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."
Mozilla nightlies versus Firefox nightlies (Score:5, Interesting)
Has anyone else noticed this, or is it just a side effect of my old hardware? It seems like Mozilla 1.8 will be noticeably faster than at least Firefox 1.0 and last night's Firefox Feb 26 build for sure.
What about these statistics? (Score:3, Interesting)
lasindi
Re:Mozilla nightlies versus Firefox nightlies (Score:5, Interesting)
Are small projects just easier to optimize?
It will pick up once the corps grab it (Score:5, Interesting)
In any case, a coporate wide switch won't happen overnight. I'd expect to see the next 6 months or so start to see more corporations install linux enterprise wide. Those same corporations will complain about sites that don't work in Firefox, which helps fuel the uptake.
Also note to FF people - one of the reasons cited for not installing FF enterprise wide was the lack of central patching and policy control. This means patching security holes and forcing down settings to the clients; from my desk, without spending hours writing scripts.
Re:Is this the end of the ride? (Score:3, Interesting)
Before I couldn't go FF, now I have no need. That said, I have seen neighbors go to FF from IE after someone (kid they got to help them with spyware, or an adult child, or someone else) suggested it and they have to problem with it. They don't seem to see a difference, which may be part of the problem. Since both browsers take you too the same Internet, there will be a number (and not an insignificant number) who see "nothing different" and so they stay with IE. And now that IE has popup blocking (from SP2), one of the biggest complaints people had is gone.
But either way, FF is a nice browser and even if I don't use it I'm glad it's out there (another option, more competition, etc). Also I'm suprised that adoption was so fast in the first place. I think we are out of "try this new FF browser" and into "FF is better, look into it sometime". People will still switch, but how long could we really have held up that high pace? In about 6 months FF got almost 6% of the market from 2% or so. That is AMAZING for a product that isn't forced on people (IE updates).
Re:Not surprised at slowed growth (Score:5, Interesting)
Browser Speed Benchmarks (Score:5, Interesting)
Browser Speed Analysis [howtocreate.co.uk]
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:1, Interesting)
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/391526/200
Works on Windows and Linux apparently.
Re:Here's what I think (Score:2, Interesting)
Whenever some product has tried to compete directly with Microsoft, Micro$oft has just killed it. M$ is an unfair competitor, and it know just how to get ride of the rest of the market. Just look at the FUD campaign aginst GNU/Linux they are doing
just a paranoid idea
You know, Firefox's tabs convinced my buddy (Score:5, Interesting)
So, I get and download Firefox for him. I explained to him "OK, I'm going to reinstall this system and not give you the admin password when I get time. In the meantime, use this to browse the web". I got rid of the IE icon from his desktop and replaced it with Firefox using the IE icon.
A couple of days later, my friend says he wants to keep Firefox. He told me the tabbed browsing was "tight".
I think Firefox is currently the best open source application for non-technical people out there. It is 100% open source and better than the competition (better CSS than IE; more security than IE; more feautures than IE).
3 things from galeon I miss in firefox (Score:4, Interesting)
There are 3 things that have been in galeon for years and are not in Firefox yet:
1. Tab detach feature
2. password manager not based on autofilling (which is dissallowed by some banks thus my on-lin bank site has password unmanageble by firefox [operations requires one-time passwords and tokens so no, there is no extra security in that ]).
3. sessions - saved in given point of time (windwos with tabs) or when browser crashes
Also there is one feature needed:
4. disabling flash player - same way as hjava.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mozilla nightlies versus Firefox nightlies (Score:3, Interesting)
I've not noticed bloat in firefox, I think extensions take care of that. You only need to install the bits you use.
Yup, it's true - less COM (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
Adblock (Score:1, Interesting)
and techsavvy users is probably the reason websidestory is seeing falling stats, every good filterset and hostsfile block them and their javscript tracking shite by default
Re:Here's what I think (Score:3, Interesting)
Rumor has it that IE 7 will sport all the little whiz-bangs like tabbed browsing and so on that Firefox has. What this means is that the "average" non-techie user will see no difference, and there for no reason to migrate from IE 7, should they already have it. As well, I see a problem with a feature that most techies like, but the average user sees as a big hassle: Surfing the web, only to find that the base install requires a lot of plug-ins to be installed to open Flash, Real files, and all the other popular crap. My worthless two cents...
See More Internet (Score:3, Interesting)
Then I show them that you can see more of the screen in Firefox than you can in IE, "You can see more of the internet". This makes Firefox look better on every page they see. As dumb as that is, it works.
I then do as above, removing shortcuts to IE.
Re:Some people are just stubborn (Score:3, Interesting)
Drive home the concept that it's the same web they're looking at whatever they use.
Oh, and show them a site they like but that has really bad ads, with popups blocked and the banners filtered with adblock.
Re:Not surprised at slowed growth (Score:4, Interesting)
Most users don't want tabbed browsing? Are you on Crack? EVERYONE I've showed tabbed browsing to has loved it. Even when I didn't do it intentionally, e.g., googling for something with a friend I start middle clicking, he sees these tabs extending off to the right and goes "WHOA - what's that?" -- I show the sites opening up in the background -- he says "That's cool!" That's the usual response from tech savy to friends who think AOL is a nice service.
As for the "90% IE", three words "user agent spoofing".
Re:Some people are just stubborn (Score:2, Interesting)
I've tried Firefox many times, and I have it installed right now, but I keep going back to IE. Why? Because Firefox just doesn't "feel" right.
Minor things bug me, like "Bookmarks" in Firefox versus "Favorites" in IE. I don't really care what you call them, but I've trained my muscle memory to hit "alt-a" to open the "Favorites" menu. In Firefox, I have to consciously think about hitting "alt-b" (which is a more cumbersome chord than "alt-a", as well, given the placement of 'a' vs. 'b' on a qwerty keyboard). I could live with that, retrain my muscle memory, but there's a bigger problem once the menu is open. In IE, I can step through the entries by typing the first character. If I have three favorites starting with 'm', I can hit 'm' three times to get the third one. This works in Firefox, except when a bookmark starts with the same character as one of the accelerator keys ('b' to bookmark the page, 'm' to manage bookmarks, 'o' on a submenu to open all bookmarks in tabs (which seems like a stupid feature to me anyway, and why isn't it on the main menu page as well as submenus?)). If I have the same three bookmarks in Firefox starting with 'm' as I have favorites in IE, I can't quickly access them by typing 'm'. As soon as I do that, I'm taken to the window to manage my bookmarks. That sucks.
Another issue I have with Firefox is the installation of themes and extensions. Why must I restart the entire browser just to change a theme? I can understand having to do that with the installation of an extension (the same thing is necessary in IE), but for switching my theme? That's just silly. Still, that's a minor issue that's made worse by the fact that Firefox's default theme is pretty poor (the button icons are pretty amateur, and just don't look "right" to me). So, I go to find a better theme [mozilla.org], and many of the listed themes don't have any preview image (side note: If you have a website dedicated to something visual like a browser theme, you had better have previews for every item -- I'm not clicking through and installing every theme that has no preview just to see if I like it or not). Once I find a theme I like (or not, as the case may be), and am able to install it (after a new release, good luck getting old themes to work), I still have to stop and restart the browser just to see what it looks like. Lame.
Perhaps I'm just too set in my ways to switch away from IE, but that's fine by me. I use SP2's popup blocker alongside my own custom-built blocker. I set the security permissions properly so I can block Flash crap. I have full control over cookies. I haven't had a spyware infestation in quite some time, and the last virus I got was back in 1994. In short, IE works for me, and I've long since gotten used to its minor problems. The utility I'd gain by switching to Firefox is not enough to outweigh the need to learn and get used to a whole new set of minor annoyances.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
People say this frequently but it is simply wrong. Imperfect security is not the same thing as bad security.
From some sort of theoretical perspective one vulnerability and many vulnerabilities are equally exploitable. From a practical perspective things are different. What is necessary for there to be a "problem" is for there to be a large quantity of vulnerable systems of a certain sort installed. There are a number of conditions which must be met to go from "a vulnerability exists" to this point. Among them are the range of installed versions of the system, the range of versions which contain vulnerability, the range and nature of individual vulnerabilities that vulnerability represents, the time between the discovery of the vulnerability and the patches, the patches take to be installed by the end user, and in general the likelihood that a potential exploiter of vulnerability may expect that attempts to exploit will be successful.
All of these are effected by the frequency and quantity of bugs, not just "has there been a bug ever". In particular, if major security patches are released on a bimonthly basis because the vulnerabilities are many and frequent, it is much harder to get everyone to upgrade and install all of these patches than if there's one big urgent security patch once. (One might say that hacking on this scale is a social process, not a technical one.)
There is some sort of basic human inability to create a perfectly secure software program. But this does not mean a focus on security cannot be beneficial.
Re:Mozilla usage down... (Score:3, Interesting)
You can leave out mail and newsgroups, the address book, and the IRC client.
With modern demand paging systems, it doesn't matter anyway, as long as you don't load and use the other components. If you don't do e-mail with mozilla, the email code won't even be fetched from the disk. Same for IRC or other stuff that you don't use.
Re:Not surprised at slowed growth (Score:2, Interesting)
I say "Hey, you know you could open all those sites in one window?"
She says "Oh in tabs? I'd rather use seperate windows"
That said, does anyone know of an extension that would allow me to organize tabs in multiple rows based on the site they were from? I'm willing to write one myself, but it's going to take me a little while to learn how to.
Why Firefox downloads are slowing (Score:5, Interesting)
- Februry is a short month
- New releases of Firefox updates have all but stopped. Its been about 4 months since the last update
- Lack of helper apps/extensions - Not much new (that is publized on places like
/.)
Firefox is solid. Early adopters have it and are happy. No new updates, so new reason to download it.No one really knows a whole lot about the new extensions because Firefox relies almost exclusively on the OSS forword of mouth. The current batch of extensions are not quite primetime so no one is pushing them.
Firefox is solid, but its reached a platue where Netscape was at 2.0. Now Firefox has to take to the next level with better advertising and new features, or fall between the cracks, just like its older brother.
Re:You know, Firefox's tabs convinced my buddy (Score:1, Interesting)
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Interesting)
Actually, being open source, it's had far more attention paid to it than IE has.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:5, Interesting)
- it renders your page inaccessible for blind,... people
- people can't use their browsers comfort functions with Flash (like Open in new Window)
- Flash is too dumb to distinguish between right mouse clicks and drags (like the ones used in mouse gestures), it opens a popup menu with lots of useless commands on right-click - Flash Animations and Intros annoy the shit out of your site users when they have to wait for them even though you have already seen them (slow down site usage which kills your userbase)
- Flash Player is not available for all Browsers on all Operating Systems
- Who says all your visitors want your page to look the same (Font, Font-Size,Sound,...)
You should think a bit about all these points before you decide you really need to break compatibility and comfort just for a bit of eye-candy/bells and whistles.
Re:Firefox isn't made by Microsoft. (Score:3, Interesting)
--Joey
Re:Here's what I think (Score:2, Interesting)
Well, i have a friend who switched from IE6 to FF 0.9 all by his own. No i didn't even told him about FireFox (but i installed FF in that PC tho). Anyway, he didn't even know that FF has tabbed browsing until he saw me using it. "Wow! You can open many pages in the same window(TM)".
Ahh, and don't forget that when the time IE7 is released (hopefully in our lifetime), Firefow will have many new features.
CYGWIN + Mozilla/Firefox = acceptance by big corps (Score:2, Interesting)
I have been using this in the 20th century:
http://www.powerlan-usa.com/webtermx.ht
P.S. I am also looking for ISP offering NFS access to Linux software (I have no time to install everything myself).
P.S.2 I hope that some day I will be able to run both Linux and Windows simultanoesly without vmware.
E4X looks pretty sweet (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is this the end of the ride? (Score:2, Interesting)
Ah, but there IS a way to take care of this, and it's something that, had I really cared to, could have accomplished in about five minutes, both to install it and to show the person how to use it.
A simple extension for Firefox called "Open this page in IE." [mozilla.org] It allows you to load any current page or link to a page into IE, all without you having to open any programs. It'll just open the window for you, load the page, and you can close it when you're done with it.
But the reason I didn't is mainly because I think your 95% assertion is incorrect. In most (>99%) cases, I think that the non-functioning aspect of the page has little to do with vital functions and more to do with things like fonts that aren't sized correctly, and in the other cases, it's usually a situation where it's not that important to the person and they won't bother to deal with it.
What's more, I can think of only one specific group of sites that don't at least FUNCTION in Mozilla/Firefox as opposed to IE, and that group is Microsoft-based pages. The MSDN library, MSN Gaming Zone, Windows Update and the like... Those are the only pages I can think of that have severe functionality issues in Firefox. And I view a LOT of different webpages. All the rest are minor cosmetic things that the average user wouldn't notice in the first place.
Re:It will pick up once the corps grab it (Score:3, Interesting)
Then, when it comes time to update, apply a patch, or what have you, they carefully test each package's install on the test systems, before deploying them. Once they've ensured that there are no obvious problems with the approved setups, they upload the packages their repository server -- and it is this server that the drone machines track, not http.us.debian.org or whatever.
In this situation, the cron job ensures that the users' end machines are automagically updated, whether it be for security patches or software upgrades.
With this sort of setup, IT maintains (for a moderately large company) perhaps 5 machines, and as payback for that anal work, the whole system scales to essentially as many machines as you have bandwidth to support -- on your LAN.
But wait, it can be even better! Don't actually let everyone have their own machine, I mean, why bother? Run a RAID'd fileserver with a ton of space that keeps users' files, and nfs mount them on a thin client. With gigabit ethernet, running X applications over the network is pretty low latency, even for a massive corporation.
Hell, you could even just run X terminals, and put only an LCD display, keyboard and small network enabled terminal box connected to a cluster in IT! Then you can setup consolidated backup solutions, manage security, and just generally keep an eye on employee productivity, all while saving god knows how much in desktops.
This kind of setup also ensures that any employee has the ability to log in to any computer and use it as if he were at his desk, no problems.
This is why Linux will eventually rock the corporate world. It can be centrally maintained in a way that Windows simply cannot be, and it is easily locked down. Employees can continue to work as if they were using their own desktop machine, but in actuality, they are running on a centrally managed cluster that redundantly backs up their data and intelligently allocates CPU/disk quotas. They can work effectively from anywhere on the corporate campus.
It's utopia, absolutely. It's not there yet, but it will be
why has m$ waited so long to respond to firefox? (Score:1, Interesting)
It is very un-M$ to allow competition in a market segment. And its unlikely they didn't see this coming. Why did they wait this long to respond (IE 7.0)?
Its a testament to the strength of their monopoly that they haven't HAD to add new features to IE in 3 years (6.0 released Aug 2002).
Windows users (Score:2, Interesting)
Would be interesting to see a "What browser do you use" poll on
That actually leads me to thinking that geeks are a far lower percentage of the population than I originally thought.
Re:Statistics (Score:1, Interesting)
It's to get past those irritating sniffer tools that were common a few years ago, that blocked you from a site if you weren't using the latest version of IE or Netscape.
So, a naive stats tool would pick Opera up as IE, whereas a smarter one would realise that it's actually Opera.
Re:That's US stats and what about the real world (Score:2, Interesting)