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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
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.
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.
I do use 1.5 on my home machine, and one thing I've noticed is that managing bookmarks in 1.0.7 is easier - I can drag and drop items as necessary, whereas 1.5 makes me use a "move up" button.
Sorry, /. editors, I will NOT be upgrading any time soon.
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.
...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.
As for the web statistics, these were only posted because they're relevant to the story about increased Firefox usage. I want to try the 2.0 Beta, but last time I tried a Firefox beta I couldn't use any of my extensions and I therefore wasn't able to use Firefox in the way I like using Firefox (since without the extensions its only an okay browser). I don't know if I'll switch to Firefox 2.0 when it comes out though, as currently I'm really fond of Opera 9.
Read my blog posts on usability.
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
Full browser stats
Full OS stats
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
I think they're referring to people like me who still run 1.0.7 and need to upgrade to 1.5.0.4.
The results are probably skewed by people like me who use the version of Firefox that came with their distro. I'm using Debian Stable with Firefox 1.0.4
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.
No, the hard part is that people don't care. Valid technical reasons for doing something don't encumber the mind of most people. They just look for their bottom line, and in the realm of browsing the internet, that bottom line is getting to a web page with the least effort.
If you got Firefox installed on hard drives as they shipped from manufacturers, usage would increase dramatically. Hand out free install CD's? Not so much.
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.
Yes we will, and I hope that it does. The more people finding holes the more the devs can fix. I'm thinking though, that the sheer volume of problems won't be as bad as IE as it's not stupidly tied into the OS.
:)
I could be wrong mind you
Silly rabbit
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
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...
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.
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.
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 ???
No, the hard part is that people don't care.
It's all a matter of timing. I've made a nice bit of pocket change cleaning spyware and viruses for my non-technical friends. A friend whose computer has just been saved from uselessness can be very open to the idea of trying Firefox...
Good judgment comes from experience.
Experience comes from bad judgment.
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!!
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.
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
"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.
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.
1. NoScript works with all versions of Firefox now and is available from the Mozilla Add-ons site.
AniDisable is available from the author's website, and is apparently compatible with versions 0.9 - 1.5, although I've not personally confirmed this.
FlashBlock is also available on the Mozilla Add-ons site, and is apparently compatible with versions 1.41 - 1.6. Again, I haven't personally tried this extension, but I've seen no comments that lead me to believe that it isn't compatible with the latest final version of Firefox.
Tab Mix Plus is also available on the Mozilla Add-ons site, and is apparently compatible with versions 1.0 - 1.6. Once again, I haven't personally tried this extension.
2. Incremental search? Do you mean "Find As You Type?" If so, this isn't exactly a new feature, and it can easily be disabled in the Options menu (Advanced tab).
3. As for this so-called "Nullplugin" thing — I have no idea what you're on about. It's not a problem I've come accross. Tried uninstalling Firefox, removing your userdata (remember to back up your bookmarks!) and then installing the latest version?
Users should *not* upgrade, or for that matter, probably even *use* Firefox 1.5.0.x unless they plan to routinely stop it and restart it. Firefox 1.5.0.4 does have memory heap, aka memory cache, fragmentation and usage problems! I am runing Linux 2.6.16.1 on a 512MB Pentium 4 and I routinely have to restart Firefox every 1-2 days because its memory usage grows endlessly. Once Firefox is consuming 60-70% of the RAM on the machine (in the resident memory set) the machine performance as well as Firefox will slow to a crawl. The only way out of this is to restart Firefox (which can take 15-30 minutes due to the long shutdown and session restore times). The long shutdown times are due to heap fragmentation and poor Linux paging strategies. The long restart times are due to network access constraints and CPU usage when opening many windows and tabs.
I would only recommend that people switch to Firefox when the memory (heap) management issues are addressed. Netscape 4.72 was a *much* better browser from this perspective. It worked fine on a Pentium Pro with much less memory under Windows 2000 before I made the mistake of deciding to try Firefox under Linux.
I would also suggest that the Linux paging system needs work. If one has what should be a "memory thrashing" situation (95+% of RAM used, mostly by Firefox) one should not see minimal CPU (20%) and minimal disk (20%) activity.
Just because its "open source" (and I am a strong proponent of open source) doesn't mean its *better*!
Here you go:r table_firefox
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/po
BTW, when I need Linux, I run Puppy Linux from a CDROM at work - friggen clueless IT folks in some places...
Oh well, what the hell...
Go to the Help menu, and select 'Check for updates ...'.
Salut,
Jacques
The outlined scenario by the grandparent clearly indicates his system has gone deeply into swap. Apparently your system has not.
The end.
-josh