Firefox, the open-source browser which only went 1.0 in November, has this morning hit 20 million downloads. At the time of writing, the site's download counter reads "20,001,054" - it's currently averaging anything from 210,000 to 270,000 downloads every day.
Asa Dotzler, from the Mozilla Foundation, said: "In seventy six days, more than sixty three thousand of you have joined the effort to deliver Firefox 1.0 to more than twenty million thankful users - you all are simply amazing! You all have demonstrated that open source community can be powerful, committed, and capable of accomplishing once-unimaginable feats."
Figures show that 1.1 million people downloaded v1.0 on the day of its release. Download figures also rose to around 300,000 a day for the two days after an advert for the browser appeared in the New York Times. The download rate has remained fairly steady since the middle of November. v1.1 of Firefox is expected later this year.
View: Get Firefox | Spread Firefox
Asa Dotzler, from the Mozilla Foundation, said: "In seventy six days, more than sixty three thousand of you have joined the effort to deliver Firefox 1.0 to more than twenty million thankful users - you all are simply amazing! You all have demonstrated that open source community can be powerful, committed, and capable of accomplishing once-unimaginable feats."
Figures show that 1.1 million people downloaded v1.0 on the day of its release. Download figures also rose to around 300,000 a day for the two days after an advert for the browser appeared in the New York Times. The download rate has remained fairly steady since the middle of November. v1.1 of Firefox is expected later this year.
View: Get Firefox | Spread Firefox
Cont...
As a result, the publisher is expecting record results in the current quarter, which runs through to the end of its financial year on March 31st, and includes the launch of titles including Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and key new brands Brothers In Arms and Cold Theory.
Ubisoft is projecting fourth quarter earnings of 220 million Euro, which will leave its overall sales for the year up by ten per cent - a reversal of the first nine months of the year, which have seen sales down by 11 per cent.
The company, whose future has been the target of intense speculation after Electronic Arts acquired a 20 per cent shareholding in late December, is also targeting growth of at least 12 per cent in 2005/06, which would bring sales to over 600 million Euro.
"Ubisoft is well on its way to meeting its fiscal-year objectives," according to CEO Yves Guillemot, "and can count on an excellent year in 2005/06. This proves that our unique assets, brands and studios, are generating significant growth and profitability."
Of course the real interesting figure is the number of gecko users (firefox + mozilla suite + netscape 7+kmelon+galeon+camino...) which is even higher. And even more interesting is the number for standards-compliant browsers (gecko+safari+opera), that is browsers that display the page identically (and thus not requiring extra development) despite using a different engine.
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
37% here for Netscape/other:
http://www.cen.uiuc.edu/bstats/latest.html
This one says 11%:
http://ite.pubs.informs.org/stats/January_2005/#BROWSER
7.7% here:
http://www.is.mines.edu/is/logs/#BROWSER
20.3% here:
http://www.davidviner.com/browserstats.php
So who's right? Maybe the question should be how many Firefox users visit news.com compared to other sites? news.com is a noob-ish site, it would not be surprising that IE dominates there compared to colleges and tech-y sites.
downloaded firefox for the third time today, having previously checked out pre 1.0 versions. it's definately getting better, but i get equal or better security from maxthon by disabling nasties such as active-x, and the tabbing functionality is still better in maxthon (mouse over the tabs and mousewheel to cycle between them, double click to close a tab - being two examples).
however, i'll keep playing, as i'm sure there are things i've missed, and i'm sure things will be improved. 20million downloaders can't all be wrong, although i have to wonder if some of those are the usual fanboy types continually grabbing the file to overinflate the numbers by 1 or 2.
and that is to place a number on the right corner of the tabs ...
so i know which tab i'm trying to get to ...
eg Ctrl + 2, or Ctrl + 5
and i find ie is easier to use!!!
I beg to differ, their numbers also go with people who won't shutup about it. It's a piece of software, advertise it a couple of times and leave it. Every post about any browser contains 20%+ ads for firefox, get over it. If people wish to use IE, let them, if they want to use Opera, let them. There's no need for all that other crap people do. If you couldn't keep your comptuer secure with IE, that's your problem. But despite the fact you've switched, doesn't mean that the world is suddenly fort knox. I along with many people have and run very secure copies of IE, no spyware etc because it's down to common sense "Do I accept the prompt or don't I?". You don't need high intelligence to tell you that some of them you just don't accept, and usually you can make an informed decision about whether you actually need what it is or not.
So yes, report the news, tell your friends about something you like, don't force it down their throats, replace everybodies stuff because you use it and it must be good for that reason, and last but not least, after a while, give it a rest. Some of you really are pathetic with how you carry on about it. Some act like it's a do or die situation.
I agree. I've never got any virues/spyware.
Other (non-techincal) people whose computers i've set/up never get them either.
I just tell them simply to say no/cancel to message box appearing on the screen. Its a simply message but it has worked almost flawlessly.
Having said that; the worst infected computers I have seen where not infected via ActiveX, but were infected because the user downloaded one or more file sharing programs.
that's enough for me to be away of ie
So it got 20mil downloads - how do you know that 15mil people didn't simply delete FF and stick with IE? You can't honestly start all this "FIREFOX ROXX SWITCH FROM IE N00B!!!11!1!11!!!1" **** until the usage of FF is official, not the number of downloads. There are millions of people like me who downloaded it and uninstalled it because we didn't like it.
IE isn't perfect - but firefox isn't fantastic. Let's get over all this **** and move on.
Ever stop to think which browser would be the best if Microsoft hadnt bundled it with its operating system from the getgo?
Why change what works out of the box right? (major security holes, bugs, incorrect rendering and using custom microsoft html codes aside......)
I'll stick with Opera.
Still, those are impressive numbers!
1. You should only visit websites you're sure you can trust
2. You should have high security levels enabled
3. You should have anti-virus and anti-spyware/adware software install on your system in the first place
Mozilla says firefox is safe because it disables activex content - IE 6 sp2 does this, and earlier version have the option to disable the use of activex. And IE gets alot of security attacks because it the most popular browser, so hackers want to get to the most people - if FF ever becomes more popular then IE (ha), then it will recieve more security problems.
Sure, FF has a download manager, google search next to the address bar and the ability to theme - download FreshDownload, install the google toolbar, there is a program that lets you theme IE - bam, you now have all of firefox's "amazing features".
And please dont think I'm saying that people should use IE, I'm simply saying that firefox offers nothing more then IE does with a few simple toolbars and add-ons. Think about it.
2. Tabbed browsing. The main reason i switched.
3. Browsing without ads. The main reason i dont swtch to opera is theres not an easy way to block ads like there is with the Adblock plugin.
4. Proper support for web standards especially CSS. Anyone who has tried to write and pages in css will know IE's support is plain lousy. The amout of time youll waste writing hacks to get your page to show right on IE is just pain silly
5. Almost unlimited customisation with pluggins. I have a whole bunch of pluggins that make my web use more productive and pleasurable, browsing without is a pain.
6. It doesnt have IE's annoying quirks which for me include, not being able to compleatly uninstall addons from the browser, by default ie blocks all exe files from being downloaded, with all exe's that are downloaded with IE theres another prompt you need to click to run the damn things that i cant figure out how to disable (if anyone knows how to stop this id love to know)
7. Updates and innovation. Youll be lucky if you see an(non security) update to ie before longhorn (ie 2006) whereas Firefox is continually udating and adding features. (Of course you could argue it stole these features from Opera but thats beside the point!)
Id like to hear 7 reasons NOT to use firefox or any alternative browser. I guess some people are happy with what they already have and cant be bothered to change.
1/ Text zoom works on all pages, text zooming in IE kinda works, sometimes...
2/ RSS support
3/ themeable to suit my tastes
4/ smart "find as you type" search bar, I can't believe I could live without it before, CTRL+F in IE is so useless that people have to install googlebar, yahoobar... to get proper in-page search features
5/ Free and incredibly powerful web delopper tools, the same and often more limited tools for IE cost an insane amount of money or simply don't exist
6/ multilanguage UI support, when my Spanish friend come over and need internet access, I launch Firefox with a Spanish user interface
7/ a very convenient search bar with hundreds of searchplugins for all languages, all topics
And please dont think I'm saying that people should use IE, I'm simply saying that firefox offers nothing more then IE does with a few simple toolbars and add-ons. Think about it.
Except a halfway decent rendering engine.
I agree IE needs to be updated, but MS are obviously busy with more important things. MS know that IE can have tonnes of extra features, all the users need to do is take a few minutes to download a few plugins.
That's all I have to say - diagree all you want, but it's ultimatly your loss.
Don't forget IE still doesn't have PNG-alphatransparency like FF and Opera (probably others too)
I know IE does have some kind of alphatransparency support in the form of a filter but filters are IE-propietary. in other words IE will be the only one to render "filter:......".
Though I must say some of the filters are quite neat (you could as an april fools flip your page upside down)
hey, what the hell, ok I'll give
Hoorray for IE style filters!!
(somebody should release an extension to FF to be able to render IE-filters)
TBH, I've tried pretty much all the browsers out there and I still tend to use IE. Why? Because it does what I need it do. Of all the alts, the one I prefer most is Maxthon, and even then I still tend to use IE. (Yes, I know Maxthon uses the IE engine)
You can argue all you want about W3C standards, but at the end of the day, if most websites are coded to work around IE's shortcomings (which I don't deny), and the stats indicate IE is still the most used browser, it has in effect become the de-facto standard, whether it complies with W3C standards or not.
Sure, all those millions of webmasters could redesign their sites to render correctly to W3C, but then their sites might not render correctly on IE, which would kinda be shooting themselves in the foot really...
I have nothing against FF and wish it all the success in the world, we do need alternatives and it can only drive MS to improve IE... But for me, I'm happy with IE. I have no security probs as I keep a close eye on my system, and I'm quite happy without all the bells and whistles of FF.
The only page I visit with IE is windows update, and anyway, I f I came across a web page I really need that doesn't display properly in Firefox I could still use IE to view it in a question of seconds, I don't see the problem.
Of course, if your internet usage is like surfing 15mn a day to llok at the news you probably don't need Firefox, actually buying the local newspaper could even be a better alternative
How would you know if what is displayed on your screen is what the W3C intended it to look? Even though Firefox is more compliant than IE, it still isn't fully standards compliant. So what you may think is correct may be incorrect.
100,000 coming soon in year 2006 when Longhorn Releases
http://www.bengoodger.com/software/mb/options/prefwindowv/prefs.html
Seriously, it's a work in progress and will probably be in Fx 1.1, however, they aren't really leaked.
My point is that if we could get the usage statistics of those 10% volatile users (who get their hands on every new release of anything), we would be in a better position to debate - which browser is actually better. Just my 0.02 units of input.
I'm sure at least 1/2 of those 20 million downloads are re-downloads from users of previous Firefox users. not to mention the "ballot stuffers" who download Firefox over and over from as many unique machines as possible so as to make the number of downloads that's much higher.
Better yet: Open source relies on the community to assist in patching the security holes. A website you visit tells you: "This patch will fix the hole." You install it, but did it really fix the hole? Nope. It actually just installed viruses and other malware to your system. Open source is an absurd concept that reeks of non-continuity. How the hell can it be labelled secure when the fundamental concept of the whole premise of open source is insecure.
No, I just exposed a flaw of all software in general.
What if someone just decided to make an installer package and call it AvantBrowser. Would the general public know how to check the MD5 to make sure that it's an official release.
How is this problem unique to open source?
Open source is based off the idea of a community effort. It promotes the fact that if a security hole is found, any user who chooses can assist in coming up with a fix therefore pushing the patch out faster. Therefore they have decentralized the patch source. I could make a fix for the software and offer it at my personal website, without Mozilla ever knowing anything about it. I could likewise make a malware riddled version of Firefox and offer it. It's easy to do so because the source code is available. The decentralization is the major issue. Sure the same thing could happen with software that isn't open source, but it's not PROMOTED. In fact, you are discouraged from doing so and for a user you have the security of knowing that all patches are downloaded from the Windows Update site.
BTW: I'm not a supporter of AvantBrowser. What's the point in using a buggy peice of software based on IE. I have no use for it. Who the hell cares about tabbed browsing? It's a pointless feature. Hmm, I switch to a different website by clicking at the top of a clunky browser interface or I just switch to a different website via the Windows taskbar at the bottom of the screen. What's the big deal?
Most that did not download from the "official" site did download from another source, though I would surely not expose my ignorance by calling places like the official Debian repositories an "unknown source".
Note that, while the stats show 20mil downloads, other stats show aprox 5% mkt penetration at this point. This works out to a whole lot more than 20mil downloads, so that can only be used to show the increasing popularity, and not any real usage numbers, which will run quite a bit higher than that.
it is IMPOSSIBLE for an outsider to issue a patch in the wild since firefox patches are ONLY ISSUED by the mozilla fundation and the code inclusion process is extremely strictly watched. Your description of how a patch is included in the source code is simply the complete opposite of how things work.
You know where Firefox patches come from. Firefox auto-updates itself to fix holes and to upgrade to newer versions. You're discouraged to trust other sources for download Firefox "patches." A patch is also not acknowledged as a patch until it's given directly to the Mozilla foundation and put out as an auto-update patch in Firefox. Also, your image of the decentralization is wrong. You obviously forgot about CVS, SVN, and Sourceforge.
Oh, and are you implying that IE isn't mirrored by other people? If so, hah, it has plenty of mirrors. Just look around.
Firefox got it right.
Who would download patches from unknown sites?
I could make dodgy patches for privative software and put that on my site as well. Actually you can find lots of "patched uxtheme.dll", "un-plug'n'play" and several other fixes and addons for non OpenSource software, which people happily download and install, so how comes this is an OpenSource problem.
Third party patches for OS software should be submited to the developers so they examine them and merge that code into the tree, if necesary. Now if you feel like downloading and applying every patch you find on third party pages then well... whatever rocks your boat.
BTW: For those of you talking about IE security holes that automatically install things without giving a dialog box: Such experiences are rare. In fact, the only time that such an occurence would happen is by visiting W@R3Z site or Pr0n sities. Don't visit illegitimate websites and you won't have to worry about it.
Use Firefox, and when it's the most popular browser I'm sure there will be security holes for it as well. BTW: They've already got some, and I've seen no patch. I thought the best thing was that since it was open source they could be patched in a few hours rather than a few weeks. Nearly a month since the article about the 4 holes surfaced and no patch.
Oh, and about the usage, there are probably a lot more than 20 million users actually using Firefox. Firefox has about 5% of the browser market. That's easily 35-40 million right there.
800 million internet users, most stats indicate firefox has 4-5% market share however they would only need 2.5% to get 20 million users.