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Firefox Goes for World Download Record
Kelson writes "For the upcoming release of Firefox, Mozilla is preparing Download Day 2008: a campaign to set a world record for the most software downloaded in 24 hours. Participants are asked to pledge to download Firefox 3 on the day that it's launched. The exact date hasn't been scheduled yet, but everything seems on track for June."
Probably as in previous download counts, they are only counting downloads from Mozilla. As for Microsoft service packs, should a patch really count?
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Since presumably my Firefox 2 will bug me to update to 3 as soon as it's released?
Not to disparage Mozilla, but lately it seems like they've been a mite too concerned with press releases. They should release when it's ready, and we'll get it when we think it's ready. What's the big rush?
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I just don't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die.
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You clearly haven't worked with Fx3 yet. At first I was skeptical about the new smart bookmarks and address bar, but now that I've used it for a month or two (starting with beta 2) I'm quite pleased with it. The address bar basically does exactly the same as it always has, except now it actually does an on the fly substring search in your history instead of just giving an arbitrarily sorted list of previously visited sites. I would dare say this is one of the biggest improvements to the web browsing experience in the last several years.
The important one is how fast we can /. the web site :)
If you can't be good, be good at it!
I'm not getting the release until I know for sure it won't crash hard on my Macs, like the beta I tried did. And that it won't delete my cookies, like the beta did.
I'd really like to see continued support for the old style of searching in the url bar, too, but I doubt that will happen. And the new look is just uglier.
It's like inviting a DDOS attack. I suppose it has the dual merit of setting world record and testing their server capacity.
QuantumPete
I think this a great way for Mozilla to publicise Firefox and increase its market share. And I pledged, of course. I look forward to Firefox 3.
Two words: Automatic Updates,
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will be counted most probably. I dont know of many linux users who download directly from mozilla website. Most would use a package from their distribution which generally is not available on the same day (and even if it is, how will they count those downloads).
They called me mad, and I called them mad, and damn them, they outvoted me. -Nathaniel Lee
If they set a record - they'll be in the news.
If they are so successful that the servers go down temporarily - they'll definitely be in the news.
As you can see, just submitting the idea has put them in the news. This is a great idea for a company with growing market share.
This might be the most senseless Guinness record ever, and that says a lot. It's measure of nothing. It's not even a measure of Firefox's popularity. Because bulk of the download counts will be generated via some downloading scripts. Even they allow one download per IP, there are proxies. Number of downloads won't nearly equal the number of PEOPLE who downloaded Firefox that day.
I mean it can't go down in the books as Firefox was downloaded by 2 million people on that day. Maybe 2 million times, out of which half was generated by 300,000 download scripts. I am not sure about you but to me that doesn't sound all that impressive.
It won't even helps spread firefox that much, as all the pledged downloadees will be firefox users.
Entirely pointless!
Possibly the only more pointless thing that this is my rather elaborate rant against it.
I think this is a cool idea. There are still lots of people who don't know there are other browsers in existence; when they open IE they say they're opening "the internet." Anything that makes the news and makes them aware of alternate browsers is good - especially if it's "hey this thing is really popular." For many people, that's the best argument for trying it.
Mozilla seems to have done pretty well by harnessing the power of fanatic users so far - remember the big newspaper ads? And check out the "pledge map" on the site. Think how proud you'd be to see that you're one of a very few people in your country who has pledged to download it. Kind of a mix of national pride and geek pride.
Every web developer's dream is a world where all users have more standards-compliant browsers, and IE is forced to follow suit. I say hooray for almost anything that makes that closer to reality.ya, and by the same logic, if firefox is so damn good, why does the IE has 75% marketshare.
captcha: divisive
Actually, I've been using Fx3 since beta1. I still am not really keen on the thing. Unless I make sure to keep my bookmarks and history trimmed down, it freezes my system for a few seconds as it trudges through things. This is irritating, especially when I was just wanting to type in an address real quick and not have possible matches pulled up. It consumes more time in searching for possible results than it saves me in typing.
Some way of reverting to the old functionality would be nice.
Maybe they need more silly publicity stunts like this one.
Four words: Turned off Automatic Updates.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Three words: Unlike most people.
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This might sound dumb, but I wish the new address bar would go away. My laptop gets passed around the house, and I don't want my browsing history pop up to all my family members.
They don't care, so they're not snooping around (I don't live with them normally, there was a death in the family so I've come back home for a bit) but they don't appreciate my youporn stuff popping up in their face because of that silly autocomplete stuff. How can I got back to the old way?
-Bucky
Are they trying to kill their own servers or what?
Doesn't matter. On the Big Day, it's guaranteed that someone will announce it here, and within minutes we'll slashdot the server.
Someone else suggested getting the current beta version, because it seems to work just fine. This won't help their server, though, because on the Big Day, your beta version will check, find that there's an upgrade, ask if you want to download it - and you'll join in the slashdotting.
They should just put the server on a slow net connection. That way, the bottleneck would be upstream of them, and we'd just get "no connection" messages asking if we'd like to try again. Only N of us would be able to get through at any given time, keeping their server up, and frustrating their rabid fans.
Or maybe they're just expecting that the can handle the onslaught. Whatever happens, you'll read about it here.
Those who do study history are doomed to stand helplessly by while everyone else repeats it.