Firefox Usage Climbing

kbox writes "According to the Amsterdam analytics firm onestat The Firefox browser has jumped from a global market share of 8.7% to a whopping 13% since April 2005. The national usage of Firefox make some interesting reading, too, with Firefox making up 16% in the USA, 24% in Australia and a huge 39% in Germany." Unsurprisingly, on Slashdot we skew the averages somewhat, with Firefox weighing in at 65% of our traffic... but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.

Firefox is yet another OSS victory!

Netscape was good, or at lest the best of the day. It ran on every obscure platform under the sun. It was like java before even java. Runs and is able to be debugged and crashed everywhere.

I've heard from Netscape developers that the highlight was when they realized they were _the_ browser for the web, and they were seeing web addresses (complete with the http:/// [http] part on them) on the side of trucks and all that. I also heard that the secretary is quite wealthy now due to stock options, the whole nine yards.

Well, they stagnated. And IE came and IMNSHO, ruined the web experience in the late 90s to early 00s. And during that time Netscape released their code into the Mozilla project. It then got worse. AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape is just a memory.

But then, guess what happened?

Because of the open code and open standards, we got the web back! My browser of choice is Safari. I really like it. It does almost 100% of what I think a browser should do. And it too is based on open standards and OSS (KHTML), and Apple has given patches back to the KHTML people.

And then Mozilla grew into Firefox, and things are getting better on the web again. I recently ran into two websites that required IE. One was for my taxes, and I told them that sure this time I can use IE on the Mac, but IE on the Mac is dead and if they want my business, they need to support standards. At work, there is one system that requires IE _on windows_, and we had to get a new computer, with windows just to view one website, and I had a word or two with them. And guess what? They told me that they are now targeting Firefox as the target browser, and for that to be cross platform.

Hey, as sucky as IE was, it did help the scene a little bit. It focused the other guys to care about security and for standards compliance, and today I have a number of good choices for browsing the web on a number of platforms, and its getting better every day.

Thank you Mozilla team, and thank you Microsoft.

One problem...

...One could also say that MS has gone *six years* without updating their browser, and Firefox is only at 16%. I mean, I'm as happy as anyone. I'm using it now. But I really see that market share getting cut in half within 2 years of IE7 coming out. MS just won't put up with this, and when you can put your product on every PC that's sold, and the competition can't, you don't have to be great to win.

Re:One problem...

...and the competition can't...

That's not true any more -- OEM manufacturers can build firefox (or any other software they want) into their windows builds without fearing retribution from MSFT. That's what the anti-trust thing was all about.

And the last time I was at MicroCenter (a large computer chain) in Boston, a local entrepeneur (kid had to be 14) was distributing for free a CD with FireFox, Open Office, SpyBot, Gimp and Trillian (I told him Trillian wasn't open) on it -- as well as html document that had a link in it to his Amazon donation page, where he was asking for $2.50 which seemed pretty reasonable to me. I asked him about his traffic, and he said he passes out about 200 CD's a day on Saturday and Sunday. Obviously he must have access to a multiple image burner to crank out volume like that (or he was pulling my leg), but seems like a good way to make a bit of $$$ for a kid, and at the same time help spread the love

Re:One problem...

Wow, that's a nice little gimmick.

When I get stuck doing tech support for family, the first thing I do is delete all the IE links, install FF, and import their bookmarks. Normally when I talk to them later, the first thing they mention is how few popups they see.

Re:One problem...

I did that once to my father. He insisted that IE was fine and he didn't want Mozilla, but hated popups & spyware - so he ran like 4 other programs to stop popups, find spyware and whatnot.

Anyhow, I installed firefox, then installed the firefoxie theme [firefoxie.net] that skins ff to look like IE, and changed the FF icon to the IE one. He didn't know the difference, except he thought his anti-popup software was working better than ever. When I told him he'd been using Mozilla he was surprised, pleased and stuck with FF (but ditched the IE theme).

Re:One problem...

I don't think it will drop in half. People are burnt out on the company, as it has lost its reputation and the trust of its users.

Aside from that, Microsoft isn't particuraly innovative anymore, and I doubt that their latest browser will shock and awe net users.

Re:One problem...

In 2 years XP will still be the the majority of Windows installations. You'd have to wait longer than that for Vista and IE7 to have a real impact on Firefox. And we don't really know how the security of Vista + IE7 will pan out. I'd say it is too early to tell when IE7 will do to Firefox.

-matthew

Re:One problem...

IE7 is a major improvement on IE6, but it isn't anything like as integrated into the OS. Secondly, if you chose Firefox as your default browser, then all your other MS progs will respect that decision and use it.

Pretty much all the MS websites out there now support Firefox, including their ajax enabled sites such as live.com. The only site that doesn't as as far as I'm aware, is windowsupdate, and Vista won't be using that, as it has its own program for doing updates.

This all gives firefox a major opportunity to take market share from ie.

Thank you ... Microsoft?

It's easy to forget that not too long ago I was waiting for the latest upgrade to IE, downloading and installing it manually, because it was the best browser out there. I appreciate the efforts of the developers, too.

But I can't thank Microsoft. Because they quit trying to be the best and tried instead to lock out and eliminate competition, through means familiar enough to everybody here that I'm not going to repeat them.

And I don't think I'm just saying "what have they done for me lately" - Microsoft's war on the competition went some way towards undoing the good things that came from their competition with Netscape.

I agree with you, otherwise (for whatever that's worth). Just a thought

Safari Adventure Club

Safari pisses me off though because lack of design mode [google.com] is a major flaw, but one that is obviously fixable. I'm an ardent mac supporter, but the long and slow response to this makes me feel like Apple is sticking it to us (the mac faithful) because they can -- they know they've got a captive audience.

I've taken the Writely path now -- we (my company) no longer support Safari on our web applications -- we just can't. And I don't see us ever going back to that when we can code to one standard -- Firefox -- and have it work everywhere.

So I agree with you -- thanks Mozilla, and thanks OSS for having projects in which the developers are responsive to the customers needs. If I need something I can sponser someone to make an extension or tweak. We've done that several times with Thunderbird, we have some custom work we paid for in a few other OSS projects that went back to the community.

So I'm in the weird position of being a mac lover and an apple hater. Which is weird, but I think some people will know what I'm saying. Apple has contributed back where they've been required, but with the promotion of DRMs, ITunes, etc, they're not really an ally of Open Source, except in that they see OSS as an ally of convenience against MSFT. If there were now Microsoft, Apple would be doing exactly the same things MSFT has done.

Re:Safari Adventure Club

when we can code to one standard -- Firefox -- and have it work everywhere.
You've got that backwards that should be "when we can code to one standard -- W3C compliance -- and have it work everywhere. At the very least that should be your startingpoint. Having everyone code for firefox isn't really that much better to having everyone code to IE

Re:Safari Adventure Club

Speaking of Apple and browsers. What I find truly amazing is that on my iMac I have _five_ different browsers installed (none of which is IE). Now mind you some of them share quite a bit of code (camino, firefox) but still the amount of activity and innovation going on with browsers is amazing. Amazing everywhere that is except at Microsoft. IE exists and has always existed for the sole purpose of locking people into Microsoft products. It was Microsoft's best reaponse to regain control after the world wide web broke out.

You always have to remember that when the web became big, it wasn't where MS wanted the fuure to be. In fact the delays on the way to IE7 are all about MS not wanting the web to be the future either. Microsoft fears open standards and systems like the plague. Embrace, extend, extinguish exist soley for the purpose of trying to defeat open standards.

Its good to see MS losing ground on this battle in the browser space and hopefully ODF will help them lose it in the document space.

You always have to remember that if in the 90's Microsoft could have in any way caused the web to not exist they would have done anything to make it so. But the best they could do was try to monopolize the market with _their_ browser.

Go Firefox!

Re:Safari Adventure Club

Safari pisses me off though because lack of design mode is a major flaw, but one that is obviously fixable.

I don't have a bathtub in my kitchen. It would be very easy to hire a plumber to have one installed, but I won't. Why not? Because a bathtub does not belong in a kitchen.

Apple doesn't seem to be of the opinion that it's appropriate for a web BROWSING application to incorporate the features of a web AUTHORING tool. I find this to be a reasonable design decision, even if I don't particularly agree with it.

Stagnating

Well, they stagnated. And IE came and IMNSHO, ruined the web experience in the late 90s to early 00s. And during that time Netscape released their code into the Mozilla project. It then got worse. AOL bought Netscape, and Netscape is just a memory.

Yeah, Netscape definitely stagnated back around version 4 or 5 - when the browser was a bloated mess and was in danger of collapsing under its own weight. When IE 4 came out it was quite simply a better browser. It rendered pages faster and had a much better user interface. I think it's a bit of an exaggeration to say that IE "ruined the web experience in the late 90s". They were the best game in town back then.

I made the move to Firefox a few years ago when pop-ups were a huge problem, and discovered that Firefox was about a LOT more than just blocking popups. IE had started to stagnate bigtime. IE5 and IE6 offered no meaningful improvements (although a pop up blocker appeared way late in the game). People knew that IE sucked but the word hadn't spread about Firefox yet. The momentum is clearly shifting towards Firefox now.

I just hope that they don't start to stagnate or bloat up with unneeded features too much. Fortunately they let extensions take care of any "bloat" that a user may want, which I think is good. Just keep a small core set of features and let people add enhancements on as they see fit. So far the history of web browsing has shown that through many generations of innovation come long periods of stagnation. From Mosaic to Netscape to IE to Firefox to ???

Re:Firefox is yet another OSS victory!

Actually, what make Firefox pretty good is that the vast majority of web sites render correctly under this browser, which was not true of many previous non-IE web browsers. That plus the fact the basic download is only around 4.5 MB helps, too.

What about Opera, Safari and Konq.

Would Taco like to furnish us with those stats? :P

Here are some

These are my percentages for June, with spiders and wget-type things stripped out. Nearly two thirds of my hits are referrals from Slashdot.

Firefox - 69
MSIE - 10
Konq - 5
Opera - 4
Safari - 3
Mozilla - 3
Camino - .4
Galeon - .3
Epiphany - .1
Links - 0
Firebird - 0
Omniweb - 0
Dillo - 0
WebCollage - 0
K-Meleon - 0
Multizilla - 0
Lynx - 0
Shiira - 0
Motorola - 0
w3m - 0
GetRight - 0

Re:OS/Distro/versions?

Full browser stats [linuxvirus.net]
Full OS stats [linuxvirus.net]

The World Is Seeing the Light?

"Slow but sure, to win the race", says the quietly confident tortoise...

Work

That number might be higher (for /. users), but some may do a bit of viewing while at work. Some employers do not allow Firefox for some reason.

Re:Work

Indeed. I'm a summer student working on an internship right now.

At the orientation, they had a woman from IT give us the rundown on how to log into our computers blahblahblah. A student asked if they had Firefox. The IT staffer said that they don't allow instant messanger software on the computers...

Ya... switch to Firefox was one of the smartest computer choices I ever made.

Re:Work

And most probably don't know about USB thumb drives. Put those two together and hey! You got Portable Firefox! :)

I'm doing my part

Here at my office, Firefox is the default encouraged officially sanctioned browser of choice. After all those javascript/buffer overflow/remote code execution errors we gave the heave ho to IE and made sure that everyone had a copy of FF installed. So, put me down for 0.000000000000001% of those users!

Portable Firefox

we aren't allowed to install any additional programs

No problem. Just run Firefox directly from a USB drive [portableapps.com].

Firefox

It's 'Firefox'. Not 'FireFox'.

Thanks for reading.

More Data

Well, this is one firm's results and we all know how sometimes findings can be biased. If you want the full report from onestat, it is here [onestat.com] with all browsers covered.

Interestingly, Adtech [adtech.info] found similar results (~12% in Europe [adtech.info]) while The Counter [thecounter.com] put Firefox at more around ~9-10% for those months. Net Applications [hitslink.com] placed Firefox at around 10% also. Of course, Wikipiedia [wikipedia.org] has a decent article on this with combined data at the bottom.

I guess 13% seems like kind of a stretch and 10% seems a bit more realistic. I don't know what makes any one source more reliable than the other though as none of them really talk about their strategy for attaining these statistics.

The big question shouldn't be "where is Firefox's percentage" but instead "how do we make Firefox more appealing to non-technical users?" Because it's clear that the technically savvy people have adopted Firefox but you'll never make it past 15% of the population with that attitude. I hate to say it, but introducing some functionality that Internet Explorer doesn't have might be the only way to accomplish that. And when you do that, you lose the stability and security that made it so popular in the first place. Solution? Perhaps a MySpace plug-in in light of recent news? :)

Extensions

We need a Windows version with some of the extensions pre-bundled. Set up the AdBlock and Spell Checking, and dispatch that version. That way it consists of Download -> Install -> Doubleclick -> Browsing!!

Upgrade?

but sadly 18% of our firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.

Do you mean version 2? But I just remember reading a story on slashdot that was tagged "donotdownlad" and there was a highly moded comment stating that Mozilla did not wanted us to download that version...

I am running 1.5.0.4 (now that I see it, it is funny the quantity of digits in that version number, what does the .0 is suppose mean?)

Is it the latest version? according to the Help/update it is :) yay!

Mythbusters, Firefox Edition!

• Dragging bookmarks works fine for me in 1.5
• The interface is only as sloppy as you make it, thanks to the right click | customize menu option.
• Extensions can be used to tweak the interface further if you wish. Stylish can be used to apply styles to the interface (although I ran into problems when trying to limit the height of the toolbars, but I probably wasn't doing it right).
• I don't see a "move up" button anywhere anyways. But then again I'm using 2.0 at the moment.
• If Firefox seems screwy, disable all extensions using Safe-Mode and see if the problem goes away. If it does, you have a bad extension somewhere. Not Firefox's fault. This also applies to memory usage (although a large part is still due to Firefox's memory cache... which people like to refer to as a leak, despite the fact they take no steps to limit the memory cache size using about:config) and overall load time and stability.

Re:Upgrade?

I think they're referring to people like me who still run 1.0.7 and need to upgrade to 1.5.0.4.

The results are probably skewed by people like me who use the version of Firefox that came with their distro. I'm using Debian Stable with Firefox 1.0.4

TechGranny dons tinfoil hat.

I was reading Tacos journal, and read about the new widgets being prepared.

Tim has been working on an improved control widget which hopefully will make a lot more sense then the terrible UI we kludged together to get things started. We're going to start buy giving access to the system from a random sampling of users. There are bugs in various browsers that will need to be worked out, and the UI will need to be refined, but I think everyone will be happy with how it works. It's definitely becoming very clear where the performance problems in different browsers are. It's a pain.

Hmm.......

Checks version number.... ;)

Operating systems?

I assume the majority of that growth must be on Windows, but I'm wondering if Firefox usage is growing at the same rate on different OSs, since they have different alternatives. Mac and *nix users have some pretty decent non-Firefox browsers that arent available to Windows users. Just curious, anyone got relevant stats?

Why my Firefox is out of date...

My Firefox is out of date because I switched to Opera when Beta 9 came out. I still use Firefox on occassion for testing my web site and for the ocassional page that just refuses to play nicely with Opera (or when I need to use the IE tab for one of the few pages that STILL refuses to work in anything except for IE). So I just don't bother to stay current on the latest updates. Of course then there's the version of Firefox I'm using now at work (version 1.0.7) and that's pretty out of date... but I'm not the person who originally installed Firefox (and this is a multi-user computer) so I don't know if they need the older version of Firefox for some reason...

I wonder...

If by coming out of the obscure browser category to the significant market share browser category will increase the amount of exploits used by hackers, spammers and adware people out there. It would seem that much of the IE security breaches result from, aside from it's crappiness, its ubiquitous presence on the web. I wonder if Firefox will start to see more security breaches as it gains market share... We will see!

BBC doesn't require WMP

From the article:

It's to be expected that a coding or Linux forum would have a higher number of users using FireFox than a more general website such as BBC (which requires WMP to play media) or myspace.

Not so, the BBC offers vid/audio content in either Real format or offers a choice between Real and WMP.

Link to the One Stat statistics mentioned [onestat.com].

Fire who?

That's pretty good numbers considering the vast majority of web users have never heard of Firefox. All my IT/tech-head friends are on Firefox and have been for some time but pretty much all the 'normal' users, mums, dads, people at work etc. have never heard of it and even when shown it simply don't understand why they would want to change from IEx. Web standards? Reliability? Safety? They just don't care. They fire up their PC and get browsing with IEx. It works for them, that's all they're interested in. They might care more if people like me didn't keep doing a free clean of their machine to remove all the muck they have downloaded every few months.

So, if you want Firefox to flourish, stop fixing friends PCs for free :-)

Re:Fire who?

You dont need to stop fixing them - you just need to start changing the *way* you fix them - eg, you fix them by removing (or at least hiding and removing from the default) IE, and installing FireFox. When they see its 'different', just tell them its a new version. Most people don't even understand the difference between software, the OS, and the Internet anyway.

Re:Fire who?

Nah, they'll just get annoyed that their computer is slow. They don't link their behavior with the computer's state unless the relationship is clear and immediate. Programmers and techies are used to that sort of thinking, but then, they already use Firefox for the most part.

IE Nostalgia

Maybe Microsoft can build a widget for Firefox that pegs the CPU usage to 100% while a little Explorer icon keeps spinning in the corner deciding if you are worthy enough for it to load the page. Ah, just like old times...

Fine!

I'll make my own browser, and it will be supercool and it will support CSS 4.0 and the ACID test will totally look awesomer in CSS 4.0 because it will support 3-D web browsing!!!

Actually, I still miss Firebird. Birds are way better than Foxes. Especially when they're on fire. And 16% use in the US counts as being on fire.

50% of people will always use IE, because they're too dumb to use IE to download Firefox. Makes you wish MS would just give it up and adopt Firefox, huh? It would save a boatload of cash.

Anyhow ... my browser is gonna be better than both!!!

Stats

Strangely enough, for no reason we could figure out, our usage stats showed an increase from 12% to 20% of visitors to our site using Firefox. We've assumed since we are getting more traffic from europe, and reading this article that europe is using Firefox at ever greater levels it looks like our assumptions were correct. I for one welcome our firefox overlords.

I prefer Mozilla, not Firefox

Mozilla has the ability to switch the text zoom from 100% to 200% or 300% or even more IN A SINGLE STEP.This feature is essential for me, that is why I use Mozilla and not Firefox.Is there a Firefox plugin for doing that?.If the answer is yes I may switch, otherwise I'll stick with Mozilla. Unfortunately they stopped the depelopment of Mozilla to version 1.7 something. Why dont they implement this feature in Firefox? Both Netscape 4.7 and higher and Mozilla have it, but not Firefox. I switch from 100% to 2-300% and back hundreds of times everyday and Firefox is too awkward for this task.

Re:I prefer Mozilla, not Firefox

I simply hold ctrl and use the mouse wheel. Doesn't that work?

Are tags edited?

This story was tagged as a dupe, but after reloading the story, the "dupe" tag disappeared and was replaced with "firefox, mozilla". I assume the editors edit the tags, as they used to often say "bullshit", "stupid", etc, but now seem to be a lot more tame...

LS

Many people still don't know Firefox exists.

A friend of my father called me to fix his computer because he had spyware problems. He did not know Firefox existed...I have met many people over 40 that use the Internet and have no idea of what Firefox is.

Firefox Slashdotter Extension

Another tip for Slashdot readers using Firefox... get the Firefox Slashdotter Extension [mozilla.org]. It expands hidden comments inline using AJAX, allows you to change skins, informs you via an icon on the status bar if you got mod points, displays links to Coral Cache, plus more.

It's all Firefox as far as I can see...

I'm sure I know someone who is not using Firefox, but everyone I know well enough to know what they are using... uses Firefox. That's why I'm always suprised to find out the real numbers are as low as they are.

OTOH, I work in the tech industry in San Francisco so I'm probably in the middle of a very un-average sub-group of the population.

Browser Usage...

Well, now that we know what browser is being used at /., how about just releasing all the stats about the browser habits of /.?

Just block IE users

I think more non-commercial websites should just block IE visitors. For example: http://www.lobstertech.com/explorer.php [lobstertech.com] If your website is just giving away Free software, you have nothing to lose by blocking IE users.

Work

Remember that some people still use I.E. at work and have FireFox at home. So probably there are more firefox users that 65% in the /. crowd

Which latest version?

18% of our firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version

I wouldn't suggest everyone to upgrade to the actual latest version [mozilla.org], as it's a little unstable... but it sure is fun to use a 3.0 version (with improved Acid2 test compliance, for example) while everyone else is puttering along with 1.x or 2.x ;)

How to generate these statistics?

Hmm i wonder how they generate statistics? Do they create a representive set of websites that represend the whole net and log their users? They would need quite alot small websites for that ... Or do they analyse the requests in large server farms ... what would preselect users in a way. How to do it "right" ? I guess an offline survey would be the most accurate way ... I also wonder whats the stats of newb sites, like MSN :) "Compare prizes on Mozilla" .. what a fine ad for this article ;)

I'm Hoping Opera Gains Ground

I've traditionally used IE. I keep up with the patches, so I haven't had spyware or virus issues in a very long time, and IE always just seemed to fit how I liked to operate. I've got Firefox installed, and sometimes I use it, but until the last update I found it would periodically cause my network connection to fail. I'd reset it via the control panel and it'd be good for a while, but inevitably it would happen again. It was the only application to exhibit this quirk.

Recently I downloaded a copy of Opera, and I find it far more to my liking than Firefox. It's well-behaved, fast, and everything feels intuitive, which is something I never got from Firefox. I'm very happy with it, and I use it about half-and-half with IE.

I de-installed Firefox last night, after realizing I'd probably never start it again.

Unfair

These statistics do not filter out things such as Business users. Large companies have millons of employee's who browse the internet every day, and i would assume the majority do NOT use firefox, as their system is locked down, and IE is default, and only browser Available. It would be interesting to see what the usage stats are for HOME users. I think that Firefox growth will continue until Vista comes out, at which point it will slow for a short period while people adjust to the new OS. Lots will try out IE7, and simple see that it is a clone of firefox(and other browsers), years behind in joining the game. But soon after its release, new versions of FF, Opera, and other browsers will emerge with even better features, and we will see the numbers start to raise again.

Hopefully larger companies will begin to make the switch, and people will then adopt what they learn at work, to their home environment as well.

Most people i know, have adopted Firefox at home, but that is because the know me, and i did it for them, or told them to make the switch.

Browsing with Ubuntu/Firefox exclusively

Early this year, I went from using a Win2K box to using an Ubuntu 5.10 (now 6.06) box as my primary browsing/email/text and spreadsheet system at home.

While Ubuntu *is* a bit slower in some respects than Windows (I give MS credit for speeding up the UI wherever they could), it never hangs, and I'm very happy with its flexibility.

Firefox has been my browser of choice ever since Netscape's purchse by AOL. It does have warts, but to me, its primary advantage is that it allows me much more control of my "browsing experience" than IE does. I can shut off pop-ups, block ads, install extensions and just about anything else I want to do. And, should I stumble across a website trying to install malware, it's gonna be a problem for them, because it won't run!

A fellow worker and I are having a small contest. The winner will be the first to "convert" a naive user -- mom, grandma, wife -- to using Linux exclusively (no force allowed, the user must willingly convert, and stay converted). The current
version of Ubuntu is every bit as usable for browsing, email and text/spredsheet as Windows is. Many users don't ask for more, so our contest isn't as silly as it appears.

I wish I could use it at work

I use Firefox and Safari at home. I'd be using Firefox at work, but our office only allows Internet Explorer to be loaded on the machines. The IT folks say Firefox has "dangerous" security holes and they won't allow it. I know, I know ... then what's IE?!?

Re:I wish I could use it at work

Here you go:
http://portableapps.com/apps/internet/browsers/por table_firefox [portableapps.com]

BTW, when I need Linux, I run Puppy Linux from a CDROM at work - friggen clueless IT folks in some places...

18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade

I bet a good portion of that 18% is users using a linux distro release that has an aged version of firefox from the package manager.

I think not

... but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.

I think not - for several reasons:

1. Some of the best extensions don't work in the newest version. Last time I tried (long ago, admittedly) things like Noscript, AniDisable, FlashBlock and Tab Mix Plus didn't work; I consider them absolutely essential for any sensible use of the net.

2. I'm just plain weird; I hate some of the 'cool' features in the later versions. In fact I hate anything that is only meant to be cool, but turns out to be counterproductive. Eg. the incremental search that is now mandatory (or was when I last looked)

3. I also hate not being able to completely remove what used to be the nullplugin, which tends to keep nagging about installing plugins that don't exist.

Stealth evil

Unsurprisingly, on Slashdot we skew the averages somewhat, with Firefox weighing in at 65% of our traffic... but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.

Yes, and when you do so upgrade, you'll find that Firefox has joined the evil collective - it phones home and upgrades without asking for permission or even bothering to tell you till the job is done.

Update?

18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version ;) Go do that now.

Well I'm using Debian stable and thought I should update myself to the latest version. Here's how that went.

# apt-get install mozilla-firefox
Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
mozilla-firefox is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.

My conclusion, I'm comletly up to date. Yes sir, "Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.7.10) Gecko/20050925 Firefox/1.0.4 (Debian package 1.0.4-2sarge5)" is the latest version. I don't know who these people are who need to upgrade Firefox but they really should go and do that now.

Alternative browsers

The advent of firefox has definitely been a good thing. For me at least, it not only is a good browser, but it has raised awareness, and subsequently usage of other alternatives. I no longer use firefox, as I switched to opera, but without Firefox and all that I loved about it i would have never known about other browsers (or /. for that matter, I was a tech n00b)

Firefox is not going to replace IE

Everyone seems to be hoping that Firefox will replace IE... I just don't see that happening.

I'm a happy user of Firefox. I use Firefox because it does things that IE doesn't, and I really like the ability to customize it to how I like. The thing is, though, that for most casual web users, IE does suit their needs. They want a browser that can browse the web and will keep them safe. IE6 isn't the safest browser in the world, but IE7 will definitely be safe. IE will continue to be the dominating web browser because A.) companies will use it because it's easier to use the built-in browser, and it should be just as safe as Firefox B.) Casual users don't need anything more.

I think the future will have IE and Firefox co-existing (and Opera!) because IE is what the normal people will use and Firefox/Opera will be what the expert web-users use. It's the same reason most people still use Windows Media Player. I use Winamp because of plugins/customization, but most people just want to use what works, and since they don't want any more functionality than that, they have no reason to change.

UK Lagging

I am ashamed to see that we in the UK are lagging behind at only 11.65%, behind even France. Could this be due to the very quick uptake of broadband in the UK by novice users? Or just a lack of awareness of the alternatives?

Web browsers on my computer

I have a mac with the following browsers installed: Safari, Camino, Firefox, Opera, and OmniWeb (with a paid for license).

I'm currently writing a browser plug-in.

I like Safari the best of these.

AdBlock

IE7 will never implement or allow a plugin (if they even have plugin's, I haven't bothered to check), that has the functionality of adblock. MSFT gets substantial revenues from online advertising, and enabling users to block their own ads would be counterproductive.

Sort of like when Sony wouldn't allow MP3's to play on any of their electronic devices because they also own Sony Records.

This is why I'll never use IE again (and stopped buying Sony too).

A whopping 13%!!!

Sensationalism at its best. Now, I find it more significat that 65% of /. users use FF.

That of course means I have a 65% chance of takin' a Karma hit by posting this. I'd rather the 13%, thanks.

unfortunately...

There is a such thing as anti-firefox. My friend work at a place that sells laptops on ebay, and he was installing Firefox on all the laptops becase he had to deal with tech support. People would call saying, "How do I set up my internet connection, Internet Explorer won't open right" amongst other things. Well, when his boss found ot he was sending out Firefox with the laptops, he got pissed and told him not to send it out agains. Direct quote: "No one needs tabs, why use tabs when you can open seperate windows?" Some people will just never learn, I guess.

On a side note, he was also recommending people to get OpenOffice and a lady gave him a negative saying they had "Suggested using their bootleg software they made themselves" He told her he wished he could make software that damn good.

Sure, I'll Update!

I'll just backup my ~/.firefox-conf file and call it a day, right?

The question, of course, is what's going to break. And what the new rules are. And then searching for replacement extensions to to replace the existing ones, followed by the usual trial and error to see to what extent the replacement is acceptable. And that's after you've spent the time figuring out how it works.

Let's take one example -- configuring keyboard shorcuts. Customising keyboard shortcuts is supposed to be done using something like the keyconfig extension . But that won't always work because the keyconfig extension won't accomodate anything more than the simple changes, so directly editing the prefs.js file is required. So, close Firefox, make the changes, and restart Firefox, right? Well, after writing a few dozen lines that look like

Close Current Tab: c user_pref("keyconfig.main.xxx_key_CloseTabFocusLef t", "!][][][var tab = gBrowser.mCurrentTab; if(tab.previousSibling) gBrowser.mTabContainer.selectedIndex--; gBrowser.removeTab(tab);");

I restart Firefox and see my carefully crafted, thoughtfully commented prefs.js file get rewritten. Lather, rinse, repeat and an afternoon is gone.

Maybe the above is an unfair example, but it seems to me that this kind of nonsense reminds me too much of Windows Update where something will typically break something else with little or no warning, and the lack of documentation leaves the user in a position where guessing is the operative word. Will the new version accept keyconfig? Will my existing prefs.js work? And what about the other dozen extensions I have installed?

Firefox is a great browser, and the large number of extensions can be a blessing, but I'll pass on the updates and start relying more on using lynx, elinks, etc. for the day to day stuff. Maybe when things settle down ...

Why Windows Users Don't Use the Latest Version.

but sadly 18% of our Firefox users need to upgrade to the latest version.

In Linux, I use the default firfox 1.5 that comes with ubuntu. But in Windows 1.5 is dogg-ass slow loading up. Really gets me how much faster 1.08 is. I'm not being completely fair in that I'm using a Stipe build for firefox in windows, which is quite the speedster.

I haven't regretted dumping IE after it got hijacked one time too many - JackRazz

Good News, But

This is great and my hat off to FireFox. The problem I still see is the website developers need to support standards, not browsers. I use Opera on every site I can then use FireFox if I have to. If neither of the browsers work then I do not use the site. It sucks at times, but unless we put our mouse down and ignore the sites that are not cross platform/browser compatitable not much will change. I am a developer that has actually changed attitudes. My company writes code based on standards and if a browser doesn't work without major tweaks, then we don't support it. With that said we have had a lot of clients switch to FireFox and leave IE behind.

In this case

it really is Deutschland uber alles.

Howto update firefox 1.5.x.y

Go to the Help menu, and select 'Check for updates ...'.

It turns out that Netscape was evil, too...

I too loved Netscape back in the days of the war with M$. But back then, I loved it not because it was better than IE, but because it was the best out of about 10 browsers that were competing fairly in the market.

Then, Netscape became evil (in the way that Google wants not to). They had earned their lead in the market, but with it they added non-standard features, making simple HTML viewing too hard for any small company. There are many examples of this. Here's the top one I found from Google:

http://www.utoronto.ca/webdocs/HTMLdocs/NewHTML/ne tscape.html [utoronto.ca]

They embedded a custom scripting language (Javascript), and added hooks for every darned thing you can imagine. They even tried to get M$ to work with them to drive out all the little guys. In short, they used monopolistic practices to drive out the competition. In doing so, they stupidly handed over the whole market to M$.

With Firefox, the evil motives are gone, so it's no wonder that it's catching on. I love it. Rock on Firefox!

ie wrappers

I'd be curious what the stats are for people using the ie wrapper kind of browsers, Maxthon and all that. About a year ago, I downloaded every single browser I could find (including a mess of IE wrappers--security isn't really too much of a concern for me) and spent some time with them. My biggest considerations were: 1. functionality 2. customizability (yes, it's a word. in my world) 3. resources used Opera won, followed closely by Firefox. It's a shame Opera 9 is such a buggy mess, though--it's making me think about switching to FF.

chatsum

another reason to use firefox: http://www.chatsum.com/ [chatsum.com] now you can discuss articles on slashdot live... amazing..

Re:slashdot vs digg

I wasn't aware Slashdot's traffic was decreasing, just that Digg's was increasing. Personally, I look at them both. Digg I look at for more recent stories--the conversations tend to be at a very low intellectual level (high school or lower). Slashdot, while there are quite a few really dumb comments, still has quite a few "field experts" browsing and commenting on stories, which is why I read Slashdot. I spend maybe 2 min. on Digg with each visit (glance at the stories--open the ones I'm interested in and then close the Digg tab); while I spend at least 10-15 min. each time I go to Slashdot glancing through the conversations (from stories that interested me) for intelligent/interesting comments. I will say that I like the fact that I can post a blog entry to Digg and only get 10 diggs, but get 60+ readers for a blog entry that would have only gotten maybe 3 reads (MacBook and OS X Review [blogspot.com]...

As for the web statistics, these were only posted because they're relevant to the story about increased Firefox usage. I want to try the 2.0 Beta, but last time I tried a Firefox beta I couldn't use any of my extensions and I therefore wasn't able to use Firefox in the way I like using Firefox (since without the extensions its only an okay browser). I don't know if I'll switch to Firefox 2.0 when it comes out though, as currently I'm really fond of Opera 9.

Re:Major flaw of Firefox - no instant zoom

Ctrl+

Ctrl-

Have a nice day.

Re:Firefox Cheerleaders

Firefox? No thanks. I've got better things to use that 130megs of free ram on.

How did you slim it down to run in 130MB? Mine's 330MB...

Re:slashdot vs digg

Well, if you look at Alexa [alexa.com] THey are fairly similar, however Alexa is notoriously inexact. For one thing, it doesn't work if you use firefox, which constitutes around 60% of both sites. Google Trends paints a more believable story perhaps with slashdotremaining fairly steady and digg slowly climbing and finally overtakes slashdot. Not though that slashdot doesn't really lose any traffic to it. I'd say that's fairly accurate even though it's only measuring web-searches. [google.com]