Firefox Browser On An Upward Trend 670
carbolic writes "The Firefox browser is ramping up as fast as Internet Explorer is ramping down. According to these stats posted from the Engadget logfiles, IE has dropped to 57% of all browsers used to visit the site, while Firefox is up to an amazing 18%! The Engadget stats reflect an early-adopter consumer crowd and backing those up, this chart from w3schools shows the same trend. I guess CERT's recommendation and a mature product are finally paying off for the Mozilla project. Less than 2 years ago, IE had a 95% lock on the market. Anyone else see a trend here?"
Not more people (Score:5, Interesting)
But am I alone in the (admittedly selfish) desire that Firefox / Mozilla doesn't become too mainstream? As the usage of Firefox goes up - so too does the interest from exploit kiddies. Can the Mozilla / Firefox team keep ahead of the net nasties when it attains the majority of Internet users?
I can see that an open source browser can respond to security threats quicker than Microsoft has - but will it remain quick enough?
It's no surprise. (Score:2, Interesting)
It won me over.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Ok let's hear it from..... (Score:3, Interesting)
nice.. (Score:2, Interesting)
IE-only sites? sorry! (Score:5, Interesting)
With tabbed browsing, fantastic bookmark controls (add bookmark here and synchronized bookmarks), great content tools (bugmenot, adblock), the browser goes almost everywhere.
Folks who are reading this and who made the plunge, but still use Outlook, SWITCH TO THUNDERBIRD! While I wasn't very happy with the seemingly random way my old emails were imported (messages with multiple mime parts dont have the correct items displayed on the pane, and others meant to be displayed as shown as 'part1.1' attachments), I was incredibly happy with the abilities and extensions of the program.
Specifically, I found Thunderbird [mozilla.org]very happy to deal with my POP3 and IMAP accounts, interface very easily with GnuPG [gnupg.org] (via Enigmail [mozdev.org])
Mozilla really sucked for quite awhile, but these days I'm surprised when I find people who still only use IE. How 2001.
I look forward to the work being done on calendaring.
Take into account (Score:3, Interesting)
Internet Explorer 6.x 53%
Firefox 18.16%
Safari 11.25%
Internet Explorer 5.x 4.07%
Mozilla 3.18%
Opera 2.50%
Netscape 7.x 1.42%
In addition opera and mozilla and firefox have user agent string plugins, but even ie can be regedited to send
Mozilla compatible, sod Microsoft (Windows 3.11)
Of course, stats don't matter, as long as you use what you want. Out of interest,I noticed Yoper is using evolution as the mail client, I personally love thunderbird - any ditros thinking of using thunderbird and sunbird as thier mail/calender?
should it be thunderfox and sunfox?
Slashdot Stats? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:annoyances (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:I see a trend! I see one! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Firefox desserves this... (Score:3, Interesting)
What about browser spoofing? (Score:5, Interesting)
I am not sure about Firefox as I don't use it.
Probably the numbers would not swing the percentages to any great degree, but it would still be interesting nevertheless.
Re:Not more people (Score:4, Interesting)
is this correct, or just heresy?
Common plugins built in ? (Score:2, Interesting)
Probably some of the features that make the IE insecure is what make it popular.
How anoying it is to install Firefox, browse to a flash website and realize that you have to go to the Macromedia site, download and install the plugin and only after that you can see flash files...
Wouldn't it be great if the most common plugins on the web would come with Firefox already ? I don't see any problem with that, maybe the browsology of 'light browser' is being taken too far...
we issue this all the time (Score:1, Interesting)
anyway, just my $0.02
Re:Ok let's hear it from..... (Score:5, Interesting)
Ok, not really, but I do work in tech. support, and spend a significant portion of my day dealing with IE-related issues. If a normal rep spends an average of 1 hour each day on IE issues alone, and there are 250 reps at the center I work at, then we're spending 250 hours a day on IE problems. If no one dealt with IE issues, we could shift the workload and fire 30 people! that works out closer to an eighth, but saying "1/8" isn't impressive enough these days.
So What? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm a long time Mozilla user, but this is a silly non-issue.
If everyone in the world abandons IE for a different browser, the loss in revenue for Microsoft is exactly ZERO. Which explains why IE hasn't been updated/improved for years, because, if everyone in the world abandoned Mozilla, Opera, etc and switched to IE, the increase in revenue for Microsoft would be exactly ZERO.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
What I find funny are those sites that throw you off if you don't have IE - often when the site works fine using a faked user agent. They must have a lot of money to burn if they can turn away 10% of their revenue just for the sake of fixing a few (or no) broken pages.
Firefox usage goes up, slashdot errors rise (Score:2, Interesting)
because of the pages not being rendered correctly, people are refereshing their screens "twice or three times" and considering how slash is certainly not static, it can cause massive problems.
I know lots of people now use the font sizing thing, but its still a definate problem.
Does 1.0 fix this?
Re:It's no surprise. (Score:1, Interesting)
When all that walware crap will install automatically, THEN you know FF has gotten some attention from the kiddies (hopefully there aren't any vuln's that could cause that) =)
Wiki sidebar extension for Firefox -- Wikalong (Score:5, Interesting)
Focus problems (Score:1, Interesting)
For example, I just completed a download. The download manager automatically closed. The Firefox window beneath it did not have the focus (focus follows mouse for me under Enlightenment/Linux).. So I clicked on that Firefox window. Still no focus. Clicked a few more times. The window would not take the damn focus.
The focus handling in Firefox is really shoddy and there are numerous bugs. These are not new problems.
I love Firefox. However, that these focus problems are being ignored (maybe just under Linux???) doesn't bode well for the project in the future. How much effort is being put into the Linux vs. Windows code?
Re:IE-only sites? sorry! (Score:2, Interesting)
besides that i just dislike the ie-like layout of firefox and that 90% of the options are hidden (yea i know about:config, but i still prefer the old preferences window)
Re:As much as I'd like this to be true... (Score:2, Interesting)
Funnilly enough I was looking at the stats for a relatively large website [coles.com.au] in Australia (receives roughly 30,000 homepage hits a week) earlier today, and noticed that the trend for Firefox did have a huge jump halfway through August (came from not even a blip in our stats package, to 1% in the space of a week). It has plateaued over the last two weeks to about 1.5% of all browsers. As far as non MS browsers go it's the highest, consistently, since the huge jump one month ago, but by no means is it continuing to grow as much as people would hope.
I would consider the stats for this website to be pretty indicative of "normal" browsers in the real world, being a supermarket chain.
Re:Not more people (Score:4, Interesting)
Umm. .
Google (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not more people (Score:3, Interesting)
Heh, considering the pain of installing new extensions using 1.0PR, I'd say yes
(For those who haven't tried it yet, any site attempting to install an xpi is automatically blocked and you have to manually enable it - and there's currently no preference override to allow automatic installation from every site. Then, of course, even once you've allowed a site xpi installation privileges, you have to wait two seconds looking at the install dialogue before the install button is activated
What are the numbers for Slashdot? (Score:5, Interesting)
not even close to what I'm seeing. (Score:2, Interesting)
Too little support for Mac users (Score:1, Interesting)
Firefox ignores window manager setttings (Score:3, Interesting)
Well it would be nice if Firefox were a polite citizen in window manager land too. It totally ignores the window manager settings on what to do if a window is clicked.
Some WMs are more versatile than others, and for example Icewm allows you to configure focus-on-click-but-dont-raise mode. That's brilliant for me, because I like to type text into partially obscured windows without them raising.
Unfortunately, Firefox says "I know what's best for you" and ignores the WM hints. All other X11 apps that I use under Gentoo obey the WM. Only Firefox is fascist about the click model. Bleh.
Early Adopter, techie trend (Score:5, Interesting)
38% -- Mozilla family
35% -- IE
4% -- Safari
3% -- Opera
On the OS front:
62% -- Windows
12% -- Linux
6% -- Macintosh
These stats also tells us that a lot of Mozilla/Firefox users are Windows users.
Re:Hmmmm (Score:2, Interesting)
1 Internet Explorer 6.x 68.81%
2 Internet Explorer 5.x 8.48%
3 Firefox 8.00%
4 Safari 3.76%
5 Mozilla 1.69%
6 Opera 1.58%
7 Netscape 7.x 1.38%
8 Others 0.83%
Two months ago, the July figures were:
1 Internet Explorer 6.x 65.82%
2 Internet Explorer 5.x 10.60%
3 FireFox 5.07%
4 Safari 4.65%
5 Opera 2.13%
6 Mozilla 1.87%
7 Others 1.53%
8 Netscape 7.x 1.36%
A couple of things to note:
a) I might skew the figures a bit as I'm _always_ on the site and my usual browser of choice is Firefox.
b) A lot of money was spent and the site launch was delayed so that Safari could be "supported" at the request of some very vocal senior team members. However, Firefox is not officially supported and in fact some key site functionality does not work as intended in this browser (iframes & embedded media problem). Yet Firefox has more activity than Safari on our site.
Re:C'mon (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Hmmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
Moz's growth at large (Score:3, Interesting)
I help run a bunch of fannish websites. Fannish websites tend to attract females with at least a slight bit of geekiness (even if they're non-technical), so the members of fannish communities tend to end up on the "front end" of mass market shifts. Based on message board conversation (unfortunately, I don't run those message boards so don't have access to those stats), a major shift over to Mozilla/Firefox occurred about four months ago. They were geeky enough to recognize that the security holes in IE announced over the past few months COULD affect them (and did, in many cases) and driven by the fact that MS wasn't putting out the updates to keep them safe. There was real fear, and there where the technically geeky of the community offering a solution that they could understand. Although my sites aren't directly connected to these message boards (and we haven't run browser stats in years) I think that if I looked at the logs for the past couple of months, they would reflect that community shift to Mozilla products. (I'm going to ask the server admin to run some historical vs. current stats for me and I'll post them if I get them in a reasonable amount of time.)
At the same time, the "computer guy" (computer idiot) in my local paper started recommending Firefox. This is a guy whose columns usually make me want to slap him upside the head, because he spreads SO MUCH inaccurate information about computers and operating systems, and reinforces a lot of the misunderstandings that are in the non-technical population. He's gone the distance with Firefox love (too far, really), now recommending it as the solution for any IE-based problem. He's completely lost the MSIE love . .
What I find interesting is that w3schools is one of the sites reflecting the trend. Who uses that site? Web designers and developers. It's a great quick-check resource (no, it doesn't go into depth on most topics, but when you've forgotten the syntax for something . .
Re:Not more people (Score:3, Interesting)
but that have been countless security vulnerabilities where Microsoft has openly said: "yes, we knew about this 6 months ago, here's the patch now"
thats scary to think back: "so who else knew about this for the last 6 months, what havoc have they been wrecking"
Re:Firefox desserves this... (Score:2, Interesting)
http://www.iosart.com/foxytunes/firefox/ [iosart.com] - an in-firefox mediaplayer control.
Find more (and some very cool ones like Bugmenot [roachfiend.com]) here: Firefox extensions [texturizer.net]
Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
I realized the trend last week (Score:4, Interesting)
-truth
Re:Hmmmm (Score:4, Interesting)
ok...ok - I know it wouldn't work like that, but it's a nice thought.
They could go through their logs looking for IE hits on the firefox download page, followed by a firefox hit on the default after install (I forget which URL the fox sends you to straight after install) page. The same IP, within 5mins or so of each other = 1 new user
Firefox - A Very Pleasant Surprise (Score:2, Interesting)
I never cared for Mozilla that much, even though it blocks popups, because it ran terribly slow on my machine compared to IE6. Even the early versions of firefox were not as fast as IE
I just loaded the latest version of Firefox 1.0PR and was pleasantly surprised. Firefox now loads faster than IR6 (with all the security patches), web pages load noticeably faster than IE, and those mini web site icons that sometimes appear in IE and then dissappear are all present in Firefox.
I especially like the tool bar that allows me to place bookmarks for frequently visited sites. I've made Firefox my default browser.
Windows update still requires IE to be present. Hopefully, the Firefox Team will find a workaround for this.
My site got SlashDotted this week... (Score:2, Interesting)
Week before Slashdotting...
MSIE 6 741 56%
Gecko 249 19%
??? 140 11%
MSIE 5.0x 57 4%
Googlebot 32 2%
NS 4.0x 30 2%
MSIE 5.5 30 2%
NS 7 26 2%
Week of SlashDotting...
Browser sort Hits %
Gecko 18733 65%
MSIE 6 8025 28%
??? 734 3%.
NS 7 471 2%
MSIE 5.5 166 1%
NS 4.0x 152 1%
Even though most use MSIE6 to visit my site (when you people aren't part of the mix) it is still a significant shift.
Stormy
From my webtrends reports that I run... (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:lame statistic (Score:3, Interesting)
Same thing here... (Score:2, Interesting)
Hmm... (Score:3, Interesting)
Yet when a site with a decidedly less mainstream audience than Google shows Mozilla or Firefox having a reasonably large percentage the same Slashdot crowd is ready to embrace these findings as evidence that Mozilla/Firefox is conquering the world. Funny.
wanted: new bundling theory (Score:3, Interesting)
OpenOffice next ? (Score:4, Interesting)
Every windows user should try FIREFOX (Score:1, Interesting)
Not mainstream? (Score:3, Interesting)
As someone that works for a professional web dev. (Score:4, Interesting)
my sites observations (Score:2, Interesting)
1 year ago Sept 2003
IE 87%
Netscape 10%
Mozilla 2%
Month of July 2004
IE 92.92%
Mozilla 2.92%
Netscape 1.99%
Month of September 2004 thus far
IE 91.53%
Mozilla 4.19%
Netscape 1.92%
This is a site that sells tshirts. Very general target audience. My conclusion would be that IE usage increased over the last year as netscape fell. Current trend is IE declining, Netscape declining, and Mozilla increasing.
That said, I love Mozilla. I finally switched after getting completely irked over spyware. I now experience the web the way I remember it.
Re:IE-only sites? sorry! (Score:3, Interesting)
Ask Google
As to compressing folders... I do that *MAYBE* once every couple months to keep file sizes down and because I have an external parser for the mbox files for a specific client's analysis.
Sure, maybe YOU only do it once every couple months, but it NAGS you constantly until you do it
Did you try the latest version of Thunderbird with a fresh profile? No? Didn't think so.
Of course not, why would I bother? I already went through the trouble of switching to it once, gave it a few months, and got so pissed off at it that I switched to something else. Given that I don't have any problems with what I'm using now, what reason would I have to switch back to something that I didn't like the first time around?
Re: Hmmmm (Score:3, Interesting)
It's probably not about fixing a few broken pages -- it's about testing, and about certifying.
I'm not in the industry, but maybe this scenario isn't too far off the mark in some cases. Suppose you run a web design company, and you're an MS shop. You've knocked up loads of web sites that run on IE, and you've got it down to a fine art. Suppose someone asks you for quotes for IE and for multi-browser. What do you say? You say that multi-browser is likely to cost a lot more. Not necessarily because there's much more coding to do, but because your testing goes from one browser on one platform to umpteen of each, in all the umpty-ump combinations (which may well involve buying and setting up those different platforms and browsers), and you then have to work out how to fix any problems (which may mean gaining or buying in expertise). So of course, for an apparent 10% of visitors, most companies won't stump up a lot more dosh. And so all the web sites, and the web design companies, do things cheaply and only certify their sites on IE/Windows -- whether or not they actually work on other sites.
It's not conspiracy, just self-interest.
If that's so, then what it'll take is one major web design company acquiring the expertise and equipment needed to be able to offer and certify multi-browser sites at the same price (either off their own bat, or from a commission from an enlightened client); then maybe clients and other design companies will follow. But until then...
BTW, for me the great thing about this story isn't the large figure for FireFox. Not that I've anything against it; it's a great browser, and I'm pleased it's doing well. But more important than that is the low figure for IE. The less of a monoculture the web is, the more everyone benefits: FireFox and their users, Camino and the other Gecko-based browsers and their users, Safari and its, Opera, OmniWeb, even Lynx. And, indirectly, IE and its users! The only people who gain from an IE monoculture are MS themselves, and I'm quite happy at the prospect of them having to compete on merit for a change.
Re:[bring on the] self fullfilling prophecy (Score:3, Interesting)
So the hacks and tweaks are typically fairly minor right now. We err on the side of IE, and maybe the width is off by 3 or 4 pixels (border width, sometimes) in Firefox. Font sizes are never quite perfect.
On the other extreme, check out Eric Meyer's pages on css/edge [meyerweb.com] to see what I mean...
You can see the menus and select them just fine, but they're weird in IE. Check the complexspiral page - it doesn't even look LOATHSOME in IE, but it's just not proper enough for professional developers to accept it for a production page. Look at the slantastic one too, as well as the explanations.
The most frustrating thing is, it works the other way around. If it looks OK in IE and horrible (or even INACCESSIBLE) in anything else, everybody just shrugs their shoulders and says "Oh well, as long as they can read the content. They can just fire up IE."