According to research carried out by French firm Xiti Monitor, use of the Firefox browser continues to grow in Europe. Since April this year, the geeky alternative to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer gained an extra four percent of the market across the continent. According to Xiti’s research, the browser is now used by some 23.2 per cent of European PC web surfers – up from 19.4% in April.
Well, when you use Firefox once there is no return.
Edited 2006-12-08 21:18
“Well, when you use Firefox once there is no return. ”
Well, that depends on the quality of your previous browser. I use Firefox 2, but not as my main browser; I mainly use Konqueror because it loads faster, eats less memory and is well integrated to the rest of the desktop. It’s not superior IMHO (perhaps debatable), but if I have a good browser that fits my taste I won’t use the one being promoted as King just because everyone is using it.
If you compare IE with Firefox, then it’s clear you should use Firefox for a better browsing. But not all cases are the same. I’m sure Opera users are going to keep using Opera even after trying Firefox.
Anyway, I still install Firefox on every computer with Windows I have access. For example, a friend of mine has a cybercafé; I quickly installed Firefox on all his computers. People do have a choice. Of course most don’t know what Firefox is. They think internet is the little blue E sitting in the desktop. But some of them actually use Firefox, because they knew it or because they saw other using it. The more people actually using Firefox, the more people will be intrigued by it.
The main problem with Konqueror in FreeBSD: flash plugin crashes Firefox, and horrible font suppont.
Other than that, it’s allright, I guess. I don’t think it is faster, IMHO.
Geeky’s a bit unfair I think – the key to Firefox’s success so far is that it *isn’t* geeky.
Still, I’d rather be geeky than clueless 😉
geeky alternative
Why did the author feel the need to slam Firefox in the very article that shows it is growing in popularity? Maybe the he feels compelled to be balanced in some perverse way.
The simple fact is, an excellent alternative to the leading browser is growing in popularity in spite of the effort users have to expend to get it (i.e. some effort instead of no effort on Windows).
Leaving aside technical advantages of FF over IE and of which casual users don’t care at all, it’s “cool” to have it 🙂
The Xiti data was for October.
IE7 didn’t hit automatic update until November 1st.
In December IE7 beats out Firefox on TheCounter.
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/December/browser.php
1. MSIE 6.x 8834291 (72%)
2. MSIE 7.x 1348616 (11%)
3. FireFox 1280834 (10%)
4. Safari 361529 (3%)
5. MSIE 5.x 166418 (1%)
Edited 2006-12-08 23:05
I’m assuming TheCounter is a global site, and not a European one since the Firefox number you posted seems to align more closely to global numbers than the 23% it supposedly has in Europe.
Actually, I’m a little suprised those IE7 numbers are so low – it seems a lot of home users didn’t install it last month when they were prompted to.
I’m assuming TheCounter is a global site, and not a European one since the Firefox number you posted seems to align more closely to global numbers than the 23% it supposedly has in Europe.
Actually, I’m a little suprised those IE7 numbers are so low – it seems a lot of home users didn’t install it last month when they were prompted to.
The non-English versions of IE7 are being rolled out by AU on a staggered basis:
English was Nov 1.
German, French, Spanish, Finnish, Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic
15-Nov-06
Italian, Dutch, Russian, Sweden, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Hebrew
1-Jan-07
Turkish, Portuguese, Czech, Hungarian, ELL
22-Jan-07
Japanese, Korean, Simplified and Traditional Chinese
Calendar Year Q2 2007
http://www.microsoft.com/technet/updatemanagement/windowsupdate/ie7…
Edited 2006-12-09 00:08
Dude… this is getting tiresome. I’ve seen you make some valid points in the past but this is just spam.
Dude… this is getting tiresome. I’ve seen you make some valid points in the past but this is just spam.
Pointing out the Xiti data was for October is spam?
Pointing out alternative stats from December is spam?
You are just being silly.
In case people missed by modded down post and doesn’t know what I’m being accused of:
The Xiti data was for October.
IE7 didn’t hit automatic update until November 1st.
In December IE7 beats out Firefox on TheCounter.
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/December/browser.php
1. MSIE 6.x 8834291 (72%)
2. MSIE 7.x 1348616 (11%)
3. FireFox 1280834 (10%)
4. Safari 361529 (3%)
5. MSIE 5.x 166418 (1%)
I love firefox. Simply the best browser. Keep up the good work!
Edited 2006-12-08 23:44
Wow. I’m moving there.
In case people missed by modded down post and doesn’t know what I’m being accused of:
The Xiti data was for October.
IE7 didn’t hit automatic update until November 1st.
In December IE7 beats out Firefox on TheCounter.
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/December/browser.php
1. MSIE 6.x 8834291 (72%)
2. MSIE 7.x 1348616 (11%)
3. FireFox 1280834 (10%)
4. Safari 361529 (3%)
5. MSIE 5.x 166418 (1%)
Perhaps you’d be less often modded down if you didn’t so often refer to those who disagree with you as cultists.
Of course, as always web stats convey an inaccurate picture. First, note that Firefox has caught up with IE7 for the month of December, with both at 11%. We’ll see how the rest of the month plays out, but that’s only one statistic from one web site.
WebReference gives 27% for all versions of Firefox in December:
http://www.webreference.com/stats/browser.html
W3Schools gives 28%, but that’s in October. Note, however, that TheCounter had only 8% for Firefox in October (and 11% in November), so it’s unlikely that there was a sudden drop due to the release of IE7. In fact, the numbers tend to show otherwise, i.e. that IE7 is mostly taking market share away from IE6, not FF:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
http://www.thecounter.com/stats/2006/October/browser.php
This one gives 24.7% for “Netscape flavor” browsers, most of which would be Firefox:
http://www.ews.uiuc.edu/bstats/latest.html
This site gives various sources, which go from 7.4% to 42%. The average comes out to 24.7%, which seems in line with what the other sites give:
http://www.upsdell.com/BrowserNews/stat.htm
I like the warning they give on that site. NotParker, this is for you and your obsession to present web stats as accurate measures of market share:
“Caution: stats mislead. Caching distorts raw data; audiences vary for each site; methodologies vary for each survey; surveys miss or omit important details; surveys mis-identify browsers or other user agents; small sample sizes exaggerate fluctuations; and stats don’t count those who stay away because their browsers are not supported.”
There’s also a link to these two pages that explain what you can’t learn from browser stats. I suggest you go and read them, because I will quote from them the next time you throw web stats around in order to push your pro-MS agenda:
http://www.collectionscanada.ca/9/1/p1-256-e.html
http://www.analog.cx/docs/webworks.html
In short, the only thing you can garner from these statistics is the number of hits from a particular browser. Not the number of users, not the number of individual machines, and certainly not a general picture of global market share…
My suggestion is that you stop using web stats as indicators of market share, and instead use reliable sources.
Perhaps you’d be less often modded down if you didn’t so often refer to those who disagree with you as cultists.
Perhaps people would take you seriously if you didn’t tell them to “suck it” when they won’t be bullied into joining the cult.
Webreference has IE7 at 9.67% and IE total at less than 50%. Most large analytics firms still has IE well over 80%.
Condsidering that IE7 hasn’t been released in all languages and it is being released in a throttled way, I’m esctatic it is so high on a site the clearly overrepresents Firefox!
W3Cschools also overrepresents Firefox … and Linux usage (which dropped in November on their site).
One thing to keep in mind … over 95% of Firefox users are using it on Windows on the non-specialized analytics sites. And Linux is still under .4% most of the time.
I personally am very happy at IE 7’s debut considering.
And I am still amazed at the huge percentage of Firefox 1.5x users.
PS Why do you keep modding me down? Why are the cult member so ashamed of stats that they don’t like and why try and silence people with an alternative point of view.
Wouldn’t you be taken more seriously in the real world if you weren’t so hateful, defensive and so prone to try to censor anyone who doesn’t agree with you?
PPS I own a D***
Edited 2006-12-09 19:33
Perhaps people would take you seriously if you didn’t tell them to “suck it” when they won’t be bullied into joining the cult.
The only person I ever told to “suck it” is you, NotParker, and I only did so after you repeatedly called me a cultist and a stalker, and after you repeatedly refused to counter my arguments but instead decided to attack my credibility.
I’m not surprised you claim web sites that show a higher percentage for Firefox are “overrepresenting it”. As usual, you pick and choose your stats in order to support your argument, and dismiss any that do not agree with your heavy-handed pro-MS agenda.
One thing to keep in mind … over 95% of Firefox users are using it on Windows on the non-specialized analytics sites. And Linux is still under .4% most of the time.
…and, as I’ve said (and researchers have demonstrated in the links I provided), web stats are useless to determine market share.
PS Why do you keep modding me down? Why are the cult member so ashamed of stats that they don’t like and why try and silence people with an alternative point of view.
Your paranoia is growing tiresome. I don’t mod you down for stats or links – rather, I demonstrate how you misrepresent stats and provide links that support my own arguments. I will mod down any post of yours that refers to people you disagree with as “cultists” however.
Wouldn’t you be taken more seriously in the real world if you weren’t so hateful, defensive and so prone to try to censor anyone who doesn’t agree with you?
Oh, but I am taken seriously in the world. I am also not hateful, unlike you. I don’t hate MS. I use Windows every day. I can recongnize what it does right, and what it does wrong, and I can appreciate the product while being critical of MS at the same time. Contrast this to you, who constantly spews out hateful rhetoric about Linux, as well as about Linux users, and who goes to great lengths to misrepresent web stats in order to belittle Linux’ impact.
PPS I own a D***
I don’t care if you own a Dell, a Compaq, a Gateway or a Mac. I do care when you’re dishonest about Linux, and when you shamelessly reprint Microsoft market material on this web site.
By now, you have me convinced that you’re an astroturfer. No one can be that big of a MS fanboy without getting paid for it…it just wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
The only person I ever told to “suck it” is you, NotParker, and I only did so after you repeatedly called me a cultist and a stalker
I asked you to stop stalking me and to stop modding down every factual, polite referenced post I made.
You laughed at me, pointed out how you were a top 150 and had enough automatic points to do whatever you wanted to me and said you were trying to get me kicked off this site.
And then you told me to “Suck it”.
Pervert. Stalker.
Edited 2006-12-09 23:26
I asked you to stop stalking me and to stop modding down every factual, polite referenced post I made.
I am not stalking you, NutParker. We’re posting in the same comment threads. This is a free country, and I’m free to respond to the posts that I choose.
Stop your ad hominem attacks and stick to the topic.
You laughed at me, pointed out how you were a top 150 and had enough automatic points to do whatever you wanted to me and said you were trying to get me kicked off this site.
Now you’re just plain lying. I did point out that I was apparently in the top 150 posters when I learned about it on the Meta blog, in response to you *accusing me* of using a sockpuppet to mod my own posts up.
I have also *never* claimed that this gave me more mod points. I don’t believe it does, either.
And I haven’t threatened you with kicking you off this site. I said that if you keep calling me a stalker and a pervert, I would send a message about it to the OSNews mods. Then I found out how ridiculous that would be and decided that I didn’t care enough about being constantly insulted by an Internet Troll to actually bother the good folks at OSNews with this.
So keep insulting me. It only damages your own credibility.
And then you told me to “Suck it”.
Believe me, that’s nothing compared to what I would like to tell you to do right now. However, since I like to stay polite, I will keep this to myself and let you do all the insulting here. After all, that’s what trolls do: they don’t respond to arguments, they attack those who post them.
No one can be that big of a MS fanboy without getting paid for it…it just wouldn’t make sense otherwise.
Another lie. That will put you over the 1000 mark for this week.
Another lie. That will put you over the 1000 mark for this week.
Please stay on-topic.
I live in the UK and I find it incredible that 1 in 5 members of the general public, who use the internet would:
1.) Know what a ‘web browser’ is.
2.) Know what Firefox is.
3.) Know how to install and start using FF.
I don’t. I have lots of non-geek friends, and most of them know what Firefox is.
Granted, I suggested to some of them to install it, but not all of them…
In my experience, people have an easier time understanding what a browser is than they do an OS. In fact, I was recently reparing a friend’s Windows PC recently, and I asked him if he had his Windows CD-ROM around. He started looking through his box of CD-ROMs and proudly handed me a MS Office 2000 CD-ROM…
My guess is that this is because a browser, like any other application, has a definite, easy-to-understand purpose, while OSes are a bit more abstract in nature (doing most of their stuff “under the hood”).
Also, Firefox is one of the few FOSS project that actually had a catchy name and logo, plus a successful grassroots marketing campaign.
If Linux and other FOSS projects had even 1/10th of the marketing budgets MS puts into its products, they would be much better known than they are right now…
Also, Firefox is one of the few FOSS project that actually had a catchy name and logo, plus a successful grassroots marketing campaign.
Plus hundreds of millions in revenue for making Goole the default search engine.
Edited 2006-12-09 23:30
That’s an interesting assertion. Do you have a link to an article, I’d like to know more.
That said, there’s nothing wrong with this, as they were two different companies striking a deal, and not a single corporation using monopolist tactics to gain an unfair advantage on the competition.
Opera as usually underrated…
Who cares that Opera has better and faster CSS/HTML/XHTML/JS rendering engines [firefox still cannot pass ACID2] is faster, uses less memory and has a lot more functionality which is slowly added to firefox.
Is that orange fox so great to make You use firefox?
Or maybe this orange fox does blow job for using his browser so that is why everybody likes firefox so much
There are two things to keep in mind:
– Firefox has a broad user support compared to Opera, so people build websites for IE and Firefox more than for Opera.
– Firefox is Open-Source, not Opera. (that gives Firefox an advantage for me and for others)
Firefox has a broad user support compared to Opera, so people build websites for IE and Firefox more than for Opera.
that is fault of noobish webmasters, not opera.
Firefox is Open-Source, not Opera. (that gives Firefox an advantage for me and for others)
Opera is free, I do not need to browse their source code to use it exclusivly.
The fact that You can compile FX does not mean that it is faster or better.
Exacly what advantage?
I can’t even imagine viewing the web in any browser that doesn’t have adblock+. To me that means IE7 and Opera are simply *unusable*. (and no, Opera’s “block content” isn’t even remotely close)
I have to agree with you here, however I’ll add that it’s not just adblock, but the whole collection of Firefox extensions.
I use adblock, Google Preview, Gmail Manager and FarkIt…and I would really miss these if I was forced to use IE.
The extensions are so useful that Firefox has even replaced Konqueror as my main web browser on my Kubuntu system.
My provider has a quota on traffic. If the quota is exceeded I have to pay for extra megabyte. That’s why I use Adblock and local proxy cache (Squid). Since I visit a couple of sites most of the time, it keeps traffic low.
The cache is configure to violate some W3C rules,
to make it more efficient than Firefox cache.
Squid has a couple of Ablock equivalents, but Adblock is easier to use.
I force very long expiration times on all the graphics, and at least 15 minutes on everything else, so when I hit ‘back’ button it is always served from cache. Shift + Reload is allowed to work as usual.
DG
I always try opera, and in general I like it but never like it as much as ff/iceweasel for some reasons that I really cannot lay a finger on.