1 Million Firefoxes in 4 Days 602
Dodger73 writes "The Mozilla guys would have liked to reach 1 Million downloads of the Firefox 1.0 pre-release version within ten days of its release. After four days, the download counter now shows 1,006,060 downloads, surpassing the 10^6 mark more than twice as fast as they desired! Congratulations!"
Link to get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link to get it (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Informative)
They did talk to them; Yahoo replied that they want to be able to script Windows Media Player (plugin). Not sure what's happenning now.
It would probably help if you complained to Yahoo as well (hopefully more complaints would help motivate them to fix things).
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Interesting)
Do you have a reference to this intention? One would think that Firefox had the intention of being a cross-platform browser like Mozilla before it.
Linux on desktop was a much less credible beast at the time of first phoenix release, though...
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Informative)
Parent: Do you have a reference to this intention?
The opening paragraph of the Firefox Development Charter [mozilla.org] says:
Firefox grew out of the desire to make the best browser for Microsoft Windows. Eventually we began to build on Linux as well, and also Macintosh. Most of our development work is done on Windows, and so that platform naturally tends to lead although we express a desire to work as well as is feasible on every system we can.
Linux vs. Windows FF (Score:4, Informative)
However, one thing that irks me about the Moz team is how Firefox's default behavior is quite different in Linux and in Windows. In Windows, if you middle-click on the tab bar at the top, the tab closes. In Linux, the middle click by default wants to open a new page with a link from the clipboard which, more often than not, is not a valid URL and generates an annoying error message. To fix this, you just have to go into the about:config, and change the middleclick.openURL (I think..) to 'false'.
Another thing.. In Windows, if you middle click in a page, you can scroll up and down. In Linux, again, you have to enable this in the about:config.
Since FF is supposed to be a multi-platform browser, I really wish they would make the default behavior consistent between platforms. I don't want to have to twiddle in the config to get it working like it's supposed to.
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Why don't you just tell us what these three extensions were for? I mean hell, how do you think the thing is going to improve if all you say is "it sucks". I really think this version of Firefox is somewhat complete and far superior than IE in its default state.
And what about the tabbed browsing? Everything works like expected to me.
then build a "consumer" download
What a brilliant idea. There should also be a Google for the intelligent and one for the stupid masses. And there should also be a 2.6.x kernel for people who know what thei're doing and one for those who don't. No, this is really a bad idea. There should always be one product, which needs to be compatible with every type of user. Firefox is doing this in a great way!
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Insightful)
Your average AOLer doesn't give a crap about Tabbed Browsing, and if they do, the built-in behavior is fine.
Stop projecting your nerdy predilections on "normal users".
Re:Link to get it (Score:3, Insightful)
I really can't Im,agine that anyone who uses firefox can really say no-one will care about tabbed browsing.
Re:Link to get it (Score:5, Insightful)
Most people (novice or otherwise) that I've ever introduced Firefox to are very thankful for that fact; I'm sorry your daddy wasn't. If you want something that works just like IE, my advice is stick with IE.
How many of these are repeats though? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:How many of these are repeats though? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How many of these are repeats though? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How many of these are repeats though? (Score:5, Funny)
You mean you browse slashdot.... at home??
Shit what do you do all day at work then?
Re:How many of these are repeats though? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:How many of these are repeats though? (Score:3, Interesting)
And that's nothing. Think if you were the Debian maintainer....
--Bruce Fields
Re:How many of these are repeats though? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:How many of these are repeats though? (Score:4, Interesting)
--Asa
Raises hand (Score:4, Funny)
I've already stress tested the websites of Mono, OpenOffice, Debian, Gentoo, Mandrake, Fedora, SuSE, and other open source apps. They all pass too.
You don't honestly think that open source is that popular, do you?
(Okay, sacrasm aside, yes, there are multiple downloads. In your case, you had three downloads for two computers, but I think this is the exception. One download can serve more than one computer and in an office or "sneaker net" setting, that's the most likely outcome)
I downloaded it once for 20,000 users (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:I downloaded it once for 20,000 users (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:I downloaded it once for 20,000 users (Score:3, Insightful)
behold! (Score:5, Funny)
Firefox vs. Windows update (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Firefox vs. Windows update (Score:4, Informative)
Enjoy!
Re:Firefox vs. Windows update (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox vs. Windows update (Score:5, Interesting)
If I understand the comments correctly, IE is still required to be fully installed. All it does is to add a menu item for "Windows Update" that runs IE?
What would be nice is a special program that grabs stuff from WU. I know the WU client does, but only the critical security updates.
Re:Firefox vs. Windows update (Score:3, Interesting)
Still needs IE (Score:3, Funny)
From the author's page [beggarchooser.com]:
Re:Firefox vs. Windows update (Score:5, Insightful)
I also installed Firefox for the first time yesterday. I have moved from Internet Explorer to Netscape Navigator to Opera version 5, 6 and 7. I thought Opera was the best browser on the planet, but then I realized it was Firefox!
Firefox launches really quickly, and the websites loads very fast too (actaully a bit faster than Opera as far as I have experienced). The Firefox extensions are really a neat thing; you can validate a page (HTML, CSS, link check etc.) from a menu on a toolbar instead of typing the URL everytime. The other features of the developer extension makes developing a standard website easy outlining deprecated elements for example, or resizing the window.
Overall, my view on Mozilla and Firefox has changed rapidly within a few minutes.
Re:Firefox vs. Windows update (Score:5, Insightful)
coolness (Score:3, Informative)
It's great (Score:5, Interesting)
Supported browsers (Score:5, Interesting)
I am always so annoyed with the "Your browser is not supported" mesage...
Re:Supported browsers (Score:3, Informative)
I have just the opposite problem: I usually have to remember to go back and check my site in IE after I update it. I've had to make a lot of minor changes because something looked muffed up in IE. For example, IE doesn't like when you put spaces inside of the quotes around HEX colors. (e.g.: bgcolor=" #333333 "). That color appears green in IE.
Re:Supported browsers (Score:3, Insightful)
We have a dress code sir, 'no ties allowed'...
Reporter to Bill$ Gate$ (Score:4, Funny)
Gate$: "I think its a myth. There are foxes and then there are foxes. There is no such thing as a Fire fox. And now if you'd excuse me, there is a Long Horn up my ass, I have to go see someone abt it."
More downloads... (Score:5, Informative)
Copies are spread through many other sources so the actual amount of downloads is probably much more than the download counter indicates!
Congrats Firefox!
Re:More DL --Junk toolbars no longer exclusive for (Score:3, Interesting)
How many did you contribute? (Score:5, Informative)
Things that impressed them the most over their first ~5 mins.
1. Tabbed Browsing
2. Ability to set multiple pages as home pages.
3. Sleek look.
4. Small download size.
I guess the popup blocker didn't make as much of an impact because of 3rd party blockers/etc that they had installed and functional.
Go Firefox!
Re:How many did you contribute? (Score:5, Funny)
Its like bringing the search results up from google cache.
My gf has fallen in love with the "Nuke anything" extension, she thinks its cool to make geek stuff go away bit by bit (she sits and wipes out bits of
Re:How many did you contribute? (Score:3, Interesting)
3 million in four months (Score:3, Insightful)
The community must spread this kind of initiative to other projects.
My four downloads... (Score:5, Interesting)
Something I don't think has been promoted enough is that Firefox works brilliantly on older computers. I've got an old Win95 machine that I use for when I need to use Microsoft Office (OpenOffice.org is great, but sometimes I need the real MS thing), and was trying to update the IE 4 that it's currently stuck with. Is it possible? I've no idea. I was bounced around various Microsoft download pages, unable to find something that suited Windows 95 - all the system requirements for newer versions of IE given were at least Win98...
Contrast this with Firefox. Visit the Mozilla site, and it guesses which version of Firefox you should need from the User-Agent string of your existing browser. Big link on front page, click on it to download, and minutes later you're in a new browser.
There are many, many older computers around, and before not it was too easy to get stuck with an out-of-date browser. There were alternatives, but Firefox has become the easiest of the lot - it's incredibly simple to upgrade to something secure and modern. It's brilliant!
Re:My four downloads... (Score:3, Informative)
In this case, the Win95 machine's a 333MHz K6-2. Firefox is a little slow on startup (ten seconds or so?) but a big improvement on Mozilla. In use, it's absolutely fine.
One of the Win98 machines is a 166MHz Pentium. Firefox is completely usable there, too - screen updates are slightly slower than on a modern machine, but it's really nothing to complain about. It's all completely
Re:Minimo (Score:5, Informative)
I think that anyone who has ever built a rendering engine capable of displaying even 95% of today's websites would beg to differ with you. Mozilla's Gecko rendering engine is the most capable standards supporting code available. Minimo is an attempt to get that rendering engine leaned down some and running on small devices.
I've spent some time testing Minimo [mozilla.org] on an iPaq and it rocks. It can handle just about any web page you throw at it, like Mozilla and Firefox, and it fits in your pocket
--Asa
Now how about fixing slashdot? (Score:5, Insightful)
Surely somebody here could fix it?
Re:Now how about fixing slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
You should take a look at slashdot through the W3C markup validator [w3.org].
Of course, the Slashdot Moderators(tm) don't want you to look at the site through the w3c. That's why you get the 403 forbidden error. However, if you save a page from this site and upload just that html file to w3c, you'll get over a hundred html errors. Try it with this story and you'll see what I'm talking about.
And people wonder why this site doesn't render right on different browsers, sheesh.
Shaggy
p.s. Yes, I know it's easier to bitch and moan than to actually do something about it. But damnit Jim, I'm a bicycle mechanic, not a programmer!
Re:Now how about fixing slashdot? (Score:5, Informative)
It comes from the ability to view the site while not all of the data was already downloaded. In case images don't have their size properties, it assumes a default value and forgets to update it when the data appears.
To fix, simply ctrl- and ctrl+ to change font size and it'll fix the layout.
So now they are a worthy target for black hats (Score:3, Insightful)
And since the good guys cannot always win (unless you live in an hollywood movie), it is time to prepare a nice chroot jail in which to run our beloved browser (and maybe the mail client as well).
Firefox.com (Score:5, Informative)
Kudos to Kevin for demonstrating a great deal of kindness in supporting our favourite browser..
Average Joe is starting to catch on (Score:4, Insightful)
The important thing is that people are now realizing that they actually have a choice. That's the first step.
Thats nothing compared to the future (Score:5, Informative)
Even though I limit peoples permissions they still get spyware. When things get bad especially for people who need admin access to their machines for legacy apps, I have to reinstall Windows2k. Not fun.
Wait till we get version 1.2 or something, and people can confidently install it in the corporate.
Then start counting.
Re:Thats nothing compared to the future (Score:4, Informative)
--Asa
Is my emerge counted (Score:3, Insightful)
1 million is great, and like every poster here has said. The count isn't close to accurate. So let us now aim for 2 million!
Re:Is my emerge counted (Score:5, Interesting)
Unfortunately not. We miss a lot of downloads. Right now we're just looking at our primary FTP mirrors. We're not taking into account all of the not Mozilla FTP mirror download locations or mechanisms.
If you have suggestions about how to get a more inclusive count, please let me know.
The good news is that this is probably a conservative estimate and our real number of 1.0PR downloads are probably higher than what we're reporting.
1 million is great, and like every poster here has said. The count isn't close to accurate. So let us now aim for 2 million!
See SpreadFirefox.com [spreadfirefox.com] where we're already looking for that second million
--Asa
This is interesting (Score:5, Funny)
Dean: "Take back your country"
Firefox: "Take back the web"
One new user here (Score:5, Interesting)
I just got the new release of Firefox a few days ago after a friend recommended it, and I think I have just found my new favorite browser. It has the same streamlined look that I had customized on my old IE setup, but without the MS junk and frequent crashes. Its very fast too, and tabs seem like a great feature (I used to just open everything in a new window before Mozilla.)
I'm basically stuck with a crappy operating system because of gaming and office fonts, but its nice to know that I'm not stuck with IE if I want a fast streamlined browser.
Would be much higher ... (Score:5, Interesting)
So the counter would be much higher, if other languages were finished.
Mac OS X Users check this out: (Score:5, Interesting)
Early Hype a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
* there are still some nasty bugs in there (like some HTML rendering), so they should have waited for a proper 1.0
* many cool plugins and themes haven't been updated for 1.0PR - which would demonstrate the full power of FF
* I can see many avarage Joes downloading 1.0PR and never updating it - jeust because of the buzz
* maybe they should have started the hype, when FF and Thunderbird were ready for 1.0 - so they could offer both in a bundle?
* I still think many major features are either to hidden or need a plugin: mouse gestures should be in by default and 'search in page' is way toooo geeky
* there should be better mechanisms in the software / first startup to make users download their 'usual' plugins (they already have in IE) like Flash, QuickTime and RealPlayer - so that FF will work properly with their usual sites
Re:Early Hype a mistake (Score:5, Interesting)
* First, it simply works [tm] for most users and most sites, so, yes there are still bugs on HTML rendering and it haunting them down will be long story, but as I said - it works for most users.
* I guess lot of those users won't chase cool plugins as long as after month or two of casual browsing - or maybe won't look after plugins at all. So this stuff is for advanced users who already know that they should wait.
* This (t.i. third) point is the most I would agree with - but hey, it's a common problem and it is not only with Firefox.
* Hmmm, smart thought, but I think marketing should start when it should start - it must be slightly before the release of original product. See, Microsoft hypes about Longhorng veeeeeery eaaaarly
* Of coarse lot of things could be improved, but hey, let's leave it to the next versions
* I really LOVE the new way of handling Flash plugins - just click on the embeded object with text 'Download the plugin', opens the wizard, several 'Next' and vola - I got working Flash. It is really MUCH better than previous way of handling things.
So, it is not so bad - it is marketing and I really happy to see that it works - even for open source.
Re:Early Hype a mistake (Score:5, Insightful)
I find that the most glaring error in firefox. The plugins that need updating EVERY SINGLE VERSION of it. I mean, how hard can it be to make the plugins work across versions? Is the interface changing EVERY version? Is the change worth it? Is it getting THAT much better for plugin programmers? What they'll acomplish with this is that they'll burn trought the good will of the plugin programmers before releasing 1.0 final.
Firefox/Mozilla Usage Up to 5.2% (Score:3, Interesting)
Firefox.com (Score:3, Informative)
Nice one Kevin.
Help boast the counter... (Score:3, Funny)
Word is getting out there (Score:3, Interesting)
some of them are starting to ask me about this Mozilla thing! You know it's catching fire when the gun-toting hunting types want to know about it.
How'd they hear about it? Some anti-adware programs and stuff recommend installing it.
So 2 points - it's getting out there (obviously), and word of mouth is still the best tool - and with an app as slick as Firefox, you're going to get plenty of that
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:5, Insightful)
Has anyone suggested or in any way implied that they were new users?
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:5, Interesting)
it's still more than with the previous releases, meaning that it has gotten quite a few new users since that.
(ok, the release having magical 1.0 number in it might have something to do with it too)
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:4, Informative)
Who said it did?
Just think about the numbers though. It must be already 10x the number of people the whole development team will meet in their entire lives.
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:5, Insightful)
The release of 1.0 PR garnered a lot of media attention. It appeared on news.google.com [google.com]'s front page. On most tech sites there was a mention. The Wall Street Journal mentioned it twice last week. And then it was going to fall from everyone's attention until 1.0 was released...
Except the MARKETING arm of Mozilla/Firefox decided to have a legitimate goal of 1 million downloads in ten days. This would be the most downloads of the browser ever but it was certainly do able. And then when users pushed it over 1 million much sooner - new press release and new stories. Mind share increased. And all of a sudden, it appears Firefox has huge momentum. And 1.0 is not even out yet. So, does this mean a ton of new users, not necessarily right away. But long term it shows that Mozilla has decided how important MARKETING is and they are ready to use its power to take the program to a whole new level.
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:3, Interesting)
I think this hurt Mozilla's adoption greatly; if they had marketed with the furor they're marketing with now, they would have a LOT more users, as AOL could have placed links to their stuff on pages visited by TENS of millions of people daily.
Kudos to the Mozil
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:5, Interesting)
Based on my reading of the referrer stats, a significant portion of those downloading Firefox 1.0 PR were using IE to perform that download.
--Asa
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:3, Interesting)
For me, that could be anywhere between 30% and 80%
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:5, Insightful)
I mean, 1 million downloads in 4 days is really something for any *regular* program.
Here we have a million people willing to download a pre-release version, and track down bugs !!
i would predict that this version will get downloaded by 3 million people.
Can you imagine how many bugs will be reported?
If they manage to deal with them, Firefox v1.0 will be the most stable browser ever made.
Many more millions of "new users" are expected to follow after that.
Re:Most of that is probably from previous users (Score:3, Insightful)
I have a t-shirt announcing, proudly, 5 million copies of a company's flagship product shipping -- over the span of 4 years. We had a party and press releases, and a few folks recieved nice bonuses.
I think 1 million in 4 days even from current users is impressive.
Re:Firefox vs. Real Mozilla? (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.mozilla.org/products/choosing-produc
--Asa
Re:no prize? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:It's a conspiracy... ok not really, but sort of (Score:5, Informative)
With almost every release of Mozilla based products, we fix security bugs. We announce those security bugs when we release, that's our standard operating procedure. See http://www.mozilla.org/security/ and http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html.
We're very proud of our new Security Bug Bounty program which went into effect well before the Firefox PR shipped. That program helped us identify and fix several more security bugs than might have otherwise been fixed in this release.
The PR was actually release a couple of weeks behind schedule, in part due to our being busy working on fixing a couple of security and privacy issues. We certainly didn't "throw together a preview for the sake of not having to announce it as a fix for major exploits." What actually happened was that we announced the security fixes to the public and to security research firms like Secunia when we shipped PR. They found out about the problem because we shipped and we disclosed the bugs -- our normal process.
You seem to have the misconception that the security issues were about to be disclosed so we rushed a release out. That's just not the case. It was the Mozilla Foundation that made the security disclosures. We do that each time we ship a new release that has security related bug fixes.
--Asa
Re:New Firefox Users (Score:5, Insightful)
We're not stopping at all. I think we'll make 2 million by the end of our original 10 day campaign.
And 10M isn't nearly ambitious enough for the next year
Re:What's so "cool" about FireFox? (Score:5, Interesting)
Firefox doesn't look and feel like Netscape, circa 1997.
There's a reason why I stopped using Netscape, I don't want to go back...
I think that sums it up.
Re:What's so "cool" about FireFox? (Score:5, Informative)
The difference between 4.5 MB and 11MB is dramatic for the 60 million (49%) US internet users who still don't have broadband [66.102.7.104].
I'm not sure how a figure like "half" isn't significant. Half of the US still isn't on broadband and for them, Firefox downloading much easier than Mozilla. Firefox is about the size of an MP3. People can relate to downloading something that size.
But Mozilla has a few things that FireFox lacks right now: 1) better page-rendering accuracy and 2) a very good mail and newsgroup reader.
Mozilla and Firefox share the same Gecko rendering engine so I'm not sure where you get the "better page-rendering accuracy" from. Firefox has a powerful companion e-mail application called Thunderbird [mozilla.org] for anyone who needs a great (not "good") email and newsgroup reader. Thunderbird is to Mozilla email what Firefox is to Mozilla browser.
--Asa
Re:Firefox 1.0PR sucks!! (Score:4, Informative)
Re:awesome (Score:5, Funny)
You were a day early, matey. Today be Talk Like a Pirate Day, arrr.
Re:awesome (Score:5, Funny)
You forgot this part:
and then i woke up.
Re:awesome (Score:3, Informative)
They do. Sort of. Nvu is a standalone web authoring system based on a fork of Mozilla Composer. The project head is Daniel Glazman, who was lead developer for Composer. I have not used Nvu, but it seems to have added a number of significant (and IMO much needed) features to Composer's base (e.g. CSS editing and site managment).
The development is sponsored by Linspire, not the Mozill
Re:All Right! (Score:3, Informative)
Re:All Right! (Score:4, Informative)
Saves so much inks when printing directions.