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Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads
Posted by
ScuttleMonkey
on Wed Oct 19, 2005 12:54 PM
from the shop-smart-shop-f-mart dept.
from the shop-smart-shop-f-mart dept.
webslash writes "Mozilla's Firefox web browser crossed the 100 million downloads milestone today. Webmasters are adding Firefox download counters on websites to keep track of the downloads in real time. Firefox celebrated 50 million downloads just 6 months back and with the release of Firefox 1.5 Beta 2. Additionally the Firefox 2/3 roadmap also looks promising."
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Firefox Tops 100 Million Downloads
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Some misc. Browser Percentage Data - GO FF! (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://www.komar.org/christmas/)
In comparison, the 2004 Christmas webcam [komar.org] had 67.9% IE, 21.1% Firefox, 2.7% Netscape, 2.7% Safari, 2.4% Mozilla, and 1.6% Opera. Not a lotta change, although one interesting thing is the drop in Mozilla (everyone uses Firefox now?) and Netscape - no surprise on the later.
This would support some of the press that says Firefox growth is slowing. Having said that, Firefox just ROCKS - really sucks when you can do something cool in HTML/CSS (example :hover) and IE doesn't support it.
And obligatory "extensions are cool" too ... GO FIREFOX!
Re:Some misc. Browser Percentage Data - GO FF! (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Monday November 21 2005, @10:29PM)
IE: 75.5%
Firefox: 18.0%
Mozilla: 2.5%
Netscape: 0.4%
Opera: 1.2%
Worth mentioning, though, is that any site that attracts tech-savvy people is going to have a disproportionaly high percentage for Firefox. This means that
Re:Some misc. Browser Percentage Data - GO FF! (Score:4, Insightful)
In what way? There's absolutely nothing on the linked page about Firefox 2 or Firefox 3 (presumably what Firefox two-thirds means) except a single codename: "The Ocho." Are you saying that this codename is promising? Or did the submitter of the article not even read the link he pasted in there?
Re:Some misc. Browser Percentage Data - GO FF! (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.mangaschool.com/ | Last Journal: Tuesday January 03 2006, @07:51AM)
So when
More sec bugs = more downloads (Score:2, Insightful)
Google News/. (Score:5, Funny)
Net Installations (Score:4, Insightful)
100 million, billion, jillion, whatever is great. Those numbers can be achieved via the same people downloading multiple releases. But, how many singular installtions are there. Now that would be an interesting statistic.
Re:Net Installations (Score:5, Informative)
(http://warrenmyers.com/)
THat being said, I agree that it would be a more helpful stat to know how many unique installed copies there are out there (I've downloaded it multiple times on a couple computers due to reformats).
Go Firefox (Score:2, Insightful)
(http://dzdesigns.centraldown.com/)
usage on the way up too? (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.milliondollarsweethearts.com/)
Free As In Beer - Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
(http://www.yafla.com/dforbes/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 27 2005, @10:43AM)
Of course to me the primary benefits of Firefox were standards compliance, features, cross-platform capabilities, and free-as-in-beer. I get all of those advantages, along with improved speed and a few more feaures (e.g. native SVG, something that is coming to a stable Firefox release any-year-now), in Opera. Of course I do miss some of the Firefox plug-ins, which is why I jump over to it on occasion.
Am I alone in feeling this way? I suspect that the freeing of Opera has had more of an impact on Firefox than anything Microsoft is doing.
Re:Free As In Beer - Opera (Score:5, Interesting)
hmm (Score:1)
Versions? (Score:1, Insightful)
(http://www.smo.uhi.a...clora/riomhaire.html)
No... (Score:5, Funny)
(http://www.emopirates.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday July 16 2003, @10:46AM)
Re:Versions? (Score:4, Informative)
(http://www.hyperborea.org/journal/ | Last Journal: Tuesday September 11, @05:30PM)
If that's correct, that means it depends on whether you used Firefox or another browser to download the updated installer.
One wonders..... (Score:2)
Ratio of downloads to users (Score:4, Insightful)
Well even if they're ridiculously high, 100 million is a freaking huge number. Even if the average person has downloaded it 10 times, that still means over 10 million people are using it worldwide.
Roadmap? (Score:4, Interesting)
(Last Journal: Friday August 24, @08:58PM)
Firefox 2/3 (Score:5, Funny)
promising? (Score:2, Interesting)
can you explain what looks promising in that link concerning 2/3? "The Ocho"? I guess thats promising...
What do they mean by download? (Score:1, Redundant)
(Last Journal: Tuesday June 12, @07:38PM)
100 million is impressive, Im just wondering where the numbers are coming from.
Is this is coincidence? (Score:2, Funny)
(http://jordanthoms.no-ip.org/)
"The Ocho" (Score:2)
(http://www.bapudi.com/)
Yeah, the roadmap looks promising (Score:2)
(http://www.linuxchile.cl/)
What a promise!
How many unique? (Score:1, Redundant)
I'm just glad... (Score:2)
And the meaning is (Score:1, Redundant)
(http://www.crazysquirrel.com/index.jspx)
While this is great news it doesn't really tell us anything about how many people are using firefox. Every good geek out there downloads just about every new release which means that figure is huge compared to the user base. They might as well have just said "We do a lot of releases". It has basically the same meaning.
Top 10 browsers for RubyForge (Score:2)
(http://tomcopeland.blogs.com/)
I would have posted the stats here, but the lameness filter stymied me. Ah well.
looks promising (Score:1, Troll)
(http://www.crapfilter.net/ | Last Journal: Tuesday August 16 2005, @06:52AM)
You dumbass. They don't say jack shit about Firefox 2 or 3. Woowee! The code name is a reference from Dodgeball! Holy shit, I can't wait for that. It sounds really, really promising! OMG!
The number for 1.5 will have more weight (Score:3, Insightful)
(http://tinyurl.com/6q4x4)
It's one thing to have FF 1.0x but given the auto-update feature in FF 1.5, you'd have to be a fool not to upgrade.
I just hope you don't need to run FF 1.5 as Admin for the Auto-update feature to work.
The Next Next Big Thing?! (Score:3, Interesting)
Additionally the Firefox 2/3 roadmap also looks promising.
Let's look the roadmap...
2.0, "The Ocho", 2006, The Next Big Thing
3.0, ???, Bugs, The Next Next Big Thing
Nice, but what would be the goals for The Next Big Thing? To quote again:
Goals
We are still working on goals for 2.0/3.0 and are drafting a PRD for its development. Some likely goals include:
* Improvements to Bookmarks/History
* Per-Site Options
* Enhancements to the Extensions system, Find Toolbar, Software Update, Search and other areas.
* Accessibility compliance
* More
That doesn't look very promising to me. It would be revolutionary if web browsers in general could break the monopoly of JavaScript and introduce other script languages (python, ruby,...) on the client side. This would boost the web applications much further as they are now. That's just a wish, but probably a security nightmare.
Still my question remains: what's the next big thing for web browsers?
Firefox on 4 month decline at w3schools.com (Score:5, Interesting)
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.
May 2005 ===> Sept 2005
IE 5 and 6: 71.6% ===> 75.5%
Firefox: 21.0% ===> 18.0%
Mozilla: 3.1% ===> 2.5%
Netscape 0.7% ===> 0.4%
Opera 7 and 8: 1.3% ===> 1.2%
Additionally the Firefox 2/3 roadmap... (Score:2)
should be:
Just looks like Firefox has a 2/3 compromise... reminds me of 3/5 compromise [wikipedia.org]. Is that how browser statistics will be measured?
/joking of course.
Keep in coming, give me all you got! (Score:2)
(http://www.sophistic.com/)
Now on the FreeBSD platform it is pretty stable as well, I just wish FreeBSD/Gnome/Mozilla+ could get together, especially I'ld cheer for much better plugin support/installation/management. But guess, the plugin system is still not that cross platform? having to have everything compiled, for firefox updates and java as well..
Well perhaps next christmas.
But definately, things are moving great. Lets keep it up, have to control the upper ground before Microsoft will attack with alternative lock tactics with Vista, Winforms and what else they got coming to keep the technology coming together for the users across platforms.
Firefox, the Family Browser (Score:1)
(http://www.jasongreb.com/)
Free ad blocking going mainstream, not good (Score:1)
I used to want to tell the world about this great new browser called firefox, but more and more I now want to keep it my little secret. If a program like Adblock were to become part of the standard firefox package (like pop-up blocking currently is) and also turned on by default to block most ads, whats going to happen to websites that depend on ad revenue to exist?
If firefox, or Opera, were to theoretically add ad blocking by default, and in turn advertise their browser as the one that makes all the annoying ads go away, it could really begin to take market share from IE. The bigger fear is that microsoft will then add their own ad blocking feature which would mean that ad blocking would become main stream.
The fact that webmasters seem to be the biggest promoter of this, or any alternative browser, seems ironic. Finding that millions of people now have the opportunity to not view my ads, is not exactly good news.
Promising roadmap? (Score:2)
(http://lawpoop.blogspot.com/ | Last Journal: Friday May 28 2004, @06:51PM)
Really? All I saw listed for 2 and 3 was "The Next Big Thing" and "The Next Next Big Thing". Maybe this is the wrong link?
Way to go... (Score:1)
(http://tarrysingh.blogspot.com/)
Hard to deploy in a network (Score:5, Interesting)
But it is still far too dificult to deploy on a company network. I know, I have done it. I used FFdeploy to make it a bit easier.
Now that FF is on a solid path to conquer the personal desktops it deserves, I would really like to see some progress towards helping administators manage network installs.
How do I upgrade 25 client machines running 1.0.4 to 1.0.7 on a Samba network? Ideally, I would just put all files somewhere, and call xcopy from the logon script. Unfortunately, it is almost certain to break stuff (particularly with extensions).
Whew!... (Score:1)
roadmap also looks promising ? (Score:2)
Looks like a mostly pointless document to me. Unless you mean the 4 minor "likely goals" listed that might be in 1.5, 2.0, or 3.0.
I'm a relative outsider to the ins and outs of Firefox (a KDE/Konqueror user), but that page sums up the project as a whole to me. They've gotten too big, too quickly, and can't really cope.
I hope the document is just wildly out of date.
FF is great, but there are problems....... (Score:1)
(http://mistshadow2k4.deviantart.com/ | Last Journal: Wednesday May 31 2006, @02:37PM)
I think everybody on slashdot is aware that there have been some security problems with FF (I don't have time to hunt for the links, just do a search here). I personally love FF, have since it's infancy, but I can't help but foresee similar problems in the future.
I think the source of the problem is that Mozilla is spreading out too fast. And it's hurting their products. For example, I just had to uninstall and reinstall FF; I'm browsing my fave extensions to reinstall as I write this. A month ago I had to uninstall and reinstall SeaMonkey (the classic Mozilla, which my husband prefers to FF). In both cases, it seems some of the app's files became corrupted.
How many programmers are regularly working with Mozilla? How many on each project? I don't know personally, but I'm betting that most of them are working on multiple projects. And how many Mozilla projects are there? SeaMonkey, Firefox, Thunderbird (best email client I've ever seen, btw), Camino, Sunbird.... am I forgetting any? Probably.
I like the new free opera, but I don't use it much. Opera doesn't have two things that makes the Mozilla browsers invaluable to me - you can turn off software installation and you can get extensions. You have to turn on software installation to install extensions, but otherwise you can turn it off and leave it off, and this helps secure your PC (if you know this, you're probably thinking "duh!", but you'd be surprised how many people using FF don't know).
What's my point? Don't count your chickens before the eggs hatch. Firefox is gaining popularity, and it should, but I'm going to wait until 1.5 is in final release before I begin celebrating. I'm just holding out for hope that these recent spate of problems won't become a long-lasting trend. Only time will tell.
Firefox getting worse with every release (Score:3, Insightful)
An Informal Survey Of Blog Stats (Score:4, Insightful)
(http://blogtk.sourceforge.net/)
I think Firefox usage is quite a bit higher than people think. A lot of blogs contain public Sitemeter information that includes browser share. For sites like Instapundit [instapundit.com], Daily Kos [dailykos.com], or Red State [redsate.org] Firefox usage is anywhere from 25-40% of total browsers. My own site has IE just under 50%, Firefox with 35-40%, and Safari hovering around 10% depending on the time of the survey.
Granted, blog readers tend to be somewhat more ahead of the curve than Joe or Jane Sixpack, but they're also indicative of where the market will be a few years down the road. The problem IE and Microsoft faces is that while they have a very high marketshare, their mindshare sucks - everyone uses Microsoft products but only those who take return trips to the Kool Aid bowl particularly like doing it. When an alternative like Firefox comes along that doesn't take a CS degree to use, people start switching, and the stats on more technically-oriented sites bear that out.
Did I miss something? (Score:1)
All webbrowsers seem to be becoming the same (Score:2)
1). All feature integrated pop-up blocking
2). All feature Tabbed browsing
3). All open webpages.
4). All have their own specific security holes
So why would I spend the time to download firefox or opera or any other browser for that matter if the one that comes with my OS does what I need. I use IE when I use windows (1% of the time) and firefox when Im in Linux (99% of the time). I'm glad the media hype has gotten Firefox in the mainstream, now can we please work on features for the average non-web programmer that make one browser better then another?.
Mozilla press release (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Thursday August 23, @11:40AM)
Mozilla Corp. press release [mozilla.org] about the 100 million downloads.
Bogus statistics (Score:1, Redundant)
But the numbers are bogus.
Every patch generates a ton of new downloads.
I download it once and install it on multiple computers. But it patches from each new computer as a new download.
What's important is market share- not some wierd counter of downloads.
Spread the Word! (Score:1)
(Last Journal: Wednesday October 12 2005, @01:40PM)
People at the office were reluctant at first when i started to change all of the browsers to firefox but now everyone is happy and i'm happy. we are a big loving family thanks to firefox.
2 main thing that made it possible:
1-find the right themes. bells and whistles. peeps just love that. something that kinda have that Aqua look and they got a new toy to play with. lovely.
2-The IE Browser plug-in. that's the clencher. people complains that some website are IE only. just right click and open in IE.
soon we'll be done and over with the IE foolishness.
Yeah Yeah (Score:1, Offtopic)
(http://djdavetrouble.com/ | Last Journal: Thursday September 01 2005, @10:34PM)
Can we deduct my three downloads? (Score:2)
(http://slashdot.org/)
I've ended up staying with Opera. It's just much, much better in the end.
So can we have those stats updated to reflect that my downloads ended up being a waste of time? Just pretend I didn't do it, and we'll all be happier for it. I know I am!
I discovered some kind of bug with Firefox (Score:2)
Anyway, in case anyone is curious, the bug is I was trying to upload a 75mb file to megaupload.com, and the upload speed kept tapering off from 50kb/s down to 10kb/s or so, until about 20-30mb, and then I got a "file contains no data" (iirc) message.
Then I tried with IE, and the upload started at 30kb/s, and went up to 40kb/s, and stayed at this speed til the upload was complete.
Sex sells (Score:1)
We all know that sex sells.
So try to look at this site http://www.thelovesearch.com/ [thelovesearch.com] using Microsoft
Internet Explore. It will try to convince your to use Firefox using
sex appeal.
If we could convince all porn sites to only support Firefox the battle
would be won in a few weeks.
Or am I dreaming now ??
If Only They Had an Uninstall Counter... (Score:1)
I'd be curious as to how many of the 100 million downloads are actually still installed and being used...
1 millionth (Score:1)
(http://eseb.net/)
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:5, Funny)
(http://honeypot.net/ | Last Journal: Friday April 07 2006, @09:33AM)
With a 2.4 GHz Athlon 64, 2 GB of DDR400, and two 7200 RPM 8 MB cache drives in RAID 0
You were just waiting for a chance to slip that into the conversation, weren't you?
Foxes? (Score:2)
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:1)
(http://lyrictalk.net/)
The slowness factor and memory issues are the only things keeping me from using Firefox 100%. Things like the Web Developer extension are unmatched anywhere else, and when combined with some other really grat plugins, Firefox has all the right tools... now it just needs to focus on speed and those memory issues that have been around for such an awfully long time now....
Big difference in Firefox for Windows and Linux (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://www.totallygeek.com/)
I told a friend of mine that uses Windows to try Firefox and he later claimed something similar. I would like to say that this is not indicative of my Linux experience with Firefox. It works as expected, with no latency, and is not bogged-down by my running of more applications/tabs/etc.
Re:Whitedust = Firefox Land (Score:2)
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:2, Troll)
I can't tell you how many problems are user based. I've worked tech support, in business and in family. It pains me so to see people smearing quality software's good name in place of intelligence. No your CD ROM tray is NOT a cup holder. No Firefox does NOT take 200megs of memory. End of story.
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:4, Insightful)
(Last Journal: Saturday November 10, @03:30PM)
Under Windows, if I leave a FF browser with two or three tabs open running, and come back maybe 1 1/2 hours later, about half of my system memory is beng hogged by FF. (512 megs, FF reports using 210 of that under the Task Manager in Windows XP Professional)
So, no smearing of names here. It works great for one OS and it just seems to suck under another OS. For all we know it could be something Microsoft is causing. I will admit one thing, FireFox is getting a bit more bloated with each release. Instead of writing patches, why not just re-write the vulnerable code so that it works, and release a new version, not a patch? We may have to wait longer but at least we'll know the code's been "fixed" (and hopefully optimized.)
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:4, Funny)
(http://www.ianmassey.com/)
http://tomchu.com/images/computers/commandcenterd
poser.
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:3, Interesting)
(http://perso.wanadoo.fr/mbeaumel/zoovage)
However, I find surprising that only Firefox "chugs" when you try to maximise it. It's a very normal process (especially if it takes more than 200 MB of memory) : it indicates the memory used by the program has been swapped to the disk, and used for more useful purposes, like playing a game.
If other applications maximise quickly, that either mean they don't use much memory (as does Trillian I believe, even though I've never used it), or that for somewhat reason they kept using the main memory (Photoshop being also a memory hog). And the last reason is indeed bad.
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:1, Offtopic)
(Last Journal: Monday April 11 2005, @10:38AM)
Re:I gave Firefox a chance (Score:1)