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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."
At 10% FireFox is starting to become interesting to malware producers. I guess I'll switch to Opera.
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.
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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...
Please help metamoderate.
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".
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.
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
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.
>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.