Firefox Now Serious Threat to IE in Europe

Tookis writes "Mozilla's Firefox web browser has made dramatic gains on Microsoft's Internet Explorer throughout Europe in the past year with a marked upturn in FF use compared to IE over the past four months, according to French web monitoring service XiTiMonitor. A study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that FF had 27.8% market share across Eastern and Western Europe, IE had 66.5%, with other browsers including Safari and Opera making up the remaining 5.7%. In some key European markets FF has already reached parity and is threatening to overtake IE as the market leading browser."

Browser usage

[by Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco reports from the our-logs-show-nobody-using-ie-anyway dept. but this has got me interested: what are the percentages of usage of browsers for accessing Slashdot?

Re:Browser usage

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

Mod parent up, please share some details!

Re:

[Crayon Kid (700279)]

How relevant would the Slashdot figure would be, anyway? Of course a bunch of geeks worth their salt wouldn't use IE unless somehow forced (work computer, office policy and such).

Re:Browser usage

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Mod parent up, but can we also have a breakdown on weekday Vs weekend figures. During the week, a lot of people are accessing Slashdot from work, where they are not allowed to install non-IE browsers. At the weekend (hopefully) the percentage of Slashdot users at work will be lower. Just don't forget about time zones...

Re:

[ehrichweiss (706417)]

If this isn't a parody then we need to get all the people with IQ >120 together and get them to start making babies like crazy cause "Shelley" goes beyond retarded. I mean she argues that Google/blogger is hosted on M$ servers when it's well known that they are not. Maybe it's a Micro$loth troll site. Who knows...but send the smart hotties my way for "population explosion therapy". Only 3 at a time please.

Great

[niceone (992278)]

Now I'm going to have to find something more obscure to avoid the attentions of the malware makres... what was the name of that other one... Icemeasles?

Re:Great

[muffen (321442)]

If you want to avoid malware, go for Lynx, I bet you there isn't even one threat that works under Lynx.

... the actual webpage might not work either, but that's just a minor detail :)

Re:Great

[yohanes (644299)]

Ah, even lynx can be exploited (for example: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-206-1 [ubuntu.com]) to make room for malwares.
I want to use wget, but it is also has a history of bugs that can be exploited [google.com].
I'll stick with telnet, and parse it with my eyes. Although it is a bit difficult for HTTPS sites.

Re:

[catscan2000 (211521)]

Or you can use `openssl s_client -host www.somesite.com -port 443` for HTTPS sites :-)

IE 7

[by Anonymous Coward]

Once you've seen IE 7, you too will want to switch to any other browser.

Re:IE 7

[quintesse (654840)]

You might be modded funny, but it's TRUE! I don't know what MS was thinking but IE7 is butt-ugly! It's turning in one of those christmas tree decoration interfaces like those media player skins. Out the window with consistent design etc, let's make it actually more difficult to use our products, maybe then the people will understand the added value of windows! No, really , I have NO idea why they're doing it, it just seems illogical.

Re:

[Niten (201835)]

since IE7 was released Ive had no reason to use firefox unless some old website was not designed properly

That's more likely to go the other way around: With few exceptions, a properly designed site should render just fine in Firefox. On the other hand, IE 7 is still quite buggy [gtalbot.org], therefore any quirkiness you happen across is likely to be for the benefit of IE and not other browsers.

Re:IE 7

[_xeno_ (155264)]

Look again - closely. The effect is fairly subtle under the XP look but much more noticeable under Vista with the full Aero Glass effects enabled.

When you position the mouse cursor over a scrollbar, it's supposed to light up. Under Vista, this means going from a gray color to a blue color, making it fairly noticeable. Under XP's look, this means going from a light blue to an even lighter blue. If you're using the Classic look, there's nothing to see, since there is no mouse-over effect.

Vista's full Aero Glass additional has a fade-in effect where the button background on the arrows is supposed to appear. (Firefox fails to do this, just like IE7.) Likewise, there's a fade-out effect when the mouse leaves the scrollbar that both IE7 and Firefox fail to do. Of course, IE7 can't do it since it never did the original mouse-over effect.

Under IE7, this effect never happens. Mousing-over the scrollbar does nothing.

I've got a movie of it happening under Vista using FRAPS. Unfortunately I'll have to go hunting for something to change it into a useful format, since I doubt a lot of people have the FRAPS codec installed.

Keep in mind this only happens in the MSHTML control. All form controls inside of MSHTML are emulated. You can easily verify this by looking at a form button with a very large caption - IE6/IE7 stretch out the button background to the point it looks strange. Not to mention that all form controls in IE7 are missing Vista's Aero Glass fade-in/fade-out effects.

Wish for US

[markdavis (642305)]

Well, I wish that were the case in the US. There are still *FAR* too many sites that have IE-only components. So, although the vast majority (90%+) of sites we use (at work) work for us (we use only FireFox), there are still a few important sites that cause a nightmare for us. Since we use Linux only, running IE is not an option. (And yes, I know about emulators and IES4Linux, which are nice, but don't work everywhere, don't work well for thin clients, and/or are difficult to maintain).

What is more irritating is that those few IE-only sites are about 95% working with Firefox. There are usually only a few parts of the site that don't work (but that is all it takes). With minimal correction/effort, those sites would work on any platform. But even after repeated begging (on one, for YEARS), a few such sites have still had no interest in "fixing" things. I do wish there was a version of Firefox/Mozilla that had an IE-compatibility mode... "FireIE Fox" or something, for use in such cases.

Fortunately, another few broken sites finally "saw the light", probably due to complaints from people like us, and fixed things.

Re:Wish for US

[janrinok (846318)]

I was reading a few weeks ago that, in Europe, the impetus to change web sites that only supported IE was significantly increased by showing how large a market share they were missing out by tying their site to proprietary software 'standards'. I am trying to find the professional journal in which I read the article and, when I find it, I will try to find if there is an electronic link that I can post here for others to read. The usage of Firefox, Opera et al in Europe is much higher than in the States and so our businesses have much more to lose but the principle is the same wherever you are, particularly in these days of globalisation.

There is no need for a IE-Compatibility mode in Firefox/Mozilla, simply get MSIE to use the accepted standards and the problem is solved.

Re:Wish for US

[janrinok (846318)]

Now look, I didn't say the Microsoft isn't stupid, but changing the rest of the world to suit MS is not the way I choose to go. Why should we modify everything else to suit one company?

But the solution is easier still. MSIE doesn't have to change, if people just stop designing websites that use MS-specific extensions. It can be done, you know. MSIE can accept whatever it wants but if no-one is using MS specific extensions then it will still work.

Re:

[markdavis (642305)]

>It's better to complain and get the issue fixed than it is to waste time on the endless task of chasing M$'s tail. Well, I agree with that, which is why I *do* complain, and give lots of info and why. I also tell my staff the same thing, and also my LUG. But if they don't fix it, it is still me that suffers. This is a case where I can't choose to just "use another vendor", unfortunately.

Methodology

[echucker (570962)]

While the article doesn't mention how, a previous study [xitimonitor.com] on XiTiMonitor's site shows that they're using share of visits by each browser type to the sites in question.

Where do the stats come from?

[thona (556334)]

From the largest site i have access to - a medical online shop, in fact: last 30 days: IE: 78,26% of visitors Firefos: 16,33% of visitors Gets funnier if you look at the revenue: IE: 85,9% of revenue Firefox: 9,46% of revenue. I can not really see "great advances". Firefox is a respectable and solid nr 2, but that basically is it.

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[6Yankee (597075)]

From the largest site i have access to - a medical online shop

Ah, it's you! Stop sending me email. :P

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[A beautiful mind (821714)]

So you're saying that your sample is indicative of the trend, while a much larger sample consisting of 90k websites - isn't?

Not what we're seeing

[abhi_beckert (785219)]

This is not at all what we're seeing with a UK based employment site with ~40,000 hits per month. What we see is 55% IE 6, 25% IE 7, 12% FireFox, 4% safari, and all other browsers below 1% (every browser from opera to lynx (!!)).

Re:

[dvice_null (981029)]

It is no wonder if you see low statistics in UK. That is because it is one of the worst countries in Firefox market share:

Slovenia 47.9%
Finland 45.4%
Slovakia 40.4%

6 nations 35-40% ( Ireland jumped here (55% more users since last monitoring 4 months ago) and now has 38.6% share )
6 nations 30-35%
0 nations 25-30%
8 nations 20-25%
8 nations 15-20% ( UK is here with 18.7% )

http://www.xitimonitor.com/fr-fr/barometre-des-nav igateurs/firefox-juillet-2007/index-1-1-3-102.html [xitimonitor.com]

Re:

[SiChemist (575005)]

If you had read the article (and ignore the typo where they put IE instead of FF), they say:

"Although clear market share gains for FF were reported in every single European territory, countries where [FF] still has not reached 20% market share include Britain, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Norway and Denmark."

So, your results DO match up with theirs.

IE7 WGA?

[physicsnick (1031656)]

I wonder if this has anything to do with Microsoft refusing IE7 upgrades to non-genuine Windows installations. Everyone I know who has a pirated copy of Windows (mostly self-made boxes) uses Firefox, while nearly everyone I know who has a genuine copy of Windows (mostly laptops) uses IE7.

I'm not sure why they refuse it to non-genuine users anyway. I can understand security patches, but this? No one is going to go out and buy Windows just to use IE7.

It seems everything Microsoft does to curb piracy these days hurts its monopoly.

Popularity Contests

[gerrysteele (927030)]

FOSS should not be obsessed with the popularity contest of userbase size. It will only come back to haunt you in the end. Like the man said, "The majority are always wrong"

Market Share Matters

[roca (43122)]

Browser market share matters. As long as IE had all the market share, Web developers tended to ignore Web standards and build sites that only worked in IE --- it's a simple economic decision on their part. Wherever Firefox has major market share, they can't do that anymore. They are forced to build sites that at least work in Firefox too. That has the nice side effect that those sites are now usable by Linux and Mac users, and they're also much more likely to work in other browsers. Everybody wins --- except Microsoft.

This is why it's not enough for us to just believe in freedom and build free software. We have to make sure it succeeds in the market, or we'll lose the ability to communicate with the non-free world and ultimately our free software will be useless.

The figures are misleading

[janrinok (846318)]

There are many Firefox users who select MSIE as their User Agent string in order to get sites to even allow them access, banks being one particular group that springs to mind, but I am sure that there are others. I cannot imagine that any MSIE users would need to select Firefox as the User Agent. In which case the figures will be conservative for Firefox usage and optimistic for MSIE usage. What we don't know, or at least I don't know, is how much this skews the figures.

Re:

[Crayon Kid (700279)]

Please give it a rest. If this old argument carried some water when used with Opera, it's silly to use it with Firefox. Common sense dictates that there's far too little to gain by simply changing the UA string, and even so there are far too few people knowledgeable enough to attempt it to make a sizable difference.

Re:The figures are misleading

[janrinok (846318)]

Well changing the UA string with my UK bank's website makes the difference between 'Your browser is not supported' to a fully functioning web page which obviously doesn'trequire anything in IE to make it work. Mock all you want, I have to do this all the time - and I have just checked again to make sure that I am correct.

Leaving 5.7% to the other browsers....

[walter_f (889353)]

...like Opera and Safari.

That makes Steve Jobs' recent presentation using a diagram with just I.E. (ca. 75%) and Safari (supposedly ca. 25%) shares shown for some time in the future an even more ridiculous event... :-)

Think that's bad?

[dbolger (161340)]

Where I work, one of the systems has us completely locked in to using Netscape 4.0. I can't see any reason for it in terms of what the system does, but it refuses to even give you access with any other browser. Netscape is installed on every PC so they can access this system, and because management hope to "eventually" get rid of the system entirely, they refuse to update it to work on any other browser.

So, when you are cracking up because of idiot webmasters locking you in to using IE7 to view their sites, just know you don't have the absolute worst of it :)

IE still had some + points

[Toreo asesino (951231)]

Can I just first I'm a huge FireFox fan, and am indeed writing this very message from it.

That said, IE is the only browser where you can easily configure it enterprise wide, extremely easily. Want to lock down specific websites to text & images only for thousands of machines remotely? It's as easy as doing it in "Internet Options" in Windows. Want to switch off JavaScript internet-wide for specific departments/offices in your enterprise? Same again - just set the group policy option.

Basically, ALL of the IE options are over-ridable at a Group Policy level, built into every AD system since Windows 2000 Server. IE is the only browser that makes this possible. That, folks is quite often why IE is the corporate browser of choice - it's the only one that can be centrally managed like that.

Re:IE still had some + points

[Yosho (135835)]

That said, IE is the only browser where you can easily configure it enterprise wide, extremely easily. Want to lock down specific websites to text & images only for thousands of machines remotely?

I would argue that this isn't the sort of thing that a browser should be doing. If you want to strip Javascript out of particular sites or something similar, you should set up a transparent proxy at your router to do that to all outbound traffic. Why modify software on hundreds of computers when you could just do it on one instead? Not to mention that in that case, you don't have to worry about anybody installing an alternative browser or plugging an unauthorized computer into the network. They'll still get filtered, too.

Re:IE still had some + points

[BiggerIsBetter (682164)]

That's doable for Firefox as well:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:2.0_Institutional_ Deployment [mozilla.org]

and inparticular:

http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/mcs/FirefoxADM/Readme.ht m [ed.ac.uk]

It's FX, not FF!

[Tutsumi (1128403)]

Bloody hell, it's people like you who spread a false abbreviation. FX is Firefox. FF is Final Fantasy. Check the spreadfirefox website for FX. They ask people to stop calling them FF. DO IT.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Bin Naden (910327)]

Junk (I.E.) is being replaced with more junk (Firefox). Yes, it's better junk, but junk none the less.

At least it isn't proprietary junk that doesn't follow standards and tries to shut out the competition. It's a step forward.

Re:Hoo-ray

[mrbluze (1034940)]

I think the success Firefox is having at the moment will drive its development further. Because it's not a commercial product we're not going to get the IE experience where the lazy bastards never fix anything and just add features that are broken. There is a genuine drive to innovate and make something that withstands the scrutiny of the community.

Maybe it will pave the way for some proper competition like Opera and others, which are bound to win more market share as the firefox using public start to hear about other alternatives.

Personally though, I've found Firefox to have gotten better and better with time. It's gotten very stable and has plug ins which run well and reliably. It's definitely ready for prime time.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Pieroxy (222434)]

And AT LAST, Internet Explorer is back to where it belongs: A nice tool to download Firefox. ;-)

Re:Hoo-ray

[Winckle (870180)]

I'm with you on tool, nice on the other hand... :-)

Re:Hoo-ray

[TheRaven64 (641858)]

Isn't that what ftp.exe is for?

Re:

[RonnyJ (651856)]

Maybe it will pave the way for some proper competition like Opera and others, which are bound to win more market share as the firefox using public start to hear about other alternatives.

I'm not sure that's the correct term to use, since Opera already is 'proper competition', and has been for a long time. It may have a low market share, but it still gets huge praise from it's users whenever it's mentioned on Slashdot, and I consider it to be a better browser than Firefix. It doesn't get the mainstream atte

Re:Protectionism?

[cp.tar (871488)]

Does this statistic underline or undermine the argument that integrating and bundling IE with Windows harmed the competition?

It does neither.

That the bundling of IE with Windows practically destroyed the competition at one point is a historical fact; however, the competition's picking up again has got to do with something completely different, though related: having annihilated the competition, MS stopped innovating - actually, MS stopped doing anything about it. The war was won, there was nothing left to do, and any further innovation in a market you monopolize would be redundant.

Netscape failed because Microsoft managed to build a good enough product, bundled it with Windows and then improved at least to the point people wouldn't bother downloading Netscape. It was a hard blow, and Netscape never recovered, though they might have.

Now, history is repeating itself; this time Microsoft sat on their collective heels and Mozilla hit them.

Re:Hoo-ray

[SpecTheIntro (951219)]

Yeah, the well-known insurmountable power of communism over Western school systems. I'm pissing my pants.

It has nothing to do with communism, and everything to do with the politics of WWII. The reason Nazi Germany is covered more thoroughly and often thought of as worse than Stalin's USSR is because:

1.) Stalin was our ally at the time, and pointing out the systematic slaughter he carried out against his own people would not have been good for domestic support of the war.
2.) The Nazis committed the Holocaust, and we in the West have convinced ourselves that killing based on political ideology is more palatable than killing based on ethnic/cultural/religious identity.

If you bother to pick up a history book, though, or even just look at the total dead under Stalin's regime, you'll quickly begin to see that Hitler had nothing on Stalin. Hitler killed roughly 9-11 million in the Holocaust. The general consensus, according to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], is that Stalin killed at least that many, and likely killed nearly twice that amount. Stalin just chose the right group of people with whom to ally. And, he didn't specifically target the Jews. If history has taught us anything, it's that killing the Jews never works out as intended.

Re:

[MightyMartian (840721)]

There's a reason why the Holocaust garners more attention than Stalin's purges or the vast number of deaths attributed to Mao's Great Leap Forward, and that is because the Holocaust wasn't merely a mass-murder, but an institutionalized bureaucratic machine. This wasn't some mad man forcing his subservient lieutenants to shoot Polish officers, but rather an entire government apparatus, with civil servants, budgets and records, all dedicated towards the murder of every Jew within the Nazi's grasp. No one is

Re:

[SpecTheIntro (951219)]

Hitler and his cohorts were not ordering the murdering millions of Jews to force subservience out of conquered populations, or to destroy political rivalries.

Precisely, and this is what I pointed out: what, inherently, makes Hitler's killing worse than Stalin's? Why do you believe that killing a particular ethnic group is more heinous than killing political prisoners? Stalin created his own institutionalized machine, he was just remarkably less adept at keeping records than Hitler. Why does Hitler's profe

Re:

[Knuckles (8964)]

You don't think Stalin's gulags and deportation camps were just that?

Show me a Soviet gas chamber. Plus, regarding the singularity of the Holocaust, you are arguing against probably >> 90% of (as least European) historians, and your arguments are not new.

You are arguing what I pointed out as absurd, earlier

No I don't. I am arguing that Nazi Germany was the point where enlightenment horribly turned on itself. Prior to 1933, Germany was what was regarded as a modern nation, albeit with its problems. In

Re:It's about Freedom.

[anethema (99553)]

He is talking about Firefox :P

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[dvice_null (981029)]

Firefox's goal is to make the web use standards, so that you could select what browser you want to use. How many websites you have seen that work only with Firefox? And how many that work only with IE? That is they key difference.

So once Firefox has majority of the global market share, the web has already been converted to work with any browser and we (users, companies, developers, anyone except Microsoft) have won.

Re:

[gratemyl (1074573)]

Just as a tip - try PortableFirefox (http://portableapps.com/ [portableapps.com]), it should bypass the "remove firefox" script.