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Comments: 422 + - News: Firefox 3.5 Now the Most Popular Browser Worldwide on Sunday December 20 2009, @09:36PM
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gQuigs notes a graph up at StatCounter Global Statistics, which shows that in the last few days Firefox 3.5 became the most used browser version worldwide, edging ahead of IE7. IE8 is rising fast (along with Windows 7), but over the last few months the slope of Firefox's worldwide curve has been steeper. (In the US, IE8 has always been ahead of Firefox 3.5; in Europe Firefox has led since late summer.) The submitter suggests using the time when Firefox rules the roost, globally speaking, to put the final nail in the coffin of IE6, which still has a 14% global share (5%-7% in the US and EU; China and Korea are holding up IE6's numbers).
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Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
OS next.
Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
People already complain that firefox is to bloatet. Adding an os might really cause people to complain, but they can always do it as a plugin
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Re:Browser down. (Score:4, Funny)
only if I could get Emacs as a Firefox plugin...
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
Emacs is a wonderful operating system. All it lacks is a decent text editor.
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
Emacs is a wonderful operating system. All it lacks is a decent text editor.
What do you mean by that? You can run Vi in Emacs.
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
You and your advanced "hole punching technology" have no idea what I go thru [krytosvirus.com]
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
Last time I punched a ho I got owned.
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
You had it EASY! We had to punch the holes in ourselves using jagged pieces of rock 25 hours a day, until the IT Manager came along, cut us all to ribbons, ingested us in a carnivorous cannibalistic rage, only have to start again, this time in EBDIC!
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Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
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Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Why would you want to create a Linux plugin for Firefox when you can run Firefox on Linux instead?
Re:Browser down. (Score:5, Funny)
You know.
Yo dawg, we heard yall use Linux....
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Why MS failed. (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why MS failed. (Score:4, Interesting)
Actually IE8 might be soon the king of IEs even corporations now have a serious upgrade look.
I expect that IE7 wont really have the impact IE6 had and frankly spoken IE8 while not being really that good is good enough for now.
Still I applaud the rise of firefox, this will open enough pressure on M$ to finally support SVG and raise their ACID compliancy from 20% up to decent levels without lying that ACID tested unfinished standards (which it does not)
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Only reason for any IE6 market share (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Only reason for any IE6 market share (Score:4, Insightful)
Insightful? Ignorant.
Go look up XP torrents. Most come slipstreamed with IE7.
Much more likely to be corporate users, or people that ignore the little yellow shield.
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StatCounter? (Score:4, Interesting)
Considering most Firefox users are more tech savvy than average and many of them are likely to have already blocked StatCounter altogether, this is impressive.
Re:StatCounter? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm not sure "many" of them are. It's hard to estimate, but most estimates for the proportion of users using some form of ad-blocking software are only in the 3-5% range. Even if every one of those is a Firefox 3.5 user, that would only nudge up the 21% market share to the mid-20%s, not totally rearrange the curve or anything.
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Re:StatCounter? (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:StatCounter? (Score:5, Interesting)
Considering most Firefox users are more tech savvy than average and many of them are likely to have already blocked StatCounter altogether, this is impressive.
Statcounter uses an image as a fallback for getting stats where the cookie is blocked or Javascript cannot be run, so unless you've blocked all third party images (how's the text web going for you, tinfoil hat man?) it still shows up.
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An interesting way to summarize the data ... (Score:5, Insightful)
I have another way -- Firefox (all versions) at 32%, Internet Explorer (all versions) at 55%. The fact that the IE market is split between 6.X, 7.X and 8.X doesn't not detract from the (regrettable) fact that Internet Explorer is the most popular browser, worldwide. Different versions do not a different browser make.
In hindsight, this distribution is rather predictable -- FF nags you to update (rightly so) whereas IE can't even update itself, let along notify you about it.
Here's a plot (thankfully, they give out the raw CSV data) with the "all versions" included. Firefox has a ways to go. http://yfrog.com/j5temptlp [yfrog.com]
Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly you have never been involved with web development. "aieee" has wildly different bugs and proprietary features between major versions.
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Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... (Score:5, Informative)
Statcounter also plots that [statcounter.com], fwiw. (Click on the dropdown box after "Statistic:" at the bottom-left of the graph to get other views and data sets as well.)
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Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... (Score:5, Insightful)
The real story here is in the trends of each version. IE7 and IE6 are in decline. For Internet Explorer, only IE8 is still growing, but its rate of growth is significantly slower than Firefox's. The headline may be misleading, but the the summary is right on the money. If these trends keep up, the headline may well become true a lot sooner than you seem to think.
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Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Not to mention that IE8's growth seems to be exclusively at the expense of 6/7 so IE as a whole has declined greatly, or the market has grown while IE use has remained constant.
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Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:An interesting way to summarize the data ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Sure, if you are just a spectator cheering for your team from the sidelines.
But not if you are a web developer/designer, the different versions are very different browsers. In terms of making a modern website work there is much more difference between IE8 and IE6 than there is between IE8 and FF/Safari/Chrome/Opera etc.
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IE6 comes with XP, IE8 with Win7 (Score:4, Interesting)
You're going to see IE8 be absolutely huge over the next 5 years - even if firefox is preferred by geeks and the somewhat tech savvy.
As the huge 32/64bit transition begins (next 12 to 36 months my guess) business's finally can roll out 64bit Windows 7, avoiding Vista entirely and finally retiring Windows XP.
This is going to continue to increase IE8 marketshare much like IE6's was boosted from XP, so what we can only hope is that IE8 isn't garbage (me, I don't know? I use Firefox also)
For what it's worth, I work for one of the state govt's of Australia and one of our departments has just switched from Win2k to XP :/ so I'm guessing we won't be moving to Windows 7 for at least 2 years.
One word: adblock (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:One word: adblock (Score:5, Informative)
When I first saw the option on Slashdot's main page to turn off ads I was a tad croggled. I'd been using Firefox with AdBlock + for so long I'd forgotten that there were ads on Slashdot.
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Re:One word: adblock (Score:4, Insightful)
That's sorta why I go for NoScript + FlashBlock over AdBlock. Ads still display - unless they are powered by Javascript or Flash. So if your ad is a simple image or block of text, I'll still see it. But it won't annoy the heck out of me.
(The bigger reason I run NoScript/FlashBlock is to avoid malware being installed via Javascript / Flash.)
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My plan worked (Score:5, Funny)
1. Remove shortcuts to Internet Explorer
2. Rename Firefox shortcuts to "Internet"
Firefox 3.5 - My Idea
Re:My plan worked (Score:4, Informative)
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Obligatory xkcd post (Score:5, Funny)
Unless you're a web browser developer, keeping track of global browser market-shares is just plain nerdy. But then again, this is
Non uniform adoption across countries? (Score:5, Interesting)
Japan
Firefox has been having a 21-23% share for the 2 years, with IE still leading though dropping from 70 to 65%
Growth in conservative. UK seems to have a similar trend.
Singapore
About 30% share and growth is conservative.
Malaysia
Growth from 30% up to 40%, with an equal drop in IE share.
This looks like a market where Firefox can overtake IE?
France
very interesting trend. W38 2008 and W26 2009 had a short period where IE use was displaced by Firefox, but IE use was resumed in a few weeks.
Does that mean users in France are open to the idea, but still don't deem Firefox a good replacement yet?
Interestingly Vietnam seems to have a similar trend.
China
IE has 95% share all the way, with a drop recently, giving way not to Firefox, but to Maxthon.
Poland / Finland
Firefox is the most popular browser!
North Korea
Nobody really wins. Only IE, once in a while.
Antartica
Go figure. But firefox seems to be winning?
It would be nice if we could have a world map of the most popular browsers in each country
so we can adjust our expectations when talking to overseas partners...
Seriously.. non event (Score:5, Informative)
Using the same method as the poster, you can say that ie6 has more market share then Firefox 3
Nice way to warp the statistics (Score:4, Informative)
IE still has over 50% of the market, so firefox isn't exactly the most popular browser. Firefox is at 30% and Chrome is already at 5% and its still an infant.
Don't get me wrong, I'm glad IE's share is getting smaller and smaller, but Firefox still isn't the most popular browser out there, lets actually accomplish it before we tell everyone we've accomplished it by messaging the data.
Re:From The Book of Mozilla, 11:9 (Score:5, Insightful)
Mammon slept. And the beast reborn spread over the earth and its numbers grew legion. And they proclaimed the times and sacrificed crops unto the fire, with the cunning of foxes. And they built a new world in their own image as promised by the sacred words [mozilla.org] , and spoke [mozilla.org] of the beast with their children. Mammon awoke, and lo! it was naught but a follower.
from The Book of Mozilla, 11:9
(10th Edition)
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
And while IE 6 may be archaic, if you have an intranet based on people using IE 6 that IE 7+, Firefox or another browser breaks, you either have to upgrade the entire intranet or keep IE 6 around.
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:4, Informative)
Except that IE8 is perfectly capable of emulating both IE6's and IE7's standards-noncompliance modes, in addition to rendering in a proper (albeit lacking some newer features) standards-compliant mode.
There's no excuse. There's less than 250 hours left in this DECADE, so Win2k isn't a valid argument in my books.
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:5, Informative)
Except that IE8 is perfectly capable of emulating both IE6's and IE7's standards-noncompliance modes.
Nope, IE8 does not emulate IE6, which is the chief problem here. (It does emulate IE5, however.)
In fact, CSS2 that "works" in IE6 is almost guaranteed to break in IE8 or any other modern browser.
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:4, Funny)
Except that IE8 is perfectly capable of emulating both IE6's and IE7's standards-noncompliance modes, in addition to rendering in a proper (albeit lacking some newer features) standards-compliant mode.
I recently spent some time in Korea, working on-site for a customer who you will have heard of.
We had to set up our machine with their ghastly intranet security software. After realising that their intranet portal only works with IE due to stupid stuff like missing Javascript onClick handlers, we started the installation procedure and the requisite four reboots. It failed weirdly after reboot #3.
After some time trying to make it work, we discovered that their security software is not compatible with IE8.
Unfortunately our sysadmin is quite efficient, which means that the Windows installation had IE8 slipstreamed into it. This meant it couldn't be removed. And you can't install IE7 on a machine with IE8 on it. Which meant that the only way to progress was to reinstall Windows, from scratch, using an XP CD that the customer lent us.
...which turned out to have a virus on it.
</pissed off>
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:4, Funny)
And while IE 6 may be archaic, if you have an intranet based on people using IE 6 that IE 7+, Firefox or another browser breaks, you either have to upgrade the entire intranet or keep IE 6 around
More to the point, the following scenario tends to happen in large corporate IT...
Users: "IE6 is old, slow, and renders pages incorrectly. We'd like to install a more recent browser. As per IT policy, we are raising a support request to install non-standard software or upgrade the corporate standard image."
IT: (thinks) "Bugger, they're asking me to do some work again... hmm..." (types email)
Dear users,
In regard of your requests for Firefox or IE8. As this is a user-requested upgrade, we require you to provide a full cost-benefit analysis of the upgrade, taking into account the impact on our corporate agreements with third party hardware and software suppliers (which we will not reveal to you as they are commercial in confidence), a detailed technical analysis of the impact on all internal software infrastructure (including those under development that we won't tell you about), and the cost of manpower to perform the upgrade using specific IT staff's accurate salaries and overheads (which again we will not reveal to you). The analysis must contain a full twenty-page analysis of the benefits including time-in-motion studies. For brevity, however, the entire document must be no longer than half a page. Please deliver in person, in triplicate, printed on unicorn hide rather than paper (the IT analyst is allergic to most paper bleaches). We will then schedule the upgrade in our next user-requested improvement slot, currently scheduled for the year 5000. No there is not a timecode for your work preparing this analysis.
best regards,
Your helpful IT support team.
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, checking Google Analytics for one of our websites at work has consistently shown IE6 at "just cranks and a handful of corporate users" levels for a long time now (less than 10%, down to about 5% last month or so). You'll never get rid of it completely, there are still a few nutjobs running Mac OS 9 + IE5 out there, unfortunately a lot of these people will complain loudly when things don't work for them (even though there is no chance whatsoever of most websites supporting their ancient setup).
/Mikael
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
I see "This site requires Internet Explorer 6" on our Intranet all the time. Peoplesoft for example, urgh.
Of course, the site will run perfectly with Firefox if I change the user agent string.
Corporate Intranets with lazy admins or dumb policies are what keeps IE6 alive.
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate Intranets with lazy admins or dumb policies are Microsoft's best friend.
Fixed
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Re:IE6? Really? (Score:5, Insightful)
Corporate Intranets with no budget for upgrades are what keeps IE6 alive.
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Re:Given the instant speed difference alone (Score:5, Informative)
I fail to see all good news for Firefox on that page. Or, should I say that I don't see all good news for consumers.
Together, IE6, IE7 and IE8 still dominate the market. I'm afraid that will remain true for a couple more years, no matter how much pressure the rest of the world puts on the market. Separating the versions of the various browsers just clutters the picture.
If I may, I'll point out that I'm partly color blind. It's tough to see that chart. It's hard to see the "real picture". What is literally true for me, is figuratively true for those who are working so hard to track browser usage.
Is there a page that tracks usage, which lumps IE (all versions), Firefox (all versions) Opera (all versions) etc?
Ahhhhh, here we go: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser-ww-weekly-200827-200951 [statcounter.com]
Yes indeed. Global domination by Firefox is indeed getting closer - but not this year, and probably not next year. Let's give it between 3 and 5 years, alright?
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Re:Firefox / Windows 7 (Score:4, Informative)
Some Googling suggests it's a recent update with Firefox others suggest it's a Firefox / Flash issue.
A userspace application cannot cause a BSOD (kernel panic). This is strictly a driver issue, video most likely. Of course it can be triggered by Firefox/Flash/whatever combo, but the bug is still in the driver.
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