Firefox tops 1,000,000 downloads in 4 days

[Dan MacDonald]

http://www.spreadfirefox.com/

Is reporting that the beta for the first commercial release of FireFox has reached it's 10 day goal of 1,000,000 downloads in just 100hrs.

Like many of your I was a big Netscape fan back in the day, I never thought IE would ever become a better browser. But it did, and Microsoft gobbled up 99% of the market.

For a while things went pretty well, everyone had IE and developing compelling web applications was starting to become a real possibility. Then Microsoft realized something, the more compelling web applications became the less compelling the Windows platform became. If IE kept up with the web standards then someone could potentially make a great MSWord replacement that would run in a browser and be totally cross platform. The more options you provide consumers, the less compelling YOUR option becomes.

So Microsoft has really slowed their adoption of new standards and support of IE in general. Only recently with the buzz around some of the new browsers has Microsoft finally added a popup blocker to IE (in SP2)

I'm a huge believer in the potential of the internet, I want to see compelling web applications, I want to see web technology advance server side AND client side. It seems recently Microsoft has put all of its energies in advancing web technology on the server side (.NET anyone?), but very little on the client side.

I really like .NET and Microsoft technologies in general, but I think they are crippling the advancement of technology on the internet by sitting on IE. It's time to change, as they say on the FireFox site "It's time to take back the web". If you havn't checked out FireFox lately, check it out.

Be sure to download the "Tabbrowser Preferences" or "SingleWindow" plug-ins to really experience the benefit of tabbed browsing. My favorite setting is to "open offsite links in a new tab" instead of opening them in a new browser. This setting alone feels like a huge improvement in how I surf the web.

[Teq]

Good news indeed, firefox is far from perfect, but it is a shot across the bows of Microsoft, while I doubt Firefox will have the effect on IE that IE had on NN, I am sure it will find a good home on many a computer system and deservedly so

[luggage]

I gave it a try but didn't like it. I use Avant Browser and I've gotten too used to it now.

[Valen]

I've been using Mozilla for a few years. It's about damn time they came out with a browser that doesn't require a memory resident "quick launch" to load in a reasonable amount of time. Though, I did hear that IE gets its speed due to the fact that it's partially (completely?) integrated into the GUI. So I used that as an excuse to tolerate Mozilla's shortcomings. Now if only I could figure out how to transfer my email from Mozilla's client to Thunderbird.

[Dan MacDonald]

In most applications I find firefox to actually load and render HTML faster then IE.

[Mike Boeh]

I like firefox, but there is one thing that I hate.... When you click the "back" button in IE, it remembers your scroll position on the previous page- but Firefox doesn't...

[ggambett]

When you click the "back" button in IE, it remembers your scroll position on the previous page- but Firefox doesn't...

Weird... I just tried it on 1.0PR on Linux, and it does

[Larry Hastings]

That's it, I'm naming my next game FireFox!

[Dan MacDonald]

Weird... I just tried it on 1.0PR on Linux, and it does

Just tried it on my version of FireFox (windowsXP) and it does here too...

[Pixel Gem Games]

I think ive used just about all browsers out there, ie, myie, avant, mozilla, firefox, opera and I must say that my choice is Opera. Its fast, robust, and works the way I want it to. Only problem I see with it is lack of plugins. There are 2 thing sI would like to see on opera I could easily code but I cant

[Mithril Studios]

In most applications I find firefox to actually load and render HTML faster then IE.

I've gotten this impression too. I'll have to get the latest version.

Anthony

[dreeze]

I've used Opera for a few years now and I really like it. It's fast and have all the features I need. I recommend it to people whenever I have the chance

[Mike Boeh]

Just tried it on my version of FireFox (windowsXP) and it does here too...

They must have fixed it, I guess I will have to re-download

[Kai Backman]

I have been using NetCaptor for ages and it has been a excellent replacement for IE (tabbed browsing, pop up blocking, gestures etc). The latest version of FireFox I tested got me doubting my preferences, I would be delighted to find an even better browser than NC ..

[svero]

Wow.. this is really awful news. Another platform to support. Another thing to test. Why can't everyone just use the same browser? I really don't get what everyone is so happy about. This is the worse thing to happen since svga...

[ggambett]

Why can't everyone just use the same browser?

Sure, the world would be a better place if everyone used Firefox

I really don't get what everyone is so happy about. This is the worse thing to happen since svga...

Remember that brain-dead and bug-filled browsers and email clients are largely responsible of the zombie networks sending millions of spam every day...

[Obscure]

I have been using Mozilla for ages and recently switched to Firefox and Thunderbird. They are both excellent and the various extensions are great too.

The one that allows for spell checking in forms like this is great for people like me that can't spell. Adblock, prefbar and the Mozilla archive format are also great.

[Air]

Wow.. this is really awful news. Another platform to support. Another thing to test. Why can't everyone just use the same browser? I really don't get what everyone is so happy about. This is the worse thing to happen since svga...

Don't fret too much. Firefox is still basically the Netscape/Mozilla core HTML & Javascript processors, with bugfixes and such. So you can pretty much just follow your basic Netscape v7 web authoring rules and maintain 100% compatability with Firefox.

For the record, Firefox does render most websites faster than IE. I can tell because my video card has very little Windows acceleration abilities and scrolling windows often requires it to redraw all the contents of the window. At the very least the two render at roughly the same speed on some sites. But really this is of little suprise because the core renederers of Mozilla and Netscape 7 were also faster than IE -- it's just that bulky interface around the browser window that was so friggen slow.

It also does things like render images *as* they download, which is nice. In most versions of IE and most image formats, you don't see a thing until the whole image is downloaded-- which can take a while given a large image, slow connection, or a sluggish website.

As for the "remembering the scroll position when hitting back" -- my version which I downloaded about two months ago does that fine too, although you must wait for the whole page to re-display (or re-download if not cached) before it jumps back to your position. And if you move the scrollbar before it finishes, it won't jump back.

[Phil Newton]

Switched to FireFox earlier this year and I really like it. The extensions and tabbed browsing are definately my favourite features, and it's nice to be able to customise it to my tastes.

I still use IE for the odd web-page or if I'm doing some quick design, but FireFox is my number one browser now. I also use Thunderbird for email, though that's not quite as popular as FireFox is.

[svero]

I've tried firefox recently. The main reason being spyware and search redirectors and that crap. For the moment firefox will be better on that. The one problem I have with it is that I couldnt import my toolbars and popup blocking software. (or maybe you can use Ie extensions? i expect not but didnt look too closely) I've grown use to my particular ie plugins and I'm reticent to lose what they do. Like the google bar has pagerank, search within site, and groups etc... All nice features.

If Firefox does gain a large market share then we'll see the same kind of hacking attempts on it that IE had. It's not like switching to firefox is really going to make the web more secure or lead to less spam. That argument is just nonsense.

If there are many browsers being used we'll have to support many browsers. I still maintain that lack of uniformity is a bad thing for developers - not a good thing. Imagine there were 30 os's instead of just windows mac and linux that were worth supporting. It'd be a cross platform nightmare. The fact that firefox is reasonably well behaved now is great, but who's to say where it goes as the browsers compete for features and marketshare. There was a time where supporting netscape and ie required testing on both browsers and coding your html to the lowest common denominator. I didn't enjoy that.

[ggambett]

Like the google bar has pagerank, search within site, and groups etc... All nice features.

Get your googlebar with pagerank etc etc here.

If Firefox does gain a large market share then we'll see the same kind of hacking attempts on it that IE had. It's not like switching to firefox is really going to make the web more secure or lead to less spam. That argument is just nonsense.

The "more hacked because it has bigger market share" is nonsense originated by MS... Apache has a 67% market share (vs 21% of IIS) and IIS is far more hacked. Please stop using that argument.

[EpicBoy]

It's not nonsense. You go after the largest target because the pay off is the greatest. Windows is attacked primarily because it has the larger market share. For example, Linux advocates love to brag about their security features but if Linux ever becomes as widespread as Windows prepare to watch those walls crumble as the hackers of the world turn their attention to it.

[ggambett]

You go after the largest target because the pay off is the greatest.

When it comes to web servers, the largest target is Apache. Three times as big as MS servers. Why, if its size is 33% of the largest target, it gets 60% of the successful attacks?

[svero]

The "more hacked because it has bigger market share" is nonsense originated by MS... Apache has a 67% market share (vs 21% of IIS) and IIS is far more hacked. Please stop using that argument.

A web server isn't a browser. And besides there are plenty of hacks for apache. I'm constantly patching it on my server. Does iis have more patches? I've read sites that say it does and some that say it doesn't but in statistical reliability comparisons they're about equal on runtime.(hacks included) One thing is certain... There is a anti-ms bias that tends to cloud the reliability of certain articles.

In terms of market share you're only partially correct. Apache is used by far more home users and enthusiast than serious companies. If you weed out someone running a web server in his basement for his beer making hobby iis and netscape come out way ahead. Serious hackers are aiming at real companies not every joe user's basement hobby install. If you look at companies in the fortune 500 apache only has 15% of that marketshare with both netscape and iis beating it by a wide margin.

[svero]

Just to nail down my point on this apache market share thing...

"Port 80 Software, has conducted a web server survey in June that has shown that half of top 1000 corporate websites run on Microsoft IIS. Survey results show that 53.9 percent of the sites use Microsoft IIS, while 20.3 percent use Apache and 14.6 percent Netscape. The remaining 11.2 percent use other platforms such as Sun One, Lotus Domino, Weblogic, Websphere, IBM and Zeus." - web hosting news

So where it matters (ie top traffic websites) apache's market share is actually not significant.

[carl]

Just to nail down my point on this apache market share thing...

"Port 80 Software, has conducted a web server survey in June that has shown that half of top 1000 corporate websites run on Microsoft IIS. Survey results show that 53.9 percent of the sites use Microsoft IIS, while 20.3 percent use Apache and 14.6 percent Netscape. The remaining 11.2 percent use other platforms such as Sun One, Lotus Domino, Weblogic, Websphere, IBM and Zeus." - web hosting news

So where it matters (ie top traffic websites) apache's market share is actually not significant.

Interesting... it's been a while since I looked into these statistics myself (about four years in fact).

I did some quick googling, and found another study of the Fortune 500 that provided the same results for 2004 (the Port 80 Study appears to be from 2003): http://www.biznix.org/surveys/

What I found interesting was their study also checked the Global 500 list (also provided by Fortune). That significantly evened the results between IIS & Apache (actually giving apache the edge), with Netscape Enterprise Server/ IPlannet losing market share.

So, according to this study, IIS is very popular in the US, and rarely used outside of it. I don't necessarily agree with their analysis of why this is so, but I do find the results interesting.

[GBGames]

If there were 30 OSes to support, each with an equal market share, don't you think a unifying platform would be developed to make it easier to support all of them with minimal effort? Think Java, or .NET, or even some open standard that can be implemented by any OS.

Having multiple choices is a good thing for consumers, and if you think it is a problem that your program/website/application won't run properly in multiple browsers, then you can blame the fact that Microsoft basically took control of the market and prevented Shockwave/Flash/etc from being created and updated on "unsupported browsers." Netscape wasn't that much better back when it started, but if all browsers followed the open standards without adding too much of their own proprietary extensions, you wouldn't have this problem.

Write to a standard, not to a specific platform.


EDIT: just a side note, there are hundreds of distributions of Linux, quite a few versions of BSD, etc. Applications can be made to run fine across all of them in C/C++. This is mainly due to the support of open standards (filesystem hierarchy, standard libraries, networking, etc).

[svero]

>If there were 30 OSes to support, each with an equal market share, don't >you think a unifying platform would be developed...

It might it might not. Why speculate. Even if there were some kind of unifying platform.. like say directx as an interface to all 3d card. As we well know you still have to deal with testing and debugging for each card. That's the way it ends up in the real world. You can't just sit back and look at it ideolistically and say gee wouldn't be great if everyone just followed some standard and everything just worked. That's bullshit. It's not *real*. It's a child-like utopian view of a world that simply has nothing to do with what actually happens. You can hold up an apple and say as often as you like that the apple will float but when you let it go it will still fall.

> Having multiple choices is a good thing for consumers

Maybe... but it's not good for the companies trying to make the most profit they can. And that's the world we live in.

>wasn't that much better back when it started, but if all browsers followed
>the open standards without adding too much of their own proprietary >extensions, you wouldn't have this problem.
>Write to a standard, not to a specific platform.

Yeah but we're not talking about some linux nerd's fantasy world. We're talking about the real universe. In the real universe companies compete for market share and if the way to do that is to add proprietary extensions that customers want then that's exactly what they'll do. It's nice to imagine a world where everyone just codes to some arbitrary standard but it's not realistic. The technical skill isn't even there in general even if the will to do it were. It's never going to happen. It's a fantasy.

[Valen]

There're many standards in existence Svero, without which there'd be no civilization as we know it. The internet has a standard. OpenGL has a standard. Browsers are required to comply with standards. When you're having problems with your site not displaying the same way on both IE and Mozilla or Firefox, chances are it's because IE isn't complying with certain standards. If it works in IE and not Mozilla, it's usually because IE is more forgiving of syntax errors (which makes it less compliant as well).

You might say "well you see, this is what I meant when I said that standards don't help." But the way things are, Microsoft is the tail that's wagging the dog. If there was a lot of competition in browsers, they'd all strive to be compliant. Monopolies are never good for the consumer. It took Microsoft over 3 years after Mozilla's release to incorporate a popup blocker. What's so great about that? Or the fact that IE still has no tab support? Or what's so great about the fact that Windows has remained the same since 1999?

[svero]

>You might say "well you see, this is what I meant when I said that
>standards don't help."

I didn't say standards don't help. I said people won't always follow them either because they're technically unable or because they don't want to. That's reality.

>But the way things are, Microsoft is the tail that's wagging the dog. If
>there was a lot of competition in browsers, they'd all strive to be
>compliant.

No. This is false because as we all know most websites are not coded strictly to standard. (including your own I bet!) -- The goal of a browser is to make it as easy and comfortable as possible for a user (say my grandmother who couldn't care less about internet standards) to browse websites. Firefox could popup a big red error dialog everytime it comes across non-standard web code and make a big buzzing sound and force the user to read it for 20 seconds before enabling the ok button. It doesn't do that does it? Why? Because the goal of a good browser is to not enforce standards. Nobody cares if their browser is compliant or not. All they want is to read the lastest issue of the onion or buy a book on amazon and have the site display correctly.

> Monopolies are never good for the consumer.

Monopolies can in some cases have beneficial effects for a consumer. In general they're bad, but in technology having several different platforms generally means more expensive and less stable software.

>It took Microsoft over 3 years after Mozilla's release to incorporate a popup
>blocker. What's so great about that? Or the fact that IE still has no tab
>support? Or what's so great about the fact that Windows has remained the
>same since 1999?

Nobody is stopping anyone from offering an alternative. But the fact remains that with more platforms to support and test for our jobs as developers are more complex.

I fail to see how this conversation is any different from people cheering on a completely new graphic card standard by fictional company newgraph inc. and saying.. finally those bastards as nvidia and ati are losing marketshare. It's just another thing we have to code to.