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Firefox Appears Ready to Crack 20% Share Next Month
CWmike writes "Mozilla's Firefox browser is on pace to hit the 20% market-share mark next month. Net Applications marketing VP Vince Vizzaccaro didn't pin all of Firefox's increase on a change last month to its update dialog; he did note the new approach. 'Mozilla has implemented a change in Firefox 3.0 [Release Candidate 1] where the installation now has a checkbox that defaults to making Firefox your default browser,' he explained. He refused to ding Mozilla for the practice. 'The option is clearly displayed and labeled, unlike Safari, which misleadingly labeled the Safari install as an "update" [but has] since correctly changed to an 'install.' However, this practice is a break from the traditional practice browsers employed of defaulting this option to off.'"
Firefox @ 16%
Firefox @ 18%
Firefox @ 40%
So which one is right?
When you click on an html file or a link in some other program, the default browser is opened.
"the installation now has a checkbox that defaults to making Firefox your default browser"
It's an installation of a browser. Why would you -not-
1. Offer the option to make it the default browser
and
2. Have that option pre-selected.
I would expect a browser to do this. I would expect an image viewer to present me with the option to change image file associations and have those checked by default, a music player to associate MP3s, etc. -On installation-.
I don't want this happening when you simply start the application (I'm looking at you, Outlook).
"unlike Safari, which misleadingly labeled the Safari install as an "update"(1) [but has] since correctly changed to an 'install.'".
Great, so the Apple update checking thingy now has two sections(2). One for actual updates, and one below that for -completely unrelated applications- to be peddled onto your machine. Still selected by default.
No longer labeling it as an 'update' is a good step, but it's not the major gripe with this practice in the first place.
1) http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee248/msanto/One-Offs%202008/AppleUpdateSafari.jpg
2) http://i231.photobucket.com/albums/ee248/msanto/One-Offs%202008/AppleUpdateSafari2.jpg
Please, please, please Mozilla... don't start peddling Thunderbird to Firefox users in the update checks; or if you do, make sure it's -not selected- by default.
What's wrong with having default as enabled? All applications around the world does it and even hides it in advanced install settings. Firefox doing it openly is just OK. Not good, not bad, but just OK.
Stop being so nitpicking. I am no total Firefox fan (have lot of issues in Ubuntu), but this is not a case to bash them.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
I don't really see the big deal. Most programs make themselves the "handler" for whatever file type they support by default upon install. Quicktime, MS Media Player, and Real all do this with media files. Every photo viewer I've ever installed does this with image files.
It's especially innocuous here, because if you accidentally make Firefox your default, IE will simply ask you if you would like to make IT the default browser upon the next run (with the default again checked "yes").
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
And on XP and Vista, the default browser is also registered in the start menu as the 'internet' application. Which means it gets the top icon in the left row of the default setup.
And any program which follows the guidelines will launch it, and not a hardcoded internet explorer.
Mozilla Firefox already has much bigger market share on many countries. Ex. on Finland is over 40% and most ITC sites report Mozilla is over 50% market share owning browser. Many other EU country has over 30-40% market share and looks like only few big country has lower than those and where IE still dominates.
Because IE's a bitch to develop with. On a javascript error, it tells you the correct line number but it can't tell you which file it's in. It doesn't allow anywhere near the quality of plugins that firefox does, so it doesn't get firebug, greasemonkey, etc. Finally, IE doesn't comply with the standards very well, so it's a lot harder to get the site looking how you want it to. With firefox, when you make a change you can know fairly well what that change is going to do. When you're developing a site and making a lot of changes and tweaks, it's important to have a browser that you can work with. Converting the final product to something IE can render is a lot easier to working with IE the entire way.
It takes a fraction of the time needed to make a site that was built in Firefox to work in IE compared to making a site built in IE work with any real web browser.
In most cases I can build the site using Firefox, knowing that'll it'll be 99% the same in Safari, Opera, and whatever other browsers you can think of. Then I just need an IE specific stylesheet (that'll be full of nasty hacks) to make everything look right in IE as well.
And that's not taking into account the extensions that make life so much more pleasant. Firebug alone must have saved me several days of tracing bugs this year.
I happen to live in a country where Firefox usage broke 45% months ago and is the most popular browser, overtaking IE by 5-6%.
I honestly don't care about marketshare after the point of no return has passed where web developers are forced to use the standard in order to make it work on multiple browsers.
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
That comment isn't informative, its inquisitive, which should be a mod option.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
The state you are in while your HEAD is detached... - wait, what?
The same way many people can bash windows and continue to use it.
- Casual Firefox user clicks link from friend
- IE opens asking if it should be set as the default
- An IE user is reborn
I suppose this list replaces the ??? between "ignore system setting" and "Profit!"I have long distrusted these shady stats companies that provide these figures with absolutely no way to check their validity. I poked around a bit on netapplications.com, and although they don't actually tell you outright, I gather that their Firefox statistics come from corporate websites that they host(?). Needless to say, there might be a huge bias here (e.g. the types of companies in bed with NetApplications might be biased towards having a large influx of corporate users on IE, or something like that).
So what to do about this lack of statistics? A couple months ago I wrote a bot that crawled webalizer statistics pages, harvested the results, loaded them into MySQL, and produced aggregate browser statistics by month. To make a long story short, I had difficulty getting enough Webalizer pages to make for a really good study (my bot was just scraping Google), but I showed around ~20% Firefox usage. Results here. If there's interest in this project, it could easily be revived.
http://cltracker.net -- powerful craigslist multi-city search
Mod parent up!
IMHO Web Dev Toolbar and Firebug are the two biggest reasons for Firefox's adoption. Being able to poke about in the DOM and inspect individual elements, and to put breakpoints into JavaScript, are HUGE wins for developers. Even if your final site will never be looked at by any browser except IE, it's still faster to make it work in FF and then tweak it as necessary.
To do decent debugging in IE, you have to install Visual Studio... ick.
If you're switching away from IE, you might as well switch away from its annoying pet chihuahua WL Messenger. There are SO many alternatives out there...GAIM, Miranda, Pidgin, and Trillian (free edition) come to mind...
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
This is why.
Where, and when are we getting to see the browser usage distribution of Slashdot?
I bet you could have one of those stories with more than 1000 posts by publishing it in the "Taco Blog", and linking to it.
It would probably be very interesting to see how (if?) the distribution varies depending on section (games, linux, mac etc).
I run a fairly busy site that has the following stats:
1. Internet Explorer 97,589 75.07%
2. Firefox 26,383 20.30%
3. Safari 4,844 3.73%
4. Opera 500 0.38%
5. Netscape 329 0.25%
6. Mozilla 270 0.21%
7. Konqueror 37 0.03%
8. Camino 21 0.02%
9. Mozilla Compatible Agent 6 > 0.00%
10.
Playstation 3 5 > 0.00%
What is interesting to note is that this site is for stock investors so think middle aged, none-technical crowd.
(Com-on Konqueror!)
I know that GNU's Not UNIX -- but it was supposed to try and be. The real question is, why should Linux try and be "largely compatible" with Windows?
If it were meant to be an "alternative" to windows, using your metric of "largely compatible," then it shouldn't have been a UNIX clone, it should have been a DOS/Win32 clone, shouldn't it have?
Linux "fails" to take to the Desktop because it fails to be Windows. It fails to be Windows because it is not -- it's Unix. And that means it has a completely different underlying philosophy of how things should be done that goes back over 30 years.
Then again, it seems that most people who "switch" to Linux, especially these days, do it because they want cheap/free windows, then complain when its not windows.
This is like buying a Crysler 300M then complaining that its not as nice as the Bentley Brooklands that its a rip-off of.
public static function ieSucks() {
$browser = get_browser();
$name = $browser['browser'];
$version = $browser['version'];
if ($name == "MSIE") {
switch ($version) {
default:
$stillsucks = true;
break;
}
return $stillsucks;
}
while (ieSucks()) {
switchTo('Firefox');
}
I totally agree
Internet Explorer is simply the best tool ever (for downloading Firefox) i wouldn't even think of using anything else
Wait... what was the question?
Your story is too convenient to be 100% true.
.NET goodies didnt work? Only some? If sales dipped like you said... then the whole system had to be hosed to get 0 sales from that demographic.
1) No programming team would ignore FF unless directed to do so. You are telling me you got a group of programmers together and they all loved IE so much they were completely oblivious to FF?
2) Some
3) You traffic would not drop to nil in a week, so that is your biggest "I am lying" thing. You are suggesting that all your past users accessed your site that week, saw it didnt work right, and decided to not come back ever again. None of the only check the site every couple weeks? I mean give me a break - this is obviously an exaggeratiom
4) FF traffic shot back up in a week. (See #3)
5) Your 'younger' crowd would have been apt to try your site in IE if it failed in FF... at least in lets say... 25% of the cases.
The bottom line is this story is almost certainly partially fabricated and why? Do you not like Microsoft or maybe you just really like FF? I cannot believe you got modded up for blatant fanboyism.
Invexi - a Phoenix, AZ based web design and web development company.
The issue you describe in IE has probably nothing to do with the nesting and everything to do with hasLayout. Also, if you've got more than 2 or 3 <div> inside each-other, you should re-evaluate what you're doing and probably use a more appropriate element (ul, ol, dl, p, h1-h6, etc).
[insert witty comment here]