Firefox Shooting For 10 Percent

Random BedHead Ed writes "An article on ZDNet Monday features an interview with Bart Decrem, the Mozilla organization spokesman, who says that by the end of next year they expect to have 10% of the browser share. "We have the momentum," he says. He attributes some of the success to faster browsing and a lack of software bloat, and suggests that other open source projects might see similar success if they trim features. The article also quotes some very interesting figures from ZDNet's own web servers. About 9% of ZDnet visitors were using a Mozilla browser in February; now in it's at 19%." The average for OSTG overall is about 30%.

So does this mean..

[ivan256]

.. that all those obnoxious web developers who make their sites IE only "because it's got 99% of the market" will have to stop telling us to "just use IE" and learn to develop standards compliant websites?

No surprise

[1000101]

The typical ZDNet visitor is much more technically savvy than the average internet user. This explains why their Mozilla use rate has increase. Go to www.aarp.org and you more than likely won't see the same results.

Why bother?

[Pan T. Hose]

Why even bother with 10% when after Google releases the G-browser (Google branded Firefox [slashdot.org]) it will shoot for 90%?

Re:FireFox question

[Anonymous Coward]

Slashdot's HTML is shit.

People have submitted w3c valid versions to slashcode. Slashdot don't give a shit, for all the OSS hype here, the /. team are still MSIE wankers.

Re:So does this mean..

[ivan256]

10% of the browser market is probably 1000% or more of the AutoCAD market.

What really matters is wether it would cost more to make your site standards compliant than it would bring in through the added users. Since the cost of making the site correctly in the first place is very low, likely the same price as doing it incorrectly, that's almost never the case. Ignoring a segment of the market, no matter what percentage of the market it is, when the costs of supporting them are less than the return is stupid. As that segment grows, it becomes clear just how stupid neglecting that market segment was.

It will happen

[Ars-Fartsica]

The tipping point is coming. The point where enough late-adopters see news stories, tv segments, links on the web, and most importantly, other late-adopters using firefox. I actually think numbers like 25% or higher are achievable.

Re:My Website's Stats

[System.out.println()]

I don't see Safari as a threat to IE.... unless someone thinks it's good enough to warrant buying a Maac over a PC. It's good.... but not that good...

Feature creep

[RealProgrammer]

The desire to want to match features is an artifact of the hidden source monolithic development model. If you have a product you're trying to sell, you want to maximize how attractive it looks to the purchaser.

FOSS developers, on the other hand, generally want to use the program they're writing (and don't want its performance to suffer). Also, they're open to the possibility that their niche has a boundary past which they shouldn't grow. There is generally less financial pressure to add new features than there is general pressure to keep the program working.

The thing that keeps Linux competitive is that Linus won't accept (*) a new kernel feature patch that decreases performance. As a result, Linux benefits from new hardware but continues to work on the older stuff (or at least, you can make it work).

I think as long as the Mozilla people keep these principles in mind, they'll keep doing great work.
----
(* except for emergency security fixes, or in a development kernel where the current state of a new patch is too slow, but the technology looks like it will eventually be faster.)

Re:My Website's Stats

[jellomizer]

Well it is logical for Safari to pick up. Because microsoft stopped supporing IE for the Mac. So all the Mac users are switching to Sarfari. While I Support Firefox and Gave them donations. At home I use Sarfari most of the time because it is just as good as Firefox for what I use web browsing for And it fits better on my envronment. But for Linux and Windows I install Firefox. So this drop in IE is expected to go down around 3% because of the Mac users switching. But it is nice to see MS drop to 90%

Re:FireFox question

[Anonymous Coward]

This is an incredibly ignorant comment considering slashdot doesn't even use valid html.

Re:Interesting? Probably not.

[Kazrath]

Problem is: Some of us work in a corporate environment. FireFox may not be a "Certified" application for use. Thus we are stuck with IE. Most of my web-browsing is done from work. If I use a home PC its for playing games explicitly.

Re:Show us your stats!

[93 Escort Wagon]

Slashdot users to the contrary - I can't believe that any significant number of reported "IE users" are actually Firefox or Opera users that are spoofing their browser's identifier. Most people follow the path of least resistance. If they can't get into a site with Firefox, they'll switch to IE.

Re:So does this mean..

[jellomizer]

Many of these people were also lousy coders or just common person who learned a bit of html. IE was more forgiving for bad coding then netscape was so people started to make more bad HTML and IE was the only browser that could render it. So more people use IE to view the content of the html. I see very fiew Sites that are still IE Only and most of them that are are just due to bad coding and they dont have any important feature that proper HTML cannot fix.

Web Standards

[ratamacue]

I don't think anything else needs to be said.

Re:My Website's Stats

[IEEEmember]

The financial and business effect of browser choice is not felt on the client side, it is not typically a factor in purchase decisions.

It is felt on the server side and determines who gets to drive standards.

Additionally Firefox is carrying the banner for freely available open source software on the client much like sendmail and apache have done on the server. The success of Firefox will encourage other developers and increase the rate of adoption on software such as Open Office.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:The stats from windowsupdate.microsoft.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Technically, you can get to windowsupdate.microsoft.com with mozilla if you really wanted to. Getting past that first page, though, would be a problem. :)

Now getting the stats for their thank-you page at:
http://v4.windowsupdate.microsoft.com/en/than ks.as p
would be more interesting.

migration

[RealProgrammer]

I think you hit it on the head. I'd guess that for most people, a browser and office suite is all they use. If people see they can use some other browser, and some other office suite, it's not far from there to using some other operating system.

Sort of like hoof and mouth disease for their cash cow.

Re:My Website's Stats

[_KiTA_]

The theory was that if MS controls the client, they can influence other things.

Here are the two ideas:

If MS controlls the browser 99% of people use, then they can change the HTML spec at will. Add a few MS only extensions, a few "nifty things" that other browsers can't do, like pipelining and activex. The theory is that people will be stuck with your OS, your web editor, your browser, and -- possibly -- your Server, all because somewhere down the line it becomes too painful NOT to.

The other theory is the ActiveX thing. If the browser becomes a platform for actual programs, for example web based games, shopping systems, etc, then people are going to be locked in to that format if they are going to want to go to that website. So if they can sucker enough programmers into using ActiveX or some other MS-extended mess, then the users are going to be stuck with IE in order to view that content. Of course, how do they keep the programmers stuck using ActiveX? By suckering enough users to use IE in the first place. Fortunately, PHP, Java, and the general suckyness of ActiveX kinda stopped that in it's tracks.

Then of course, you can make these things patiented, and prevent other people from even trying to beat you at your own game.

So yeah. The idea of MS losing a good 50% or market share -- which is very much a real possibility, since most tech grunts who work at ISPs *MUCH* prefer customers who don't use Outlook and IE (MUCH MUCH easier calls) is a good thing, because it will have a snowball effect.

Re:FireFox question

[Just Some Guy]

When will Firefox render slashdot properly?

When you can build an unambiguous object tree from HTML, you can define what "properly" means and apply it to that tree to get pixel-perfect renderings in every correct browser known.

When the same HTML can be diagrammed 39 ways to Sunday without any being the obviously correct tree, the rest is a crap shoot.

It's like attempting to decode data encrypted with a one-time pad. "Mozilla is teh r0xx3r!" is just as likely as "Internet Explorer 4 me", but neither is necessarily the "correct" answer (ie what was originally intended). Frankly, that Slashdot renders at all is a testament to the design teams behind all of the browsers that can display it. I &heart; Slashdot, but it's certainly not because I admire the beauty and elegance of the HTML that Slashcode pumps out.

Here are my results over the past 3 months

[Mustang Matt]

Aug 2004

MS Internet Explorer No 63689 91.9 %
Mozilla No 1875 2.7 %
Netscape No 1363 1.9 %
Unknown ? 702 1 %
Safari No 563 0.8 %
FireFox No 554 0.7 %
Opera No 315 0.4 %
Firebird (Old FireFox) No 121 0.1 %

Sept 2004

MS Internet Explorer No 56837 91.5 %
Mozilla No 1685 2.7 %
Netscape No 1294 2 %
Safari No 945 1.5 %
FireFox No 931 1.4 %
Unknown ? 211 0.3 %
Opera No 118 0.1 %

Oct 2004

MS Internet Explorer No 40864 91.9 %
Mozilla No 895 2 %
Netscape No 880 1.9 %
FireFox No 757 1.7 %
Safari No 628 1.4 %
Unknown ? 235 0.5 %
Opera No 85 0.1 %

Standard Compliance Not Cost Effective

[RAMMS+EIN]

``Since the cost of making the site correctly in the first place is very low, likely the same price as doing it incorrectly''

That's not true. Any script kiddie with a WYSIWYG tool can generate a website that has hideous code but will be grokked by browsers. Making a standards-compliant website requires someone with actual knowledge and a certain passion, and likely needs to be hand-coded. This obviously costs a lot more.

At least, until the script kiddie FUBARs the site, of which I have seen the results a number of times. And cleaning such a mess is not pretty.

Re:So does this mean..

[Stinking Pig]

"Since the cost of making the site correctly in the first place is very low, likely the same price as doing it incorrectly..."

unfortunately, for the type of site you seem to be describing this doesn't play out. I'm assuming you mean the typical sell something site that has been built in FrontPage...the people paying the cost rarely know that the site won't work in non-IE browsers, because they don't know that non-IE browsers exist. They pay the developer for a site and the developer makes the decisions, and their input is limited to colors and page content. They have no more opinion on browser compatibility than they do on roofing material or what type of plumbing pipe to use.

The other kind of MSIE-only site is the doing-something site, which is designed to use an ActiveX plugin. This kind of site is not going to switch over readily, becuase they rely on the bad design that motivates switching in the first place.

Re:So does this mean..

[jilles]

10% is more than enough (in fact todays marketshare is apparently already enough) to convince any site developer depending on advertisement revenue or ecommerce revenue that he shouldn't lose those precious customers. It's enough for customers to complain if the site they bought from Leet Hackers Inc. doesn't work in some browsers (and users complain, loudly).

10% matters enough that MS has started to convert www.microsoft.com to something that is quite nearly xhtml compliant and renders fine in mozilla. Even they realize that some of their customers use something else than IE.

The only sites I am aware of that don't work in mozilla tend to be targeted to windows users (typically authored by inexperienced developers and painfull to browse even in IE), older frontpage stuff or legacy stuff like 1st generation banking sites (most decent banks have since fixed their software and if yours hasn't: vote with your money). You're not missing much these days if you browse mozilla (and you miss a lot if you browse IE).

Sure, MS won the browser war but they lost the war over webstandards. Nobody uses their proprietary extensions and the technical roadmap for the internet is now drawn by others because MS has effectively stopped developing their browser. And now their marketshare will start to shrink unless they do something.

Include PreBar by default!!!!

[Anita Coney]

The ability to turn Flash crap on/off with the PreBar add-on is a great feature. I cannot understand why it isn't implemented in the brower. Does anyone have any insight into this why such a usefull feature is not included by default?

Re:Dissenting Thoughts

[Hollins]

The Firefox download for Windows is 4.6MB. For it's feature set, this is a small application and can hardly be considered bloated.

You compare Firefox and Konqueror on two different architectures. When using them both in Linux on P3 and P4 machines, Firefox seems every bit as fast to me, though it starts up a bit slower. Once it's set up with my preferred set of extensions (easy-gestures, bookmarks synchronizer, web-developer, adblock), it provides the best browsing experience I've encountered. This extension system is another reason Firefox avoids bloat. Basic features are built in and users are free to add desired functionality, though adblock ought to be included, IMO.

On my Windows P4/1.8, Firefox page loading is at least as fast, if not faster than IE.

Re:Web Standards

[skraps]

If you are locked in to a Microsoft non-standard, then you are locked in to Microsoft's product line. That means you have to pay the Upgrade Fee, and if you want to interoperate with another piece of software, you are forced to select Microsoft's offering, because it is the only one that is compatible.

Re:Feature creep

[RAMMS+EIN]

Hate to say it, but popular open source software is far from immune to feature creep.

Just compare the speed and size:
OpenOffice.org vs. KOffice, or even MS Office
glibc vs. NetBSD libc
GNOME or KDE vs. Xfce
Mozilla vs. Opera
Firefox vs. Safari

I may have an occassional mistake, and some omissions, but I think this disproves your claims.

And, seriously, Mozilla is bloatware, and Firefox needs to do a lot more fitness to get slim and fast.

Re:Standard Compliance Not Cost Effective

[ivan256]

Any script kiddie with a WYSIWYG tool can generate a website that has hideous code but will be grokked by browsers. Making a standards-compliant website requires someone with actual knowledge and a certain passion

Webmasters of commercial websites that deny non-IE browser access are not typically script kiddies with WYSYWYG design tools. They're typically Microsoft fanboys with with Microsoft certifications that they don't want to become useless who took the time to figure out how to write the javascript needed to deny access to non IE browsers. Those types of things require the same amount of knowledge and an equal emount of (misguided) passion to pull off. This is especially so for the obnoxions ones I'm complaining about who defend their IE only decision with religious zeal in public forums such as the comments section to slashdot stories. I'm perfectly satisfied ignoring people who make non-compliant sites out of stupidity. I just want to rid the world of people who defend their decision to do something idiotic.

Re:FireFox question

[Kenshin]

How is he being stupid?

A website shouldn't require user intervention to display properly.

Re:Interesting? Probably not.

[Anonymous Coward]

I use IE to browse slashdot because installing or using firefox at work will get me fired.

Its an easy choice i guess, to use IE or get fired, but I'm already looking for another job because of it. Yes I HATE IE that much.

You know, you could just wait until you get home to read Slashdot.

Re:My Website's Stats

[Just Some Guy]

The financial and business effect of browser choice is not felt on the client side, it is not typically a factor in purchase decisions.

I couldn't disagree more. I'm responsible for a web-based application that my company's customers use to access our database, generate reports, fetch scanned documents, etc. and I made strict XHTML/1.0+CSS compliance a critical priority from the first day of planning. Because of this, our clients can use Windows+IE, Windows+Firefox, OSX+Safari, Linux+Konqueror, or good ol' Lynx to use every bit of functionality throughout the site.

Our clients are in the transportation industry, and many of them have Internet-connected computers solely to visit our site. As it stands right now, they have no reason whatsoever to stick with Windows when they buy their next computer. If their friends tell them to get a Mac because they're easier to use, fine. If their kid installs Linux for them because it's free, fine. If they want to stick with Windows, that's also OK.

The point is that I've given them no reason to keep from switching to a different OS if they want to. I didn't do this because I'm anti-Microsoft - I just wanted a good experience for our customers - but I'm sure that Bill and friends would've preferred that I approached it differently.

Re:The Return of Microsoft Free Fridays?

[mattgreen]

Classic Slashdot comment: "my views are obviously superior to yours because they involve free software, so I should force them on everyone!"

What kind of webmaster barrages visitors with demands on what browser to use? Let the visitor read your site in peace for crying out loud! Forcing people to use Firefox because it is 'better' is no better than writing IE-only pages.

I find it ironic that you advocate such a step in order to 'free' the web. Perhaps a plan that didn't involve alienating the vast majority of web surfers might be more effective.

Re:/. people need to donate $$$$$

[ip_vjl]

Or ... people are pro-firefox but don't think that donating to a full page ad in the paper is the best use of money.

I'm definitely pro-firefox. I've gotten numerous people to switch. I'm willing to spend my time getting someone installed and tweaking the app to their preferences, but I can think of a lot of other places I'd rather spend my money than for a one-shot ad in the paper.

Re:Interesting? Probably not.

[spitzak]

What is interesting is that the company will waste so much money and time "authorizing" software, but won't do simpler money-saving things like checking if their employees are wasting time reading web sites instead of working!

Re:The stats from windowsupdate.microsoft.com

[GiMP]

Use the User Agent Switcher [chrispederick.com].

I managed to load the Windows update page here, but couldn't get very far without Active X (on Linux).

Re:/. people need to donate $$$$$

[Bryan-10021]

You're missing the big picture. The reason for the full page ad, if it isn't obvious, is to get mainstream users to switch to FireFox. The NY Times is read by many influential people in business who have never heard of FireFox. These people are never going to move from IE if they don't realize that there's more than Microsoft IE.

But back to the big picture. This is not about an ad or FireFox but getting the Web back from Microsoft who by not updating IE in years is trying to kill off the web.

We need competition and innovation back and the ONLY way to do this is to have an alternative browser with market share from mainstream users.

Taking the web back isn't worth $30?

BRING BACK THE WEB!

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm tired of the intarweb acting as a giant perverted application. Animated div layers, popup windows, javascript, frames, etc. Fuck ActiveX. Fuck Xul. Fuck Flash. Fuck Java. Fuck plug-ins. Fuck them all. Just give me static hyperlinked pages. That's all I want.

Re:My Website's Stats

[efatapo]

Well, first of all Microsoft doesn't make a browser. They make an OS named "Windows" one of its features is an icon called "Internet Explorer." That feature isn't free, you have to fork over cold, hard cash for a Windows license.

I guess this [microsoft.com] doesn't exist then. As far as I can tell it's a free browser available from Microsoft.

Not that I use it...but it's available and free. I just like saying "you're wrong".

Photos by Daniel Coughlin [pbase.com]

Firefox weakness

[Anonymous Coward]

I use firefox only, but it isn't all that great as slashdotters would like to believe. A few nice extra features like Tabbed browsing, and Other small stuff like Fast Find, Live bookmarks. If MSFT wants to, they can easily add these features to IE. If MSFT perceives Firefox as a danger, they will certainly defeat it by improving IE. I feel Firefox must add a lot more features. It seems to have a Windows 95 like clunky user interface. For example, why can't I close a tab directly. The closing "X" icon should be right on the tab just like in the Eclipse IDE. Second, I should be able to browse the various tabs by keyboard (so simple, yet not implemented. It clearly Shows that developers and not end-users are driving the GUI design). Third, open the Excel/Word/Other documents without the extra browser window. Finally, For heaven sake, please remove the "View Saved Passwords" option in the Privacy tab. If a guest wants to use my PC, I hesitate because he can easily check my passwords. So I stopped using the Password Manager totally. Finally, make the ad-block Extension a fundamental part of Firefox. This is the one and only reason I use firefox today. It is an absolutely lovely extension. kudos to adblock.

Firefox != Mozilla

[Anonymous Coward]

Am I the only one to notice that the devs involved are becoming more focused on FireFox and less focused on Mozilla?

FireFox has a better download manager.

If both code bases are open, why don't the improvements I've noticed in FireFox filter back to Mozilla itself?

I'll stop whining. Guess I should learn to program, then check in the appropos subroutines in CVS, and see if it ever gets built.

Re:/. people need to donate $$$$$

[Bryan-10021]

Have YOU seen the ad yet? There's absolutely no reason this ad can't be done to get a non-techies attention.

And a bonus is the Newspaper and Magazine coverage of this first time ad.

It's all good.

The Google Factor

[TekkaDon]

If Google ever releases a browser based on Firefox and promotes it in every frikkin page they have, I believe things could get pretty shaky for MS.

And once you are there, who knows what could happen. I can see a Google browser becoming a truly powerful and dominant consumer platform.

No good IDE for XUL

[darnok]

I think one of the key pieces missing for XUL adoption is the lack of a robust, powerful IDE. If there was something with a notionally similar user interface to Boa Constructur, but spitting out XUL instead of wxPython code, it would be a HUGE advance.

Creating GUIs is fundamentally a different mindset to writing straight code. As a coder, I tend to use more "primitive" tools such as vim that let me get my hands dirty in the code (although Eclipse has just about turned me around); on those admittedly rare occasions when I have to build a GUI, I'm just lost without a powerful IDE. One of the big reasons for the success of VB in the past has been the absolutely killer drag-and-drop style IDE.

If/when MS releases XAML, you can be very sure it'll have a terrific IDE behind it. If there's no moderately comparable IDE for XUL at that point, I think it'll be very tough for XUL to keep up.

They don't think that way.

[Per Abrahamsen]

The idea of "standards" are foreign to most web designers, even those that really ought to know better (/.).

Instead, they will make two versions of the page, one for IE and one for Mozilla/Firefox, and tell everyone else to "upgrade". Just like they did when Netscape and IE both had significant marketshare.

PS: The Firefox version will of course be so outdated and broken, that you get better results by pretenting to be IE and let FireFox "bug compatibility" handle it.