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Firefox Slides, IE Gains?
limber writes "InformationWeek is reporting that a Dutch Web metrics company is stating that Microsoft's Internet Explorer has gained market share, contrary to other recent studies, while Firefox has lost market share, during the last two months. 'People are not switching so often to Firefox as before,' said Niels Brinkman, co-founder of OneStat."
...which means that all those new computer sold to students are using IE. Not all those students are migrating to FF.
Every new computer that runs Windows is a new IE user. Not so for Firefox or any other browser. Nothing to see here. Move on.
But I'll admit I've slowed down on my evangelism.. Honestly, Firefox seems to perform worse now for me than it did at .9 (or so). It's getting to be fairly regular that I see the "Firefox is already running - go kill the process" dialog. It's getting to be fairly regular that I see All-In-One Gestures in wacky mode where it's building a huge string while I don't have the button down (and then usually crashing). It's a little annoying, too, that the association with QuickTime (for playing .WAVs or .MP3s) doesn't ever "just work". I was thinking about writing a little game based on the Canvas object - but when it came to adding sound in a manner that was going to work for people I just gave up.
Maybe I've just had bad luck, but Firefox seems bigger, slower and less stable than it did a year ago - and I can't think of any added feature that I've cared about during that same period.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
I work at CompUSA in the tech department, and having dealt with numerous customers, I'd say one major reason many users (who don't specifically need IE for web based "apps") don't switch to Firefox/Mozilla/etc is because of a combination of two factors (1) they haven't even heard of it (much less the security concerns IE brings about that exist minimally in Firefox), and (2) many people equate the "e" icon on their desktop AS the Internet as opposed to a browser. Yeah, it may seem funny to us /.ers, but it is true more often than not for the average computer user. MS has made that little "e" icon synonomous with the Internet in their minds. I can't begin to list the number of times a customer has said "When I click on the Internet..." referring to IE's little "e" icon.
- RobM
Tech Lead
CompUSA #531
To track visitors you have to implement a small piece of javascript in your HTML pages.
So, if I use Adblocker to block the javascript - which I do for most ad sites unless it's a poll or something I need - then they aren't counting you AT ALL when you use Firefox, since you blocked their ads and their popups.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
if anything, I'm an old school netscape fanboy. My first browser was Lynx, then I eventually jumped on the bandwagon and got netscape 3, then eventually moved on to long lasting netscape 4.x series. Netscape 6 sucked so I stayed with netscape 4.x during that time. I eventually starting using the Mozilla suite pre 1.0 after stumbling upon it. The lack of AOL branding at the time was a major reason for my jump from Netscape proper. Since then I've been using Mozilla, then Phoneix, then Firebird, then eventually Firefox. When 1.5 came out, it really sucked major ass for me. FF1.5 would crash at least 7 to 10 times per day. I'm fairly computer savy and I followed explicit instructions on making sure it was a clean install. I was browsing with hardly any extensions at all, which sucked.
There have been other major changes behind the scenes that might not be so apparent to the average user. In my attempts to create an extension for FF1.5 extension contest I came accross a shitload of bugs. Very simple XUL markup could make the browser disappear by simply clicking on a hyperlink. And by disappear I mean as in invisibile, except for plain text. And there are others, but my attempts at using Bugzilla have sucked. I've reported bugs in the past only to have them recently deleted because no one want's to fix them.
OSS is fine, but it seems to foster a mentality that if a developer can't reproduce a bug then the end user must be stupid. That's annoying, especially for a company that's marketing its browser to everyone, including urging people that don't know what a browser even is to upgrade.
The feeling I've gotten from this open source netscape project is that I'm using a product, such that if it ever gives me serious problems, I'm left with no recourse since there is no focused method for attaining a definitive solution or fix for something. It's like the bystander effect when it comes to fixing or even acknowleding problems.
my reason for using firefox was adblock, but now I have safariblock so use safari.
the thing that made me delete firefox was realising how it managed passwords. as far as I can tell you have 2 options:
1. you passwords are free for everyone to see by looking in the preferences (secured only by a "are you sure?" box), or
2. you must enter a master password every time you start a new session.
this is absolutely insane. I guess it's because firefox isn't OS-integrated so can't use OS-protection such as Keychain to keep passwords safe.
Phase 2: Right click FF icon --> properties --> change icon --> select IE icon
Phase 3: Delete old IE Icon from desktop
Phase 4: Rename Mozilla Firefox icon to Internet Explorer
Before you mod this funny, I have done this to at least half a dozen people's computers. They arn't smart enough to realize the difference (all they need is an address bar and bookmarks), so FF stays. Their computers get less spyware, they see less popups, I get less "OMG HELP ME" calls. Which brings me to Phase 5, which is profit.
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