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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
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'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.
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.
I can't upgrade IE.
Since large bits of my job involve web interfaces to various systems, I have to make sure things still render right on IE 6. Since you can't run 6 and 7 on the same machine, I stay on 6. When I need to check 7 I ask a coworker who has upgraded to check it out.
Of course, I use FF for everything because IE 6 was so far behind. Seven has improvements, but I still find annoyances, and I'm happily used to FF.
Then again, I can't go to FF3 quite yet either. Needs to be a little bigger than 50% (at a tech heavy site). I'd like to see the numbers for Yahoo or Google.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
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?
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.
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.
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
Why don't you use something like this http://tredosoft.com/Multiple_IE ?
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?
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.
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).
Seems like you're not alone. I'm holding off upgrading until it's sorted out a bit more. FF2 works just fine for me, thankyouverymuch.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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.
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.
There is the ever-present threat of Operating Systems being marginalized to a role of providing a portal to a web-based OS. Whomever controls the browser will get a good chunk of ad revenue.
"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
I've been having the same issue (FF3 on WinXP SP3). Firefox crashes on me several times a day, especially when using Gmail. It fullout crashes and kills the browser for me.
On my work machine, it was crashing so often I had to downgrade to FF2 because stability is more important than the new features.
I hope Mozilla addresses the issues and provides a fix soon. As much as people love FF3, it's gonna run into walls with adoption if something as commonly used as Gmail crashes.
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.
They won the first browser war. But failed to meet their victory objectives.
What they were hoping if the won the broser war they were able to push their Technologies such as ActiveX, VB Script forcing people to say on windows to browse the web aka MSN v.2.0, having Web Servers use IIS as it would be the only server that will have the IE particular features Slowly replace HTML MS Office formats having all development need to be in done in Front Page for simple stuff or Visual Studios for more complex stuff.
Why did they fail to meet these objectives. A couple of unforeen side effect.
Linux and Apache. While Linux has a small marketshare for the Desktop, for servers it is much larger and far more common. And Apache is still the #1 web server. Being the programmers for these systems tend to have Unix/Linux experience with Apache for the most part for more popular sites they made sure that their code was as much platform independent as possible, by making the justification if we don't pay an extra $5,000 for these features then we won't isolate 10% of the market, an easy sell.
There was DOJ case which put Microsoft in the bad eye of the public. No longer was it considered an exciting company inovating the future. But a big corporation out for itself, squashing others. Making them less likly to use IE only features.
Next was right after the browser wars and Microsoft won, the Bad people who make spyware, malware started targeting IE the victor using easy holes such as ActiveX and the such making many browsers weary of using them, causing the rest of the people who use such features in their site to take them off. As well viruses and hacks against IIS.
Microsoft then needed to shift gears and make thier system reasonably secure now. Causing a huge delay in IE 6 production time until IE 7 leaving both IE 6 and 7 years behind its competitor and causing developers to stick with the tride and true universally compatible methods.
Adobe/Macromedia Flash (Love it or hate it) Killed Java Applets as it was faster and looked better and Active X (for over the internet (Active X survied a lot longer for intranet and extranet apps)) because it was more secure and didn't even think about writting to your disk. Being used by advertisers insured flash was installed widely.
And on and on. IE won it Browser War but it didn't get the riches.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
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.
MultipleIEs is nice, but IE6 doesn't behave correctly. For whatever reason, it inherits some of IE7's HTML/CSS rendering and JS execution. I can't think of a specific example to test at the moment, but it's not the same as having separate installs.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
Those FF installs will all be personal users, the majority of IE users are on corp desktops. Need you look further.
So when you come across a site that has content that you enjoy, but also contains annoying ads
Then I have a decision... but I also have yet to have this happen. I have found a pretty high correlation between sites with terrible ads and sites with completely idiotic (in my view, at least) content.
That's quite a minority opinion, and yet you don't understand why people don't agree with you?
I understand it perfectly well. I just don't agree.
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
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.
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.
"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 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!
well, duh, ... its Golden. That's like asking 'Who is buried in Grant's tomb.'
Think global, act loco
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
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.
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