with IE, some with Firefox, perhaps some with Opera."

      This is a reason to complain about Microsoft's monopolistic marketing. Dell, Gateway, and other OEMs are free(as in speech) to put extra software on their PCs before selling and shipping. But putting FF on Windows before shipping the box would likely result in non-free(as in beer) issues with Microsoft. The issue here is not the bundle, but the use of their power to control what OEMs and other vendors bundle with the final product.

      -Rick

      --
      "Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
    4. Re:An interesting side note by Al+Dimond · · Score: 1

      So what if you do an OS upgrade? You're stuck without a browser. Oh, where would you go to get a browser? I'd probably think www.opera.com or www.mozilla.org. Shame I don't have a web browser to get there. There's FTP; who remembers FTP addresses (I'm sure I could find it.)

      Internet Explorer is part of the operating system (well, it's part of the desktop environment at least). One might say it's a good thing that an operating system has a web browser in it. Or a package management system. Though as I've posted before, sometimes bastard ISPs won't let you grab a webbrowser with a package manager until you've agreed to their terms of use with a webbrowser.

      Do you really think Dell would write their own custom browser? And why would anyone want to use a browser with a bunch of crappy Dell branding that would be slow to get Mozilla updates? OEMs can already install whatever they want and I even read on /. that at least one of them installs FF. Don't recall what they used for initial default browser setting. Maybe they gave users a choice. I don't know. It's just that OEMs do have to install IE, because Windows and many third-party programs depend on it (first examples coming to mind are Windows help and other apps that want an HTML renderer).

      Perhaps it would be nice is MS sold Windows the desktop environment seperately from Windows the operating system. That's where the break would have to be made, IE would be on the DE side, as Konq. is on the KDE side. Of course, it would be silly since most Windows programs are the equivalent of KDE apps, they would require their particular DE to be installed anyway (even if you're not running it).

    5. Re:An interesting side note by dylan_- · · Score: 2, Insightful
      So what if you do an OS upgrade? You're stuck without a browser. Oh, where would you go to get a browser? I'd probably think www.opera.com or www.mozilla.org. Shame I don't have a web browser to get there. There's FTP; who remembers FTP addresses
      They're ftp.opera.com and ftp.mozilla.org respectively. If only you had a 4 digit slashdot id, you'd be able to perform these stunning feats of memory too! ;-)
      --
      Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
    6. Re:An interesting side note by OneSeventeen · · Score: 1

      Okay, keep in mind that I do not disagree with microsoft bundling software, but Internet Explorer is not bundled, it is a part of the operating system.

      Here's a test, uninstall Internet Explorer via add-remove programs/windows components, then open up my computer and in the address bar, type http://slashdot.org/ and hit enter. Ooops, there's the web browser we just uninstalled.

      I use Ubuntu, which comes prepackaged with firefox and a few others, so all I do is install the operating system and use the bundled software, which happens to be firefox. (It used to be evolution, and KDE was konquror or something like that.) On a side note, I could also use the "wget" command to grab a file from a web site easily.

      What Microsoft is doing is first: creating a security risk because even if someone uninstalls Internet Explorer, they are still vulnerable to the security risks associated with Internet Explorer, and second: they only give the ability to package a browser to run along side IE, not as a replacement.

      --
      "Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed." -C.S. Lewis
  18. The headline is somehow misleading by bogaboga · · Score: 2, Insightful
    The headline should have the word "alleged" somewhere in realtion to the Firefox market share.

    Why? Because there exists no proof that all parties involved in market share tracking can agree on. I will not be surprised if anoher party comes up and says something to the effect..."not so fast Firefox..."

  19. Firefox as part of the path away from Microsoft by shanen · · Score: 1, Interesting
    I use Firefox and Opera quite a bit. My objective is to become Microsoft free, but it's still difficult. On one of my machines I am almost totally able to avoid using IE, but there are still times when it's the only way to see what's going on, and of course Microsoft also locks WindowsUpdate to it.

    An especially annoying aspect is that my company talks a lot about offering non-Microsoft solutions, but many of our internal applications are locked to IE. It's getting better, and Firefox has the official status of a "supported" browser, but IE is still an effective drag.

    And don't get me started about MS Office. That's a love-hate relationship and a half.

    Moving onto dreams, I'd really like to be able to banish Microsoft from my life. The two major alternatives seem to be Apple or Linux, but I haven't made any move yet...

    Getting further off topic, but for me to move away from Windows, I think the new non-Windows operating system should be pre-installed by the manufacturer with high assurance of software equivalents for all of my primary applications *AND* the ability to import my old data, which has mostly been trapped in Microsoft formats. I've done enough of cross-booting to say that cross-booting is not convenient enough...

    --
    Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
    1. Re:Firefox as part of the path away from Microsoft by Secrity · · Score: 1

      ... the ability to import my old data, which has mostly been trapped in Microsoft formats.

      Few MS Office documents are unreadable by Open Office. Most MS applications have options to save data in a format that is readable by most other software; such as comma delimited, ASCII text, or RTF.

    2. Re:Firefox as part of the path away from Microsoft by shanen · · Score: 1

      Most of my experimental attempts have involved email, and there the crucial problem is that my complicated file structure has always been destroyed in the process. It is possible that a non-folder-based solution along the lines of Gmail would solve that problem, but it would need to have highly reliable import capabilities. Also, I have strong reservations about importing my personal email to some other server, even Google's with their quasi-promise to do no evil. Not exactly binding in a court of law, where possession is nine points.

      --
      Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
  20. School kids can't choose... by DaoudaW · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Web applications provider NetApplications reported that the open source browser's share of the market dropped by 0.7 percentage points from August to September

    I couldn't verify it in TFA, but my first thought is that millions of kids go back to school around the end of August and begin using a browser which they haven't chosen. So it probably doesn't mean anything except that schools tend to not be early adopters.

    1. Re:School kids can't choose... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I would imagine you are talking about elementary and high school kids here, where this may well be the case. However I work at a university that has moved to Firefox as the official recommended browser (as soon as it hit 1.0) and I'd have to say that many college and university level schools are very eager to be early adopters for good, open-source software (we're switching to Open Office now that they've hit 2.0 as well). It's a joy to be able to tell users who call in with bizarre spy-ware/browser hijacks "Just install Firefox, it's free and it will work." I know that FF isn't utopian and will be plagued with more security attacks as time goes forward, but I have much more faith in the Mozilla foundation's ability to keep up with those threats and address them. I say ability because for all Redmond acts the part of Giant Evil Corp., I think they would do a full audit and re-write of their bug-ridden code if they thought it feasible. Thank goodness for the diversity and quality of open-source! (Reduced licensing fees are a bonus as well!)

  21. I'm curious by ninja_assault_kitten · · Score: 0, Troll

    In light of the rash of security issues for both and aside from a hate of MS, why exactly are you so adement about migrating away from everything MS?

  22. Neat thing about wearing Firefox logo'd gear by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

    People stop you to ask about it, or give you a knowing nod. It's like being part of a special club.

    1. Re:Neat thing about wearing Firefox logo'd gear by British · · Score: 1

      Yes, yes, a t-shirt representing computer software. It gets you into the "I'm not going to get laid wearing this" special club. Yes, wearing the shirt shows your love for penetration, ie only the browser market share kind. This is why I wear my WinZip shirt to the gym, and not for a night out on the town. :)

    2. Re:Neat thing about wearing Firefox logo'd gear by Snap+E+Tom · · Score: 1

      And for the people that ask you about it, do you say, "If I told you, I'd have to kill you"? That's probably bad PR for Firefox, though. Forget I said anything.

    3. Re:Neat thing about wearing Firefox logo'd gear by shudde · · Score: 1

      This is why I wear my WinZip shirt to the gym, and not for a night out on the town.

      I'll shortly be releasing a Bzip2 t-shirt complete with slogan: 'even geeks beat me up'. Can I count on your pre-order?

  23. cool. and in the future ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    i mostly use firefox, except for
    accessing the web interface of the
    dsl router, because i have firefox setup
    to use my local proxy and the dsl router won't
    except a request not coming in direct ...
    anyway, firefox should keep sticking with
    "no frills", just browsing idea, which it
    started with in the first place ...
    on my 166 mhz 64 mb win2000 lappy i use k-meleon,
    'cause firefox has gotten to *shriek* bloated.
    anyway, maybe they could go visit that lanl
    gov think where they make the squid, and maybe have
    them two abit thighter integrated ... i'm sure
    firefox could get a speed boost of some kind,
    and squid could have a firefox friendly module ...
    just a thought ...

  24. And it's free, too! by roscivs · · Score: 3, Informative

    With Opera recently becoming free (as in beer), there's no better time to switch. Most of the important functionality from Firefox is there (and incidentally was there first), even most of the things that require plugins for Firefox (automatic saving of tabs, mouse gestures, ability to "undo" closing a page, etc). And it has far better (in my opinion) single-key shortcuts (no CTRL or ALT modifier required) to do things like maneuver around a page without using the mouse, switch tabs, increase/decrease font size, go forward/back, and so forth.

    If you're at all serious, make the leap--I think it's well worth it.

    --
    ~ roscivs
    1. Re:And it's free, too! by Rude+Turnip · · Score: 1

      Let's just be honest, Opera is a far superior pr0n browser. You can start at an index page and just keep hitting the space bar to navigate through the gallery.

    2. Re:And it's free, too! by B3ryllium · · Score: 1

      and just keep hitting the space bar to navigate

      What do they call this feature? "Wang Gestures"?

    3. Re:And it's free, too! by Senzei · · Score: 1
      What do they call this feature? "Wang Gestures"?

      No, that's what they call the combination of spacebar-based navigation and their upcoming "Dynamic Interpretation of Combined Keystrokes" technology.

      --
      Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
    4. Re:And it's free, too! by rufuseddy · · Score: 0

      but did it allow the installation of walware or did it just crash the browser?

      --
      Giggidy Giggidy Gigg-a-dy
    5. Re:And it's free, too! by Dirtside · · Score: 1
      If you're at all serious, make the leap--I think it's well worth it.
      Sounds great! Where do I download the source? I'd like to be able to verify myself that there's nothing malicious hidden within.
      --
      "Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
  25. If MS was promoting this... by denis-The-menace · · Score: 1, Funny

    The company said that Mozilla's browser now has a global market share of 11.5 percent, an increase of 2.8 percentage points since April.

    If MS was promoting this it would be touted as a 24% increase in usage! And market share numbers would not even be mentioned. (It worked for NT...)

    Showing my work for math nazies
    (2.8/11.5*100=24%)

    --
    Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
    1. Re:If MS was promoting this... by swiftstream · · Score: 1

      Actually, 2.8 should be over the old usage, (11.5-2.8)=8.7. So it's actually a 32% increase in usage.

      You obviously never took a marketing class (I admit, I haven't, either).

      --
      Be a PATRIOT--because the only thing we have to fear is the lack thereof.
  26. In Germany Firefox achieves over 30% ... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    ... according to figures from http://www.spiegel.de/ and http://www.heise.de/ ( http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/64790 => 40,2 % in sptember 2005) - two of the most popular .de-websites.

  27. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by NtroP · · Score: 1
    She blamed the website though, but I had to show her Internet Explorer so she could order the stuff she needed.
    You should show her the IE Tab extension.
    --
    "terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
  28. Re:Really by Rinnt · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have to disagree. This is excellent news for my site...

    You should our website. Evertime you place your mouse cursor over some text the entire pages starts jumping around. It's a horrible experience and can really disorient the viewer. The last time I recommended our web master make our website Firefox friendly, I was given the reply of "Firefox is only 2% of the market share". Hmm, good thing I saved the email because now I can reply with the current stats. Plus with a little management on my side, maybe it will happen this time. Thanks Slashdot and ZDNET!

  29. Now...you have a revolution by beforewisdom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am a free(dom) software user and fan. However, whenever I hear talk about ___ software being a revolution I always dismiss it as hype. It is not revolution until a piece of software has at least double digit market share.

    I am happy to see that in the case of Firefox, that is is NOW, indeed, a revolution.

    Steve

  30. Re:Really by PinkyDead · · Score: 1

    The only reason I use IE is to do tax returns because my revenue service only supports IE. They say that FireFox support is coming soon - but that's been for 2 years now. I've often seen comments asking why we are so concerned about this, it's only a number - but it's not just a number, its the basis of many a (good/bad) design decision.

    Everytime I open windows and type 'iexplore', a shiver runs down my spine. The sooner FireFox gets to 25% the better.

    On another point, I think it is significant that the 11.5% that use FireFox, as opposed x% that use IE, actually choose to use FireFox, not just use it because it's there.

    --
    Genesis 1:32 And God typed :wq!
  31. Sex sells by Isomorph · · Score: 3, Funny

    I am working to spread the firefox browser.

    We all know that sex sells.

    So try to look at this site http://www.thelovesearch.com/ using Microsoft
    Internet Explore. It will try to convince your to use Firefox using
    sex appeal.

    If we could convince all porn sites to only support Firefox the battle
    would be won in a few weeks.

    Or am I dreaming now ??

    1. Re:Sex sells by SimilarityEngine · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Hmm.... "download this browser to view our site" tends to be viewed with suspicion where porn sites are concerned. So I hear.

      --
      Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
    2. Re:Sex sells by An+Onerous+Coward · · Score: 0

      Yeah, you're probably dreaming. If the porn industry did make a massive push towards Firefox, suddenly you'd get Focus on the Family sending out warnings about having "this ungodly porn browser" installed on your machines. Kids and spouses who installed it would be shipped off to Christian "rehabilitation camps". And so on.

      All right, let's cut to the chase: What is the point of this website? What is it supposed to do? It doesn't seem like there is much sophisticated processing going on in the background (it seems that most of the time when I click on the prettier woman, she ends up getting replaced by an uglier woman) and of the 50,000 pictures supposedly on the site, I seem to get the same twenty or thirty over and over again.

      I guess what I'm asking is: am I missing something?

      --

      You want the truthiness? You can't handle the truthiness!

    3. Re:Sex sells by Isomorph · · Score: 1

      It is cooperativ filtering so is gets better if more users join. And the is only 522 at this time.

      But also your can try the 'View new' list and there look at more girls.

    4. Re:Sex sells by liangzai · · Score: 1

      I once had a similar idea to spread Quicktime as the religious multimedia doctrine of the world, delivering the best porn for free. To my surprise, Apple declined supporting the project.

  32. Opera by DaPoulpe · · Score: 3, Interesting

    • IE - 85.5%
    • Firefox - 11.5%
    • Safari - 3%
    • Opera - ?

    Is Opera UA still stuck on IE by default ?
    Would be nice to be able to monitor Opera market share, especialy since it got Free (as in Beer)...
    1. Re:Opera by Hittite+Creosote · · Score: 1

      Yes, the latest version of Opera still automatically identifies itself as IE unless you go in and change it in the preferences.

    2. Re:Opera by DaPoulpe · · Score: 1

      Are there still many websites that requires a IE around ?
      Whichever browser I use I always make it behave not like IE and it's been a while since I've got any trouble...

    3. Re:Opera by Jussi+K.+Kojootti · · Score: 1
      Is Opera UA still stuck on IE by default ?

      Do we have to go through this every time? These figures might not be reliable, but that is not the reason. It's easy to spot Opera even when it's spoofing:

      Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 6.0; Windows 98) Opera 7.0 [en]
      And yes, the people who log this stuff generally know enough to separate Opera from IE (there was a study on the different sitetrackers a couple of years ago and even the free ones got Opera right).

      The press release is at http://www.onestat.com/html/aboutus_pressbox40_bro wser_market_firefox_growing.html, Opera is at 0.77%. In April it was 1.03%

    4. Re:Opera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      * IE - 85.5%
              * Firefox - 11.5%
              * Safari - 3%
              * Opera - ?
              * PROFIT!!!

      meep meep popo :)

    5. Re:Opera by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Ah yes, but there are many potential sources of errors, such as Opera's aggressive caching which means that it downloads/updates resources with less frequency than other browsers.

  33. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by crimperman · · Score: 1
    And writing emails to these guys doesn't help.


    We have to keep writing though because if we don't they'll take the "nobody uses it" approach. At the moment they may think that but after they get enough messages they'll have to change or lose custom. Which do you think'll want to do?

    As an aside - following yesterday's post about Windows Live - I went to http://www.live.com/ and (using BugMeNot) logged in. At the top was a message saying "Firefox users: Firefox support coming soon - please be patienet :-)". Interesting that M$ are now acknowledging that at least some of their users prefer to use alternative browsers.
  34. Auto-update will spur popularity by fak3r · · Score: 1

    I can't wait for 1.5 to come out. Why? Auto-update. Yes this may be abused, or not trusted, but think about Safari; it's always up to date, or at least is after a few clicks. With FF 1.5 I can leave my Mom's computer alone knowing that her browser will be the safest out there as any vulns will be dealth with/installed ASAP. I see this as being a MAJOR improvement over MS, which last I checked, forced you to jump thru hoops to keep IE up to date.

    1. Re:Auto-update will spur popularity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Microsoft update is perfect.

      - We have a computer which is in safe network and it should never be restarted because of the critical application it is running. Luckily Windows autoupdate restarts it once in a month.
      - We were copying a large file to a laptop from network. It seemed to take for ever to copy and finally at 99% the computer restarted it without asking anything. The copy was cancelled and all waiting was lost. Autoupdate again.
      - When I would like to get updates asap to secure my computer, autoupdate might install them after a week or so.

      I'm so moving to Linux...

    2. Re:Auto-update will spur popularity by Mant · · Score: 1

      If you have windows update on automatic it downloads the security fixes for IE in the background, although you may need to reboot afterwards, it is simple. I'm glad FireFox is getting better at updates since I use it all the time for browsing and re-downloading the whole browser for a security patch was a pain.

    3. Re:Auto-update will spur popularity by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I was thinking about this just yesterday. It might be interesting to incorporate some sort of early adopter user based voting/approval system for pushing updates.

      Users would be able to manually update the software at any time (ie. click on "Update Now"). Once you have the software installed, you would have the option of approving or disapproving the software.

      Alternatively, you could set the software to automatically update. An automatic update would occur some time after the update was released (Maybe 4 days?), but only after the percentages of early adopters who Approve/Disapprove/Don't Vote reach certain levels.

      This way we can set Parents/Grandparent/Aunts/Uncles computers to automatically update, and by voting to approve the update essentially remotely update their computers.

      What do you think?

  35. Yes its not the browser by wombatmobile · · Score: 5, Insightful

    At 10% FireFox is starting to become interesting to malware producers. I guess I'll switch to Opera.

    That's what's good about web standards. It's becoming increasingly possibly for you to make a choice like that because content less and less tied to one browser.

    FF and Opera are both commited to implementing and supporting web standards like XML, SVG, and CSS. The bigger share they get, the more reason people have to develop standards-compliant content.

    A virtuous cycle.

  36. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    To me a website which only works in IE is just like any other nonfunctional or missing site. I am certain that Audi and ALS Verlag can be contacted by phone, where they can be informed of their problem before you have them tell you about their products and possibly take the order. It is in their interest to shift that workload back to the automated webshop.

  37. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by jawtheshark · · Score: 1

    Interesting... I didn't know about that extension. Still, doesn't the risk exists that she starts browsing with IE without knowing it with this plugin? At least now she uses Firefox most of the time and IE when trouble comes up (due to bad webdesign, and she knows it... )

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  38. diversity, not domination please by SuperBanana · · Score: 5, Insightful
    At 11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent, but it's heading in the right direction

    You know, it's exactly that attitude of "world domination" that got the Web into the mess it is today. Firefox is not for everyone. I don't want to see it become "what you have to use whether you like it or not", because we've been down that road.

    What is nice to see is that users of alternative browsers do make more than single-digit percentages, which of course means they're harder to dismiss. If Apple, The Mozilla Foundation, and Opera can all assure they take the high road at all times with regards to fixing rendering/parsing/etc bugs, MS won't be guaranteed to be the same, but it'll certainly make life easier on web designers.

    If designers have to somehow work around 3, 4, 5 different browsers' rendering habits and bugs- things will be a disaster, they'll be frustrated and tempted to just support IE and "the next biggest fish", etc.

    Also- I hope all the non-IE browsers are now 'shipping' by default with their own browser strings, not set to pretend to be IE...

    1. Re:diversity, not domination please by Red+Flayer · · Score: 1

      "If designers have to somehow work around 3, 4, 5 different browsers' rendering habits and bugs- things will be a disaster, they'll be frustrated and tempted to just support IE and "the next biggest fish", etc."

      Which is the biggest reason to support open standards. Then, designers only have one set of standards to develop for, and those 3, 4, 5 browsers will render without problem.

      --
      "Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
    2. Re:diversity, not domination please by Secrity · · Score: 1

      I have NO sympathy for web designers that design their websites to accomodate specific browsers and then bitch about the differences between browsers. It really is as simple as web designers designing to STANDARDS set by recognised international standards groups, not to any specific browser. If browsers 1, 2, 3, or 4 are not standards compliant, then they would have an incentive to become standards compliant.

    3. Re:diversity, not domination please by roca · · Score: 1

      > I don't want to see it become "what you have to use whether you like it or not", because
      > we've been down that road.

      Well sure. But there are two things that make Firefox different from IE so Firefox domination wouldn't be so bad:
      1) The Firefox team is fiercely committed to supporting Web standards.
      2) It's open source. If any competitor wants challenge Firefox they can start by copying our code and then taking it in whatever direction they want. It's kinda hard to sustain an evil monopoly in the face of that.

    4. Re:diversity, not domination please by kurtmckee · · Score: 1

      I don't want to see [Firefox] become "what you have to use whether you like it or not", because we've been down that road.

      There's a difference - Microsoft has a big stake in ensuring that their browser does not adhere to the standard. If Internet Explorer has a large share of the browser market, nothing else works properly. If Firefox and Opera have a large share of the browser market and developers are coding standards-compliant code for them, everyone except Microsoft benefits (at which point Microsoft may fix their decade-old problems, bringing us back to "everyone benefits").

      I, for one, code my site around the standards. If it doesn't render properly in Internet Explorer, tough. It's a personal website, and my IE-using readers will get over it (although IE accounts for only ~25% of my traffic, so I can more easily pull stunts like that).

      What is nice to see is that users of alternative browsers do make more than single-digit percentages

      You know, it's exactly that attitude of "alternates get to play, but never get full recognition" that keeps the public opinion uninformed. I would like to see a day where browsers are chosen for their merits, not accepted by default. Calling superior browsers like Firefox and Opera "alternates" or "up-and-coming" just reinforces the concept that there is one true browser.

  39. It is is "over 32%" growth! by Great_Geek · · Score: 1

    Your math is wrong. The *growth* is from 8.7% to 11.5%; so the correct calculation is (2.8/8.7) * 100 = 32%.

    Your calculation would be right for: the old number is 24% lower. This busines of growth catches a lot of people.

  40. Ugh. by dep01 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can't believe 9 out of 10 people still fire up IE to surf the web. *deep sigh*

    --
    "hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
    1. Re:Ugh. by CaptKeen · · Score: 1

      And its people who 'should' know better too. I know abuse handlers at large organizations and network security people - hell, even some computer forensics people - who use IE. A good friend of mine, who has done a bit of all the above, and is currently doing the online investigation schtick bought a new laptop a month ago. He still hasn't installed Firefox on it... still using IE. *shudder* I just don't understand it.

      --
      --
    2. Re:Ugh. by dep01 · · Score: 1

      Totally agree. I have a few friends who I consider to be *very* computer/web-savvy, and yet still fire up IE. How is it *not* the first thing you install when you rebuild your PC? I just don't get it.

      --
      "hey, could you pass me a paper towel? er.. I mean... DEPLOY ABSORBTION PANEL!"
  41. Has anyone noticed... by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1

    How Microsoft is being constantly attacked by the competition right now?

    DB: Oracle just launched its free database.
    Browsers: Firefox, Opera
    Office: OpenOffice.org + Google initiative muahahahaha!
    OS: Linux + Wine
    Servers: Apache
    Microsoft .NET: Mono

    Compared to five years ago, Microsoft is now living a nightmare (No wonder Ballmer began throwing chairs and everything).

    Just a thought.

    1. Re:Has anyone noticed... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      yeah great, so oracle has a free DB to compete with MS free DB. effect Zip, oracle still losing market share, MS SQL server still the fastest growing DB platform.
      MS still has 85%+ of browser market, almost no change in 12 months.
      openoffice. Slow resource hungry piece of software that makes MS office look good.
      Linux+wine (wine the only piece of software to Make windows look extremely stable by comparison)
      Windows and office sales still climbing in double digit figures.
      Mono, helps push the .NET story, positive for MS not negative

      far as I can see they are still growing double digit in profit and sales. Please explain exactly where they are losing???

  42. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by Evan+Meakyl · · Score: 1

    > Audi Belgium and ALS Verlag . Both sites majorly fuck up on navigation.

    Ok so ladies and gentleman, you know what you have to do. Just click on the links.
    The /.ing effect will learn them to be non standard compliant!

  43. Even Microsoft by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    even Microsoft is recognizing firefox. The new microsoft live site states-"firefox support coming soon".

  44. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by frodo+from+middle+ea · · Score: 1
    Never again pure IE, atleast use avant browser. IE based engine and no pop-ups , activex /java disabled. javascript much tightly controlled.

    Also install "Open in IE" extension and configure it to use avant browser. Remove all shortcuts to IE or avant browser, and make FF use mandatory. For sites that don't run properly , just right click and do "Open in IE".

    --
    for the last time people, I am "frodo from middle eaRTH", not "middle eaST".
  45. Only about 38% to go by Anonymous+Monkey · · Score: 1

    To catch IE, asuming all new firefox users are IE converts.

    --
    We are the Borg...
  46. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by Nate+B. · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Sadly, despite your letter writing, you still fired up IE and gave them business. Unless there is ZERO suitable competition to purchase from, then a better approach would be to have written and let them know that their named competition did receive your business due to their unrestrictive Web site.

    Pushing for Free Software and open formats/protocols is not easy and it does require some sacrifice of convenience. Some people only understand the bottom line.

    --

    "Insanity is doing the same thing over again expecting a different result."
  47. Browser Strength by Da3vid · · Score: 1

    I don't know if Firefox is really much more secure in terms of virus/spyware than Internet Explorer or not. My intuition is that the virus/spyware things are just geared towards Internet Explorer users. Either way, I get far far fewer problems using Firefox than IE. Perhaps the more people that use Firefox, the more problems we'll have? Strange side effect if true.

    -Da3vid-

    1. Re:Browser Strength by ZachPruckowski · · Score: 1

      As I understand it, and I don't work in IT or anything, the reason Firefox is safer is that it isn't given preferential treatment by the operating system as IE is. At worse, someone could, what, crash Firefox? Oh no, darn. Move my mouse all the way down to the dock, click it again, go to the Go Menu, and pick the 2nd most recent thing, and I'm back in business.

      Also, the fact that Firefox doesn't automatically trust downloads helps. Of course, viruses that are downloaded can still get through if the user is stupid/tricked.

    2. Re:Browser Strength by shudde · · Score: 2, Informative

      I don't know if Firefox is really much more secure in terms of virus/spyware than Internet Explorer or not.

      I think you'll find that IE's reliance on ActiveX plays a major part in the difference. Personally I'm running Firefox with the NoScript extension for that extra bit of protection (blocks javascript by default with easy right-click access granting for trusted sites). While I presume you can block JS in IE, I doubt the functionality exists to quickly enable it on a case by case basis.

      Of course I'm not really especially concerned with virus/spyware infecting my OS but I won't rehash that tired old argument.

    3. Re:Browser Strength by ErroneousBee · · Score: 1

      Try using advanced features like CSS, events and the DOM and you soon realise that underneath the shiny icons, IE is a mess.

      E.g.

      • Try drag selecting a load of text from the main slashdot page in IE and FireFox. Whilst firefox occasionally pick up something like an adjacent table row, IE will bounce around and completely lose track of the cursor.
      • Microsoft were involved creating W3C specifications regarding javascript events, yet didnt implement them, presumably because the code theyd have to change was too fragile to touch.
      • They created CSS items for all the table except for cellspacing, forcing web developers to use non-CSS style controls in thier code.
      • Thier DOM implementation is just broken, you cant create dynamic pages for IE using setAttribute() and appendChild() without major sudden failures.

      All of this points to something beyond being the biggest target. Thier browser seems to be built on unstable foundations. Ive dealt with code like this before, you cannot add features without to breaking things and introducing security holes.

      --
      **TODO** Steal someone elses sig.
  48. Back to 1998 again :o( by EraserMouseMan · · Score: 1

    As a web developer I'm seeing the return of having to fill my javascript back up with "If IE do this; If Netscape do this; If Firefox do this".

    Major pain in the butt. That's all I'm gonna say.

    BTW, "Almost there"? Firefox now officially has it's foot in the door. That's all. IE7 is about to come out which will eliminate the reasons why many people switched to FF in the first place. I've got no beef with FF. I'm just trying to be realistic here. I predict FF growth dramatically slows when IE7 comes out.

    1. Re:Back to 1998 again :o( by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      IE7 is about to come out which will eliminate the reasons why many people switched to FF in the first place.

      Many, but not all by any means. For example, the thing that finally made me decide to try Firefox properly was when Microsoft decided only to provide essential IE security updates to users of WinXP SP2.

      Firefox runs just fine in Win2k. IE 7 won't run at all. Guess who won't even be trying IE 7?

    2. Re:Back to 1998 again :o( by Senzei · · Score: 2, Insightful
      Browser detection has come up as a problem a long time ago. Instead try object detection. The idea is that you test for the existence of the javascript features/methods you need and wrap them in a set of standard functions, then use those functions in the rest of your script.

      Although I agree that IE7 will slow down the growth of firefox I doubt it will really diminish the current market share. Slightly better support for web features will cut a little bit out of the "it only works in IE" problem, and most of the new stuff in IE7 is in firefox, or a plugin. In the end a lack of new features combined with any possible previous bad IE experiences will keep the new FF users where they are.

      In the future I see technologies like xul as "where things are going".(and yes microsoft has one too) HTML+Javascript is only going to get us so far, and although using the javascript to dynamically update pages can do some (comparatively) awesome things, it does not have the feel of a real solution to it. So if I were a web developer[1] I would start playing with these tools now to be ready in ~3-5 years when they become a preferable alternative.

      [1] I am not a web developer. If you are one, and I sound like I don't know what I am talking about, that is probably because I don't.

      --
      Slashdot: Where anecdotes and generalizations can be freely substituted for facts, logic, or intelligence
    3. Re:Back to 1998 again :o( by Kelson · · Score: 1

      In general, Mozilla, Opera and Safari handle a large number of features in a similar manner, and they're working to become more similar. IE7 will go a long way toward catching up.

      What makes this different from 1998 is that back then, each major browser was working to implement different features, diverging the capabilities. After the dust settled, a number of features were codified into the newest versions of the CSS, HTML and JavaScript standards, and since that time web browsers have been filling in their support for those specs. Functionality is actually converging now. Even the new features being developed through WHATWG are being done so in a cooperative way -- the <canvas> element is a good example of something that was implemented in Safari, codified in a spec, and is now implemented in the Firefox 1.5 betas and the Opera 9 beta. And if IE wants to join in, they have an actual specification to work from, and can easily implement it in a compatible way.

      So the differences shoudl decrease over time. Additionally, another poster suggested that you do object detection. This is definitely the way to go, because you never know when a new version of some browser is going to come out, or when someone will release a new browser based on an existing codebase. If your JS code looks for Firefox, and someone visits your site in Camino or Flock, you might run into problems, but if you look for Feature X, your site automatically works in all gecko browsers.

  49. The numbers are misleading. by SeraphimXI · · Score: 1

    Just like in the case of the PSP "taking marketshare" from nintendo's handhelds. The numbers are very misleading. Just because someone is caught using firefox does not mean they don't have internet explorer also. I have both, and i'm posting this using IE *gasp*. The fact that I have both IE and firefox means i'm in that sample set twice, once because I have firefox and once because I have IE. That does not mean firefox is taking marketshare away from internet explorer. It just means that more people are using firefox.

    1. Re:The numbers are misleading. by Chubby_C · · Score: 1

      true enough, from home I choose to use firefox (except for those IE only sites), at work however I use IE, so I'm probably in those sample sets twice.

      --
      - My question is: Can Slashdot be Slashdotted? -
  50. Netcraft joke by Calydor · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Netcraft confirms it, FireFox is ... umm ... wait, this can't be right, Netcraft confirms something is thriving?

    --
    -=This sig has nothing to do with my comment. Move along now=-
  51. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by nine-times · · Score: 1
    She blamed the website though, but I had to show her Internet Explorer so she could order the stuff she needed.

    And she's right to blame the website. Professional web developers should know better than to code IE-only sites.

  52. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by jawtheshark · · Score: 1
    Uhm, *I* would not have bought with them: I have a wife who does. My wife (while nicely using Firefox on my advice) does not have an Opensource agenda, and just wanted to have her stuff nice and fast. Competition? It's already hard enough to find online stores that ship stuff to my country, that we're happy to find someone who is willing.

    You see, this works when you talk about me: I would never buy a product with them because of their inability to create a compliant website. For my wife this is a small inconvenience, but she really doesn't want to hear about browser wars and standard compatibility. All she needs to know is that she needs to fire up another browser because (I quote myself) "ALS Verlag did everything you shouldn't do when building a website". I can't do more than that *and* have a peaceful marriage.

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  53. Explanation by Arthur+B. · · Score: 2, Insightful

    "Web applications provider NetApplications reported that the open source browser's share of the market dropped by 0.7 percentage points from August to September."

    Sure... it's the new school year, new computers ship with IE installed, I am not surprised at all.

    --
    \u262D = \u5350
  54. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by jawtheshark · · Score: 1

    You really thought that I linked to them without thinking of such a thing? ;-)

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  55. familiaritIE? by dada21 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    My employees install Firefox for 90% of our customer base. hey delete all IE icons and references. Yet within weeks almost 90% of the customers are back to using IE. The reason? Familiarity.

    I can't figure it out. I'm no OSS fanboi, but IE sucks. Why the addiction for so many?

    1. Re:familiaritIE? by Rocketship+Underpant · · Score: 1

      "Yet within weeks almost 90% of the customers are back to using IE. The reason? Familiarity."

      It could also be apps like MSN, which opens email links in IE even when Firefox is the default browser (or so I've heard). Then IE starts up, asks to be made the default browser, and you're back to square one.

      --
      He who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me.
    2. Re:familiaritIE? by Darth+Maul · · Score: 1


      There are people in my office that just refuse to use Firefox for some reason. The rest of us explain the benefits: you can import bookmarks from IE, tabbed browsing, popup blocking... but for some reason they refuse. I'm sure it's just laziness or perhaps for spite. I don't know, but I just don't understand. There is something better! Why not use it?

      --
      --- witty signature
    3. Re:familiaritIE? by Apotsy · · Score: 1

      It could be in the way you approach it. Be careful there isn't a subtle implication that the user is stupid for not switching sooner, or for using IE in the first place. Such an implication, real or perceived, will couple the act of switching with admission of being wrong or stupid. If they make that connection in their heads, right or wrong, they won't switch. You'll have to find a way to break that connection.

  56. don't need 85% to beat IE... by fanblade · · Score: 3, Funny

    At 11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent

    Yeah, I can't wait until IE and Firefox are at 85.5%!

  57. The Future of Open Source? by aoptik · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I am optimistic, but if firefox can get around 25-50% of the market we could see more people using open source products. I think with many Open source products that are not popular is the fact they are not so easy to use. Firefox has figured that out. They have even made it easier in Firefox 1.5 by having automatic updates and force pop-ups into tabs. If the rest of the open source community can look at firefox and take some ideas like ease of use people may start going toward open source other than people like myself. Some already have like Novell and IBM putting a nice GUI to many difficult applications to make it easier for everyday people to admin or use as a desktop.Hay, If i can get my girlfriend into open source like firefox and thunderbird i think their might be a new era of applications coming from open source development.

    1. Re:The Future of Open Source? by Brad_sk · · Score: 1

      Hay, If i can get my girlfriend into open source like firefox and thunderbird i think their might be a new era of applications coming from open source development.
      Firefox is good but the same does not apply to Thunderbird...I have been using it since a year and its still a below average crap...May be Thunderbird 1.5 (if they ever release) wil have a chance to compete against Outlook...

    2. Re:The Future of Open Source? by yourexhalekiss · · Score: 1

      I agree. Firefox was my first real introduction to free/open source software. I give Firefox full credit for starting me on the path to Linux.

  58. What about Ordinary Mozilla by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Odd that the figures don't count Mozilla as well as Firefox. On my (non-techie, UK-based) site, about 3.5% of visitors use Mozilla, on top of the roughly 10.5% using Firefox.
    <br><br>
    My graphs show a slow but steady decline in IE visitors (about 82% now.)

  59. Will the next version help? by Lord+Byron+II · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I can only imagine that the next major release of Firefox (1.5) will cause another wave of Firefox adoption. Personally, I am currently not pushing Firefox that strongly since I know that if I help someone install 1.0.7 today, I'll have to do the same thing with 1.5 in a few weeks. But I will once again be pushing the browser heavily once a new, production-version of the browser is ready. Also a new release means new publicity. I think 1.5 will easily push Firefox into the 15-20% range.

  60. The US and UK aren't remotely similar by Colin+Smith · · Score: 1

    "I would expect the two nations to have roughly the same uptake rate since they are braodly similar."

    Simply not. Language is similar but culturally they are worlds apart.

    --
    Deleted
    1. Re:The US and UK aren't remotely similar by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
      sounds like something an englishman would say who knew very little about the U.S.

      at work, one of our guys is from London. he was quite shocked to find out just how much like the U.K. things are in the southern U.S. apparently he'd been led to believe, incorrectly, that the U.S. and U.K. had very different cultures.

  61. What malware? by khasim · · Score: 1

    With FireFox, just add the NoScript extension. Along with the built-in restrictions on installing software (whitelist), this should keep your browser free from anything that isn't an exploit in the browser code itself.

    I don't care how "interesting" it is to them. If they can't get their crap installed on my machine, I'm happy.

  62. Learn Your Statistics by Tom · · Score: 2, Insightful

    the overall trend for Firefox is upwards.

    That's the point. There are too many people in the news business today who only went to one week of statistics in university, the one where they were told how to "lie with statistics" (and yes, my prof had a special lecture about that in his curriculum).

    Posting "Firefox down 0.7%" one month, and another "Firefox share declines again" a few months later is misleading and dishonest if it refers to two dips in an overal upwards trend. Everyone who's ever done statistics knows that very few graphs are monotonously rising, and even the strong rising ones have some dips in them.

    The overal longterm trend can be calculated and extrapolated, and it's much more important than what it's been up or down this week, except on the stock exchange where you can actually make money on a moment-by-moment trading basis.

    --
    Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
  63. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by geoffspear · · Score: 1
    And right there you've demonstrated why they'll never change.

    Most people don't care, and never will. They don't want to here about why IE-only support is a problem, they just want the web to work right, so they'll keep using IE, and sites will feel free to keep coding exclusively for IE.

    Do you think they care if they get a letter from someone who wasn't going to buy from them anyway, as long as they make a sale despite the incident mentioned in the letter?

    --
    Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
  64. Not at cost of Opera by porneL · · Score: 1

    Opera in US has marginal share, so there is nothing to take. OTOH in Poland Opera has 6.5% market share and Firefox almost 16%. Since Firefox hype started Opera didn't lose market share and it usage still grows, although much slower (last year Opera had 4% while FF had 0.5%).

  65. Phear not, help is on its way! by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Unfortunately we cannot do anything about audi.be, butt als-verlag is a different matter. Check back on Saturday morning, and their site will be, hummm, much more interesting than it is now.

  66. Netscape = 0.26%, Opera = 0.77% by po8 · · Score: 0

    "Oh, no! I told them once, I told them a hundred times: put 'Spinal Tap' first and 'Puppet show' last!"

  67. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by jawtheshark · · Score: 1
    Man, can you read? I said that *I* wouldn't give them business. Actually, *I* did not give them business. Do you understand that I had to choose between a happy-wife-because-she-got-the-stuff-she-needed-fo r-her-job and being-an-ass-because-I-think-Internet-Explorer-suc ks. It's not that I don't care, but other things have priority... For example the happyness of my wife.

    If you can't understand that, you're either not married or are married to a geeky wife. Go figure, my wife is definately non-geeky and I have to respect that. You don't want to know in what kind of state her computer was when I entered her life.

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  68. Idea for TV commercial by Spy+der+Mann · · Score: 1

    "1 out of 10 users prefers the Firefox web browser."

    (Picture happy guy browsing the web)

    "The other 9, are still having problems."

    (Picture unhappy users with viruses and popups. The Firefox user just looks at them and shakes his head, smiling)

    Firefox. Now with AdBlock.

    1. Re:Idea for TV commercial by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Is this supposed to be a clever advertisement? Because it sounds to me like you took a statistic, are reciting it, and then shallowly representing it. If this is all advertising agencies needed to do to come up with ideas for commercials, well, then you should be making huge sums of money.

    2. Re:Idea for TV commercial by raoul666 · · Score: 1

      Does anyone else see the irony of advertising an adblocking service?

      --
      When cryptography is outlawed, bayl bhgynjf jvyy unir cevinpl
  69. Re: CHANGE THE SHORTCUT ICON by s388 · · Score: 1

    that's why you change the firefox icon to the BLUE E, and stick it under My Computer. And in the hotlaunch bar.

    on every machine you can.

    why should you care? well, maybe you shouldn't care, unless you're a network admin who has to deal with the ie spyware, or if you actually want people to have a browser that allows functional text resizing, bla bla.

  70. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    it's my experience that usually it does help to send a friendly e-mail explaining the problem. I did it with 3 websites with serious problems (not layout) and 2 of them repaired it within a few days. Most of the time the website works mostly except for 1 thing that makes it unusable in firefox.
    I understand not everyone wants to spend time debugging someone elses website for free, but I had the best results by sending a rather detailed analysis of the problem and some hints for a solution.

  71. Amex website by dbgeek · · Score: 0

    American Express site seem to have problem with non Microsoft, Non IE platforms. I stopped using their credit cards anyway. Here is one if you don't belive me. Kinda funny lookingin Firefox(I am using firefox 1.5 Beta 1). I heard stories recently they don't you hire if you are using a Mac.

    https://www124.americanexpress.com/cards/home?acti on=notregistered

  72. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by geoffspear · · Score: 1
    I'm quite happily married to a non-geek wife, thank you very much.

    I'm not judging your actions. I don't expect you to demand that you wife boycott companies with bad websites.

    However, the fact that she, like most other people, doesn't care how bad the website is shows that it's pretty much a hopeless cause to write complaint letters about the websites in question. The people running them know that you wife doesn't care if she has to use IE. They know that 99% of their potential customers care more about being able to make their purchase than they do about whether they're forced to use a Microsoft product. If every single person who does care about browser choice and good use of web standards boycotts a business, they're hardly going to lose a significant amount of their revenue.

    --
    Don't blame me; I'm never given mod points.
  73. Finland 34 %, Germany 24.1 % by TimoP · · Score: 4, Informative

    Europe is far ahead. Take a look at Xiti's map: http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement11.asp

  74. But not to FF by jmorris42 · · Score: 1

    Firefox is a commercial branded product looking to make co marketing deals for the initial bookmarks and such. I wouldn't give them a dime. They are even ordering me to remove Firefox from my RHEL rebuild distro because I don't have permission to use their precious trademark. Feh. So the next WBEL4 release will have Iceweasel in instead. Just not getting in a hurry to to the rebranding work because 1) I don't like getting rolled by buttweasels and 2) I was kinda hoping for consensus among the Free Software community on a new name. Iceweasel is what the Debian folk have been half jokingly suggesting calling it if Firefox does more than rattle their sabers at em, but for now they seem to think the best course is ignoring em and hope they just go away.

    And forget passing out customized copies either. Even Speakeasy couldn't do it, instead they pass out a little plugin to install after Firefox to accomplish their cusomizations. As for me at my public library, since Netscape doesn't appear to be going to release a Netscape Communicator Customization Kit for the current release, my choices for our next setup CD (we have two dozen public access dialups) is either a setup doc walking an end user through Firefox, Thunderbird and local customizations for both (support nightmare!) or trying to get a Windows devel box up and building a customized Seamonkey when it finally comes out of Alpha. Double Bleh!

    If the Seamonkey guys are hard up for cash though, I'd gladly toss THEM a few bux to keep the caffine flowing in their veins. They are our best hope for getting a 100% Free browser at this point.

    --
    Democrat delenda est
  75. three times higher in the US than UK by freedom+of+informati · · Score: 1

    urm, this report says 11.5%

    this one from the other day says the http://www.bbc.co.uk/ homepage gets 9.7% firefox.

    http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/24/0627 252

    Surely that is about as representative of the uk population as anything?

    so since when was 11.5 / 3 = 9.7?

    maybe onestat's coverage in the UK is a bit skewed?

    1. Re:three times higher in the US than UK by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      this one from the other day says the http://www.bbc.co.uk/ homepage gets 9.7% firefox.

      http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/10/24/0627 252

      Surely that is about as representative of the uk population as anything?


      No. The BBC website is definitely an international site. There's no way that overall hits to it can be said to be representative the UK population.

  76. More like analphabetic by ichigo+2.0 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    The most popular browsers on the web are:


    1. Microsoft IE 85.45 %
    2. Mozilla Firefox 11.51 %
    3. Apple Safari 1.75 %
    4. Netscape 0.26 %
    5. Opera 0.77 %

    Is that the new l33t alphabet or something, because I don't see it.

  77. I just lie to my bank by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    My bank (SunTrust) won't let me pay bills unless I'm using IE or Netscape. So I installed the Firefox User-Agent Switcher plugin to let Firefox tell the website that I'm using IE. Firefox renders the online banking web pages well so there's no reason they couldn't support Firefox. They're just too lazy to test it.

    When I use the User-Agent Switcher plugin, the bank is collecting bogus data about which browser I'm really using -- bogus data that supports their contention that "everyone's using IE, why should we support Firefox!" Irksome.

    1. Re:I just lie to my bank by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I recently exorcised my aunt's WinXP box of the usual demons (spyware, malware, etc.) and after doing so I installed Firefox for her. Like yourself, the only website that has given her grief is http://www.suntrust.com/ as she also uses it to pay bills. I wrote them an e-mail about their lack of support for browsers other than IE. They never reponded. I find it interesting that you mention that their website works fine with Firefox with some user agent spoofing. Perhaps I should pay my aunt a visit to "install an update" on her computer. Although, I also cringe at the thought Firefox masquerading as IE and the negative effect it has on browser statistics.

    2. Re:I just lie to my bank by ydrol · · Score: 1
      My bank (SunTrust) won't let me pay bills unless I'm using IE or Netscape. So I installed the Firefox User-Agent Switcher plugin to let Firefox tell the website that I'm using IE. Firefox renders the online banking web pages well so there's no reason they couldn't support Firefox. They're just too lazy to test it.

      That's like telling an ugly woman she's pretty so you can get laid. On so many levels....

  78. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by jawtheshark · · Score: 1
    Then excuse me for attacking you. Sorry about that.

    Well, I suppose that if I hadn't been around for asking why the website was flaky, she would have gone elsewhere. Fate wanted that I was around to help her. She didn't even know about Internet Explorer anymore! I had to start it for her.

    So, from that point of view, I am entirely at fault.

    I'm already happy that my whole family converted to Firefox. None of them ever uses Internet Explorer (as far as I have observed, of course...), with the recent exception of my wife... of course.

    --
    Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
  79. Fanfare by Eli+Gottlieb · · Score: 1

    Joy to the world! The Fox has come! Let Earth, browse oooo-pen sourrrrce!

  80. Firefox needs to focus on security by Offwhite98 · · Score: 1

    Many people moved to it because MSIE was seen as insecure but recent reports show some problems with Firefox. The Firefox team should work with the OpenBSD/OpenSSL team to develop an audit process over the code to ensure it truly is more secure than MSIE.

    --
    Brennan Stehling - http://brennan.offwhite.net/blog/
    1. Re:Firefox needs to focus on security by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      I agree, which is why I have switched to Opera until they get their act in order.

  81. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by WhiteWolf666 · · Score: 1

    Yes, keep 'em separate, thats the best way.

    Non-sophisticated computer users (read non-total nerds) don't mind a little bit more "difficulty" if it avoids "complexity" (these are two different things).

    It is more difficult to run two web browsers than to worry about which browsing engine you are using in a given tab, however, its also an easier idea to conceptualize.

    As long as the setup works for the end user, you're golden.

    --
    WhiteWolf666 an exBush supporter. All you new-school,compassionate,save the children Republicans can rot in hell
  82. How about other countries? by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 1
    The Onestat press release only mentions the UK and a few of it's former colonies, which tend to flock together somewhat as far as trends and culture go.

    I'm interested in what data they have for Germany or other countries. If Apache is any example, then Firefox should be much more in use some places: Apache has only about 70% of the HTTP server market worldwide, but has over 90% in Germany.

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
  83. Banks coding to W3C standard by SgtChaireBourne · · Score: 1
    Not all banks are like that, and you can always switch banks (or threaten to switch.)
    ...
    Let them know that "Use IE" is not an acceptable answer.
    I've used many banks but had to do that only once. If you play it right, the new bank will sweeten the defection with a few perks, discounts, better rates or waived fees.

    It's kind of stupid though. If the bank had simply coded to standard, then there wouldn't be a problem, assuming that MS reps didn't flat out negotiate with the bank to make problems for standards compliant browsers.

    However, I think more people are now coding to standard XHTML + CSS for FireFox, Opera, Safari, etc. first and then making tweaks so that their work renders also in MSIE. Passing 11% marketshare will just make that practice more common.

    --
    Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
    1. Re:Banks coding to W3C standard by danharan · · Score: 1
      I've used many banks but had to do that only once. If you play it right, the new bank will sweeten the defection with a few perks, discounts, better rates or waived fees.
      Neat. Wonder how many people would have to get those perks before they'd clue in that it costs them less to just support those standards?

      Actually, if they're not clued in about standards, maybe they're not clued in enough to account for that either. At least geeks get a discount :)
      --
      Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
  84. The king is naked by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How come no one mentions that Fire Fox has a very bad memory management ?
    Maybe the decrease in the percentages is due to the fact that the average Internet user have less RAM than the average /. reader ? And for such a user - in the choice between cool browser and functional machine (after 20 minutes of browsing) the second option wins ?
    Don't get me wrong - I'm using Fire Fox since ver 0.6, and I like it a lot. But the last versions are impossible. After 20 minutes of usage, the Brower must be restarted. A friend showed me Fire Fox consuming 1 Giga (!) of RAM on Debian Linux, with only 2 standard tabs opened (after 2 days with no restart).
    The dev team should pay some of its attention to the memory problems, and not just to the new cool features.

  85. Shame about... by aug24 · · Score: 1
    ...your spelling.

    Love,
    The Spelling Nazis

    --
    You're only jealous cos the little penguins are talking to me.
  86. FF not 4 everyone by aysa · · Score: 0

    I just installed FF 1.5RC on a friends machine (Pentium II/III 600 with not much memory).
    It was impossible to use (taking too much resources) to the point of being no use. Had to unistall it, and leave IE alone...

    1. Re:FF not 4 everyone by Kiaser+Wilhelm+II · · Score: 2, Informative

      Try Opera.

      It does just about everything FF does and more while taking up much less RAM and uses lots less CPU.

      --
      Lord High Crapflooder The Right Honourable Vlad Craig Esther McDavenpherson III
      Destroyer of Mercatur.Net
    2. Re:FF not 4 everyone by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      just about....try a thousand times more!

    3. Re:FF not 4 everyone by LordGlenn · · Score: 1

      yep. Linux version is easier to configure as well. I still cant get Java to work right under Mozilla.

  87. I keep installing it on my user's machines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    and make it the default browser but I don't take away their IE. The dumb fuckers just go searching for thier IE icon and use that instead.

  88. Re:If MS was promoting this... 32.2% increase by rjune · · Score: 1

    If MS was promoting this, they would have used the original market share (11.5 - 2.8 = 8.7) in the calculation. The calculation would then be (2.8/8.7)*100% for an increase of 32.2%!

  89. Recent vulnerability where NoScript didn't help by MarkByers · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I use NoScript.

    One recent exploit that worked even with NoScript enabled was the highly critical 'Firefox IDN URL Domain Name Buffer Overflow'.

    http://secunia.com/advisories/16764/

    --
    I'll probably be modded down for this...
    1. Re:Recent vulnerability where NoScript didn't help by rufuseddy · · Score: 0

      but did it allow malware to be installed or did it just crash the browser?

      --
      Giggidy Giggidy Gigg-a-dy
  90. Re:If MS was promoting this... 32.2% increase by rbarreira · · Score: 1

    And MS would be correct, since that's the proper way to compute increases in percentage.

    --

    The AACS key is NOT 0xF606EEFD628B1CA427BEA93A9CA9773F
  91. Unfortunately, there's a downside as well. by Other+Than+That... · · Score: 1
    Recently, I've started to notice a lot more popups while using Firefox.

    I'm guessing it's always been possible to get around firefox's popup blocker, but when it only had a tiny market share, the evil marketers didn't bother with it. However, with the popularity firefox has been enjoying, it looks like they've dicided it is worth their time to try and get me to buy something by hitting me in the face with it. :(

    Does anyone know a way to make the popups go away again? - I don't want to block the ad banners; if the sites can get revenue with no interaction from me, good for them. I just the annoying popups to go away.

    1. Re:Unfortunately, there's a downside as well. by Secrity · · Score: 1

      Turn javascript off:

                        Tools | Options | Web Features | uncheck Enable JavaScript

      It is also prudent to turn Java off if you are not needing it:

                        Tools | Options | Web Features | uncheck Enable Java

    2. Re:Unfortunately, there's a downside as well. by nix249 · · Score: 1

      Try installing Flashblock http://flashblock.mozdev.org/, which will disable flash objects until you click on them. This cut back the number of pop up ad's I was getting in Firefox.

  92. LaTeX is the answer by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Who needs graphical web browsers when we have LaTeX!!!!!11oneone

    . . . sorry, couldn't resist.

  93. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    A small anecdote, but I was recently asked to sit in on a vendor demo of some big brother software for tracking usage and keystrokes (!!) of our organizations employees. Prior to the demo, I thought I would check out their web site. The navigation menus were broken in Firefox. I thought that was funny considering most of their products used a web interface. To me, it said, "We don't know how to code a web site properly, but please buy our web-based products!"

    Too bad I don't make the buying decisions. Of course, if I did, we'd never be looking for that type of software to begin with.

  94. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by Evan+Meakyl · · Score: 1

    O_O

    And I thought all /.ers (except me) were good guys :)

  95. Maybe he is usi... (was Re:Firefox is on the up!!) by Laebshade · · Score: 1

    Maybe he's using Sun's versioning method!

  96. No auto-update is a non-starter by LaughingCoder · · Score: 1

    I would never recommend FireFox to a casual user until auto-update is available. Casual users will not periodically check for security updates (of which there have been many in FireFox) and so they will be like sitting ducks.

    Don't believe me, check out http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html

    --
    The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
    1. Re:No auto-update is a non-starter by spinel · · Score: 1

      If you install firefox 1.5rc1 or newer I think you will find auto-update works ok. It is much easier to update firefox or extensions. I would never let naive users run IE on the open net. There are too many vulnerabilities which have been open for years like captiveX. See for yourself how many virus, spyware and other malware just don't propagate even on MSWindows if you don't use IE, MSOffice or Outlook/Exchange. You can't kludge security into an operating environment, someone needs to do the basic design with security and networking in mind.

  97. Firefox's Security by themepsp · · Score: 0

    Firefox is still no where near being secure as it should be for mainstream. Remember the IDN flaw which affected everything? This flaw still hasnt been fixed either: http://security-protocols.com/advisory/sp-x19-advi sory.txt/

  98. Browsers should identify as "Standards Compliant" by Secrity · · Score: 1

    I hope all the non-IE browsers are now 'shipping' by default with their own browser strings, not set to pretend to be IE...

    I wish that browsers would ship so that the user agent would identify themselves only as being Standards Compliant. Web designers have only themselves to blame for non-IE browsers masquerading as IE. There have been a great many web designers that have configured their sites to REFUSE to serve non-IE browsers. There have also been web designers that have have set up their web sites to deliberately serve broken code to non-IE browsers (one famous example is MSN deliberately sending a broken stylesheet to Opera browsers in Feb of 2003).

  99. Switch to which bank? by tepples · · Score: 1

    you can always switch banks

    For several years, the only bank with branches in Terre Haute, Indiana, was First Financial. And for several years, the bank's web site required IE for Windows (though this has since been fixed).

    1. Re:Switch to which bank? by NefariousAryq · · Score: 1

      Thankfully, this is no longer the case, here. I got fed-up with the run-around from First about their website (not to mention $5.95/mo for online bill pay, when its mostly free elsewhere), and switched to Fifth/Third (53.com) ... and I told them exactly why I was leaving. I'm sure its not changed, but hey, at least I gave them my two cents. 53.com works beautifully in Firefox, btw. Another Slashdotter from the Terre Haute area, color me surprised. :) --Aryq

  100. Anecdote. by Rowan_u · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've had Firefox installed on my wife's computer since before the 1.0 release. I deleted all the shortcuts to IE, and after that just assumed she was using it. Until looking over her shoulder one day, asking her about a movie, I see that she gets to the internet by opening up the start menu, and clicking on windows update . . . shudder. Some people do like Internet Explorer, and will go through extra means to get to it. My wife doesn't know how to recreate desktop shortcuts, but did remember that windows update runs on IE. Hence, she was able to fill up her windows machine with spyware despite my precautions. I haven't figured out what the appeal for IE is yet, maybe she enjoys clicking on the giant stacks of IE windows in the taskbar, and painfully locating the site she was just on.

    --
    only one everything
    1. Re:Anecdote. by Billly+Gates · · Score: 1

      Ie seems snappier on older systems because its loading when windows startsup.

      I can see why people prefer and the ladder releases of firefox are HOGS! Why does my system use 245megs of ram just to browse the internet? Earlier versions of firefox were less memory intensive and on my athlonXP2400 with 512 megs of ram I still use firefox but its sluggier.

      On my fathers pentiumIII with 256 megs of ram firefox is dog slow comparied to IE.

      Also many websites just work and people are familiar with it. Many of these same people used netscape to death until 2000 before giving up.

    2. Re:Anecdote. by Sockatume · · Score: 1

      This may be a bit "out there", but have you tried talking with her about it, rather than (somewhat disrespectfully, I'd say) attempting to force her into using the browser you want her to use?

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  101. Re:There are still too many non standard websites. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I wrote an email to the ALS Verlag. Maybe it helps.
    rubinstein

  102. Mozilla's browser*s* have 11.5% share by bunratty · · Score: 1
    "OneStat.com ( www.onestat.com ), the number one provider of real-time web analytics, today reported that Mozilla's browsers have a total global usage share of 11,51 percent. The total usage share of Mozilla increased 2.82 percent since April 2005...

    The global usage share of Mozilla's browsers is still growing and it seems that Netscape users and some Internet Explorer users are switching to the Firefox version."

    It's clear from the text that the 11.5% figure reported in OneStat's press release is the share of all of Mozilla's browsers. According to at least one source, the use of the Mozilla Application Suite is over 1.5%, so Firefox may not really have over 10% share yet.
    --
    What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
  103. Dance Dance what? by tepples · · Score: 1

    However, whenever I hear talk about ___ software being a revolution I always dismiss it as hype.

    Even Konami's dance simulation software? What about games developed for Nintendo's 2006 video game console?

  104. Re:Not much further to go _Wells fargo by vernonjvs · · Score: 1

    Wells Fargo Online Banking works fine with Firefox and Mozilla.

  105. Block IE by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0
    How often have you encountered a web page that compelled you to use IE? A configuration program for some hardware, perhaps; or a web site.

    Get even. Block IE. Using Apache:

        RewriteEngine on
        RewriteCond %{HTTP_USER_AGENT} .*MSIE.*
        RewriteRule .* /noie.html [L]

    Then just create a little noie.html page that says "IE not supported here. Use a real browser."

    If MS wants to pick a fight, fight back I say.
  106. do the numbers really jive? by chivo243 · · Score: 1

    Look All, I think this is over simplified. I have downloaded firefox 3 times for our network installation, and have deployed it hundreds of times.... so what does the download stat have to do with the real number of firefox users? 10 million downloads, x how many corperate/large network users got it through one download. Did you know that 69% of all people lie thourgh stats? Look it up, google it, or what ever...

    --
    Sig Hansen?
    1. Re:do the numbers really jive? by bunratty · · Score: 1

      OneStat isn't counting downloads. It's counting the number of times Firefox and other browsers are used to access sites.

      --
      What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
    2. Re:do the numbers really jive? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      and i have downloaded firefox ~10 times and use it currently on : 0 machines

  107. Re:familiaritIE? Plug-ins? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Are you installing common plug-ins? I think a lot of people are reluctant to install or don't know how to install them. If you can't view plug-in dependent websites, your browser experience isn't going to be all that great.

  108. F is before I by donutello · · Score: 1

    What idiot modded this informative?

    Funny? Yes. Informative? No.

    --
    Mmmm.. Donuts
  109. Auto-update is here now. by tepples · · Score: 1

    I would never recommend FireFox to a casual user until auto-update is available.

    Mozilla Firefox 1.5 RC1 has working auto-update. Install it now, and your casual users will get Fx 1.5 final when it is released.

  110. Fixing the bug, real fast by tepples · · Score: 1

    Evertime you place your mouse cursor over some text the entire pages starts jumping around.

    Then your page's CSS has a bug. The fix is simple: don't use a font-weight or font-size that varies based on :hover.

  111. Who needs IE anyway? I never have, never will. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    I happily run Firefox on Windows 95 and NT. Guess you can count me out of IE7 too. Actually one of the reasons I stick with 95 and NT is because they DON'T integrate IE into the shell. Too bad I can't run Firefox in Windows for Workgroups....

  112. Opera and the Mac by mrraven · · Score: 1

    I'm NOT switching to Opera until there is an easy to install ad blocking plugin like Firefox has for OS X. I don't have hours to mess with config files, and TOR is buggy and unreliable on OS X. I'll do just fine with Firefox. Camino and Safari, thanks.

    --
    Tired of all the isms, don't exploit people as an employer, or a government, mmmmK?
  113. Help test Firefox by carlmenezes · · Score: 1

    Go download Firefox 1.5 RC1 and help test it. The only way its going to be adopted more is if it works better and has few enough shortcomings to make the move to it worth it.

    --
    Find a job you like and you will never work a day in your life.
    1. Re:Help test Firefox by Bloater · · Score: 1

      Go download Firefox 1.5 RC1 and help test it.

      I would if they'd provide a goddammed amd64 build!

  114. Norwegian Anti-Mozilla Plot by billstewart · · Score: 1
    Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten's English-language pages keep crashing my Mozilla 1.7.7 browser. I assume it isn't *actually* a plot to get Mozilla users to convert to Opera - more likely it's got something IE-centric in it - but it's annoying, especially because my normal way to read news sites is to start with the front page, open lots of stories in separate tabs, and then read the stories, so if one of the stories has some bad html in it, it crashes a whole browser session, plus whatever other Mozilla windows I have open. I usually only read a few news articles from Aftenposten at a time, but Fark typically has URLs and titles for a large number of stories every day, often with some Aftenposten m00se-bites-car story that crashes my browser after I've opened 50 tabs.

    And yes, that's Mozilla, not Firefox, and I probably should either upgrade to 1.7.12 or else use real Firefox, but it's convenient to have a browser install that has all the parts and most of the plugins working with it. I haven't hunted down the offending pages, or tried them in Opera yet to see if they crash it; if I'm going to bother doing that, I should upgrade the browser first.

    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  115. So.... by Omestes · · Score: 1

    As one of the 1.77% using Safari, is it even worth while to switch over to FF again? I've been with the project from the very start, laughed through the name changes, wrote my bugzillas, and got my share of people to switch.

    Then I bought a Mac. And FF got sluggish, it takes for ever to open. It's a memory whore (about as bad a pre 10.4.3 Safari). The only thing I miss is extentions, ad-block (dang 4.3 breaking pithhelmet), and mouse gestures.

    Does the new FF make this worthwhile?

    --
    A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
    1. Re:So.... by Arimus · · Score: 1

      That's the one thing I don't like about FF - I've got FF running now with two tabs - one on Slashdot and one viewing my websites stat's on sitemeter.

      Memory useage: 49MB...

      Just fired up IE ... 28 MB for two instances viewing the same pages as in FF.

      --
      --- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
    2. Re:So.... by Omestes · · Score: 1

      Perhaps I will give FF a try again, checking Activity Monitor tells me that with /. open in two tabs I'm using 52MB... And, just firing up the new FF install it says 42, for two tabs. How do extentions scale into RAM in FF, since right now this is complete vanilla?

      I guess now I worry about the aethetics, I hope they speed it up since 1.1 (which is pretty much where the performance tanked)

      --
      A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
    3. Re:So.... by Arimus · · Score: 1

      Trouble is performance wise and interface wise its my favourite browser... so while its not the leanest its still going to be my first choice (Opera second and IE only for MS specific needs (outlook webaccess, windows update etc)).

      --
      --- Users are like bacteria -> Each one causing a thousand tiny crises until the host finally gives up and dies.
  116. Mi is before Mo by flibby · · Score: 1

    What idiot modded this to 2?

    Funny? Yes. Wrong? Yes.

  117. By the time they hit 20% by Dan_Bercell · · Score: 0, Troll

    MS will release its latest version of IE and will start to regain some of its lost market share. IE 7 is very nice to use, and should (while running on the next version of Windows) reduce security issues, not to mention better support for standards.

    In all honesty I hope Firefox reachs 70% of the market share so they can get beat down with spyware/adaware...

  118. Might be just a Slashdot hallucination by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Regular sites have slightly different hit count. I doubt that any huge site has 85% IE and 10% Firefox. Most sites even havy pro-Unix probably have 95% IE hits in stats.

  119. rules should serve employees, not vice versa by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Allowing employees to install...

    Gad, what a bureaucracy. I thought the bureaucracy was supposed to *support* employes by *empowering* them and *meeting their needs*. The first clue that you're in a dysfunctional institution is when it starts to be the other way around. Run! Run!

    1. Re:rules should serve employees, not vice versa by ninja_assault_kitten · · Score: 1

      It's the job of the business to evaluation and reduce risk to an acceptible level. Without doing so it will no doubt, at some point, suffer losses as a result. The idea that it's to the benefit of the company to allow what is essentially IT equivalent of the wild west is completely ridiculous.

      It's one thing if you're 50-300 employees, it's quite another when you're 50,000.

  120. Doesn't have to reach 85.5 by kurtmckee · · Score: 2, Informative

    At 11.5 percent, it's still got a long way to go to reach Internet Explorer's 85.5 percent

    No it doesn't. (85.5-11.5)/2 = 37.7% Firefox only need another 37.7% to surpass Internet Explorer's illegal market share.

  121. is it time for us to turn on firefox? by jc42 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Seriously, while FF reaching 10% is good news, we do need to avoid pushing for another monoculture. The world would be better off with a flock of browsers designed to work well (which included efficiently) for different people and different environments.

    A flock of different browsers, all standards-compliant of course, would really help to avoid a situation where a single piece of malware can bring down zillions of machines.

    And there are good technical reasons for wanting browsers designed differently. There are all sorts of special situations where one might want an unusual browser. Thus, lynx does pretty well for the visually impaired, and it's also a browser that can be run from scripts (since it doesn't do full graphics). A browser running on a handheld with a tiny screen is going to render things differently that something on a huge screen, and code that does both kinds of renderings is going to be inherently slower than code that's more specialized.

    Lots of readers can probably give situations where they'd really like a browser that's unusual in some way. I know I can think of lots of things I'd like done differently from how FF does them.

    So, good as firefox may be, we should treat its success as grounds for pushing for still more good browsers. Some may be based on FF. But we'd probably be even better off if they are independent code. Monocultures are dangerous, and should be consciously avoided.

    Of course, right now we might start the anti-FF action by pushing for opera. OK; it's not open-source, which is a mark against it. But it's good, and the company is a bunch of nice guys (so far). They just made it ad-free. So everyone should grab a copy and start running up the server stats for it.

    And use konqueror some more. Can it run on Windows yet? That'd be fun to foist on the MS crowd.

    The ideal would be no browser over 10% of the stats.

    --
    Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.
  122. Analyst tanalyst by int19h · · Score: 1

    Why cares if some RedMonk analyst believes the trend for whatever is upwards or downwards?
    My mother can predict stuff as good as him.

  123. Horizontal Scrollbar by fossa · · Score: 1

    I love w3m. It's so nice and fast compared to, say, Firefox. It's a pleasure to use on properly (and sparsely) designed sites.

    However, w3m, like all browsers I've used (maybe not lynx, I can't remember) often requires horizontal scrolling to view the entire page. I most often see this in Firefox in mailing list archives where someone isn't breaking paragraphs into multiple lines (which I believe should be perfectly acceptable... oh well). Why oh why can't Firefox be forced to break these lines? Can it and I just don't know how? Can any browser? I never want to see a horizontal scrollbar. I don't care what contortions the browser needs to go through; just never never never burden me with a horizontal scrollbar. It makes reading anything absolutely miserable. And no, a horizontal scroll wheel on the mouse would not make things better for I'd still need to shift back and forth just to read a paragraph or two.

    1. Re:Horizontal Scrollbar by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 1

      Tried a user stylesheet? A style for the body tag might work. Something vaguely like this might be worth a go:

      ! body { width: 1200px ; }

      (the ! means "Important, should override a style set on the page". Not sure that's the right syntax, though.)

  124. Audience determines the stats by kbahey · · Score: 1
    It is important to realize that the audience of a web site will skew the statistics.

    Here are examples from two web sites (those with a share of less than 1% are omitted, unknowns are crawlers).

    The first is mainly a techie site. Audience are tech savvy.
    MS IE 65.9 %
    Firefox 19.2 %
    Unknown 5.5 %
    Safari 2.8 %
    Mozilla 2.1 %
    Opera 1.5 %
    Netscape 0.8 %
    The other is for non-techies.
    MS IE 82.6 %
    Firefox 7.5 %
    Unknown 4.4 %
    Mozilla 1.7 %
    See the difference in MS IE vs. FireFox share? It is about 3X as much ...