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Only 25% of Firefox Downloaders Are 'Active Users'
bheer writes "The Guardian points out a page on the Mozilla wiki noting that 'only 50% of the people downloading Firefox actually try it out, and only a further half of those continue to use it actively.' ZDNet has some commentary on the browser's retention rate. While a 25% retention rate isn't necessarily bad, Mozilla is trying to improve these figures with a 12 point plan that includes more TV and media advertising, a better start page and several installation tweaks."
This is much better than I expected.
There is a spark in every single flame bait point.
Maybe if they didn't hide options to disable stuff like image resizing people wouldn't be annoyed by stuff like that?
I like muppets.
Why bother downloading it if you aren't going to try it? Is this a common thing? I can only recall maybe a couple of things in my entire life I've downloaded and not checked out.
I introduced three people to firefox myself.
Only one went back to IE.
The rest love this foxy little browser. (horrible pun intended by a cruel AC)
I see about 80% retention in the past. Granted I'm in tech, so you might think that geeks usually go for the most reliable technology that offers the best tools and such, but I dont introduce FF to techs...they are already using it. I see about 80% retention from non-techs that I introduced it to. Now that tabbing is a feature of both browsers, 25% still seems very low.
Often wrong but never in doubt.
I am Jack9.
Everyone knows me.
I use Firefox as my main browser, but I've downloaded it many times to different PC's (which I may use only occasionally). I wonder how this affects their numbers.
What about the times that people download it once (IT shops) and install it on hundreds of computers(ok not always that many, but enough to mess up these stats)
Sometimes it's easy to forget that us 'geeks' are a small community. I can't imagine downloading software and then never even installing it or trying it. Whenever I do install a browser the very first thing I do is go to where I want my homepage to be and set it. I get annoyed when software defaults to 'intrusive' behavior.
But apparently if they want wide spread usage - they need to look at people who are not like me.
It's hard to believe that's how Micronians are made. Why don't we see it right now by having you both kiss one another?
Person A computer really messes up.
Geek B fixes it and puts firefox to help them out.
Geek B tells them to use Firefox so their computer doesn't mess up.
Person A Ignores Geek B advice because what does he know he only fixes computers.
Person A Computer gets really messed up.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Really with all the possible add-ons Firefox is the choice for savy users. That being said it's also the plug-ins that present the big challange to most users. IE is a 'just works' browser for most needs. Little tweaking needed.
Designed for maximum retention rate ;)
1. We admitted we were powerless over IE--that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a browser greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of Firefox as we understood Him.
4. Made a google search and fearless moral inventory of bloat.
5. Admitted to Firefox, to ourselves and to another human being the exact nature of our standards breaking.
6. Were entirely ready to have Firefox remove all these defects of browser.
7. Humbly asked Firefox to remove our security vulnerabilities.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly installed a patch for it.
11. Sought through addons and extensions to improve our conscious contact with Firefox, as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the plugins to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to IE-aholics, and to practice these principles in all our browsing.
I do believe this might be close %. I've often observed even hardcore FireFox advocate using IE. Usually they seem embarrassed and have some excuse:
"I reloaded my system and havent had time to put FF back on"
"This is my work machine and I'm not allowed"
"I have some stupid site that only works with IE, so it's easier this way"
"I keep firefox on my USB drive and I left it home today"
Now, being a good F/OSS geek, I went up online to find out WTF the problem was. Well, there was this series of directions to follow. I followed them to the tee. Still nothing. Then I saw a post about my "Firewall" being the problem. Well, I turned it off - no change. BUT, when I was logged in as an Admin, no problem. Interesting. The Firefox folks were insistent that it's my firewall.
So, I went in and gave the Mozilla directory full access rights (this is in Windows XP) and everything is working now.
So, is Firefox on my machine secure?
Would the typical user have to deal with this security problem with IE - (NO)?
How many of you are going to call me or imply that I'm an idiot for not being able to use Firefox correctly?
Users want to know.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
they say
Note that Active Daily Users is an estimate of the number of users who are using Firefox on a daily basis.
And well, i couldn't find much else on their statistics. What does 'try it out' even mean? They have solid numbers on how many are downloaded, but I'm interested in how exactly they're coming up with these statistics. Does firefox report to them when it's being used? I don't think so... number of people downloading the upgrades? Maybe...
I know I've downloaded it several times for various computers, some I use daily, some maybe once a week, how many users do I show up as? Are they able to measure if people are using another browser? If I take a weekend off from the internet does my blip dissapear?
It's just silly to think every other person that goes through the trouble of downloading it, and doesn't even load the application. Something must be skewing the data, cause this makes no common sense. Unless someone can find out where this stuff comes from I say BS.
"I only speak the truth"
Karma: null(Mostly affected by an unassigned variable)
Only 5% of Internet Explorer users intentionally use Internet Explorer over alternatives.
If you mod this up, your slashdot background will turn into a beautiful sunset!
I work for a company that offers a downloadable product with a monthly subscription. We find that people actually login, enter their credit card number, download the software, and never run it. There's another group who never click the download button. It's really quite amazing. We've worked hard to make it as easy as possible - make sure the download link is visible on all screen resolutions, browsers, not require scripting or the latest softare, etc.
How many people have firefox as a default package on linux? I think the only times I've downloaded firefox for linux were the alpha/beta releases or even the nightly builds (which probably don't count here) Now if I could only remember how many 100's of times I've installed linux (work in a linux lab and use it on most of the machines).
I think they should totally make a better start page. Just remember how well that worked for Mozilla back when it was Netscape. Leave image resizing up to MS Paint and the professionals who use it.
Cretin - a powerful and flexible CD reencoder
Kiss my fucking finnish ass! Check Finland's Firefox usage stats! In Finland 90% of people use Firefox.
... not a whole lot. Its not a browser for people who like something else. I really hope firefox does not continue to play some sort of one-upmanship with other browsers- Generally when a family member or friend starts complaining to me about their browsing experience not only do I install FF for them but I go through & remove any ability to easily switch back to ie (how did you know they were all ie users?!?! lol...) Of course I tell them beforehand this is what I'm going to do & I set FF up exactly the way they want it, with all their favorites, all their prefs, etc... and guess what, they all stick with FF.
The average user of a competitor to FF DOESN'T CARE what browser they're using so long as it works as expected and performance doesn't degrade over time.
The article (or the wiki for that matter) doesn't state just who is downloading all these dead copies so why should we care? It's certainly not anyone using ie...
I downloaded firefox 2.0.0.6 once and deployed it to 1500 machines... does that count?
Not convinced the 25% is a true figure -- although admittedly download stats are not a true measure of anything other than downloads. Some people download several times if they have some problem, just as one example of skewness.
It would be interesting to see what the figures are for site visit stats and how that's grown, say for Google or similar. I imagine the Guardian's stats are now skewed by lots of Firefox users navigating to the article.
I have some concerns about the 12 point plan. As a non-profit organization I see no reason why Mozilla needs to follow the marketing-droid business model. More is not equal to better. New features are not equal to more.
I switched to Firefox in its 0.8x days because it was a great product that worked well. Most of the "improvements" since then have not been necessary.
Stay true to the original design, people will come. If they keep adding features they'll be losing as many loyal users as they gain in n00bs.
I was encouraged that I wasn't the only one whom sees "plugins" as a drawback. As a developer and Help Desk contact, the things I disliked about both IE and Firefox were the 3rd party add-ons, because depending on what they do, or were designed to do, can interfere with the proper operation of the page.
This is bad because I have to support the usage of a page that should "just work" on a standard browser configuration. The eternal conflict comes from "My 1337 friend told me I should be using Firefox because IE is 'dangerous' and now when I check my college webmail, when I click the compose link, nothing comes up. I don't know how many NoScripts i've removed because users had no idea what was going on.
There is also very little to let end users know what plugins have a community of developers, or are tested to work properly, and which ones are hacked together by first year university and do stuff like "FOX FACEBOOK PIMPAH 1.9".
I guess the plus with Firefox is, is that most people that end up with plugins on their computer intended on them being there.
Forgive my spelling from time to time. I'm often posting during short breaks.
I have to say I have installed FF on more than a few computers for friends. They almost always try it out of curiosity, but I often find them back using explorer again. Mostly, because they are familiar with MS layouts and they aren't into diddling with software as a hobby. Especially true with people my parents age. They don't like different.
I try to use FF, but if I have a complaint, it is not the memory thing (got lots of that), but it is that often FF just seems to stops loading pages and I have to restart it. I think it is more of an adblock thing, but that is speculation on my part. It could also be the plethora of badly coded sites out there.
The numbers are probably accurate. Not even Mozilla is disputing them.
It helps me segregate my p0rn browsing from my other browsing.
My work flow is
1. Open FF from a link buried in my system
2. Open a hotmail account with emails from p0rn websites with links back to the sites (ensuring that save email account/password is checked OFF)
3. Browse p0rn all day
4. Close p0rn websites
5. Log out of hotmail
6. Clean out FF cache etc
7. Close FF
But if someone wants to use my computer, they will pull up the link the prominant browser and I won't have to woryy about explaing why the cache is empty after I spent all day on the internet.
Its all about plausible deniabilty.
No TV , no advertisement....just features and high usability.
We have a winner.....
The use of the word 'intentionally' makes your statistics plausible, the unintentional people that just use what they got is probably still the majority, though. News of the day: amount of downloads and usage are not the same measurement methods. However, server logs catch the http headers sent by the browsers, still one of the more usable methods of measurement (except for browsers that stealth themselves as other browsers).
molmod.com - computing tips from a molecular modeling
I made my first comment without reading the full article. Now that I read it, I'm thoroughly amused!!!
It seems that Mozilla is "finally get it", and in the process, going against some of the things that the OSS community generally detests. I'll comment on their 12-step program (just the ones i find interesting):
1. Change Firefox icon label to closer resemble action of getting to web
Wow! They finally realized that the name "Firefox" doesn't make ANY connection to the internet for standard users.
2. Force the Firefox icon to easier to find location
ha! They're going to load down systems with icons to Firefox EVERYWHERE on a person's machine. I guess they figured they'd follow the lead of Real Player.....everyone loves how the real player icons show up everywhere.
7. Make common plug-ins work out of the box
In other words...they're going to consider Firefox to be "Firefox plus the top few plug-ins as a package", at least for comparison purposes and feature lists. Wasn't Firefox supposed to be the Non-bloated sister of Mozilla? Someone's lost their way.
9. Make the web feel more human
Let's add a bunch of eye-candy to use up CPU cycles of all these Dual-Core processors! Why not, people like Vista!
11. Stickier start page
We're going to make it hard to change your start page, you know...like MSN
I experience troubles switching between tabs...the application simply does react to my mouse-click for seconds at a time. The thing also pegs one of my processors nearly all the time.
FireFox is going to lose people if they don't focus on bug fixes and avoid the temptation of feature creep.
Blar.
And how many IE users have consciously chosen to be IE users? I wouldn't brag about a market share which is based on people's ignorance, laziness and waning market monopolies. Firefox has a superior product and every one of those 25% are users for life. IE on the other hand can only wish to slow down the eventual avalanche of switchers.
www.tribalnetworks.org - helping tribal people around the world to own their own means of high-tech communications
Web browsers have largely become a commodity. There is nothing preventing people from easily switching between IE, Opera and Firefox as their tastes shift. A user may hate IE 6's lack of tabs, do Mozilla for a while then stick with IE again when they use IE 7. Who knows why they leave, what do know is that shifting back and forth is very easy. That's one thing that Firefox has helped foster, and having that be the case could do a lot to weaken the importance of IE having a large marketshare since IE would not have compelling reasons to stay beyond aesthetics or familiarity.
I put Firefox on my dad's computer. I later went back to it to find he went back to IE. I asked him why and he said it didn't have yahoo.
If these are the kind of people they're losing, I'm not all that upset about it. Too many people assume that their homepage is part of their browser. I tried to explain to him that yahoo only opened up as default on IE because it was set to be his homepage and that I could do the same thing with Firefox. He then made up some excuse that he's fine with IE and doesn't need to change.
So, the two problems Firefox is facing are:
1) Stupid people
2) People feeling they don't *need* to change and therefore use that to say they shouldn't.
I converted my parents and in-laws, put a link on the desktop that says "browser," and haven't heard word one since. I doubt they know they're using Firefox, and I KNOW they don't care.
And I concur: The "leak" needs fixing.
ceci n'est pas un sig.
After watching my grandparents navigate their computer, I am wondering if 50% of the people that download it can't find where it saved the file and give up in frustration cause they just don't 'get' computers :)
Yes, they use AOL as well.
I wish I were kidding too, but I'm not. My family (in the past) has used me for tech support, and I was always getting the 'I saved this file but I cannot find it anywhere' and when I showed them, 'hey look, it's on your desktop' they were dumbfounded (as was I in how they lost it).
How I solved the problem? I bought macs and told them I didn't know how to use windows anymore :) Of course 'know how' and 'want' are fully interchangeable.
Pfft. That 12-Step Retention Plan sucks. Here's a better one:
/> Problem solved.
1. Change Firefox icon label to closer resemble action of getting to web. No longer shall the icon on the desktop be called "Mozilla Firefox", but instead, "U CAN HAZ INTRN3T".
2. Force the Firefox icon to easier to find location. <img src="firefox.png" alt="U CAN HAZ INTRN3T" height="768" width="1024"
3. Alter the default browser settings path for better user choice. Embed an audio file of Arnold Schwarzenegger saying, "Use Firefox! Use it now!" into the IE startup path.
4. Major outbound brand marketing program driving brand recognition and differentiation. A full page NY Times ad with the "Walkthrough Cat", its text changed to "GIT UR INTERN3T ON".
5. Improve download page and first run pages. Download page must be similar to NY Times ad, so the imbeciles we're trying to reach can actually remember wtf they're downloading. The first run page must have "HAI! U GOT INTRN3T!!" in large letters, preferably with blink tags and links to pron.
6. Launch support.mozilla.com SUMO If Firefox sees another bloated browser installed on the computer, it will challenge it to a wrestling match, the winner becoming the new default browser. A small side-effect may be a userbase increase in the Asian market.
7. Make common plug-ins work out of the box. The MegaRotic Toolbar will now be part of the initial install, as will an RSS feed of Digg.com.
8. Make add-ons and personas more accessible. The Mozilla Store will now ship free wizard hats and robes with every Firefox download.
9. Make the web feel more human. Male users will find their browser displaying all text in capital letters approximately once every twenty-eight days. Female users will find their browser doesn't remember their user preferences or date of birth form fields.
10. Improve messaging through communication channels. We will also improve messaging through non-communication channels. Yes, our code monkeys are that good. 11. Stickier start page. If you left-click anywhere on the new start page, it will take three right-clicks to get your cursor to move again.
12. Change Firefox icon image to closer resemble action of getting to web. In keeping with steps 1 and 7, the new icon will show Ceiling Cat, as we all know what most of our users will be doing on the internet.
I've installed Firefox for various family members and made it their default browser. I go back later and see that they've reverted to using IE and I've never really gotten an explanation as to why. Usually they're not sure how it happened.
I know there are a lot of viruses/trojans that install as browser helper objects and thus only affect IE users. I suspect some of these probably revert the default browser back to IE.
Personally, I can't stand IE. But then, I never bothered to upgrade to 7.0. I find the ability to add keywords to bookmarks and pass parameters one of the best features in Mozart, though this is probably a feature that most novices wouldn't be able to figure out how to setup for themselves. I frequently use IMDB, for example and I can type: "imdb [movie name or star name]" and it pops right up. 'g [whatever]" does a google search. "weather [zip code/city name/whatever]" gives me weather for a place. I probably have a half dozen of these that I use regularly. That and the tabbed windows had me hooked.
I can't imagine IE has anything that outdoes that at this point and I'm so happy with Firefox that I just don't bother checking IE out anymore.
I can't help but wonder if this comes from the proverbial, "Jimmy" downloading it on his Mom and Dad's computer because they keep complaining about "The Blue E" getting hijacked. Jimmy tells them to, "Click on the Fox", but they keep clicking on "The Blue E" because to them it is, "Getting on the internet." Similar events happen with Jimmy's girlfriend and Boss.
The only other scenario I can think of is that there are a lot of web developers out there who are still trying to get it to work in IE.
In Korea, only old people use IE!
If I purchased your software, I would be in those groups.
I frequently have tabs open on download pages, forgotten...or installed applications yet to be run. It tends to be forgotten about or when distracted to do something else. Sometimes I find myself installing software I already have, accidentally.
Slashdot needs Geekcode | Can anyone recommend any good SCIFI? My tastes: Foundation, Startide Rising, CITY, Ringworld,
I don't know about you, but I use a variety of browsers, depending on which sites I am visiting. I find myself primarily using The Off By One Browser since it is very light on resources and caches everything into RAM. No annoying Java / Javascript / Shockwave flash / etc. gets in my way, and I do not contribute to hard drive fragmentation this way. I use Lynx for message boards since I have no desire to load annoying avatars and other junk. Finally, when I actually visit a site that "needs" the extras, then and only then do I fire up something more sophisticated, like Opera or Firefox.
Am I an "active" user of Firefox if I use it, say, no more than 5 to 10% of the time?
yea i've had the same thing with setting people up with firefox and then like a month later going back and see them using IE... I never could understand it
;-)
For my little sisters I got rid of every trace of IE icons on their whole computer... that made it stick
Anyways... a solution
They should have a check box default to checked in the install that says Make Firefox my default browser...
and.. maybe another that says remove all IE icons from my computer (people don't read they just click "Next")
OR
The community needs to start making bigger, meaner, scarier, security flaw utilizing virus' to attack IE
kidding.. sorta
----------
Trying to fix or change something only guarantees and perpetuates it's existence
It's worth noting the FF+Google Toolbar pays webmasters who supply links for the download and install. How much of the discrepancy is because of webmasters scamming the pay-for-install system?
These snide comments towards MS don't help. IF you're a member of the F/OSS community, please stop it. You're only hurting the "cause". The users out there just want something that'll keep their computers secure and working. By all means, if you folks in the F/OSS community want to charge for your services - go ahead! But don't bash MS. Take the high ground! Show us why you're better - don't insult us - don't be the "Comic Book Guy" on the "Simpsons".
Some of us know you're better but it's hard when we're, along with the others and MS, are insulted. Insulting your competitor is sooo common that folks consider THAT to be FUD.
In other words, insulting Microsoft is considered FUD by most people and it only makes YOU look like an idiot.
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
I'll try it. Thanks!
I prefer Flambe as apposed flamebait.
Users are inherently lazy. If you ask them to download a software product and learn to use it, you have already lost a bulk of the potential market share.
The key is to bundle it together. Have Firefox pre-installed on computers. Make is hassle-free for the user. Make it a no-brainer. Dell installing GooglePack (which includes Firefox) on every PC they ship - that's a start. Yahoo messenger downloads should bundle Firefox (side note - this can be installed as an opt-in or opt-out component. While opt-in i.e. checkbox unchecked by default is a more "considerate" option, opt-out is better if you want to increase downloads) In any case, hyperlinks from Yahoo messenger chat windows should open in Firefox windows if FF is installed. Ditto with Trillian.
Yes, this is a sort of militant technique (the same technique that MS used to make IE a monopoly). But let's face it - it's not the geeks but the users who don't know about FF that need FF most because they are most vulnerable to the security cracks in IE.
Some other things they can do: bundle the most useful extensions with the product (Map This, AdBlock, Fetch text URL, DictionarySearch, BugMeNot, SearchPluginHacks), reduce the memory it hogs, interactive tutorial. They need to get out of the "of the geeks, by the geeks, for the geeks" mentality.
2+2=5 for very large values of 2.
Hehe, you do have a point there :)
True, Finland is a modern society with world's leading educational and healthcare systems while corruption is the lowest if you compare Finland to any other country in the world. Did you know that Finland tops USA in most competitive country in the world list? What does this say to you? Firefox usage is high in countries that have high-educated people and IE is popular in countries that have low IQ people.
If its free, how does firefox make its profit?
What you are seeing could be criminals testing the stolen credit card numbers (to see which ones are still valid before making a large purchase). This happens to be a huge problem for sites such as redcross.org requiring designated abuse teams.
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
AFAIK, Firefox got 25% of the browser market (from web statistics) also. Does this mean that 100% of users download, since only 25% are "active users"? This seems flawed.
Well, maybe if they allowed one to install FF without having being an admin and without having to download some 20 plugins each time to just get the basic functionality of a default Opera install...
Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
My company will be rolling out Firefox within the next month, and we will not support anyone using IE (yay). I cannot tell you how happy that made me, when I heard the news.
Our IT manager is a real big Firefox fan, and requires Firefox to be on all of our images. But almost no one in the company uses it.
The developers all have 2GB machines, but Firefox has such bad memory leaks that it ALWAYS end up causing our systems to thrash madly. We only launch firefox to debug webpages now (Firebug is second to none in page debugging), and leave it closed otherwise.
The non development machines only have 1GB of RAM, and it's simply impossible to use Firefox on them without closing it every 6 hours, because it causes the system to thrash so badly since it typically consumes over 50% of the memory.
Please don't blame it on the plugins. I did a scientific test at home, and used Firefox 2.0 for 4 months without installing a single plugin. I would have to close it every single night due to its horrible memory leaks. One time it even got up to 1.4 GIGABYTES of memory usage. Yes, you read that right. 1.4 GIGABYTES. I had 6 tabs open, and when I closed them all and went to www.google.com, the memory didn't go down. In fact the memory usage went UP by 2-3 megs each time I closed a tab. How does that make any sense.
Anyway, I waited overnight, with one tab open to google... memory usage did not decrease at all. That, my friends, is called a memory leak.
I hear all this stuff about how Firefox is working on new cutting-edge features for 3.0... but whenever I bring up the memory leak problem, I'm always told one of a few things.
1) It's the plugins, stupid!! (proven wrong with a plugin-free test.)
2) Buy more RAM, it's cheap (that's a stupid solution.)
3) There's no memory leak (The wikipedians insist this is true. Every time I add anything about the horrible memory leak to wikipedia, they say it's FUD and that I must work for Microsoft since I'm insulting their precious browser)
4) Internet Explorer hides its memory usage in the kernel, it uses 10x as much memory as Firefox! (Prove it.)
So, anyway:
Firefox, if you don't fix your damned memory leak problem, I'm going to keep using IE7.
I have been using Mozilla and subsequently Firefox since their inception. I continue to use Internet Explorer, though, for web sites that put up so much cookie and adware activity that Firefox blocks access.
Currently I use Firefox 2.0.0.6 and IE 7. Any issues I have with either product is the result of my firewall activity.
I have to add that Firefox has cooler add-ons!
Goddamned kids! Get off my lawn!
I'm an active FF user and have been so for many years. I like the extensions, mainly Adblock. Of course I would like FF to grab a larger market share. But it's so frustrating that there are large-audience websites that are not FF-compatible. Banks, universities, government, customer support. And that won't change. It's no use pointing out that FF is more standards-compliant than IE. That doesn't help. Therefore I cannot do without the "Open this page in IE" (IE Lite) extension. My suggestion: make FF more "IE-compliant", install it by default on most PCs, and then people will see the advantages of browsing in FF and you'll see a surge in its usage. Otherwise, it's only either idiosyncrasy or evengelism that could bring more users to FF. Another thing: the Mozilla Foundation is a company. Non-profit, granted. But I don't know how much their programmers get paid. Last time I checked, that "foundation" had made USD 60 million a year. So, if I were a web site admin, how could they convince me to redesign my website to make it FF-compatible when I gain next to nothing in the process and they make so much money out of this compatibility, in "non-profit" mode? Maybe I'm not the only one who sees things this way.
...you can install Firefox on a Windows user's system, but until you remove that IE icon from wherever they're used to clicking on it (desktop, quick launch, program files, etc.), they're not going to use Firefox.
I spent a long night cleaning thousands of pieces of spyware off this user's workstation. Installed Firefox. The next day I showed him how to use FF. Explained that his spyware problem would be greatly minimized by using FF instead of IE. User agreed to stay the hell away from IE. One week later I'm in his office helping him with something completely different. User wanted to show me a web site about some new car that came out, and what does he do? He clicks on IE, then starts browsing around. I point out what he just did. He quickly closes IE and, with some fumbling, launches Firefox and continues.
A month later? He's back in spyware hell again.
Until you break the user's habit, it doesn't matter what software you install, they're going to keep doing the same thing they've always done. They don't care about how many hours you spend, they don't care about how many hours they waste because their system turns to molasses. All they care about is that they can keep doing things the same "comfortable" way they've always been doing them. Until you force them to change their habits use won't rise.
Frankly, I'd be happy if there was a checkbox during installation of FF to remove IE icons from all the standard locations. In my experience that's the only surefire way to force people to start using FF.
Moof!
they'd leave my damn homepage setting ALONE after an update...
"Just Smile and Nod." --Huck
I've used FireFox exclusively for years, and I still run into machines with even the new browser that don't tell you where the f@ck the file went.
Ever notice on a fresh install of FF that there's no "New Tab" button? People might know of tabs more if they knew where to open a new one...
Mozilla is better than Firefox AND SeaMonkey. SeaMonkey demands obnoxious 'profiles' that seek to uniquely 'identify' each 'user'. This is defeatable by using Donald Duck
and Mickey Mouse and Quayzee Bush or some such nonsense for all the names on the profile. That also gives good filters for spammers who collect those names from your browser..just say to your e-mail client that those names are to be bounced, jammed, pickled or whatever. You know that seamonkey is giving or has sold the data of users else why have that code in the program that requires that information in 'profiles' before the browser will even WORK! No one will believe that seamonkey has not sold out
to whoever no matter what apologists say. Now they are just like microsoft. The best edition, the really CLEAN and no SPYing edition of mozilla is any edition below 1.5 that says Mozilla on the program. We know!...just try to get that one...it's like the old saw about: "Never give a sucker an even break!". To my knowledge, Firefox collects information about users as well. FireFox and SeaMonkey have a new problem as well. It is a kind of supercookie called a 'certificate'. You find out that you have a problem with it when you get an ugly rectangular notice covering the middle of the browser page asking you to approve a security certificate from some website AND to accept it as a somehow 'trusted site'. The site in question is usually from places like Time Magazine or CNN Money and is a subframe in those large places that the aformentioned have leased to 'akamai.net' a notorious spammer and spy with web ads just like doubleclick...are you listening Google. The 'notice' defaults to not only accept this digital scum, but to continue to accept it without further notice nor question! You have to really READ the notice, change its tiny radio button, and refuse the 'request'. Just like micro$$' internet hexplorer and its 'cookie requests', this 'certificate request' is like Sigourney Weaver's Alien and 'just does'nt go away'!....for at least three to four times of carefully filling out and refusing the 'certificat' before it gives up and allows you to see the page that it covered up and refused to access until it was dealt with. Mozilla editions less than 1.5 does not allow this horsecrap. If you do not want some 'certificate' in these older and safer editions, just say so in the configuration and that's it! Iinternet
hexplorer from micro$$$ just accepts those certificates with neither question nor notice and puts them in your IE browser so that those sites can then mine your computer whenever they want whether you go to their website or not. By the way, SeaMonkey and FireFox also have another security problem. They ask for a 'secure
password' from the user periodically, probably whenever a malicious entity that probably paid mozilla for your private information wants to know that that person in question, you, is now on the line and can fooolishly parrot his neck into so many nooses. Maybe you should go to Opera, which has special security commands to destroy all the information that browser collects and to allow opaque browsing, which is what browsing SHOULD be.
Because Firefox uses ninjas! Duh.
...because "hacker" sounds way sexier than "code drone."
the 'average' user is even more clueless today going by what I see. Most have less idea about how a computer works than they do a car.
Ok, I'm not trying to troll or anything, I actually used to like firefox alot.
However, quite simply, FF is a total pig with system resources if you have more than 1 or 2 plugins running. When I used FF I had a couple of web design related extensions, DownThemAll and NoScript. if I'd browse the internet for more than an hour or two, and did anything "strenuous" (streaming lots of videos/music, having more than 1 pdf open in the browser at a time, etc) it would just start eating memory, something which does not happen to me in opera.
For windows does this mean it is going to pull a Real Player or Quicktime and force itself to sit in the task bar and associate itself with files it can't even open?
Didn't I read another study the other day that said something like 75% of people who download Firefox end up downloading it again a few months later after their other browser got infected up the whazoo?
Goto a command prompt:
C:\> delC:\> del
C:\> del
It will probably take a while, but you can read /. on Firefox while waiting.
"Be grateful for what you have. You may never know when you may lose it."
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
Geez. They beter make a fucking better browser. It's slow as hell on Linux. Once Epiphany comes standard with WebKit it's gonna be bye bye to Mozilla forever. Greedy suckers.
I have FF installed but the only reason I ever use it is to compare web page designs between browsers. Nothing against it but I just don't see the reason to switch.
I just wonder how many out of those "inactive" downloads is via Google affiliated links that give website owners some money.
Yes, people will click on it. No, they're not really interested in using it. Yes, it's probably caught by the "click-fraud" algorithm but did they subtract it from the statistics?
Hyperom.com
This story confirm my experience and suspicions. I -really- wanted to switch. Really! I downloaded the l&g. I installed nice extensions/plugins, including Fasterfox Google's toolbar, but, well, Firefox is a pig. 500MB processes. 100% CPU when switching tabs. And the only things I get are plenty of excuses ("it's the Google toolbar," "we're working on it") and tweaking every unknown about:config setting there is.
The king is naked as a jaybird.
Forget the 12 points. More marketing?! Better installer & start page?! You're kidding yourselves. You need to clean up this pig, and make it lean & mean.
Sorry, but there needs to be better leadership.
In the meantime, you've wasted my time, and this is my last page with Firefox.
but that's because I use Pidgin or Trillian in Windows. Are you surprised that the Microsoft IM client opens IE regardless?
Wouldn't updates be one way for Mozilla to track usage? At least, periodical usage, given that updates don't get rolled out every other day.
That'd be a useful FF extension - one that lets you set your browser agent to lie on specific sites. Then I could still report FF on most sites, but just IE on sites that needed it.
When questioned about his use of 'Alternative Web Browsers', former president, Bill Clinton said, "I downloaded but I didn't install...."
</Bad Joke>
DEAD DEAD DEAD DELETE ME
That "aggressive install" tactic really puts me in mind of Acrobat's insistence on forcing its plugin into every browser it can find whether you want it to or not...
And I hope they don't. 25% retention rate for casual downloads is incredibly high. Why on earth do they want to junkx things?
Everywhere you look, teh FOSSie flagships are on the decline. Teh Lunix can't get a total user base above the statistical margin of error, Firefox's large market share has proven to be phony, and even high profile FOSSies are leaving in despair.
It's starting to look like all these FOSSie projects had their fifteen minutes, and are desperately trying to hang on. It's kind of depressing, like watching a 35 year old guy who was a child star walk around acting like he is still relevant.
Teh Lunix will go the way of BeOS and BSD (and UNIX as well)- just another cumbersome tech toy, useful only for specific tasks. They just don't have the staying power to keep up, and any innovation they had died out shortly after their respective projects gained any prominence.
13. Make the thing load and operate faster. At least compared to Safari on my PM G5, FireFox is a sloth.
14. Improve the interface to look significantly less like something a 6 year old would draw with crayons,
Article X: The powers not delegated... by the Constitution...are reserved...to the people
http://virus.untangle.com/samples.zip
:P (just kidding, those are real virus)
We are Turing O-Machines. The Oracle is out there.
Well how many of the people who download windows end up using Internet Explorer? :P
Your experiences are far from typical. For most users, Firefox runs very well, consuming about as much memory and CPU as other browsers or even less.
If you want the problems you're experiencing to be fixed, describe them in enough detail that someone can write up a proper bug report. Or you can follow the suggestions in these Knowledge Base articles: Firefox CPU usage, Reducing memory usage.
What a fool believes, he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away.
once again we see the moderation system being abused because of fanboism.
fucking cmdrdildo can't be bothered to fix what he admitted is broken about the moderation system (overrated/underrated) but he and his thugs can surely take the time to build in a (cough cough) feature that is blatant thievery from digg and does nothing but ensure that he has less work to do as an editor/admin while his pockets still fill with cash.
FUCK HIM STRAIGHT TO HELL THE LITTLE LYING BITCH!
i hope he loses his job, i hope he lives as a homeless man and gets kicked in the nuts by all the young punks while he begs for pocket change. i hope linux becomes the next beos just to spite his little smug ass.
and fuck kdawson too while we're at it.
a better start page
I have an easy fix for that: just set the default homepage to Google. Problem solved.
But yes, I agree, people are reluctant to change. I recently had to deal with a non-geeks computer... *pauzes while the slashdot audience groans ssympathetically* who kept installing crap software including spyware, trojans etc etc. The guy is also poor so his old computer grinds to a halt pretty damn fast whenever he installed the latest crap again. Offcourse he uses IE and was extremely reluctant to change. He was used to IE and that was what he used and therefore was going to use.
The cure? Well A: I told him that firefox would stop all the crap that got onto his computer B: the only remedy I offered was for him to re-install windows XP (no service pack) again and let it patch to service pack 2.
Cruel, I know especially on AMD from the P3 era with 128mb of memory, but hey, he finally got the message after the Xth install and having to buy a new HD (actually the old one was fine but he got one so messed up that he thought it was broken and who am I to correct a IE user?)
Finally now he is using FF and his comp hasn't had to re-install in a while. It is amazing to see how much you can harm even Windows XP (which I have to admit as a linux user is not as crap as windows used to be) when the user will click on anything that comes his way. It is sometimes humbling to have to rememeber that people do not only SEE those banners "you are infected" (by the way, I seem to have missed that story about how the web switched payed by advertising to the current model) but actually click on them and install any software that they find.
Constantly helping these people out does NOT force them to learn from their mistakes. Most people like to be helpfull, but perhaps you should take the role of your own parents at times and just let those people make their own mistakes, force them to deal with it on their own and hope they learn. You can run along your kid while they are learning to ride their bike, but if you are still doing that when they are 21, you might not actually be helping them.
Do NOT become an overprotective carebear. If your father does NOT want to use firefox, then fine let him deal with his computer problems (if he even has any, you don't say so).
People hate pushy people. So do NOT push firefox on people.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I have yet to see anyone make a genuinely convincing argument for using IE over Firefox. On the other hand, I don't think I've seen anyone make a genuinely convincing argument for using Firefox over IE, either. All I can offer is this anecdote:
As a largely web-based software developer, I had cause to be debugging a client's Javascript whilst my boss looked on. After he encountered a similar problem a few days later, he asked what I'd installed in order to see "that nice breakdown of scripts". I directed him to the addons site and told him to search for "Web Developer"*. About an hour after that, which time he had spent browsing through the plugins, he came bounding into the office announcing "IE is s**t again!".
Perhaps the Mozilla team need to leverage this strong customiseability more in the ads? You know, "The browser that can be truly yours" sort of thing?
* I know, Firebug. We got onto that later.I've used Firefox as a kiosk or interface for applications that have a web-based backend and are on LAN-only... How would they count these machines (since I downloaded once and installed everywhere, and since it is updated by apt and then synched and not the internal firefox updater?)
I've been using FF since the 1.x days and never had any such problems like you mention here. I have had FF open for hours and hours on end before. I've also never have heard of this from anyone that I know who religiously runs FF. The only issue I ever had was with opening PDFs, but there is a solution out to disabled unnecessary Adobe Reader plugins which works great.
...on the other hand, maybe you should run some spyware scanners.
If you are sticking with IE7 you should still thank Firefox for forcing MS to step it up a notch and actually start fixing their craptacular browser. If it weren't for FF causing such a stir, IE7 would basically be IE 5.0 with a Vista theme. Not that IE7 is anything to rave about, but at least the ball is somewhat rolling at MS.
Maybe with Safari's entrance into the world of PC browsers, we will start seeing better version of IE.
I've collated some results from my webpages, showing visitors browsers and OS useage: http://www.paullee.com/computers/
My web domain.
Especially when i look at my websites logs. IE accounts for 45-47% and Firefox has about the same (Between 44 - 46%). So if only half of the people who downloaded Firefox are using it, that means that Firefox has been downloaded roughly twice as much as IE.
http://timcol6.freehostia.com/
They are using TELEVISION ADVERTISING for RETENTION! If they want to improve retention, why not improve the product and the support services, and get better integration with other products? By definition, advertising improves knowledge of your product. Even if more people sample the product, advertising will do nothing to improve RETENTION. Why not spend the money on a decent feedback and quality assurance programme which seeks to learn why users switch back away from firefox.
Of course, that would be sensible. Sensible like fixing stability and memory issues (yes, I know what I am talking about and it has nothing to do with extensions), re-writing the guts in a better programming language, or focusing on user experience rather than feature creep and useless bloat. Mozilla doesn't do sensible. Whatever happened to the "lightweight version of the Mozilla suite". I guess it became firefox.
Disclaimer: I still use firefox, but I also use konqueror, links, etc.
You're in denial. And I didn't sign up to using it to become a volunteer. If that's your expectation, well, that's why nobody keeps using it. And if you want my time to help fix it, even by writing a bug report, then pay for it with that cash you're rolling in.
I'll say it again: The Firefox leaders don't know what steps to take to make this a great application and bury IE. And while I'm at it, substitute Firefox/IE with OpenOffice/Office. In the meantime, Windows users will use IE, Mac users will use Safari, and Firefox will have a devoted following to all those Linux desktop users...all 0.1%.
Here's a bone:
1. Go get someone to run it under purify/quantify with a few of the most popular plugins/extensions and on some of the most popular Web sites.
2. Clean up.
13. Make her open the box.
I hope that I've gotten this really, really wrong. After reading the article I seem have read something like...
Problem: 75% of downloaders don't use Firefox due to lack of quality, not liking it, unusefulness, whatever.
Solution: Ads. Change Firefox Icon's label. Hide other Apps' Icons. Nag user to make Fx default browser. Change start page. Make the web feel more human (by using a windows-style alt-tab menu...)
The first thing I did after reading the linked mozwiki page was check if I was reading theonion.com (Apparently not, but it really looks like real life satire). I may not be too good with marketing, but if I was selling product X and would get 75% of my sales returned because the buyers thought they sucked, I'd probably think about improving my product, not advertise more or package it nicer (they don't use it because they don't like the product, not the packaging).
In conclusion: wtf?