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Firefox Usage Climbing
kbox writes "According to the Amsterdam analytics firm onestat The Firefox browser has jumped from a global market share of 8.7% to a whopping 13% since April 2005. The national usage of Firefox make some interesting reading, too, with Firefox making up 16% in the USA, 24% in Australia and a huge 39% in Germany."
Unsurprisingly, on Slashdot we skew the averages somewhat, with Firefox weighing in at 65% of our traffic... but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.
Netscape was good, or at lest the best of the day. It ran on every obscure platform under the sun. It was like java before even java. Runs and is able to be debugged and crashed everywhere.
I've heard from Netscape developers that the highlight was when they realized they were _the_ browser for the web, and they were seeing web addresses (complete with the http:/// part on them) on the side of trucks and all that. I also heard that the secretary is quite wealthy now due to stock options, the whole nine yards.
Well, they stagnated. And IE came and IMNSHO, ruined the web experience in the late 90s to early 00s. And during that time Netscape released their code into the Mozilla project. It then got worse. AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape is just a memory.
But then, guess what happened?
Because of the open code and open standards, we got the web back! My browser of choice is Safari. I really like it. It does almost 100% of what I think a browser should do. And it too is based on open standards and OSS (KHTML), and Apple has given patches back to the KHTML people.
And then Mozilla grew into Firefox, and things are getting better on the web again. I recently ran into two websites that required IE. One was for my taxes, and I told them that sure this time I can use IE on the Mac, but IE on the Mac is dead and if they want my business, they need to support standards. At work, there is one system that requires IE _on windows_, and we had to get a new computer, with windows just to view one website, and I had a word or two with them. And guess what? They told me that they are now targeting Firefox as the target browser, and for that to be cross platform.
Hey, as sucky as IE was, it did help the scene a little bit. It focused the other guys to care about security and for standards compliance, and today I have a number of good choices for browsing the web on a number of platforms, and its getting better every day.
Thank you Mozilla team, and thank you Microsoft.
Would Taco like to furnish us with those stats? :P
"Slow but sure, to win the race", says the quietly confident tortoise...
Let me introduce you to my very own DMCA-protected encryption key: BC 1B 64 4A 8D DE 49 E8 C3 7D CC EE 1A AD EE
That number might be higher (for /. users), but some may do a bit of viewing while at work. Some employers do not allow Firefox for some reason.
Starmen.net
Here at my office, Firefox is the default encouraged officially sanctioned browser of choice. After all those javascript/buffer overflow/remote code execution errors we gave the heave ho to IE and made sure that everyone had a copy of FF installed. So, put me down for 0.000000000000001% of those users!
It's 'Firefox'. Not 'FireFox'.
Thanks for reading.
Well, this is one firm's results and we all know how sometimes findings can be biased. If you want the full report from onestat, it is here with all browsers covered.
:)
Interestingly, Adtech found similar results (~12% in Europe) while The Counter put Firefox at more around ~9-10% for those months. Net Applications placed Firefox at around 10% also. Of course, Wikipiedia has a decent article on this with combined data at the bottom.
I guess 13% seems like kind of a stretch and 10% seems a bit more realistic. I don't know what makes any one source more reliable than the other though as none of them really talk about their strategy for attaining these statistics.
The big question shouldn't be "where is Firefox's percentage" but instead "how do we make Firefox more appealing to non-technical users?" Because it's clear that the technically savvy people have adopted Firefox but you'll never make it past 15% of the population with that attitude. I hate to say it, but introducing some functionality that Internet Explorer doesn't have might be the only way to accomplish that. And when you do that, you lose the stability and security that made it so popular in the first place. Solution? Perhaps a MySpace plug-in in light of recent news?
My work here is dung.
but sadly 18% of our firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.
.0 is suppose mean?)
:) yay!
Do you mean version 2? But I just remember reading a story on slashdot that was tagged "donotdownlad" and there was a highly moded comment stating that Mozilla did not wanted us to download that version...
I am running 1.5.0.4 (now that I see it, it is funny the quantity of digits in that version number, what does the
Is it the latest version? according to the Help/update it is
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
mod me as a troll if you'd like, but slashdot readers have been asking for slashdot stats for years, now because slashdot's traffic has decreased (due to digg) they're giving out some webstats?
Comon slashdot, give us a full URL to webalizer!
Tim has been working on an improved control widget which hopefully will make a lot more sense then the terrible UI we kludged together to get things started. We're going to start buy giving access to the system from a random sampling of users. There are bugs in various browsers that will need to be worked out, and the UI will need to be refined, but I think everyone will be happy with how it works. It's definitely becoming very clear where the performance problems in different browsers are. It's a pain.
Hmm.......
Checks version number.... ;)
Make the world better. Quit hating.
I assume the majority of that growth must be on Windows, but I'm wondering if Firefox usage is growing at the same rate on different OSs, since they have different alternatives. Mac and *nix users have some pretty decent non-Firefox browsers that arent available to Windows users. Just curious, anyone got relevant stats?
Oh no... it's the future.
My Firefox is out of date because I switched to Opera when Beta 9 came out. I still use Firefox on occassion for testing my web site and for the ocassional page that just refuses to play nicely with Opera (or when I need to use the IE tab for one of the few pages that STILL refuses to work in anything except for IE). So I just don't bother to stay current on the latest updates. Of course then there's the version of Firefox I'm using now at work (version 1.0.7) and that's pretty out of date... but I'm not the person who originally installed Firefox (and this is a multi-user computer) so I don't know if they need the older version of Firefox for some reason...
Read my blog posts on usability.
The one where you had up the numbers and there's 0.1% or so left? Yeah. THAT's their stats.
I never spellcheck and I freely admit it. Save your karma for more worthwhile "lol erorrs" replies
If by coming out of the obscure browser category to the significant market share browser category will increase the amount of exploits used by hackers, spammers and adware people out there. It would seem that much of the IE security breaches result from, aside from it's crappiness, its ubiquitous presence on the web. I wonder if Firefox will start to see more security breaches as it gains market share... We will see!
From the article:
Not so, the BBC offers vid/audio content in either Real format or offers a choice between Real and WMP.
Link to the One Stat statistics mentioned.
The big question shouldn't be "where is Firefox's percentage" but instead "how do we make Firefox more appealing to non-technical users?"
How about taking cues from Microsoft and getting Firefox preinstalled on new computers? Or follow AOL's plots and have the installer CDs available for free with new computers (or even free for the taking) at major retailers (CompUSA, Best Buy, Wal-mart, etc.).
The hard part is not the appeal of the browser. The hard part is getting people to try it. Once Firefox has its foot in the door, people will let it in the whole way.
$nice = $webHosting + $domainNames + $sslCerts
...One could also say that MS has gone *six years* without updating their browser, and Firefox is only at 16%. I mean, I'm as happy as anyone. I'm using it now. But I really see that market share getting cut in half within 2 years of IE7 coming out. MS just won't put up with this, and when you can put your product on every PC that's sold, and the competition can't, you don't have to be great to win.
That's pretty good numbers considering the vast majority of web users have never heard of Firefox. All my IT/tech-head friends are on Firefox and have been for some time but pretty much all the 'normal' users, mums, dads, people at work etc. have never heard of it and even when shown it simply don't understand why they would want to change from IEx. Web standards? Reliability? Safety? They just don't care. They fire up their PC and get browsing with IEx. It works for them, that's all they're interested in. They might care more if people like me didn't keep doing a free clean of their machine to remove all the muck they have downloaded every few months.
:-)
So, if you want Firefox to flourish, stop fixing friends PCs for free
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
Just for the heck of it, since you are pulling stats anyways - what OS percentage (if possible including versions/distros). And if you have stats for that too, combinations?
Just curious. Thank you!
If your building web sites etc. - try SunriseBrowser
It IS out of Amsterdam, so they could be...uhhhh... rollin'?
Purple, because ice cream has no bones.
It's easy to forget that not too long ago I was waiting for the latest upgrade to IE, downloading and installing it manually, because it was the best browser out there. I appreciate the efforts of the developers, too.
But I can't thank Microsoft. Because they quit trying to be the best and tried instead to lock out and eliminate competition, through means familiar enough to everybody here that I'm not going to repeat them.
And I don't think I'm just saying "what have they done for me lately" - Microsoft's war on the competition went some way towards undoing the good things that came from their competition with Netscape.
I agree with you, otherwise (for whatever that's worth). Just a thought
Using plain ol' text since 1968
Maybe Microsoft can build a widget for Firefox that pegs the CPU usage to 100% while a little Explorer icon keeps spinning in the corner deciding if you are worthy enough for it to load the page. Ah, just like old times...
Safari pisses me off though because lack of design mode is a major flaw, but one that is obviously fixable. I'm an ardent mac supporter, but the long and slow response to this makes me feel like Apple is sticking it to us (the mac faithful) because they can -- they know they've got a captive audience.
I've taken the Writely path now -- we (my company) no longer support Safari on our web applications -- we just can't. And I don't see us ever going back to that when we can code to one standard -- Firefox -- and have it work everywhere.
So I agree with you -- thanks Mozilla, and thanks OSS for having projects in which the developers are responsive to the customers needs. If I need something I can sponser someone to make an extension or tweak. We've done that several times with Thunderbird, we have some custom work we paid for in a few other OSS projects that went back to the community.
So I'm in the weird position of being a mac lover and an apple hater. Which is weird, but I think some people will know what I'm saying. Apple has contributed back where they've been required, but with the promotion of DRMs, ITunes, etc, they're not really an ally of Open Source, except in that they see OSS as an ally of convenience against MSFT. If there were now Microsoft, Apple would be doing exactly the same things MSFT has done.Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm
Actually, I still miss Firebird. Birds are way better than Foxes. Especially when they're on fire. And 16% use in the US counts as being on fire.
50% of people will always use IE, because they're too dumb to use IE to download Firefox. Makes you wish MS would just give it up and adopt Firefox, huh? It would save a boatload of cash.
Anyhow ... my browser is gonna be better than both!!!
I scream. You scream. I assume that means we're both acquainted with the problem. We proceed.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
Strangely enough, for no reason we could figure out, our usage stats showed an increase from 12% to 20% of visitors to our site using Firefox. We've assumed since we are getting more traffic from europe, and reading this article that europe is using Firefox at ever greater levels it looks like our assumptions were correct. I for one welcome our firefox overlords.
Why do overlook and oversee mean opposite things?
Mozilla has the ability to switch the text zoom from 100% to 200% or 300% or even more IN A SINGLE STEP.This feature is essential for me, that is why I use Mozilla and not Firefox.Is there a Firefox plugin for doing that?.If the answer is yes I may switch, otherwise I'll stick with Mozilla. Unfortunately they stopped the depelopment of Mozilla to version 1.7 something. Why dont they implement this feature in Firefox? Both Netscape 4.7 and higher and Mozilla have it, but not Firefox. I switch from 100% to 2-300% and back hundreds of times everyday and Firefox is too awkward for this task.
"At work, there is one system that requires IE _on windows_, and we had to get a new computer, with windows just to view one website, and I had a word or two with them. And guess what? They told me that they are now targeting Firefox as the target browser, and for that to be cross platform."
Some advice please? my university work place has an expenses system which required me to use IE if I want to claim for travel expenses etc. Doesn't work on Firefox or other browsers. I have to keep IE on my computer solely for this purpose. Can you (or any other slashdotters) advise on some well chosen arguments that I could use in an email to try and persuade the management (and I guess the central organisation techies) to modify the system so I can use firefox instead? cheers in advance...
This story was tagged as a dupe, but after reloading the story, the "dupe" tag disappeared and was replaced with "firefox, mozilla". I assume the editors edit the tags, as they used to often say "bullshit", "stupid", etc, but now seem to be a lot more tame...
LS
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
A friend of my father called me to fix his computer because he had spyware problems. He did not know Firefox existed...I have met many people over 40 that use the Internet and have no idea of what Firefox is.
...and as it does, so does the amount of memory it takes up.
Another tip for Slashdot readers using Firefox... get the Firefox Slashdotter Extension. It expands hidden comments inline using AJAX, allows you to change skins, informs you via an icon on the status bar if you got mod points, displays links to Coral Cache, plus more.
Why is Slashdot THE premiere cheerleader for Firefox?
I have Firefox. I HATE Firefox. I don't recommend Firefox to anyone. Why? Because it's slow, it's bloated, it's miserably crash-prone, and it's every bit the dinosaur that the original Mozilla became. In every instance I try to find alternatives..from Safari on my Mac to Konqueror on my linux boxes. Especially Konqueror on my Linux box since the Linux Firefox people are hell-bent on forcing the GNOME button order idiocy on everyone (and don't tell me about the Plastikfox fix, I'm well aware of it..and it shouldn't even be necessary).
Firefox? No thanks. I've got better things to use that 130megs of free ram on.
Well, they stagnated. And IE came and IMNSHO, ruined the web experience in the late 90s to early 00s. And during that time Netscape released their code into the Mozilla project. It then got worse. AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape is just a memory.
Yeah, Netscape definitely stagnated back around version 4 or 5 - when the browser was a bloated mess and was in danger of collapsing under its own weight. When IE 4 came out it was quite simply a better browser. It rendered pages faster and had a much better user interface. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that IE "ruined the web experience in the late 90s". They were the best game in town back then.
I made the move to Firefox a few years ago when pop-ups were a huge problem, and discovered that Firefox was about a LOT more than just blocking popups. IE had started to stagnate bigtime. IE5 and IE6 offered no meaningful improvements (although a pop up blocker appeared way late in the game). People knew that IE sucked but the word hadn't spread about Firefox yet. The momentum is clearly shifting towards Firefox now.
I just hope that they don't start to stagnate or bloat up with unneeded features too much. Fortunately they let extensions take care of any "bloat" that a user may want, which I think is good. Just keep a small core set of features and let people add enhancements on as they see fit. So far the history of web browsing has shown that through many generations of innovation come long periods of stagnation. From Mosaic to Netscape to IE to Firefox to ???
We need a Windows version with some of the extensions pre-bundled. Set up the AdBlock and Spell Checking, and dispatch that version. That way it consists of Download -> Install -> Doubleclick -> Browsing!!
I'm sure I know someone who is not using Firefox, but everyone I know well enough to know what they are using... uses Firefox. That's why I'm always suprised to find out the real numbers are as low as they are.
OTOH, I work in the tech industry in San Francisco so I'm probably in the middle of a very un-average sub-group of the population.
Religion is poison to rationality, and we lose sight of that at our own peril. -- Lurker2288
Well, now that we know what browser is being used at /., how about just releasing all the stats about the browser habits of /.?
Help! I'm a slashdot refugee.
The instant zoom button which exists both in Netscape and Mozilla is gone in Firefox. Why? I dont get it, this is an essential function, why take it away? Why in Firefox I should push a button six or seven times for achieving the same result which in Netscape of Mozilla can be reached in a single step?
I think more non-commercial websites should just block IE visitors. For example: http://www.lobstertech.com/explorer.php If your website is just giving away Free software, you have nothing to lose by blocking IE users.
Remember that some people still use I.E. at work and have FireFox at home. So probably there are more firefox users that 65% in the /. crowd
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
FF is crap compared to Mozilla. I again download FF yesterday thinking it might finally be worth using. It crashed this morning. WTF? I'll try it gain in 6 months but I've been burned so many times trying out FF that I just may stick with Mozilla for another two years or so.
If you're happy with Mozilla, dont switch and keep waiting for FF to improve. improve a lot.
Mac and *nix users have some pretty decent non-Firefox browsers that arent available to Windows users. Just curious, anyone got relevant stats?
Most enterprise grade webapps and web based control interfaces such as OEMDBC (Oracle Enterprise Manager Database Console) and the Lotus Notes webmail client to cite a couple of examples tend to either barf an error message and not work properly or refuse to work all with an uncertified browser like Safari or Opera which is not surprising. If I was developing a webapp as complex as OEMDBC I would enforce similar restrictions. So if you are running OS.X or Linux in a corporate environment and (that's assuming you don't get terminated by the MCSE certified stormtroopers from the IT department for violating their use-Windows dictum) using Firefox is de facto mandatory at least for the business webapps since Firefox is the only native browser available for Linux and OS.X that has a market share big enough for Oracle, IBM and the likes take it seriously. I hope that Firefox keeps growing I would hate to see these companies go back to a IE only certification policy for their web interfaces. Then there are of course those unfortunate cases of webapps that only work in Internet Explorer. I have never quite understood why people do that, creating a webapp that runs only on one browser on one single OS seems pretty pointless.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
Hmm i wonder how they generate statistics? Do they create a representive set of websites that represend the whole net and log their users? They would need quite alot small websites for that ... Or do they analyse the requests in large server farms ... what would preselect users in a way. How to do it "right" ? I guess an offline survey would be the most accurate way ...
I also wonder whats the stats of newb sites, like MSN :)
"Compare prizes on Mozilla" .. what a fine ad for this article ;)
Ctrl+
Ctrl-
Have a nice day.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak
...the above thread leaves me speechless. This is what you Linux/Windows users call a good browser? You really need to get with the times.
I've traditionally used IE. I keep up with the patches, so I haven't had spyware or virus issues in a very long time, and IE always just seemed to fit how I liked to operate. I've got Firefox installed, and sometimes I use it, but until the last update I found it would periodically cause my network connection to fail. I'd reset it via the control panel and it'd be good for a while, but inevitably it would happen again. It was the only application to exhibit this quirk.
Recently I downloaded a copy of Opera, and I find it far more to my liking than Firefox. It's well-behaved, fast, and everything feels intuitive, which is something I never got from Firefox. I'm very happy with it, and I use it about half-and-half with IE.
I de-installed Firefox last night, after realizing I'd probably never start it again.
These statistics do not filter out things such as Business users. Large companies have millons of employee's who browse the internet every day, and i would assume the majority do NOT use firefox, as their system is locked down, and IE is default, and only browser Available. It would be interesting to see what the usage stats are for HOME users. I think that Firefox growth will continue until Vista comes out, at which point it will slow for a short period while people adjust to the new OS. Lots will try out IE7, and simple see that it is a clone of firefox(and other browsers), years behind in joining the game. But soon after its release, new versions of FF, Opera, and other browsers will emerge with even better features, and we will see the numbers start to raise again.
Hopefully larger companies will begin to make the switch, and people will then adopt what they learn at work, to their home environment as well.
Most people i know, have adopted Firefox at home, but that is because the know me, and i did it for them, or told them to make the switch.
-EL
Early this year, I went from using a Win2K box to using an Ubuntu 5.10 (now 6.06) box as my primary browsing/email/text and spreadsheet system at home.
While Ubuntu *is* a bit slower in some respects than Windows (I give MS credit for speeding up the UI wherever they could), it never hangs, and I'm very happy with its flexibility.
Firefox has been my browser of choice ever since Netscape's purchse by AOL. It does have warts, but to me, its primary advantage is that it allows me much more control of my "browsing experience" than IE does. I can shut off pop-ups, block ads, install extensions and just about anything else I want to do. And, should I stumble across a website trying to install malware, it's gonna be a problem for them, because it won't run!
A fellow worker and I are having a small contest. The winner will be the first to "convert" a naive user -- mom, grandma, wife -- to using Linux exclusively (no force allowed, the user must willingly convert, and stay converted). The current
version of Ubuntu is every bit as usable for browsing, email and text/spredsheet as Windows is. Many users don't ask for more, so our contest isn't as silly as it appears.
The disappearance of the instant zoom button in Mozilla is only an example of a major flaw of open source development, every major step forward is accompanied by a (tiny) step backward. I've seen it countless times. In the early days of alsa sound, more recent versions of alsaconf failed to autoconfigure some soundcards which were successfuly configured by earlier versions. Many useful features keep disappearing from recent versions of the linux kernel. Another example: Suse 9.1, although a poor version of SuSE, had the ability to autoconfigure many exotic USB audio devices; unfortunately this feature is gone from Suse 9.2, 9.3, 10 and 10.1.
This (almost) never happen in the case of commercial development, a useful feature needed by the users is there to stay. For example the instant zoom button first appeared in Word 6, over ten years ago and it hase been there ever since in each and every version of Word.
I use Firefox and Safari at home. I'd be using Firefox at work, but our office only allows Internet Explorer to be loaded on the machines. The IT folks say Firefox has "dangerous" security holes and they won't allow it. I know, I know ... then what's IE?!?
"Thats interesting, I used IE for a long time, started using Firefox a couple years ago and found it to be a very easy transition, my wife uses Opera and I could just never get into that interface."
Guess that's why ice cream comes in flavours other than vanilla.
I respect Firefox for bringing a viable alternative to market, even if I don't use the product.
I bet a good portion of that 18% is users using a linux distro release that has an aged version of firefox from the package manager.
... but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.
I think not - for several reasons:
1. Some of the best extensions don't work in the newest version. Last time I tried (long ago, admittedly) things like Noscript, AniDisable, FlashBlock and Tab Mix Plus didn't work; I consider them absolutely essential for any sensible use of the net.
2. I'm just plain weird; I hate some of the 'cool' features in the later versions. In fact I hate anything that is only meant to be cool, but turns out to be counterproductive. Eg. the incremental search that is now mandatory (or was when I last looked)
3. I also hate not being able to completely remove what used to be the nullplugin, which tends to keep nagging about installing plugins that don't exist.
Yes, and when you do so upgrade, you'll find that Firefox has joined the evil collective - it phones home and upgrades without asking for permission or even bothering to tell you till the job is done.
Well I'm using Debian stable and thought I should update myself to the latest version. Here's how that went.
My conclusion, I'm comletly up to date. Yes sir, "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050925 Firefox/1.0.4 (Debian package 1.0.4-2sarge5)" is the latest version. I don't know who these people are who need to upgrade Firefox but they really should go and do that now.
0*0
00*
***
The advent of firefox has definitely been a good thing. For me at least, it not only is a good browser, but it has raised awareness, and subsequently usage of other alternatives. I no longer use firefox, as I switched to opera, but without Firefox and all that I loved about it i would have never known about other browsers (or /. for that matter, I was a tech n00b)
I am Spartacus
this is funny stuff: http://www.ie7.com/ :)))))))))))))))
Everyone seems to be hoping that Firefox will replace IE... I just don't see that happening.
I'm a happy user of Firefox. I use Firefox because it does things that IE doesn't, and I really like the ability to customize it to how I like. The thing is, though, that for most casual web users, IE does suit their needs. They want a browser that can browse the web and will keep them safe. IE6 isn't the safest browser in the world, but IE7 will definitely be safe. IE will continue to be the dominating web browser because A.) companies will use it because it's easier to use the built-in browser, and it should be just as safe as Firefox B.) Casual users don't need anything more.
I think the future will have IE and Firefox co-existing (and Opera!) because IE is what the normal people will use and Firefox/Opera will be what the expert web-users use. It's the same reason most people still use Windows Media Player. I use Winamp because of plugins/customization, but most people just want to use what works, and since they don't want any more functionality than that, they have no reason to change.
Make it a games centered (included and prominent on the cover print)linux distro (with surfing and chat tools, etc) instead and it will get used at least once and not thrown out.
Speaking of which, on making CDs/DVDs, anyone get lightscribe to work under linux? I'm looking to get a new drive and was wondering about this, the tech looks interesting.
I am ashamed to see that we in the UK are lagging behind at only 11.65%, behind even France. Could this be due to the very quick uptake of broadband in the UK by novice users? Or just a lack of awareness of the alternatives?
Sean Ellis
Follow OfQuack's antics on Twitter.
NO SHIT!!!
I have a mac with the following browsers installed: Safari, Camino, Firefox, Opera, and OmniWeb (with a paid for license).
I'm currently writing a browser plug-in.
I like Safari the best of these.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
IE7 will never implement or allow a plugin (if they even have plugin's, I haven't bothered to check), that has the functionality of adblock. MSFT gets substantial revenues from online advertising, and enabling users to block their own ads would be counterproductive.
Sort of like when Sony wouldn't allow MP3's to play on any of their electronic devices because they also own Sony Records.
This is why I'll never use IE again (and stopped buying Sony too).
Did that two years ago. Wife hasn't looked back. Not even dual boot
I kinda like the Negative Moderne theme, but the artist/skinner hasn't updated it in years, so I'm kinda stuck on Moz 5. Anybody willing to migrate it to Firefox?
Sensationalism at its best. Now, I find it more significat that 65% of /. users use FF.
That of course means I have a 65% chance of takin' a Karma hit by posting this. I'd rather the 13%, thanks.
Nice how no one threw in the obligatory "you can use stats to prove anything" comment.
"I have an odd craving to whisper about those few frightful hours in that ill-rumored and evilly shadowed seaport of dea
There is a such thing as anti-firefox. My friend work at a place that sells laptops on ebay, and he was installing Firefox on all the laptops becase he had to deal with tech support. People would call saying, "How do I set up my internet connection, Internet Explorer won't open right" amongst other things. Well, when his boss found ot he was sending out Firefox with the laptops, he got pissed and told him not to send it out agains. Direct quote: "No one needs tabs, why use tabs when you can open seperate windows?" Some people will just never learn, I guess.
On a side note, he was also recommending people to get OpenOffice and a lady gave him a negative saying they had "Suggested using their bootleg software they made themselves" He told her he wished he could make software that damn good.
If you're finding GNOME slow, you ought to check out XFCE, or if you're feeling adventurous, Enlightenment or Fluxbox/Blackbox.
I personally use a heavily modified Ubuntu 6.06 with Enlightenment DR17 as my desktop GUI. Extremely quick and much better looking than GNOME or *shudder* KDE.
That's it?
Firefox is doing well because it's a long time since the Windows XP launch in 2001. When Vista is eventually released, you can bet that Microsoft will try to leverage this to get people to return to IE.
Reduce, reuse, cycle
I'll just backup my ~/.firefox-conf file and call it a day, right?
The question, of course, is what's going to break. And what the new rules are. And then searching for replacement extensions to to replace the existing ones, followed by the usual trial and error to see to what extent the replacement is acceptable. And that's after you've spent the time figuring out how it works.
Let's take one example -- configuring keyboard shorcuts. Customising keyboard shortcuts is supposed to be done using something like the keyconfig extension . But that won't always work because the keyconfig extension won't accomodate anything more than the simple changes, so directly editing the prefs.js file is required. So, close Firefox, make the changes, and restart Firefox, right? Well, after writing a few dozen lines that look like
I restart Firefox and see my carefully crafted, thoughtfully commented prefs.js file get rewritten. Lather, rinse, repeat and an afternoon is gone.
Maybe the above is an unfair example, but it seems to me that this kind of nonsense reminds me too much of Windows Update where something will typically break something else with little or no warning, and the lack of documentation leaves the user in a position where guessing is the operative word. Will the new version accept keyconfig? Will my existing prefs.js work? And what about the other dozen extensions I have installed?
Firefox is a great browser, and the large number of extensions can be a blessing, but I'll pass on the updates and start relying more on using lynx, elinks, etc. for the day to day stuff. Maybe when things settle down ...
... for the IE blues. I'm a Navy reservist, which means I frequently have to use NMCI. Not only does NMCI prevent you from INSTALLING anything, it prevents any application not on its approved list from using the network. So even Portable FF on a thumb drive won't work.
If anyone knows a way to (legally) get FF to work on an NMCI machine, I'd sure be happy to know about it.
Sean
the 18% must be using debian stale^Wstable systems ;)
Just do what I did: Tell your firewall to not allow Firefox.
:P
Simple fix.
-
c'mon, it's FUNNY
"If you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to fear." - Every fascist, ever
I've tried to upgrade several times but several of the extensions I need ( Image Zoom, Text Zoom, and AdBlock ) either are'nt available yet or just won't download and install. The developers need to realize that upgrading to a newer version with some neetoh-nifty-cool features is not an option if it means loosing required features.
In Linux, I use the default firfox 1.5 that comes with ubuntu. But in Windows 1.5 is dogg-ass slow loading up. Really gets me how much faster 1.08 is. I'm not being completely fair in that I'm using a Stipe build for firefox in windows, which is quite the speedster.
I haven't regretted dumping IE after it got hijacked one time too many - JackRazz
This is great and my hat off to FireFox. The problem I still see is the website developers need to support standards, not browsers. I use Opera on every site I can then use FireFox if I have to. If neither of the browsers work then I do not use the site. It sucks at times, but unless we put our mouse down and ignore the sites that are not cross platform/browser compatitable not much will change. I am a developer that has actually changed attitudes. My company writes code based on standards and if a browser doesn't work without major tweaks, then we don't support it. With that said we have had a lot of clients switch to FireFox and leave IE behind.
Back in my day, before the widespread adoption of usb. I had opera 2 or 3 installed on a floppy. And It was great, the university was stuck on netscape 2 and wouldn't update to either IE or Netscape 3. It was hundreds of times faster.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.
The latest version of Firefox requires a version of Mac OS X greater than version 10.1.x. For me, this would mean forking over US$129 to the Apple Corporation or pirating the software. I will do neither. I will continue to use this old version of Firefox, slashdot.org be damned.
CTRL+L ?
It's more like carrying a toolbox in the trunk of your car. Many people would have no use for it. They'd just call for help. Others, who have some technical knowledge of the subject, might find it comes in handy.
(Still a bad analogy. Many more people design at least simple websites than even the number of people who can change their oil.)
If we estimate the amount of users on the internet to be about 1 billion, that would make you .0000001% of the users. If everyone in the world was a web user, you'd still be somewhere close to that (like seven zeros instead of just six).
'Yes, firefox is indeed greater than women. Can women block pops up for you? No. Can Firefox show you naked women? Yes.'
it really is Deutschland uber alles.
Go to the Help menu, and select 'Check for updates ...'.
Salut,
Jacques
I too loved Netscape back in the days of the war with M$. But back then, I loved it not because it was better than IE, but because it was the best out of about 10 browsers that were competing fairly in the market.
e tscape.html
Then, Netscape became evil (in the way that Google wants not to). They had earned their lead in the market, but with it they added non-standard features, making simple HTML viewing too hard for any small company. There are many examples of this. Here's the top one I found from Google:
http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/n
They embedded a custom scripting language (Javascript), and added hooks for every darned thing you can imagine. They even tried to get M$ to work with them to drive out all the little guys. In short, they used monopolistic practices to drive out the competition. In doing so, they stupidly handed over the whole market to M$.
With Firefox, the evil motives are gone, so it's no wonder that it's catching on. I love it. Rock on Firefox!
Beer is proof that God loves us, and wants us to be happy.
It would be nice if web developers got off of a few kicks here and there.
- do not "help" me when I'm inputting a form. I've had javascript that took me forever to guess what the hell they wanted for correct stuff _as I typed_ into a form. It was especially difficult for an email address. A UI hint here. If the user has to get into a battle with the application to decide the best way for them to behave in order to get some kind of agreement with the application, then the application is broken. Word, yes, I'm thinking of you. Don't make me go into a ritual to write a simple paragraph like I used to. Don't go back and reformat the shit for me, and make me type a certain way so you will not correct it incorrectly. The email form I wrestled with at one time, was blank or had a red X by it that changed to a green check as I typed. I use disposable email addresses on the web, and I didn't know if it was parsing to see if I was using the website name as part of the email address or what. It ended up that all I had to do was just keep typing and not watch the X change back and forth between the check and it eventually liked my email address. All it had to do was leave me alone and tell me to fix it if there was something wrong after I hit return. Thanks. Data entry 101.
- do not "help" me by opening up new window after window after window after window after window. Sure, my browser tells me when its going to happen, but its a pain in the ass to have to look on each link, and then use a click modifier instead of just clicking on the simple link. I'm a big boy, I know how to open up a new window, I just rarely do it because it does not benefit me (I use tabs).
- do not burry links in onClick javascript stuff and show the link as '#'. do not burry the links in a javascript thingy either. NEVER assume that I have a plugin installed, especially for something simple like a PDF. Believe it or not, but I may want to download such a thing for future reference, and having it buried in a javascript popup to a dynamic database generation of a PDF document is simply not cool. I simply could not download my bank statement last night because of this.
- do not make every single freely available downloadable document with the same name or one that makes no human sense. I've seen places where every PDF document was named something like Document.pdf After having 10 or so of them, it became a little confusing for me. Also the cute, asldyuroioaskjehrikyur.pdf files are not very valuable either.
- do not solely use flash or have those cute flash intros to your site. Its annoying to have to load the plugin, reload the page, just to click to the next page.
- do not embed sounds into your site. I don't care if you're a music site, there is a time and place for everything, and guess what? I may be already listening to your music, and having a second copy playing is not of any value
- if your website does not work at all without javascript or plugins then your website is broken
I could keep going here, but basically 1) do not second guess me. Odds are the user is smarter than any artificial intelligence you hack together 2) do not annoy me with extra fluff that has no value to me in going to your site
Global warming is neither science, nor politics. It is a religion.
as it has lost its reputation and the trust of its users.
That's your opinion. For whatever reasons, non-technology centric users and businesses generally choose MS. It's a brand they know.
Recently I was talking to a team leader for application development for one of the largest state government organisations in my state. They where bragging that they had all of the newest technology, all of it from microsoft. Now, I'm not a MS hater or anything, but I was amazed that they thought it was such an awesome selling point.
People have been brainwashed into thinking anything with a computer is supposed to be difficult. As such, general users assume that if something breaks on their computer it is really only their fault. Because these general users use so many Microsoft products they assume that Microsoft products are good products and as such, they will choose a Microsoft brand over a brand they don't know.
If anything, general users should be complaining that Microsoft's power comes from creating a fear by disempowerment.
Ubuntu + Firefox is good but a bit slow on my box, and it seems to require keys to be pressed twice (eg. F6 to bring focus to and select URL editfield). I just wish there was a Proxomitron for Linux, now that would be marvellous!
True, if you use the distribution from the main website.
I'm not sure how any of these builds perform on the Intel-based Macs, but they have worked wonderfully on my Powerbook:
http://www.furbism.com/firefoxmac/
I'm funny. If you come see me perform, I will make you laugh.
netscape 5 had zero bugs
I'd be curious what the stats are for people using the ie wrapper kind of browsers, Maxthon and all that. About a year ago, I downloaded every single browser I could find (including a mess of IE wrappers--security isn't really too much of a concern for me) and spent some time with them. My biggest considerations were: 1. functionality 2. customizability (yes, it's a word. in my world) 3. resources used Opera won, followed closely by Firefox. It's a shame Opera 9 is such a buggy mess, though--it's making me think about switching to FF.
another reason to use firefox: http://www.chatsum.com/ now you can discuss articles on slashdot live... amazing..
Three words: Tim Berners-Lee. He invented the "web" part of the so-called intarweb, and now he's the director of W3C.
So how do you persuade the administrator to give firefox.exe permission to open a network socket, as well as permission to open a network socket to a machine outside the Secret LAN, as well as permission to open a network socket to a machine outside the Confidential LAN, as well as permission to open a network socket to a machine outside the company's network?
So how do I get an app running off a CD-ROM or a USB disk to connect to the Internet if the IT department controls the firewall software installed on each machine?
what you wrote is completely untrue. I have marked you as a fudder
Nothing great was ever achieved without enthusiasm