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After 100M IE7 Downloads, Firefox Still Gaining
Kelson writes "Internet Explorer 7 hit the 100 million download mark last week. Yet in the three months it's been available, Firefox's market share has continued to grow. InformationWeek reports that nearly all of IE7's growth has been upgrades from IE6. People don't seem to be switching back to IE in significant numbers, prompting analysts to wonder: has Microsoft finally met its match?"
So we can assume out of all the windows users out there only 100 million out of all the people who have Windows PCs are actually upgrading their system. Is it just me or is that kida scary.
So lets assume that 2/3 of the people in the US have windows computers that means half of the people in the US has been updating their windows systems and the the other half and the rest of the world hasn't.
I know most companies are waiting for a SP release of IE 7 before upgrading. Even though a person uses firefox it really shouldnt exclude them from using getting IE 7 because of the integration between windows and IE can still be a security problem. I am not saing IE 7 is more Secure then firefox or even IE 6 but IE 7 will be updated longer into the future then IE 6 and IE 7 Problems will be fixed faster then IE 6's
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
The longer that firefox maintains its current user base, the closer the time comes when a killer extension is released by someone (maybe you!). This killer extension would be something that so dramatically improves the browsing experience that pretty much everyone has to get it to be "really on the internet". By the time Microsoft rips off whatever it is, it will be too late. That is the best reason to support firefox, its extensibility means that at any moment, it could become develop a (albeit temporarily) insurmountable competitive advantage.
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How many of those were imposed by the Automatic Update routine?
I have two WinXP systems (and several non-XP systems). Both of them got IE7 without me deciding to upgrade-- it just happened. (I've GOT to fix that.)
On the other hand, all of my systems, be they Linux, Mac, or Win*, have FireFox. I've even taught my kids to use FF instead of IE.
When politicians are involved, everyone loses.
It's been there in the "Software Update" for weeks. Or better said, I always log in as "Restricted User" (as does my wife) and I then don't get notifications about that particular "Software Update". It's only when I have to login as "Administrator" that I get the notification. Logging in as "Administrator" doesn't happen often, and when I do, it's usually to fix something and I don't have time nor motivation to launch the IE7 update.
So my machines all still have IE6, but nobody uses it... They all use Firefox. The rest of the family all have their machines setup to be used in "Restricted User" configuration and that way IE7 doesn't install. Why, I do not know, because other updates do install. So people doing the "right thing" (running non-admin) don't get it automatically. Funny, isn't it?
It was a high priority update that bollucked more than a handful of my home clients...
I remove it before I do anything else (search for spywares, update AV and so on...)
As far as work is concerned, I work for the Canadian gov, and we're still using WIN2000/IE6 Corp with no near plans to upgrade to either IE7 or Vista. I wouldn't mind XP on the workstations, but Vista/IE7 if definitely not in the cards...I figure sometime soon we'll need it for functionality, but hopefully that will be a long time in coming...There's no way we'll be getting anything to replace IE though, Firefox/Opera would be nice but the red tape would plunge me into a warp breach.
End of Line.
I did - on Linux. It's extraordinarily handy for quickly testing sites I am developing without having to dig out Windows. In fact, I'm running 4 versions of IE (5.0 to 7), Iceweasel, Opera and Konqueror all on one desktop.
Simple instructions for anyone interested are here.
I think the strategic advantages of IE6 over Firefox were lost when switching to IE7 and there is no return.
To me, these advantages where:
1. Program loading time: IE6 used to open quicker than firefox and also some pages. Not anymore
2. IE6 used to show pages differently to what firefox did, I think that was changed. Or people is really interested in writing the code for Firefox (or compatible) and It has been a while since a page was incorrectly displayed or told me so.
I had a similar experience. My Dad started complaining about how he didn't like "the new google." I asked what he meant since google hasn't changed anything other than their logo on holidays. He explained that since you "click the little blue 'e'" and it says google, then that is google. I then explained that he should be clicking the orange firefox. I haven't heard any complaints since.
But that made me start thinking about how many people out there are going around saying "I hate the new msn interface." As a web developer I often forget how many people don't understand the difference between a web browser and a web page.
You have to make sure that your intranet application renders properly (in spite of Microsoft's continued non-compliance with many CSS features) on what has always seemed to me to be a buggy, bloated, easy-to-malware infest piece of junk software application masquerading as a browser.
In fact, one of the studies we are doing internally at my company is looking at the cost of deploying Firefox exclusively inside the firewall. Interestingly enough, the main resistance at this point is that if we don't continue to support IE internally, our web developers won't have the skills to deploy and secure web applications OUTSIDE of the firewall.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
IE 7 on XP really doesn't offer much to Firefox converts. Aside from perhaps the nifty tab screenshot thingy, and a really good RSS reader, Firefox has all of IE 7's features, plus it has the "comfort" factor.
But IE 7 on XP isn't really the big deal here. IE 7 on Vista is what Mozilla should be worried about.
IE 7's protected mode feature trumps the number one reason why people switched to Firefox (in my opinion): security. That's why I switched to Firefox. I was sick and tired of being at risk while I was surfing. Switching to a browser will very small market share gave me security through obscurity.
But IE 7 in protected mode is mostly likely the safest, full featured browser one can use. While people upgrading to Vista might stick with Firefox, I have a feeling that most people getting a new machine with Vista pre-installed will have little reason to switch to Firefox.
Furthermore, as the market share for IE 7 on Vista increases, I suspect malware writers will start to target Firefox more and more. It would certainly be a strange turn of events if Vista and IE 7 actually made Firefox less safe to use.
Those stats look about like what my sites see,
The only thing that was of interest is that on a few of the smaller sites ie7 has passed firefox. Those sites also have unusually low ie6 numbers, relatively high firefox on windows numbers, and are the only sites that linux shows up above 3%.
It might be a glimpse at the direction things are going, or maybe just statistical noise. Time will tell, I guess.
Work bio at MMWD
I've been using Firefox 2.0 since beta and before IE7 came out. Like a diligent /. reader I've been keeping up on the arguments from both sides. The one that stuck out in my mind was that Firefox has a pretty bad memory leak. At the time I read it, I didn't pay much attention to it because I never noticed any slowdown or stability problems when using Firefox. That was until a few weeks ago.
I started playing WoW a while ago and have recently been using Thotbott. I will have WoW open in one window (Full screen) and Thotbott running in Firefox in the background. After a while, WoW started chunking big time. I eventually figured out that if I closed Firefox, the chunk went away. On my system (P4 3.0ghz, 1GB RAM, XP SP2), IE7 doesn't cause WoW to chunk. I can leave Thotbott open in the background all day long.
Although I do use Firefox for most my browsing, it isn't the IE killer that it often gets made out to be.