Mozilla 1.8b1 Released, Firefox Growth Slowing 425
An anonymous reader writes "Mozilla 1.8 Beta 1 has been released, and in addition to numerous bug fixes now includes ECMAScript for XML (E4X). Mozilla 1.8 will serve as the code basis for Firefox 1.1. In other Mozilla related news, WebSideStory saw Firefox's usage growth slow down to just 15% (Jan-Feb) from 22% (Dec-Jan) making Firefox's 10% marketshare goal for 2005 potentially more challenging. Their stats also saw Internet Explorer usage drop below 90% for the first time in many years."
It's a 1.8 improvement (Score:5, Informative)
Mozilla still good (Score:5, Informative)
My sister uses GNU/Linux (Mandrake, with KDE) on her computer (No Windows) and prefers it to her old Windows ME OS. Mozilla was part of the reason - it is easy to use, helpful, securer and just makes sense. I'm not saying Firefox isn't any of these, but on Linux, I think it looks a little "Out of place", and Mozilla does not. My sister also preferred Mozilla to both Konqueror and Firefox.
Anyway, just wanted to point out that Mozilla itself exists for more than just feeding Firefox.
Growth is phenomenally fast & not really slowi (Score:5, Informative)
Here's my math. 0.15*(1.22)=.19, so 19% vs. 22% growth in market share from the December base, but the market is probably 1% larger. The way I see it, the number of new Firefox users is down probably 10% from January to February. Then remember that there were 3 fewer days in February than in January, which would account for the 10% difference. In other words, the number of new Firefox users per day stayed almost exactly the same from January to February. Maybe someone who RTFA can tell us what that number of new uses/day is and how it compares to earlier months.
The growth is remarkably fast, and may also be remarkably stable. How many more months would Firefox need to reach 10% market share?
Not quite accurate (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about these statistics? (Score:3, Informative)
It isn't really surprising that the people who visit a web developers site tend to use Firefox more than the general population does.
What the hell are you talking about? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Growth is phenomenally fast & not really sl (Score:5, Informative)
Re:What about these statistics? (Score:1, Informative)
That's part of it. I doubt W3Schools counts as a random sample of web users overall.
Re:It will pick up once the corps grab it (Score:3, Informative)
- ActiveX is switched off and the security settings are tied down and cannot be adjusted without a) admin rights b) knowledge of regedit
- All web access is controlled through a webproxy running websense filters. You can't get to pr0n sites from work (I know - I've tried
Re:3 things from galeon I miss in firefox (Score:1, Informative)
Interesting theory, but wrong in this case (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:2, Informative)
Number of times 'QA' used: 9
G4 optimized Firefox builds (Score:3, Informative)
http://homepage.mac.com/krmathis/
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:4, Informative)
light weight? is this why it sucks up about 122MB of ram before you even load a web page with it? (and this is with memory cache off)
122MB? TaskManager reports Firefox is currently using around 40MB, with 9 tabs open and I've been surfing on and off for around 4 hours now.
Compare to IE's 21MB with one window open and about 20 minutes worth of use.
I wouldn't call Firefox particularly "light weight" either but it doesn't clock in at anywhere near 122MB...
Re:Mozilla nightlies versus Firefox nightlies (Score:5, Informative)
Here (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firefox bugs (Score:3, Informative)
Right from the Maxthon homepage:
So really, you've given up a good browser AND the security of your computer since in reality, you are now using IE.
As for your Firefox problems, it seems like it could be an issue with your machine (possible malware), internet connection, or perhaps even your selected DNS servers. I've never experienced any of the issues you mention and use Firefox on two different platforms. Mabye you should submit a bug report [mozilla.org] instead of giving up on it
Re:slightly off topic (Score:1, Informative)
Re:It will pick up once the corps grab it (Score:1, Informative)
If you are running Windows 2000, XP or 2003, try gpedit.msc from the command line. Options exist under both "Administrative Templates\Windows Components\Internet Explorer" for both Computer and User policies. Even outside of a domain you can use these settings to configure the behavior of Internet Explorer on a local workstation.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:slightly off topic (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:5, Informative)
It cannot be assumed that FireFox doesn't have the same amount of bugs and vulnerabilities, it hasn't had as much attention paid to it. Frankly, the 'as much' number isn't all that important anyway. It needs to have one vulnerability to be a problem. Suppose a FF extension becomes really popular, and somebody finds an exploit in it?
I'm not defending IE here, rather I'm pointing out that one should be careful in making broad assumptions about the future.
Re:It will pick up once the corps grab it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:5, Informative)
Sometime in the last couple of weeks, Fastclick, a major ad network, started exploiting this to get its popups around Firefox's popup blocker. The ad scripts load a small Flash movie which then lauches the popup.
You can block plugins from launching popups by using a hidden pref but this will block all plugin-launched popups, even ones launched in response to a mouse click. To do this, enter about:config in the Location bar, hit return and then right-click any where in the content area and choose New > Integer. Enter privacy.popups.disable_from_plugins as the name and 2 as the value.
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Interesting theory, but wrong in this case (Score:1, Informative)
Firefox 1.1 will be based on gecko/mozilla 1.8 as far as I know.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Informative)
The one feature I wish Flashblock would add is a whitelist. There are some pieces of flash I'd always like to see, such as navigation bars on some sites. The rest of flash, forget it.
Flash is one of the worst things ever to happen to the web. "Look folks, here's another non-standard standard we're going to foist off on you, one complete with its own security holes and annoying behaviors that you (as an end user) can't modify."
Re:Is this the end of the ride? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:4, Informative)
Gecko, Not Firefox, Browser Stats (Score:1, Informative)
By my own accounts Gecko has an average market share of 17% and 900 million people actively use the Internet(6), you do the math.
1, 25.4% = (20.4% + 3.9% + 1.1%)
2, 6.8%
2, 23%
2, 8.9%
2, 6.6%
2, 34%
3, 18.37%
4, 22.8%
5, 8.16% = (5.69% + 2.47%)
1 = http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
2 = http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm
3 = http://www.webreference.com/stats/browser.html
4 = http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/bstats/latest-week.html
6 = http://www.clickz.com/stats/sectors/geographics/a
Re:Some people are just stubborn (Score:1, Informative)
Are you seriously trying to say that despite most websites being made for IE, they really show up properly on FireFox?
I suspect what he meant by "IE doesn't render correctly", he meant "IE doesn't render HTML or CSS correctly". You seem to think he meant "IE doesn't render the malformed tag soup that some idiots write in the way those idiots would like it to", which, as you say, is incorrect. Internet Explorer is all too happy to cater to the idiots.
There are a limited number of things that Firefox doesn't render correctly, for instance, soft hyphens. There are so many things that Internet Explorer doesn't render correctly, I've lost count.
Re:Is this the end of the ride? (Score:3, Informative)
Firefox is still growing, but there WILL be a point when we need to "cross the chasm" and get it out to the mainstream.
As of right now, Soccer Mom, Joe Sixpack, and NASCAR Dad don't yet know about Firefox. I don't think we want them to yet either -- Version 1.0 is great for all of my friends in Academia, but Version 1.1 will be time when I'm more comfortable with EVERYONE using Firefox.
Re:Growth rate still huge (Score:3, Informative)
"Especially since they're still growing, and incredibly quickly. They picked up about a percentage point a month two months straight. Since it started that at about 4%, they were seeing 25% *monthly* growth. Good god, how long could that have possibly continued?"
Thank you so much for that. I was waiting to see how long it would take for someone to point out something obvious even to a mathematically challenged Arts major like me:
A steady rate of increase will result in lower percentage growth every month.
The story should be, therefore, that after a rocketing rise in popularity, Firefox growth is still going strong, and IE is dropping noticeably.
Re:Deployment not easy enough (Score:3, Informative)
Once run for the first time, it'll add the profile.
Use a batch file and do it through the login script.
Then there's only a few steps - change the icons, which you can copy into the profile. This will get you at least part way...
Statistics (Score:3, Informative)
1 120850 55.17% Mozilla/5.0
2 76857 35.08% MSIE 6.0
3 5897 2.69% Opera 7.54
But - ah - different statistics. Same site, mind you, same logfiles, just a different tool doing the stats:
Firefox No 2287166 39.1 %
MS Internet Explorer No 2202449 37.6 %
Mozilla No 556825 9.5 %
Opera No 515143 8.8 %
Now that's a major difference, isn't it? Ah well, as long as Firefox is #1 there, I'm happy.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Informative)
Luckily recent versions of Flashblock include a whitelisting function. So as soon as you realise that you're regularly visiting a site that you do want to see the Flash animstion on, it's a (nearly) simply matter of going into the extension preferences and adding that site to the list.
Actually I was really glad to find that they had that. Blocking flash ads and useless presentations is good. But having to click-to-allow every single file on a site you visit specifically for the Flash cartoons is somewhat more annoying.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Informative)
Microsoft Active Accessibility (MSAA) makes it easier for all assistive technologies to incorporate support for Macromedia Flash Player. Once the contents of a Macromedia Flash movie are placed under MSAA, it is up to the individual assistive technology to render that content for the user. Since MSAA support is a new feature of Macromedia Flash Player, many assistive technologies still do not know how to handle the information made available under MSAA. At the release of Macromedia Flash MX, Window-Eyes from GW Micro is the first product to take advantage of the improvements in Macromedia Flash Player.
Well, since it only works on MS platforms, most assistive technologies don't work with MSAA, and there are better ways [watchfire.com] of accomplishing the desired result, I can only say
Bzzzt. Thanks for playing.
P.S. The Macromedia Accessibility FAQ page does not pass all of the Priority 1,2 and 3 accessibility checkpoints of the W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0 [w3.org].