Slashdot Mirror
Firefox 3 Already Rules the Roost
Barence writes in with a data point on Firefox 3 adoption: it's been available for 10 days, and already one site is seeing 55% of its Firefox-using visitors on version 3. "Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."
mozilla.org
I haven't bothered to upgrade IE since my last format. Why would I, I use FF3 and it's amanzing! It's not a matter of not wanting the newer Microsoft browser, it a matter nf not wanting a Microsoft browser at all!!
Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond.
Huh? This means absolutely nothing. If you want to give us data that's meaningful, tell us how many converts to IE7 there were in the first week, or wait 1.5 years and see how many people are using FF3 versus old versions. Then we'd have some comparable data. A rapid expansion right off the bat, for example, does not necessarily indicate that the final tally will be in FF's favor.
Furthermore, a decent chunk of IE users are the "computer = magic black box" type, who use IE because it's what came on the computer. If those people aren't doing Windows Updates (likely enough, imo), they won't get IE7. By contrast, the vast majority of Firefox users use it by choice, not because it was there. Those people are far more likely to manually upgrade.
This whole "data point" is utterly worthless for determining what's actually going on.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
Look, my father-in-law knows NOTHING about computing, but a LOT about using the Internet. We bought him a computer several years ago. His browser?
IE5, of course. Why? Because that's what was installed on the machine when we bought it.
The majority of people who THINK about what browser they use, use something other than IE. Firefox 3 is obviously a great leap forward for the Mozilla brand, and...well, there you go.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Booga-booga!
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
In our business environment, we will not upgrade to IE7 because it breaks business applications. No such limitations on FF3 (of course the apps don't work in FF2/3).
Maybe if MS didn't break the non-standardized technologies that they release and companies build apps on, the community might upgrade faster.
I don't understand what the big fuss is - Microsoft doesn't really make money off of IE. They never should have entered the browser business in the first place.
To me this just proves that most people ignore WindowsUpdate, thus making their systems outdated and vulnerable to attacks.
I have been a Windows Firefox user since the late 1.x beta versions. I have never had any problems at all installing alpha or beta versions, they have all been extraordinarily stable.
This is the first release where I have noticed a performance problem. I cannot tell if it is my add-ons that have been hastily updgraded to the 3.x spec, or it is the browser itself. But this is the first time in using Firefox that I have been less than happy with the experience.
I am not a programmer, but a PHB, but tonight I will go home and disable all my addons in the hope that it is one of them driving the instability (e.g. loading my iGoogle page takes 30 seconds or more each time I go to that tab).
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
I'm sure Microsoft is going to drop bricks when they find out that users of other browsers bother to upgrade to new versions of other browsers.
I've only had 1 crash and that happend yesterday, after it crashed, a nice popup window asked if I wanted to tell Microsoft about it. I declined.
It got me thinking though, why don't they have their own "tell firefox" about the crash box what sends them the stack trace and page etc so they can debug these problems quicker.
You're mad at Mozilla because a bunch of third-party extensions don't work correctly? Maybe you should complain to the right people next time.
So in two more weeks, 165% of firefox users will be at version 3. Let's see the numbers after 18 months.
Anyway, my work machine still has IE6, because they're not bothering to upgrade it on the corporate servers and I use nothing but Firefox on it anyway.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
Using Firefox implies that you probably care about what web browser you're using. People who don't care just stick with what came on their system.
How can I believe you when you tell me what I don't want to hear?
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."
Nah.. it is just that the previous versions of Firefox sucked a lot [of memory].
I've got karma to burn, sooooo bring it girls!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'
Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched
IE 7 was never backported to anything before Windows XP Service Pack 2. How many Windows users are stuck on operating systems prior to Windows XP, such as Windows 2000 or Windows 9x? Like IE 7, Firefox 3 doesn't work on Windows 9x, but unlike IE 7, Firefox works on Windows 2000.
IE survives on inertia, not quality. If anything, this is exactly what you should expect to see. The people willing to change browsers are the same people who want the latest upgrade with the best support for the latest standards.
Just because your users don't care so much about upgrading all their software as soon as possible doesn't mean you have a problem. I'd say it was a measure of success, that you we able to reach the non-technical crowd, a much more important accomplishment. That said, I'm sure most IE users just use whatever is on their computer and don't give a damn' making them an unimportant demographic in terms of measuring success.
-- http://thegirlorthecar.com funny dating game for guys
LA LA LA ... we're not listening.
There is no right to feel safe thru security vaudeville at the expense of everyone's freedom, privacy and tax money.
But an addon is not Mozilla's fault. Complain to the guys coding Firebug. (Unless of course there's some architecture thing in FF3 that is messing up Firebug. Then, I stand corrected.)
I've had some significant issues on both my PC and Mac with FF3. They all seem to revolve around JavaScript. When in GMail, navigating away from GMail via a new site in the address bar in the same tab hangs FF3 entirely. This is on my Windows machine. When in Facebook on my Mac at home, clicking any of the various links that execute javascript popups for DHTML hangs the site. I can navigate through links that are more classic hrefs that instantiate other requests through the browser, but clicking on things like the Name of someone in their status just fails. Anyone else experience this?
Or, maybe Firefox 2 sucked that much. I was running the Firefox 3 alphas long ago, only because the RAM situation in 2.x was so atrocious. I had to upgrade my wife as well, because I got sick of hearing from the living room, "I thought you said Firefox was better?" as her system ground to a halt.
- oZ
// i am here.
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."
Whatever is the choice of most businesses is always going to lag behind in adoption.
Case in point, my current client is a Fortune 100 company that mandates IE6 as the browser of choice and is planning to move to IE7 sometime next year. There's thousands and thousands of people right there still using IE6 essentially through no choice of their own.
Big, non-software business is always about the last to adopt any technology.
Firefox users, on the other hand, tend to be more computer savvy. They are the kind who pay attention to tech news, and most likely they've known about Firefox 3 since before it came out.
Boycott shampoo! Demand the REAL poo!
I just ran the Firefox 3 installer, then loaded the Slashdot front page for its test-drive. This article was in the #1 slot. How did mozilla.org arrange for that to happen?
It's easier to convert 50% of 10 than 50% of 10000000000000000000.
Please note that I know there are more then 10 Firefox users out there and all that yadayada. And that I'm a big fan of Open Source, using a Mozilla based browser myself. All I'm doing is pointing out the low quality of the anti-MS FUD that is being spread here. We don't need this kind of sensationalist reasoning/reporting to beat MicroSoft, we should (and can) do that on value and merit!
Linux user since early January 1992.
While I am a happy FF3 user myself, comparing the adoption rates of Firefox and IE is misleading. IE is installed when the computer arrives, and the people still using it either:
1. Don't care what they use
2. Have no choice since it is locked down by work
3. Prefer it over the alternatives.
People in buckets 1 and 2 (which I would argue is the vast majority of IE users) are unlikely to upgrade IE beyond whatever version is on their machine now. People in group 3 are the only voluntary upgraders to IE7.
In contrast, Firefox has the same three buckets, but since it is not preinstalled very few are going to fall into buckets 1 and 2. Almost everyone using it is using it because they want it, and that means that they are far more likely to upgrade to the latest and greatest.
What? Are you expecting Microsoft to hold a download-IE8-break-the-world-record event?
There are still too many sites that won't render properly in anything but Internet Explorer. I haven't used IE in a long time, so I hope that Firefox (or Firefox plus Opera plus Safari, etc.) will at least reach parity with IE, so that web developers will be forced to code sites that are at least standards compliant.
Yep I think i'm going to downgrade today. FF3 has completely borked the iGoogle layout for me, and spankwire videos suddenly don't work at all.
Also there's some other strange behavior with the saved passwords I can't exactly put my finger on. I think maybe http authentication and form logins are no longer saved separately, so when you have more than one login for a site it doesn't auto-fill the fields and you have to remember the username, which defeats the point.
Not to rag on firefox, I love it and my biggest pet peave (the FF3 memory usage) seems to be hugely improved, but it needs some time to be tweaked.
So, Mozilla didn't upset their most loyal customer, the add-on developers did...
"Nobody owns the fucking words man." - James Dean
PS Sorry for the small sizes of the graphs. Gnumeric was having a bad day :(
My web domain.
It has. You probably got a really hard crash that Firefox couldn't catch and the error found it's way to Windows default exception handler.
Anyway, you can get the crash information from Microsoft. Binaries must be signed and you must get through some steps, but it's an easy process.
English is not my first language. Corrections and suggestions are welcome.
I think that I may have more of a typical user experience. I'm not a gamer so I have allowed my home computer to get hopelessly old (pardon me if I skip the embarrassing specs). At some point I actually did upgrade to IE7 and the monster was so fat I could grow old waiting for it to load on my ancient relic of a computer and quickly went back again.
No such issue with FF3. In fact I was excited about better memory management for the same reasons.
So Firefox makes you want to upgrade on old hardware where IE bloat strongly discourages it.
my insights may be modded Funny, but at least some of my jokes are modded Insightful
Not to diminish the impact of Firefox, but this is not surprising. Firefox users are almost by definition more proactive. They've already taken the step of replacing their default browser. Why should it be any surprise that they're also quicker to update?
I seem to recall that the Fedora project decided not to distribute FF2 with any of their spins, opting to wait for FF3 instead, precisely because of the perception of suckage.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.
Do a clean install instead. You probably have some odd settings remaining from FF2 that are giving you problems, and the problem with other sites could be poor browser detection...which is not Mozilla's fault at all.
I'll convert once my add-ons are updated (CopyToPlaintext and TabBrowserPreferences).
I think in general, people that use Firefox are a bit more in touch with what goes on in the computer world, making them aware when an upgrade like this happens. My non-computer-people friends usually don't know the difference between Firefox and IE...
What part of your problems have been caused my Mozilla? Those are all issues with add-ons, you should hop over and report them to the authors. :)
On my own Web sites Firefox 3 usage is at ~12%. Our reporting software (AWStats) doesn't do a breakdown by day, so that's 12% for the whole month. That's out of the 50% of visitors who're using Firefox. Pretty good in my opinion, although we are aiming at a technical audience.
What interests me is the breakdown of IE versions. 13% using IE7 Vs. 17% IE6 (total IE usage is ~33%), even though we have a big notice for IE6 users telling them the site won't display properly and that they should upgrade. Seems IE6 users are either very stubborn, or in a corporate environment, where they're not able to upgrade. I expect it's a mixture of both.
I'm going to transform myself into a mighty hawk. Either that or I'll just go and work at Dixons, haven't decided yet.
As a part-time web developer, I am less than surprised. Making sites compatible for multiple browsers is always a chore, but IE makes it damn near impossible to play nice. After all, it is the only browser left that doesn't conform to W3C standards, and cannot interpret CSS correctly to save its own life. I usually have multiple browsers installed on any of my machines, but there's only one that I refuse...
"Oh, Florida. Just think, somewhere in this state, right now, Jeb Bush is eating a live puppy."
Just another statistic: if I have my dates right, it took IE7 2.5 months to reach 100 million users. Firefox is currently at 23 million and given the current rate (1080/min), FF3 on pace to beat that - even without being distributed as part of an OS (granted, IE7 was only part of volume licensing at that date, and not retail sales).
It may or may not be Mozilla's fault, but from a user's prospective that is irrelevant, all a user knows is what used to work fine doesn't any longer.
I'll try a fresh install, thanks for the suggestion.
Maybe you should complain to the right people next time.
You mean like the people who broke backwards compatibility and made needless API changes?
If you've only been upgrading, I'd highly suggest deleting your user profile and starting with a new one before deleting your addons.
Track your TV Shows with your iPhone - FREE
I manage a blog where most of the users are authors and they are not technical folks that might visit a site like pcpro on a regular basis. You might say they are average folk.
In the last few months, I have been seeing an increase in firefox from maybe 10% in January to close to 45% today. Of that 45% of FF users, 23% are already using FF3. I think that is pretty impressive. By comparison, 52% use IE and the majority of them, 67% use IE7.
Wasn't that the reason people were whining about Vista? That the third-party drivers didn't work correctly? If it's a crap excuse when Microsoft does it, why does it suddenly gain legitimacy when Mozilla does it?
In fact, it crashes any time I use LogMeIn - which, at work, is always. So I'm going back to FF2.
Something is wrong with your Firefox profile if that's the only program behaving erratically.
It could be your settings, extensions, plugins (e.g. Flash) or something else in your profile.
Either way, I use 33+ extensions and Firefox 3 is significantly faster and from the data that's been put out that seems to be the case for users who don't have a profile problem.
How shocking! People who went out of their way to install a non-default browser also tend to upgrade said browser? While people who accept the default browser that came with their system tend to not upgrade their browser? Completely amazing. Or not.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
I cant run the latest bugzilla with the latest mozilla
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond."
"Microsoft still has over seven out of ten people satisfied with running a previous version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while users have abandoned Firefox 2 in droves with over half converting to the bleeding edge version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing at Mozilla.org."
Personally, when I see a very fast migration I tend to think the last version must really have sucked. If it did what people wanted already, they'd not be in any big hurry to upgrade. Sure, there's been some exceptions where the new version is the best thing since sliced bread, but they're few and far between by comparison.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
mozilla.org
Suck it MS.
Oops! I thought this was Fark. My bad.
Fuck MS!
Oops! It's not Digg either.
Ah fuck it!
I'm not sure I see the problem. You want something that extremely stable and well-supported, then it's usually not a good idea to jump to the newest version of software directly after its release. That just seems to me to be a standard rule, across the board, no matter which developer you're talking about. When you're using the cutting-edge stuff, it tends to have a couple hiccups and break 3rd-party interactions.
So sure, go back and use FF2 for another 6 months. And then give FF3 another shot, see if it's up to speed for the things you need.
You have a funny definition of "loyal".
Random and weird software I've written.
Uh, I don't think so.
I'm looking at today's logs for a general purpose web site that I host and it's not that way at all.
For 2,564 unique visitors, with 84,000 requests, there were 2,803 requests from Firefox 2.x, and 714 requests from FireFox 3.0.
In contrast, IE 7.0 had 26,370 requests and IE 6.0 had 19,982.
Granted this is a relatively "small" sample, but it's all from today's traffic, and the site is not targeted at any particular demographic (power users, etc).
Anyway, my work machine still has IE6, because they're not bothering to upgrade it on the corporate servers and I use nothing but Firefox on it anyway.
I have a question for the audience - by doing this, would that be leaving those IE6-based security issues open on your computer, even if you don't surf with IE? That's the one thing I'd be worried about in this scenario.
There is a difference between my Ethernet not working and colored tabs.
I was using Firefox 3 beta 5 for months before Firefox 3 was released, and I only had one or two crashes. Normally I don't run beta releases, but it felt just like an official release. And, whaddya know, the IE version that I keep around is IE6 - go figure. Just goes to show another way to crash the statistics. How many more people have both Firefox 3 and IE6 installed on the same comp?
Internet Explorer is more of a utility and is generally presented as such. If you think Microsoft, with its coffers of gold, is unable to create a wild buzzed-up marketing campaign for IE that competes with Firefox's you're wrong. Firefox is a marketing behemoth while IE's footprint is rather subdued. For this reason, IE will generally get more Automatic Update customers than technology enthusiasts or web enthusiasts who will be using Firefox. To think that many web and blog sites' viewers are not web enthusiasts would be simply naive. Imagine what the web stats would like on samsclub.com, walmart.com, or maybe even amazon.com.
Microsoft needs to have IE because it underlines the Microsoft platform as an Internet platform- if they were to concede the browser market, little would separate the usage scenario between Microsoft Windows and Ubuntu Linux for most modern (especially younger) users. I think Microsoft seeks to deliver a platform rather than just an operating system and the web is an integral part of that.
Otherwise, as long as most open source projects like OpenOffice and Firefox still run in Windows (and they run well in Windows), it will continue to be a thorn in Microsoft's side but not fatal. I think Sun invests very heavily in these cross-platform open source projects because they realize that if enough Windows users start using something cross-platform... well... they might just not see why they're needing to buy Windows anymore.
And that's the real game as I see it.
I'm going wherever they value loyalty the most.
I know more than you drink.
Those dialogs are not really for Microsoft it is for their WinQual site, which the Mozilla devs could register FireFix 3 at (For Free) and see all those crash dumps within 24 hours of them happening. WinQual is a great things for devs, everybody should always send that info to Microsoft..It gives even the little devs the abilty to get all thier crash info from their apps without having to architect it in, or provide the storage space for all those apps. I am sure Microsoft probably looks at then as well to see where things might be their fault, but this a great service.
There is a difference between my Ethernet not working and colored tabs.
Not if "my Ethernet" is a euphemism for "my cable" aka "my penis" and "colored tabs" means your little blue tablets. :-)
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
by doing this, would that be leaving those IE6-based security issues open on your computer, even if you don't surf with IE?
Some of them, yes. IE is the handler for a lot of obscure and vulnerable file types, and there have been auto-execute exploits against firefox in the past that depended on these types being auto-executed by IE.
In practice, I've never seen an attack in the wild that takes advantage of such a blended threat.
Done with slashdot, done with nerds, getting a life.
why not blame them? after all, most users here are only happy to eat up all the criticisms about windows attributed to ms but are actually done by the likes of adobe, hp and dell.
since every article about non-ms software obviously needs a ms bash in it maybe it's time to start blaming developers for problems that their software doesn't even cause.
Isn't upgrading your wife a little expensive?
Yeah, but many people feel it's worth it since the upgraded version supports plug-ins.
Bow-ties are cool.
This is slashdot where the news will be twisted to serve it's agenda.
The numbers are inaccurate and are being twisted, as usual.
You can only run IE7 on XP or Vista. There are a lot of windows 2000 machines still out there, and even win98 as well. If it's impossible to upgrade to IE7 then how can it be counted as if people were voluntarily sticking with IE6?
Slashdot never lets the truth get in the way of it's agenda though. Never.
All of that said, I am not uninstalling it. I am just anxiously awaiting the first patch.
Insert Generic Sig Here:
So, Mozilla didn't upset their most loyal customer, the add-on developers did...
Actually, Mozilla did a fine job upsetting their loyal customers -- just look at the "AwesomeBar" which is anything but.
Protip for Developers: When I type in a place for URIs, I want the AutoComplete to auto complete URIs. Not try to do some hairbrained plaintext search of bookmarks/history/uris. When I type in "Youtube.com" I should be finding the most common Youtube videos I have opened, not bookmarks from 3 years ago talking about YouTube.
They get downright rabid on the Mozilla forums if you mention you don't like the "AwesomeBar". And yes, there's a plugin to undo the GRAPHICAL CHANGES of the AwesomeBar -- but it still searches the history/bookmarks files paintext.
Another BIG annoyance: 4chan has a browse button. Upon hitting browse, you can select a lolcat image, and hit OK. This populates a filename field right next to browse.
Now, say you hit back, and want to post a reply WITHOUT an image. Well, guess what, you can't -- there's no way to click on that field and empty it out by hand, clicking on it opens up the Browse field "for you" and there's no "Select No File" or other such option.
There's also an annoying bug about restoring previous sessions, in FF2 you could force quit the process and the next time you opened it, FF2 would ask you to reopen all your tabs. In FF3, it asks, but then reopens the tabs from the FIRST session you ever opened. It does not properly save the tabs you have open as it goes.
Slashdot should auto-append the browser you post with. Would make people think twice about posting stupid statistics that can be spun in any direction that helps prove your aimless argument. Then again /\ http://xkcd.com/438/ -- maybe not.
I use Firefox because i like it BETTER than IE. simple enough reason. no need to over analyze the situation. if they put out a new version that is better than the last, so be it. even better.
-- posted with Firefox 3.0
my UID is Prime. It makes me special.
EXACTLY!! That's what I had to do because 2 of the add-ons that I use constantly aren't yet compatible with FF3. No biggie but the hardest thing to do after you upgrade is to find an older copy of the installer since Mozilla seem to have removed them and it takes quite a while to find a mirror with it. Other than that, just another day in sysadmin-ville.
0x09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0
Sure it's a nice upgrade but... By adding the encoding type to HTTPRequest returns they have foobarded several poorly written applications. For example the Microsoft Maps App used on the website I support is completely broken & I'm getting it the neck :(
The only thing that gives me pleasure is that the stuff I wrote still works and the stuff Microsoft wrote doesn't.
Either way, it's a big hassle for me and surely could have been introduced "softly" rather than forced in knowing it would break stuff.
I've trained my mind to ignore ads as well, but blocking ads can save a lot of bandwidth, processing power, and memory. You might have been doing a better job of ignoring them than I have, but if you take a look at them, people aren't running nice friendly JPEG banners anymore, they're running Flash-based video-playing mouseover-expanding banners of DEATH. Plus in addition to guzzling memory and processing power, they sometimes freeze when the trained monkeys at Adobe make a mistake and release an unstable version of Flash, which happens about once a year in my experience. When it does happen, they break from the usual cycle of releasing a new version every 3 seconds and sometimes take weeks to fix it. But that's not necessary, sometimes flash content causes your browser to freeze for no good reason. Now when you have banners flying around the page like a swarm of angry locusts, the chance of having one freeze is not insignificant.
I can't wait for an open source Flash plugin replacement for Windows. I wonder how Gnash is coming along in Linuxland?
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The ratio of Firefox users (all versions) to IE users is about the same as the ratio of Vista users to XP users.
..but the google browser sync extension is not being ported. And I can't live without google browser sync! Does anyone know of a reasonable replacement? I could live with just syncing my stored passwords since there are other extensions that do only bookmarks.
bite my glorious golden ass.
And I bet that works out really well if you visit a site you've never been to before, and thus don't know if it has intrusive ads. You're proudly riding on the stupidest looking high horse I've ever seen.
I've tried everything, and it just won't go! The best I can manage is to make it look like the original address bar. I don't want something sitting around watching my habits, creating a list of frequented sites from my bookmarks and suggesting matches while I type. I hated auto-complete well enough before, now it has gone to the next level of annoyance. I just want a drop-down address bar that keeps the addresses that I specifically type in and does nothing more! It's ridiculous that the option doesn't exist to revert back to the original address bar. I fear this kind of behavior may be a sign of Firefox's misguided future. :(
"He who can destroy a thing, controls a thing." --Paul Atreides, Dune
Face it. If you're posting on 4chan, nobody will care if your LOLcat is off-topic. You're going to get reamed anyway.
Saying that 55% in 10 days is better than 70% in 18 months is only valid if the adoption rate is linear, and it most certainly is not. It would be better to check in 18 months where Firefox is at, or see where IE was after 10 days. It could well be that they are much closer than this lets on if we compare over similar time frames.
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
It's a little unfair to compare the two, since IE 7 requires XP SP2 or later to run, and Firefox 3 supports a much wider array of platforms. It's not like IE6 users on Windows 2000 (and there are still plenty out there) can upgrade even if they wanted to.
Give me a break. You know why there are still so many IE 6 users out there? Big corporations with web apps that will not run on anything newer. It is hardly Microsoft's fault that GE still uses IE 6 as default because of the numerous applications, that they have paid millions of dollars for, REQUIRE IE 6.
Get off it. You can compare the multitudes of personal users (like myself) that use FF3, only use FF when possible, but trying to say that translates into MS being worried?
Get a clue. MS is still untouchable with IE 6 in corporate areas... perhaps Mozilla should be worried?
What crap.
Because it's not a crap excuse. Mozilla isn't responsible for bad code produced by other organizations.
I don't see these numbers at all with my site... Our IE to FX 52% to 40% Of the IE users 70% are ie7, 25% are ie6 Of the FX users close to 80% are 2.0.0.14, barely more than 10% are fx3. This is out of 600k+ visits
If you need an old version, you should be able to go to ftp://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/firefox/releases/.
But, yeah, I don't see that there's any reason why anyone should be telling you that you can't use an old version. Use what works for you. Hell, use version 0.1 if that's the version that has the features/functionality you want.
"I just ignore ads, and do so with ease."
I can ignore ads too, it's just really hard for me.
Firefox 3 Already Rules the Roost
And it already hung up on me few times within first hr of usage:(
I can bend spoons with my mind. Mere ads don't stand a chance.
I don't see them either (at home anyway) Hosts + dogbone = ad free internet. faster page loading, and actually makes some add ridden sites I wouldn't touch in the past usable. That and I can allways see a picture of my wife, or gf, or my car all while browsing the hottest pron! (j/k about the wife)
How much is your data worth? Back it up now.
Hadnt noticed this before, but you're right. And it's not just 4chan, it's all file inputs. You also cant type at all in the text box part of it, you have to browse for it.
There was a Firefox vulnerability a while ago where you could use javascript to change the focused element of the form while you where typing into a textbox and quickly change back, so that 1 character at a time was added to the file input. Eventually, if you typed all of the right characters in the right order, you could fill up the file input with a valid file path, and when you hit submit it would be uploaded. I wonder if this new behavior is in response to that.
Which would explain the switch for me. I personally don't care what FF is it, as long as AdBlock works.
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser..."
3/10 = 30%. So 70% are running the latest version.
"Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week."
55% of firefox users are running the latest version.
Unless I'm mistaken, 70% > 55%. The ONLY comparison you can make is that percentage. There isn't enough information there to make any other claims.
If we had numbers for how many people updated ie7 after a week, then maybe we could say something. But it's still not a fair comparison - Microsoft didn't have a "download ie7 to break a world record" day to inflate their percentages. If we wait 18 months to see how firefox does, THEN we can say something.
Windows update isn't that friendly for noobs and people who choose to install a new browser will probably be more technically inclined and take care of their software.
The numbers are amusing. Almost all desktops are Windows. All Windows boxes come with IE. Most people have never heard of Firefox. As you walk from cube to cube in the workplace, and home to home people are running IE blissfully without even knowing there is another browser out there, except for IT and web companies of course.
If Amazon, B&N, or Best Buy turned off all IE support today, no message or suggestion, what % of their customers would be locked out and unable to proceed until some effort to convert them was run? 5%, 20% or more like 90%? These users might not be creating the bulk of traffic on the net, they use in low quantities, but they are the bulk of users.
Any browser without NoScript is a loser in my books. Firefox wins.
That said, there's certainly something nice about Safari's appearance and layout: On FF2, I had the iSafari theme installed on Mac, Windows & Linux, which gave me the best of both worlds. Alas, the guy behind iSafari has decided not to update it for FF3 :-(.
It is official; Netcraft now confirms: IE* is dying
One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered IE* community when IDC confirmed that IE* market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 10 percent of all browsers. Coming close on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that IE* has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. IE* is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent browser performance test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict IE's future. The hand writing is on the wall: IE* faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for IE* because IE* is dying. Things are looking very bad for IE*. As many of us are already aware, IE* continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
IE7 is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time IE7 developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: IE7 is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Microsoft leader Bill Gates states that there are 700000 users of IE6. How many users of IE7 are there? Let's see. The number of IE6 versus IE7 posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 700000/5 = 140000 IE7 users. IE5 posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of IE7 posts. Therefore there are about 70000 users of IE5. A recent article put IE6 at about 80 percent of the IE* market. Therefore there are (700000+140000+70000)*4 = 3640000 IE6 users. This is consistent with the number of IE6 Usenet posts.
Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, IE6 went out of business and was taken over by Trumpet Winsock who sell another troubled OS. Now Trumpet is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.
All major surveys show that IE* has steadily declined in market share. IE* is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If IE* is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. IE* continues to decay. Nothing short of a cockeyed miracle could save IE* from its fate at this point in time. For all practical purposes, IE* is dead.
Fact: IE* is dying
"That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond." Why?
Those FF installs will all be personal users, the majority of IE users are on corp desktops. Need you look further.
Actually, Mozilla did a fine job upsetting their loyal customers -- just look at the "AwesomeBar" which is anything but.
Well, it seems to me that it's just a very vocal minority.
And I know some previously very vocal people who have come to like the Awesome Bar very very much.
The tip one of them gave me was: purge your history before you upgrade, let Firefox learn from scratch.
I'd upgraded long before that, of course, but maybe there is something in this piece of advice.
I suspect, though, that Awesome Bar requires some adjustment, and maybe even breaking some habits of the mind.
For instance, you may have to stop thinking where you want to go, and instead start thinking of what you want to find.
I find it most useful, especially with all the bookmark tagging -- I often want to quickly find whatever tidbit I'd once bookmarked and now seems so relevant. The sites I attend regularly are not only bookmarked, but also in Speed Dial; I rarely need to type anything to access them.
The only addition I would like to see in Awesome Bar is Safari-like autocomplete -- with the default choice pre-loaded in the bar, so if I'm happy with it, I could simply press Enter.
Ignore this signature. By order.
VirtualPC does not support Windows Vista Home Premium, which is a dealbreaker. And totally stupid to boot - the differences between the various Vista versions are not so great that VirtualPC should break. It is just more of the same old Microsoft extortion scheme.
I use IEs4Linux for testing instead. This package does work well enough, at least for testing purposes, although some sites tend to peg the CPU at 100%.
I, for one, cannot wait for the day when IE 6 finally bites the dust.
So sure, go back and use FF2 for another 6 months. And then give FF3 another shot, see if it's up to speed for the things you need.
Yeah, real nice.
And then, just as he gets used to Firefox 3, there will be some Alpha or Beta of Firefox 4, and all his troubles will start anew.
Ignore this signature. By order.
55 % on 1 site != 55 % of all firefox users
don't get me wrong, i like and use firefox, but come on!
If by "Open Source zealot" you're implying that I won't or never pay for software, then I'm afraid I'll need to put my hand down again. Nope, I don't buy much commercial application software because I can do must stuff I need to in OSS software but, on Windows XP, I am a registered user of a number of applications that don't have an equivalent in OSS - plus I can 100% GUARANTEE YOU that you will never find an unlicensed or cracked piece of software (okay, maybe a no CD crack or two for games I've bought) on any of the computers I own.
So you don't like OSS software? Fine, don't use it then. What's the problem? It's not as though it cost you anything apart from a bit of your time to try it and not like it.
But I'm sorry to tell you that by keeping my options open, doing some stuff with Linux and some with XP so that I use an appropriate tool just to get a computing job done as quickly as possible, I'm pretty happy with my overall computing experience. So I'm afraid the only "losers" I can think of are those that have lost their noses, after cutting them off "to spite their faces" by refusing to use what can be some great, free tools.
Erm, who's the "zealot" again?
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Maybe you should complain to the right people next time.
You mean like the people who broke backwards compatibility and made needless API changes?
Why do you think they were needless?
I'll admit I'm not versed in the arts of programming, but whatever changes they'd made, I find Firefox 3 much better than Firefox 2 in every single aspect.
Anyway, I can't tell whether the changes were needed, but they are damned well justified.
Ignore this signature. By order.
or at least it seems to me that firefox users are more likely to care about which browser version they're using
Take it easy? I'll take it anyway I can get it . . .
"Microsoft still has three out of ten people running an old version of its browser more than 18 months after Internet Explorer 7 launched, while Firefox has converted more than half of its users to the latest version in just over a week. That should set a few alarm bells ringing in Redmond." The type of people who download Firefox and the type of people who stick with IE are completely different. Firefox is a separate browser that users have to consciously seek out and download. Thus, people who will seek out an alternative browser are more likely to keep up with the latest version. Windows users, however, do not typically seek out new versions. By virtue of the fact that they're using IE, they're likely using it because that's what the computer came with. In order to get IE 7, they have to seek it out and download it. More often than not, they won't do it. Microsoft has geared their software so that even people who don't understand what a browser is can use one. Microsoft has a much tougher job out of the gate when it comes to converting people to new versions of their software. In other words, IE users tend to be less computer literate and less concerned with updating in the first place.
I agree about IE's being integrated with windows being a disadvantage, but I wonder if that cuts both ways.
I'll bet most of the Firefox 3 users are Windows or Mac users. Not because Linux users don't love Firefox, but because the distros' repositories haven't made FF3 available. And why is that? Could it be because Firefox is 'sort of integrated' into various Linux distros due to various library dependencies? I've been told that's not true, but if not, where's my upgrade?
I recently upgraded FF2 to 2.0.0.14 on Mandriva 2008. I was looking for FF3, but it wasn't there. In the meantime, even upgrading FF2 messed me up a little bit. It reinstalled some crappy, non-working Totem plugins that I had deleted in order to get videos to simply play in kaffeine rather than embedding in FF via Totem and then refusing to play without paying for codecs from Fluendo.
In a lot of ways Firefox on Windows provides a better experience than on Linux - auto upgrade, etc. Does it have to be like that? I don't know.
Posted from my Android phone. Oh, I can change this? There, that's better...
Also: cracked versions of XP can't upgrade to ie7.
I thought Microsoft removed the Windows Genuine Advantage check from the Windows Internet Explorer 7 installer.
Use portable versions.
Install them all over the frigging place. FF2, FF3 clean, FF3 experimental, etc.
You can install the password importer/exporter on all of em, if that's your dilemma.
(Oh wait your on linux?)
Script it,
intercept the icon call to the executable,
#!/bin/bash ./mozilla.3.NOT ~/.mozilla
mv ~/.mozilla ~/.mozilla.2.NOT && mv
Crashed?
Add some logic, ./ backup on startup
cp
rm -rf ~/.mozilla
God I am a retard windows user, and I could work it out.
There's ways to do it. THINK. TEST. TRY. LEARN. /usr/bin/firefox -ProfileManager
Or
search for fp.tar.gz
Maybe you have IceWeasle? duh....
$ mv ~/.mozilla/iceweasel ~/.mozilla/iceweasel.hold
$ mv ~/.mozilla/firefox ~/.mozilla/iceweasel
If all else fails use wine + portable firefox
Then again you could rebrand it to some predetermined name.
http://kb.mozillazine.org/Rebranding_Firefox
I'd also search for the ~/.mozilla/profile and change that path...
Okay.
Peace
Any avid internet browser (person) should know about tabbed browsing and use it. The fact that many IE people are on older versions of IE, which don't have it, just goes to show that IE users are stupid. (If not obvious for other reason)
"To be is to do." --Socrates
"To do is to be." -- Aristotle
"Do-Be-Do-Be-Do..." --Sinatra
I find FF works great in Windows but is unstable in Linux.
And yet, in great double standard, Microsoft for some reason is responsible for bad code produced by other organizations.
Take the following (true) example:
Windows would occasionally blue screen on me. This turned out to be due to a bug in the nVidia drivers. Complaining about this caused people to blame Microsoft.
Linux would completely lock up on me when I resized windows. This turned out to be due to a bug in the - take a guess - nVidia drivers. (Seems to be a pattern.) Complaining about this causes the blame to go straight to nVidia where it belongs. Sometimes the blame was even for writing crappy drivers, more often it was because nVidia's drivers are closed source, but that's another rant for another day.
The original point was that people hold a dual standard when it comes to Microsoft and really everyone else. Microsoft breaks backwards compatibility? Groans of "anti-trust" and "monopoly abuse." Mozilla breaks backwards compatibility? It's "progress" and "the way things work."
I do want to go on record and say that I, personally, agree with Mozilla's strategy of improvement over maintaining backwards compatibility. I'd just like to see some consistency in treatment which doesn't break down into "closed source bad, open source good."
This is lame, and off topic, but if I could pick one thing to "fix," (essentially a "parallel reality) I would go back to June 4, 1968.
If Bobby Kennedy had lived, he'd have won the nomination and he'd have beaten Nixon just like his brother did. He would've served until 1976, just a couple years before I was born.
Think of it.. No Nixon, no bombing of Cambodia, no Vietnam War after 1969 really, no Watergate, no Jimmy Carter, perhaps even no Ron Reagan, no rise of conservatism stemming out of the recession of the '70s, no George Bush.
Sure, there'd have been new bad things.
But I'd take that reality in a heartbeat. No questions asked.
Sorry. Continue.
FF3 does not work well with SAP, our VPN, our timekeeping software, and a few other 'brower' apps. FF2 was good. Went back there. I still use FF3 to browse FROM work. The home PC though is still FF2.
"If you are on fire you can just stop, drop, and roll. If you fall into Lava you are just dead." - my 5yr old daughter
The Oldbar addon fixes the problem perfectly, by making the correct (yeah, correct, I said it) suggestions first, and only showing "searched for" suggestions if it there are no better options.
Best of both worlds. I do frequently use the history search, but it never gets in my way when I don't want it.
The problem with alarm bells in Redmond is that it is actually quite difficult to isolate any individual bell in the absolute cacophony that is present there at any given time.
I like the awesomebar. So now mozilla gets to choose between supporting me, or supporting you. Sucks to be you.
Good job... lets assume the adoption rate is linear. In 18 years you'll have more FF3 users than people on the earth!
And not just mine. See http://support.mozilla.com/tiki-view_forum_thread.php?comments_parentId=79084&forumId=1 I even tried to post a story on ./ but apparently it's rejected.
well, duh, ... its Golden. That's like asking 'Who is buried in Grant's tomb.'
Think global, act loco
"The previous version of Firefox was so bad that half their users have already upgraded to Firefox 3. Our Internet Explorer browser is so good that people keep using version 6 more than 18 months after version 7 has been available." - PHB
The hell they do. It's called "options". Checkboxes mysteriously spring to mind...
/. would only load one out of 10 times.... I'd get ads taking over the space, my banking system wouldn't work on it -- but would on 3.0RC1 at home -- amoung other things going wrong for me
If you do academic research (and use lots of citations), Zotero is pretty cool. It's a specialised database that embeds itself in Firefox, and any time a web page contains recognisable research citations, little icons appear (research paper, book, etc.) that you can click on to add that citation and notes to the db. Also does page snapshots for offline reading. It's like a bookmarking app on steroids for people who write research papers.
I don't think there's an IE equivalent.
Eric Baird
Maybe if companies didn't build applications on brain-dead, proprietary, single-vendor platforms they wouldn't run into these kinds of problems.
Please tell that to our customers, who require us to use such software to do business with them. :-(
(We're a small company working as a sub-contractor to industry giants. We do things their way, or we go out-of-business.)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
blah blah blah.. we get it.. firefox ftw GOD!
Not to nitpick... http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_Panda
Who modded this down? He's got a damn good point, even for an AC. Let one behaviour be the default, but give people the option to switch back. Unless there's a good reason for it (spaghetti code, perpetuating bugs), give them a binary switch to play with.
Cynical Idealist
Ask any IE user why he doesn't use something better, and the reply will usually be "because it's already there."
If they're too lazy to download anything better, what makes you think they'll upgrade to a newer version?
And? We know that MS has 70% of its IE users on IE7, and we know Mozilla has, according to a site, 55% of its users on FF3. We know FF3 reached this benchmark, on a single site, after just over a week. Do we know what IE7's usage rates where after just over a week? No. No conclusions can be drawn. Slashdot should not be posting crap designed to fool stupid people.
Slashdot: Playing Favorites Since 1997
I'm not running Firefox 3 at work because setting the environment variable MOZ_DISABLE_PANGO to 1 appears to have no effect on my "error while loading shared libraries: libpangocairo-1.0.so.0: cannot open shared object file: No such file or directory" and I lack the permissions to install the necessary RPM (Redhat 9).
Eventually everyone is going to be migrated to Ubuntu here, but no estimates on timeframe yet.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Why would he jump on the beta if he's slow to change? He'll have to decide what matters more, won't he?
Nobody's stopping him from using 1.0.
Or IE, or Opera, or something Webkit-based. Somebody whining about not being able to run an alpha or beta web browser while still have every pixel exactly where they're used to having it, needs to get a little perspective.
Are users satisfied with there IE experience, and looking for improvements or new features in Firefox? Maybe people aren't upgrading IE because it works just fine for them.
and enhanced security you can do these things: \
Get a good hosts list. This will tell your computer that a long list of websites are unreachable. Good ones include badware hosts and ad farms.
You can prevent your computer from talking to large chunks of the Internet. If you don't go to websites in hacker country you can configure your firewall or routing table to prevent communication with bad netblocks like china, Brazil and Lithuania.
All of that data you don't even get makes your browser that much faster whatever it is.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Protip for Developers: When I type in a place for URIs, I want the AutoComplete to auto complete URIs. Not try to do some hairbrained plaintext search of bookmarks/history/uris. When I type in "Youtube.com" I should be finding the most common Youtube videos I have opened, not bookmarks from 3 years ago talking about YouTube.
Type "//YouTube" instead.
(BTW: I agree, though, that there should be an option for FF2-style autocomplete - even though since the upgrade I couldn't live without the FF3 TerrificMultipurposeBarWithAnAwfulName anymore.)
At least on my primary machine I've had to switch to using IE7 as my primary browser. Firefox suddenly can't remember prefereces, and I've cleared all the cookies, cached pages, and private data several times. I essentially have given up on firefox on this machine.
My secondary machine is a 64 Bit os, and I've had different problems with FireFox on it. I think most of those problems seem related to plugins that don't work correctly in the hybrid environment. Still it's unfortunate that the web has devolved to a state where a browser can't supply what's needed to view the web. (most of the requierd add-ins are flash these days)
Is there any chance the FireFox crew could release a 64 bit native version of FireFox for Windows?
You are equating downloads with users, and also forget that Firefox 3 is being distributed as part of Ubuntu.
Consumers upgrade products that show improvements between releases.
can anyone give a general synopsis as to how many modules are 3+ compatible so far? kthxbi!
milk.x
MilkMiruku
If you've never had a Coke in your life, but you've seen the logo everywhere you go for a decade, when faced with 10 unknown colas and no opportunity to do research, you're most likely to pick the Coke because it feels like a known element even though it isn't.
If this is the context in which advertising will control me, let's just say I'm not worried. And it occurs to me that there remains the option to buy none of the 10 sodas, familiar or not.
AdBlock is a great tool for people who don't want to see ads. But if people think they are better or more independent humans for using it, they're fooling themselves.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
MS made their own standards with IE6, many corporations fell for it, and now they're stuck with IE6.
this is a big tell tale of how the righteous standards compliant open source products based on real open source standards will eventually rule.
those who surf the PCpro website and are savvy enough to understand have embraced the truth, and followed the path of the righteous, MS be damned!
"The Most Fun Possible on 4 wheels" is at SunBuggy in Las Vegas
Here is some data, via Google Analytics, from a site that I run:
Jun 13 - 19
IE 62%
FF 30%
Jun 20 - 26
IE 59%
FF 32%
Pretty close as you can see.
However, when you look at the breakdown for Firefox version, you see:
Jun 13 - 19
2.x 72%
3.0 16%
Jun 20 - 26
2.x 57%
3.0 32%
A big jump doubling 3.0's share within Firefox.
2bits.com, Inc: Drupal, WordPress, and LAMP performance tuning.
I don't know why, but the FireFox team can never seem to get scrolling right. I didn't switch to FireFox 1 because of it (the way the scroll wheel was handled as the mouse cursor moved over the different controls as the page scrolled up and down made it almost unusable).
I use my Toshiba laptop most of the time, and it has a trackpad. The sides of the track pad are "scroll areas", and I use it extensively, "flicking" to scroll rapidly up and down the page, or touching and barely moving my finger to scroll more slowly.
This works perfectly in every application I have.
Except FireFox.
In FireFox three, the page just sits there. Oh, the cursor changes to the scrolling indicator, but FireFox just completely ignores the fact that I'm telling it to scroll. Once you get used to this method of scrolling, having to use the track pad to drag the cursor over to the scroll bars, and eithee click blank areas, or grab the scroll-bar thumb to scroll is just way too much effort.
It's very frustrating. My attempt at using FireFox 3 lasted just as long as it did for FireFox 1 and FireFox 2 ... about 20 minutes. I finally got so frustrated with the damn thing I just uninstalled it.
Why can't the FireFox team get such simple and obvious things as scrolling right? And why doesn't this crap bother anyone else??
I've tried on various machines, so it's not "just me", or just THIS machine.
Very, very annoying.
- Spryguy
There are three kinds of people in this world: those that can count and those that can't
*Short musical note of angelic choir*
on any of the computers I own!!
For instance, you may have to stop thinking where you want to go, and instead start thinking of what you want to find.
If I didn't know where I wanted to go, I'd use Google. The address bar, a.k.a. the URL bar, is there to type (guess what?) addresses or URLs. If you don't know exactly what you want, there is a little Google bar right next to it.
One of the main things people that don't like the "Awesome" bar want is consistency. If I do actions A, B, C today and get the result Y, it would be nice to know that I will still get the same result in a week if I do the same actions. I don't want my computer to "adapt", "learn" and "think" on its own. It's a fscking machine that I own after all, and I want it to do behave consistently.
Amazingly, It's taken projects like End6 to try and drag people off of Internet Explorer 6 and older. For some reason, Microsoft just can't do it and those of us that are sick of fixing our aunt's computers after an compromised IE6 vulnerability killed it, have decided to do something about this. After of course upgrading said aunt to Firefox.
I was using straight Mozilla since before name change to Firefox. Before that I had constant browser hijackings, uncontrollable popups even with blockers and a host of problems.
Been browsing happily ever since. And I used Mozilla on windows xp. After switching to Debian its been even better.
Why? Firefox users update from 2 to 3 because version 2 pretty much sucked.
IE6 and IE7, the difference is in a bit of web standards compatibility (that most websites work around anyway under IE6) and that hideous new button bar. There's not a great reason to update from IE6 other than "security" like the phishing filter and the gold download bar getting more and more in the way, and that is barely a back of the mind concern for most of the browsing public. IE7 is not faster, it doesn't render any popular, well-written websites better, it just makes developers' lives easier. Users don't give a crap in the same way.
I think the difference here would be that Firefox 2 to 3 would never be mandated by Mozilla, whereas Microsoft could always slip IE7 as a mandatory security update to Windows, seeing as large swathes of it would like to make use of MSHTML, ActiveX plugins and the changes there. You can't say that Firefox improves your OS, only your internet experience :)
Personally I dropped IE8 on my system to do some development work and check some things out, and installed IETab in Firefox so I could switch between IE and Gecko and run Firebug/YSlow at the same time. I am in the minority I think..
I really do wonder what alarm bells must be ringing, for Microsoft to look around and wonder why Firefox has such a high upgrade rate..
AFAIK, v2 will not automatically upgrade itself to v3, or even alert the user that v3 is available.
Mozilla should consider pushing an update to v2 which would allow this.
Believe it or not, many, many surfers out there (and 'puter users in general) don't keep up with news, and for various reasons find manual upgrades not to be worth the bother.
The easier Mozilla makes it on Joe User to get to v3, the better off it and they will be in the long run.
Who modded this down? He's got a damn good point, even for an AC. Let one behaviour be the default, but give people the option to switch back. Unless there's a good reason for it (spaghetti code, perpetuating bugs), give them a binary switch to play with.
Spaghetti code is the reason given, yes.
Personally, I think it's a textbook example as to why Open Source isn't taking off on the Desktop.
User: "Hey, you changed this functionality, it's not what I expect anymore, can I change it back?"
Developer: "Well, no, cause I changed it, and I'm VASTLY more intelligent than you, so... maybe you should just get used to the new way?"
So in other words, it's like Closed Source but without the PR department keeping the Developers from talking to the users directly. *Rimshot*