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Firefox 2 Downloads Top 2 million in 24 Hours
linuxci writes "Firefox 2.0 has had over two million downloads in 24 hours with a peak rate of over 30 downloads a second. This means Firefox is well on track to beat IE7's three million in four days. Of course stats don't equal users but it's interesting to see that the demand for Firefox is currently outstripping IE."
These stats aren't worth crap, but it's cool Firefox got 2 million downloads. How many Windows installs were installed in 2 days when Win98 was released?
Users most likely to download a browser are probably already using firefox with it's auto-update. IE will see a huge roll out with windows update and Iceweasel will see a limited rollout repackaged for linux distros. Me, I'll wait another 6 months for ff2 to be marked stable in portage. These figures are meaningless.
After all, I never downloaded the final release since I already had RC3 and nothing changed.
For those that didn't know Firefox 2 RC3 was the same release as the final 2.0 so people who had already downloaded the release candidate didn't need to download the final (Help > About shows the build number and they're identical). This is usual with Mozilla releases, the release candidates are actual candidates for release (unlike MS) so the final RC usually becomes the real release.
So people with RC3 don't count in these stats unless they didn't realise and downloaded 2.0 again.
i thinks this must be mainly mac ans windows installs, linux user mostly use a package that is build by their distro and shipped from the distibutions package servers. for instance i just did a "sudo apt-get upgrade" on kubuntu 6.10-rcX.
i don't think the mozilla team can actually measure these amounts.
The link to the Firefox download page could have been included. I had to find it myself.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
IE7 will be installed almoust every windows machine because it will come as security update. Firefox 2.0 will not and is needed to download by user. Like there is many Ubuntu 6.04 users and it seems that firefox 2.0 will not come for those machines as security update. Users would need to update 6.10 version to get it. (or am i very wrong about this? :-D)
2 million downloads is very nice number, if IE7 has got only 3 in 3 days, i think it will be tie, after few days.
Specifically, the fuss about the US Gov demanding IE be removed from Windows? It seems to have disappeared from public memory, just like Bird Flu.
...an integrated spell checker for all HTML text form fields.
Plus, it's a relatively trim download, so cheers to the dev team for that.
As soon as Microsoft Update downloads and installs IE7 on every Windows machine with automatic updates enabled, this race will be over.
The Big News Page
I downloaded IE7 on one of my school's computers. It took a little while to download, took a long time to install, required a reboot of the computer, and I've used it twice so far. To be fair, I wasn't an IE user before IE7 and don't have a lot of interest in using it now. I downloaded it out of curiosity.
I downloaded Firefox 2.0 on two machines at home and eighteen machines at work. It downloaded very quickly, installed even faster, and did not require a reboot. It also installed over my old version, asked if I wanted to check for updates to extensions, and moved all my bookmarks over. (IE7 might have done this too, but I didn't check.)
All in all, Firefox is easier, has a cleaner layout, and just plain works. Way to go Firefox. What a great program.
Yeah, I'm as old as my UID would suggest.
In a fair fight Firefox would come out at least even and probably ahead. But Firefox can't push itself onto people's desktops through Windows Update or come as the default browser in Vista. Unless you pay people to use it, its "game over" before things really get started.
-- Gary Goldberg KA3ZYW 301/249-6501 AIM:OgGreeb Digital Marketing Inc., Bowie, MD
Everyone should know by now that extensions often take a few weeks to get updated. The extension mechanism can be annoying when there's a major update but it's like that so that extension authors are encouraged to test their extensions with new versions.
Most people actually use Firefox without extensions and by default it's a lot more featureful than IE6 and about as featureful as IE7 some people say too much was put in 2.0. You can't please everybody so instead of putting everything under the sun like Seamonkey (the Mozilla suite) or Opera they've decided on the options that are of most use to the most people and allowed others to add the extra features.
Also worth noting is that bugfix support for 1.5 will continue for a while so you can keep using it to wait for all your extensions to be compatible with the new version.
Also, there's choice in the market if Firefox is not for you. I personally prefer Firefox to Opera, but Opera is a good browser and it's worth trying it may suit your needs better.
I installed edgy eft on several machines which includes firefox 2.0 in the distro. they should add the number of edgy eft users/downloads/installs to that number.
i preferred phoenix anyways
Why UNIX?
I installed it and instantly hated the "visual refresh". Install this theme which restores the 1.5 look and feel. Once this was done I found disappointing. For me the annoyances introduced in 2.0 are outweighing the things I like about it.
The GTK matching on Linux is not very good, with glitches surrounding button sizes and positioning of text (the new "add ons" combi-dialog is horrible) and with strange button focusing.
One thing I will say for it is it does seem a bit zippier than 1.5.x, but I suspect I will be messing with userChrome.css in the coming weeks.
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
And that Firefox downloads figure probably doesn't even include all the downloads and CD copies of a file called firefox_2.0+0dfsg-0ubuntu3_i386.deb also going on this week...
I would guess that -- at least initially (before all the corporate Microsoft Update cycles start) -- the ratio of users-to-downloads for Firefox is significantly greater than for IE. Firefox users tend to be more technical (and bandwidth-conscious) on average, and Microsoft tends to make it difficult to download full install packages that can be re-used without requiring further Internet access. I just downloaded Firefox once, and installed it on several machines at home, as well as making it available at the office. I probably have 10 "users" from that one download right now. While I'm sure that's way higher than the average, I'd bet that IE is a lot closer to 1:1 than Firefox is.
Who are the people who are most likely to download a new browser right after its release ? The guys who read IT news everyday with great interest...Call them Geeks, Devellopers, or typical Slashdot's reader it doesn t matter...
The point is : do theses guys use IE as their main browser ? No.
Are they using Firefox as their main browser ? The majority of them does.
Therefore they are more likely to get Firefox 2.0 than IE7 (although many of them will get both in case they stumble upon a IE-only website). So its absolutly normal that the initial rush is in favor of Firefox...In the same way that Firefox's RC were more used than IE7's RC. Actually if Firefox had a lower download rush i would have quite worried for them.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/2.0/releaseno tes/
The yellow and blue are more suited to Microsoft than Mozilla because for some reason, those colors remind me of dealing with indian call centers. There are also zero new features that appeal to me, this is nothing but a glorified point release with some "2.0" branding slapped on top. The artwork, now there's something special; special as-in total catastrophy.
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
**My poor eyes**
oh, bye bye karma.
Sent from my desktop computer
Best part about the spell checker is (at least in my English/United kingdom dictionary) it thinks Firefox is misspelt.
It gives options for firebox and Fire fox.
There are other oddities in this dictionary which will no doubt be ironed out.
liqbase
Anyone who's currently using Firefox will likely download IE7 as well.
Only those people running Windows. I wonder what the proportions of the firefox 2 downloads were for the different operating systems.
You mean only those running XP or later? Mozilla now have an ideal target in Windows 2000 (businesses) and 98 (still in some peoples homes) as well as Linux and Mac.
It would be nice if the spell checker could have a toggle to check the ENTIRE web page. Would be useful when I'm making web pages.
Once Windows automatically downloads IE7 next month, then compare downloads. IE7's stats will skyrocket next month when it's deployed to home users. (Most companies are delaying the roll-out for additional testing. So expect usage rates to slowly increase over the next year.)
Knowing Microsoft they timed this so that they could be the last in and change the default browser back to IE.
Time for me to turn off automatic updates so that my only XP system is (relatively) stable. (others are 2 solaris, 3 Suse, 1 RH).
Thanks for the heads up!
Really? FF2 seems to be the fastest yet (on all of my machines, one of which is uber, and some of which are old as dirt). This may be different on the Linux version, though...
Earn a % of cash back from Newegg, Tiger Direct, Walmart.com, and more: http://www.mrrebates.com?refid=458505
...IE7 is a mandatory update on Windows. Firefox, on the other hand, is a voluntary update (unless you have automatic updates switched on in the programme, but I assume a lot of people don't). That makes the Firefox download statistic all the more impressive.
(Someone correct me if I'm wrong about the Windows update thing. I'm not exactly an expert there - I use Linux.)
Basilisk Digital
It would be smarter if it didn't use a whole new dictionary in addition to the ones users inevitable have for other applications.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
Considering that you currently can't install IE7 on anything but an ENGLISH XPSP2, which excludes the majority of worldwide users.
I wouldn't jump to conclusions right now, you might be embarrassed later.
I did my part and downloaded it 20 times.
I use Opera and complained to a site about their IE only policy/design.
They replied with a Word document.
Unfortunatly I've had some issues with it. Perhaps it's Ubuntus fault, but still. It's issues with FF for me.
https://launchpad.net/distros/ubuntu/+source/fire
That's one. The browser just "closes" on some pages. That's the major one actually.
Also, they've changed so that ctrl-tab no longer switches tab (in kubuntu) but changes virtual desktop.
Come to think of it, none of the issues are probably firefox issues.
Hmm...
Forget I said anything. Firefox2 is a great browser. Keep up the good work.
You are not entitled to your opinion. You are entitled to your informed opinion. -- Harlan Ellison
I like the idea of what you suggest, but there isn't always another dictionary available.
Perhaps in the future it can be consolidated into a single block of code, but I think the context sensitivity required would be quite bad.
I type differently and use words here I would not consider using for a work related document.
The dictionary as it stands now is a VERY good start for windows Firefox users at least, am I right in my belief that a global dictionary is already available for every text field on the mac?
liqbase
I cant use it for 10 min without it crashing. what stinks I cant get ie to run with the address bar and menus showing up either. BUt atleast with ie7 if i click the windows update link i can use it that way. With firefox 2.0 I cant use it at all.
I uninstalled it because it froze about 10 times a day on Windows XP. Sometimes it wouldn't open at all, the process started, but it stalled before opening the window. Other times it would freeze while trying to display a page.
Rolled back to FF 1.5 which works just fine. I tried IE 7 too, but even though it's caught up considerably, I can't live without Ad block!
Firefox 2 is translated to 34 languages. IE 7, on the other hand..."The short version is that we will be releasing IE7 in all languages available for each version of Windows - twenty-four fully localized languages in total. In two to three weeks, we'll ship the Arabic, Finnish, French, German, Japanese, and Spanish language versions. The remaining languages will be released in phases between November and January.
And then the IE7 install checks if your computer is a legal XP copy. But most of desktop users just don't own a legal copy. So, in the long run, even if you can crack the license checking, most of desktop people won't be able to install IE7. But they will want a IE7-like browser. And people will tell them to install firefox 2, which doesn't require a legal XP copy.
For the time being IE7 is only avalaible in english.
Firefox 2.0 was avalaible in many languages on launch day.
I am sure it has helped Firefox numbers.
( As I my work implies testing of some webpages, I have installed FireFox 2.0, but I still use IE7 RC1 since the final release is still not avalaible in French ).
Eric
Why would the average IE user download some other browser when they can get the newest version of "the internet" when they buy a new computer?
Extensions generally aren't maintained by the same people who maintain Firefox. If the individual maintainers chose to update their extensions before the change, then they got updated, otherwise you have to wait for the maintainer decide they want to update. It's quite possible that some extensions will never get updated, simply because their creators no longer care. There were some extensions I used pre 1.5 that never got updated. I was sad to see them go, but unless I wanted to fix them myself, there wasn't much I could do.
In an ideal world then all extension authors would test their extensions with the release candidates and have things good to go by release time, but most of these people who write extensions have jobs so may not have the time to update their extensions.
I would really like to see the Mozilla Foundation employing the authors of the most popular extensions and make them official so that they'd be ready by every release.
For some people extensions are the biggest selling point of Firefox.
Adblock runs PERFECTLY on FF2 :)
Ive had no issues on both windows XP and Ubuntu, I dont know what you are all moaning about, FF2 is back with a vengeance and better than ever
I suspect that most of these people were simply upgrading from older versions of firefox. It would be interesting to see the browser stats for these downloads. That would paint a clearer picture.
There are 3 types of people in this world. The first is those with a clue. Many of these probably downloaded both IE7 and Firefox. After all, there are sites that still require Internet Explorer, so it's best to have it, even though Firefox is better. Then there's the slightly larger number with half a clue, who will probably download IE7 when it hits Windows Update. These people aren't too much of a problem. Then there's the majority of the user population, who are probably running unpatched Windows XP with IE6 and wondering why they are getting popup ads and viruses. I think I had a point somewhere in there...
For me the extensions are the only selling point in Firefox, without extensions it's just too simple, Opera beats every part of it. With extensions there are atleast a few points which are better with FF. @AusIV: I know FF extensions are maintained an created by there creators, not the FF developers, but it's still a shame that a lot of developers haven't updated there extensions.
Here are some of the settings that I've gathered so far to get Firefox 2.0 to my liking:
/* Disable Container box for "List all Tabs" Button */
.tabs-alltabs-stack {
In about:config
* browser.tabs.closeButtons to 3 for one close tab button
* browser.tabs.selectOwnerOnClose to false for successive reading and closing
* browser.tabs.tabminwidth to 20 for displaying tab scrolling in extreme cases only
* browser.urlbar.hideGoButton no use for the Go button
* dom.disable_window to true, fix various window annoyances
* network.prefetch-next to false for not wasting my bandwidth
In userChrome.css for disabling the List all tabs which annoys me when using the close button:
display: none !important;
}
Feel free to add your own to the thread.
Even though I know those sites actually exist, I spend most of my life browsing the web (part of my job, in fact) with Firefox, and I almost never encounter Firefox-specific problems. Any respectable website (except Marlboro maybe) follows basic standards well enough these days. Even horribly random sites such as MySpace or hi5 work on Firefox just fine.
I downloaded IE7, but mostly out of curiosity, and because, again, my job is heavily Internet-related. I only use it when I need to download an XPI from certain websites that don't have a direct download link :).
Favorite quote: "
2.0 was a terrible release of OS X -- check out the mozillazine support forums -- i was running about a 25% chance of getting 2.0 to startup without having to force quit. started with RC 3 (obviously) but up until then it wasn't doing it. oh well, i had always wanted to give camino a fair shot on a consistent basis....and it's been performing beautifully so far.
For your friends that absolutely insist on getting the latest and greatest, only from Microsoft, here is the link.
WARNING: Smartphones have side effects--most of them undocumented.
I installed IE7 and FF2.0. When IE7 was installed, it did not affect my default browser settings at all (it stayed as Firefox), so that's not a reason to turn off Automatic Updates. In addition, on my Server 2003 box (which got the update via Windows Update), the installer that launches gives you a choice of whether to install IE7, though it obviously strongly encourages you to do so.
As for stable, I doubt IE7 will affect the stability of your system. While I'm sure there are numerous bugs to be discovered, the fact remains that IE7 is designed to avoid a lot of the problems in IE6, by removing some of the close ties with the OS, sandboxing webpages more effectively, etc.
Or maybe they just haven't enabled the auto update, and are waiting until the demand goes down a bit.
I had to cut that down to fit it in the title box.
The full quote is "Firefox 2: 2 million (actually slightly more) people using Firefox 2 in the first 24 hours."
This is, unfortunately, an uncited statistic that is much more vague than "X downloads in the first 24 hours." How are the number of users tracked? What constitutes a user? Are people using Alphas, Betas, and RCs counted in this statistic (the vagueness of the wording implies yes to at least RC3).
GLaDOS for President 2016! "Well here we are again. It's always such a pleasure." -- GLaDOS, 2011
A nice firefox 2.0 theme is Pinstripe for Firefox 2.0
It's a pretty nice theme for mac, I think it makes firefox look like one of the nicest browsers on the platform. The new default firefox 2.0 theme looks like ass. Whoever signed off on the changes needs to be shot.
save the GNUs!
None of the plugin's I use are compatible with 2.0...So I wait...for plugin updates... :(
Yep its just like the fancy new Christmas toy that has a few more bells and whistles than last year's toy. Unfortunately it lasted less than a hour before I managed to break it.
r ements.html
I downloaded Firefox 2.0 and installed it under Linux (Gentoo 2.6.17-r7).
Just for the heck of it I tried the same tests I tried in 1.5 and filed bug reports about several months ago. Sure enough Firefox 2.0 does *NOT* handle memory allocation failures. If one limits the amount of virtual memory (e.g. ulimit -Sv 115000) and starts firefox shortly thereafter it will core dump and will open a Talkback Incident window. I managed to file 3 different reports in 30 minutes of using it with memory limits in the range from 100-120MB.
While I anticipate the bookmarks handling may be better (1.5 never should have been released until its bookmarks handling was on par with Netscape 4.72!) I still do not consider this to be production quality software. It will not be until it has decent handling of the various types of resource allocation failures (can't open tab, can't open window, can't allocate memory for image, script, network connection, etc.).
Though I haven't tested it yet I also suspect they haven't handled things like window switching or efficient session restart. The open window (tab) should have top CPU and network priority until it is displayed. Any excess CPU or network resources can be dedicated to non-lead tabs or mininimized windows. They probably also haven't handled the heap fragmentation issue -- so after using Firefox for a week and one has opened 100 windows and 700 tabs (pushing the memory usage up to 1.2GB) it will still take 15 minutes or more to simply close all the windows and exit from Firefox (presumably because it has to merge all of the memory fragments being deallocated). Upon restarting the same session one will find that Firefox only needs 900MB. That is a memory leak and/or heap fragmentation problem.
Please, no comments about how I shouldn't be using my browser this way... You use your browser your way, I'll use it my way. I happen to like to work on multiple things at the same time and when I'm writing research papers it isn't uncommon for me to open hundreds of sources simultaneously. I wouldn't have started limiting the virtual memory and run into Firefox's failings in that area at all if 1.5 hadn't turned out to be such an excessive memory consumer.
The interesting question one might ask is how one releases software and specifies what its minimal memory requirements are if you don't limit its memory to determine that? I can only assume that the Firefox developers picked their numbers out of thin air [1].
As an aside it may be worth noting that Firefox 1.5.0.7 does run under Windows 98 on a 75 MHz Pentium that only has 132MB of memory. It doesn't have the performance that Netscape 4.72 can show on the same machine though. As the 2.0 memory requirements seem to have increased (presumably due to the SQL libraries for bookmarks & history handling) I strongly doubt its performance would be improved over 1.5.0.7.
1. Firefox 2.0 will *NOT* run in the Linux specified Minimum System Requirements of 64MB of RAM [2] unless you also have several hundred MB of swap space. And believe me, having pushed Firefox memory to ~70% of system RAM under Linux -- you would *not* want to try to use it even on a 128MB system due to Firefox's problems with heap memory management and the poor paging performance it generates under Linux.
2. http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/system-requi
installed it onto twenty machines each. ;-)
IE upgrades in the past have caused serious system troubles that required 5-10 hours to fix. I believe MS leaves semi-intentionally bugs that affect out of date OSs (XP fits MS's definition).
IE 6 works fine for sites that have been designed as it is the only browser in existance, which still exists. Hosing IE 6 with IE 7 is the stupidest thing anyone could do, considering that firefox/opera are at least as good.
I may wait for a 2.01 firefox, but there's no question what my main browser will be.
I second that emotion. It's hard to quantify, but Firefox 2 feels faster and lighter than earlier iterations. It's more responsive and the memory footprint seems smaller. This seems counterintuitive, because feature creep is usually the bane of most version 2.x.x software releases. Mozilla got this one right. By the way, this is on a highly riced Gentoo Firefox 2 RC3 ebuild, with the same USE and CFLAGS settings.
This is probably universally known by now (at least on /.), but you can right-click on a word which Firefox thinks is misspelled, but isn't - such as your username or whatever - and select "add to dictionary" to have firefox remember it as a "correct" spelling.
Before enlightenment - Code C, read Usenet, play NetHack. After enlightenment - Code C, read Usenet, play NetHack.
I know that there are probably some individuals who, like me, are using Linux on their machines and have upgraded to Ubuntu Edgy. I am now happily running Firefox 2 and I'm very impressed.
Was I included in the total?
Probably not. I downloaded the iso through Bittorrent as well so I'm at least two steps away from the official Mozilla HTTP mirror network. Still, it shows how hard it is to track a download like this. The actual figure is probably even higher.
Congratulations Firefox team!
I downloaded and installed FireFox 2.0 for my intel mac mini. It's a lot zippier than 1.5.x. I like it.
I installed it and Firefox automaticlly updated my existing extensions. I found it to be quite easy and painless. Firefox gets the kudos, it replaced IE7 on my desktop because some sites just loaded slow under IE7 compared to Firefox 2.0 and I'm running a fully patched and updated XP box.
~~ Behold the flying cow with a rail gun! ~~
There is no automatic update from 1.5 to 2.0 yet. It will be available over the next weeks as it says here
5 not included.
my password really is 'stinkypants'
Ubuntu isn't an OS.
Ubuntu is a distro.
Gnu/Linux is the OS.
Firefox update on 1.5.x says.....
9 75
There are no new updates available. Firefox may check periodically for new updates
See http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=476
(You may have trouble accessing the page. Since 2.0 was released, the forums have been slowwwww.)
I'm the urban spaceman babe, but here comes the twist... I don't exist
I can say the same thing... but not in the "a user may download it 17 times" way... I am the Systems Manager for a company with about 50 seats, and we're deploying it on -one- download to our local samba share... I'm betting there are similar cases so the margin of error on IE7 dls --> users is similar to the FFX 2 dls --> users margin of error.
Jay | http://oldos.org
The menus in 2.0 in linux are now using instead of . This interferes with a couple of plugins, and goes against the conventions I have always used on my system, that every other app adheres to. Playing with ui.key stuff in about:config has not helped.
... except it does not use my os x custom dictionary, so for me it is a lot less useful than safari.
Comment of the year
WARNING: Smoking this sig may cause lowered IQ, insanity or short term memory loss. It is also really bad for your monit
See here.
When every user has to teach the dictionary how to spell the name of its own host environment it shows a level of professionalism which is a bit rough.
Additionally, if the word is added to your custom dictionary I believe it does not come up as a near miss and will not be listed as an alternative to an incorrect word.
I wonder if the dictionary coders have ever thought of allowing the additions be uploaded to the central server and merging the most used examples into the main version? Like picing out the big entries from a tag cloud.
Sort of self fixing, but would require it to know the variations in error which the user types but intended to type something else.
liqbase
2. Find "^F" in Firefox 2.0 does not appear to work, text is entered in the Find area bottom-left but no page motion happens, queries that do not match text on the given page are not marked in red, etc.
3. Only the first tab works. You can open a second and more tab, but you can't load files into it, nor can you close any of the additional tabs. You can close the tab that works, though, leaving you with an entirely useless browser window.
I'm a nature photographer.
On OPENSTEP (and hence OS X and, I believe, recent versions of GNUstep), spell checking is provided by a text service. Any application can access this through the standard text services interface and add spell checking to any text. Anything that uses the standard text views gets spell checking without needing any application-specific code. Since the spell checker is global, words added in one place work anywhere.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
It's funny about who is changing what here. I generally keep IE as the default browser because I get email with links for some admin tasks (approvals) that only work in IE. My main browser is FF, but I want these links to work right so IE stays the "default". However, installing FF 2.0 changed the default to FF without bothering to ask first! That was not appreciated at all. I repeated the install on another machine and it did the same. I did not see anywhere where it asked "would you like to make Firefox your default browser (recommended)". LAME. I like the browser, but that is reprehensible behavior.
Find "^F" in Firefox 2.0 does not appear to work, text is entered in the Find area bottom-left but no page motion happens, queries that do not match text on the given page are not marked in red, etc.
I've noticed this as well.
An uninstall and reinstall corrected all three issues for me.
I'm a nature photographer.
Most people can't pass the WGA check.
It's a good thing we know what's best for them!
(May I suggest to the GP to stay away from financial transactions on the weekends :P)
damaged by dogma
So for me it's a no-brainer, I only downloaded what is best.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Why? My parents are using my old box - an old Celeron with 256 MB of memory and a 20 gig drive. I don't feel like spending money to buy them a new PC. This one is still good enough, and will be good enough for at least the next 4-5 years.
And it's a shame you can't use it. That spellchecker seems like it would really come in handy for you. =/
I will be downloading IE7 eventually, but only for testing pages.
damaged by dogma
I'm too lazy to check, but I think FF is compiled using gcc. Last I checked both the Visual C++ compiler and the Intel compiler produced faster and smaller binaries (generally speaking) for win32 on x86.
Is the current FF compiled with the Intel compiler? If not, are there any projects that compile stuff like FF, Videolan etc on the Intel compiler? I remember a project that was trying to compile the linux kernel using the ICC, but was failing. If Intel releases a gcc-compatible compiler for win32, we should have even faster and smaller binaries.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
Most of the half dozen or so (illegal) ebook sites I download from have stopped working with Firefox 2.0.
When the hell are Web sites going to start following standards? I don't care if they don't obey copyright law - I just want them to work with my preferred browser.
Fortunately I just discovered at least one of them works with Kongueror - so at least I don't have to boot into Windows to use the site. OTOH, if I just click the links, they open in Firefox - so I have to tell Kongueror to "Open in a new tab"...you'd think if Konqueror is being used as a Web browser, it would be smart enough to open links itself...sigh...morons everywhere...
Richard Steven Hack - This sig is TOO GODDAMN SHORT TO DO ANYTHING USEFUL WITH! MORONS!
To sum it up: If you want 100 windows and 700 tabs open on your Win98 75MHz Pentium with 132 MB memory... Firefox isn't for you. It will break. You are much better going with Netscape 4.72 on Win98. Because of this, Firefox is SO not production quality yet. Wait for version 3.
Thanks for the tip, hehe.
I8-D
You need IE View. It's a Firefox extension that adds a new entry to the context menu: "Open link target in IE".
So, your user sends you an approval email, you right click the link and select "Open in IE", and boom. There you go.
It kept failing on me
People who think they know everything really piss off those of us that actually do.
It's crashing every 3 hours . I am using FireFox 2 with two addons (all downloaded from their official collection) , Firebug (for simple web page and xml "debugging" ) and AdSense notifier .
Just FYI , FireFox has a very nice feature for restoring previous session in case it crashes , which is regretfully a rather common sight with my newly installed FireFox 2 . Thing is , it actually crashes because of certain web pages (try the comments on the Israeli www.ynet.co.il site) , which is just sad . A browser should not just crash and burn because of non-standard pages , no matter how weird they are . If you are just a Windows user and not a developer which needs several browsers , just stick to IE7 .
My Starcraft 2 Blog
So he's supposed to click the link in his email to have it open in Firefox, and then use that plugin to open the page again, but in IE this time?
Seems rather inelegant...
Ah, so that's why MS is going to push IE7 via automatic updates; anyone that does care about their browser won't voluntarily install it. Kinda like how Linux downloads outpace retail Microsoft Windows sales; nobody in their right mind voluntarily installs Windows unless they are forced to for one reason or another.
Yes yes, I know... but making the connection here was just too tempting... and too true, if I may say so myself.
I8-D
No, but you'll be able to get 0wn3d during the install...
"It ain't a war against drugs.it's a war against personal freedom" --Bill Hicks
Hmm. I was assuming that he's using a web-based email client - in which case, IE View is exactly what he needs.
You're assuming that he's using a standalone email client. In which case, having IE as the system default is what he needs.
It just didn't occur to me that he might not be using webmail. Probably this is because I myself haven't used a standalone email client for at least eight years, and I've got a bad habit of making hasty generalizations about other people's behavior based on my own behavior.
Now that I read the parent a little more carefully, there's actually no good way to tell whether his email client is web-based or standalone. How annoying.
Pshhhh, it doesn't even come with Clippy!
"Do you want to know more about browsing? [Yes] [No]"
I8-D
I also have installed on many machines, and did not experience this behavior. It didn't change any of my previous settings. On first run, it asked if I wanted to make it my default (which i said no to, for the same reasons you listed), then asked if I wanted to import any IE bookmarks. I am not sure why you are getting this behavior. Did anyone else get what the parent experienced?
today is spelling optional day.
And...what does that have to do with the OP's point? "Already installed and automatically updated" refers to the fact that IE is "already installed" on a whole lot of PCs. Hooray for Ubuntu,= I suppose, but I don't see what your comment has to do with market share.
Everyone in the world agrees that Win95 was awful. What excited the business world is that far sighted managers saw through the initial stability problems, and correctly guessed that MS had mostly nailed the front end.
After several years using early Macs, I received a Win98 P133 machine as a gift (Free as in ?). Two years is not truly a lot of time, so I barely had time to learn the basics of where Microsoft put things, visit Shawn Fanning's creation, and then, per my pattern, hunker down with a bargain Win2000 machine to wait 4 years for Microsoft to sort itself out.
I'll be getting another long haul machine early next year combining new Intel hardware with the last, best copy of XP while I wait for another 4 years for Microsoft to sort itself out again.
Poke 53280,0
Ready.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Will there be system-wide automatic updates or will people still need to update a large part of the system by hand?
If there's one thing that Windows is missing, it's a Linux-style package manager. There's this, but development has apparently stalled, and their database server doesn't work. It seems like a fairly simple to do; I want a program that will take a list of open-source and freeware packages, download and install the latest version, and keep them updated. Why doesn't this exist already? It's crazy that each program has to check for its own updates.
LOAD "SIG",8,1
Now that I read the parent a little more carefully, there's actually no good way to tell whether his email client is web-based or standalone.
If it was web-based, and he uses FF as his main browser, why would clicking a link in an email *ever* open the link in IE? Similarly, if it was web-based and he reads it in IE, why would clicking a link *ever* open it in FF? That's not how system defaults work in Windows (or any system), as it would be utterly counter-intuitive - you open your non-default browser, browse to a website, click a link, and it launches your default browser? No.
He uses a stand-alone client.
As for the main point, imho it is unforgivable for any application to make itself default and/or take over file associations from other applications without asking. Just because I've installed it doesn't mean I want to switch over to it immediately (or indeed at all!).
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Did they count the folks who downloaded it the day before the official release date? I saw it on slashdot when they said they posted it a day early and downloaded it then - I suspect many others did as well. Is this counted in the statistic? I imagine if they had not released it a day early, and the statistic doesnt take that early day into account, these numbers would be even higher. However, if they did take that first day into account and just included those downloads in the official release date, then this statistic is flawed! I can see a number of ways the statistic is wrong, depending on how they counted (or didn't count) the pre-release downloads - however I wont enumerate the rest so as to avoid boring you all.
"i stand on the edge of destruction" -shai hulud
Nono, I was serious about the karma going bye bye :)
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
This is the point where all the Mac users point out that Mac OS X has had system-wide spell-checking for all text input fields for years, and that this is nothing new to them (grammar checking coming in Leopard).
"Sufferin' succotash."
Yes. It works for every application using standard OS X text fields with no effort on the part of the programmer (unless they want to customize it). Unfortunately, Firefox does not use standard OS X text fields, so this leaves you with two dictionaries. Although, it probably wouldn't be too hard for the Firefox developers to sync words added to the two dictionaries, since the ones for the OS X dictionary are stored in a simple ascii list.
Stupidity is like nuclear power, it can be used for good or evil. And you don't want to get any on you.
I installed FF 2.0 on a Windows 2000 machine, and it did not change my default browser from IE to Firefox. On the other hand, this particular computer Firefox had never been installed before, which might explain the difference.
I'm not posting this on IE7 because the IE7 download is more then 14 megs and that would take awhile to complete on 56k. So I downloaded Firefox 2.0. I still plan on getting IE7 down the road though, just to check it out.
Do you realize that you're comparing the number of installs in 4 days of an operating system which needed an install via physical media, and an open source web-browser which can be downloaded and installed in under 3 minutes. Yes they're both software, but the comparison is moot.
I'm waiting for someone to start doing a comparison between how long it took to download firefox vs build their house...
You also need to take our current bandwidth and latencies into account. We can pump a considerable amount of data over a pipe spanning from coast to coast today, even compared to what we had 3 years ago.
I wouldn't consider the mad hatter mad. Just reality impaired. He sure can make a mean cup of tea.
"inelegant"? Hmm..
But not so - first time he tells IEView to alway open URLs for work in IEView (I do this for the work-domain), and now he only has to worry about having 1 browser(-window) open at any time.
Incidently, IEView is also cool to demo Firefox with. Open page in 1 tab, open same page in IEView tab. Now show the difference to people (Bad HTML, adblocked ads etc.) Remember to show that it Works; All proper sites render correctly.
Cheers,
G
FUD or you're mistaken. There's no quicktime bundled with Firefox, in fact no plugins at all are bundled.
And now, a PSA from David Lynch.
I still think it is great to see such demand, but I don't think the statistics mentioned can conclusively show anything at all other than that there is good demand for Firefox. Comparisons to IE cannot be realistic without considering more factors.
Firefox users think faster? find out
or you could just click view->page style->no style
being vague is almost as cool as doing that other thing...
I've been using Firefox since v1.0.4
Prior to that I'd used IE 6.0 and before that I was a Netscape fan. But Firefox rocks, the only complaint I have about all versions is memory usage. When I first installed v2.0 I was hoping for a memory usage reduction. No such luck.
I do love Shift-Ctrl-T though.
Of course not. That would indeed be counter-intuitive, not to mention silly. What I said was that he can INSTALL AN EXTENSION that gives him the ability to DELIBERATELY CHOOSE to have a link open in IE by RIGHT-CLICKING and selecting (ahem) "Open link target in IE."
Here is a screen shot showing the extra entry on the context menu that the "IE View" extension adds:
http://ieview.mozdev.org/screenshots.html
And yes, it was rude of the Firefox developers to take system default status without asking.
Semantics: the universal trump card!
Part of the problem is that GTK, which Firefox relies on on Linux, is designed to abort on memory allocation failure. It's hard to build something more reliable on top of that.
It's unfortunate that you got modded flaimbait, there are really no _new_ features as such.
Btw I was aiming for 'Funny' and I got modded 'Insightful'. :/
But that's the crowd here. :P
Sent from my desktop computer
"In UK English "misspelt" is an acceptable variant." Surely you mean 'proper' English as in the Queen's?
Don't forget, Debian, Ubuntu, and other distros offer Firefox 2.0, and their users don't generally have to go to getfirefox.com to get the browser. So you can add a 1 with a couple of zeroes to the first day users of the new browser...
(of course, magazines provide CDs etc, both with IE7 and FF2.0, so stats are moot anyway)
echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:" net@madduck
> I generally keep IE as the default browser because I get email with links for
> some admin tasks (approvals) that only work in IE.
Hmmm... Can you tell me how I can rune IE7 under Linux? I've heard some rumors that some people can run IE6 under Wine under Linux. I think could pay $$ and install a Parallels emulator (and then pay $$$ for a current copy of XP -- or do I have to install an old vulnerable copy of XP and then go through a lengthy Service Pack upgrade process???). I recently tried upgrading my cousin's original version of XP and it said it wanted to install 67 security upgrades (really!). It was OK because we left the machine running overnight. Then it said it wanted to install Service Pack 2 (but that was from 97 to 250MB of downloads) and over a dial up that would require 1 to 2 more days. Her machine is only 3 years old and I really don't think it can run Vista. In contrast I split the NTFS partition on her hard drive and had Ubuntu up and running in an hour. No more lengthy MacAffee virus update delays for her. Though she likes Firefox (because I've explained how Javascript is a security risk unless only enabled for selected sites) I'm wondering if I should download IE7 and allow her to compare them side by side. But I'd really like her to compare them under Linux since that system seems have many fewer problems with viruses, keystroke loggers, and those other nasties that have generally resulted from Microsoft's attempts to dominate the software market.
As a separate note, I run Firefox with the NoScript Extension to manage which sites can use Javacript extremely selectively -- anyone who enables the running of unknown source and unknown agenda software remotely via their browser is IMO begging for problems. There should be a site -- IamAJavacriptDummy.Org.