Firefox on the hunt

[soky]

I heard about FireFox here first... so I though it fair to offer the latest. I am using FireFox more and more but am still more comfortable with IE. But hey... that's just me.

Week in review: Firefox on the hunt
Last modified:September 17, 2004, 10:00 AM PDT

Microsoft may be losing ground in the Internet browser battle.
Web metrics suggest that the software giant's Internet Explorer has been losing a significant number of users in the past nine months to open-source browser Mozilla and its offspring, Firefox. The gains for the two browsers, which are both produced by the Mozilla Foundation, are most noticeable at Web sites popular among geek-chic early adopters.

W3Schools.com, a Web development tutorial site, found that 18 percent of its visitors in September used Mozilla-based browsers, compared with 8 percent in January. Internet Explorer use dropped to 75 percent from 84 percent in the same period.

Whole story @ CNET

[easyarabia]

In just under 100 hours, we have smashed through our one million download campaign--with 6 days still to go! This is the fastest adoption rate we have ever experienced, higher than every previous Firefox release. But it's not time to relax our efforts. How soon can we break through 2 million? We'll have more information on a new campaign on Monday.

Check out the official website for more info www.spreadfirefox.com

[Brangwyn]

Downloads <> Number of users using it though. I've probably downloaded it 2 or 3 times in the last day or so for various reasons (I'm one of those people who don't save downloads just run them from temp heh) ... though personall I still don't like firefox much, probably stick with Maxthon for now.

[dpyers]

CERT just announced a whole series of exploits against mozilla/ff browsers. They don't announce security flaws until a fix is available - e.g. the new versions of FF and Mozilla.

Lot of people going to the new versions to resolve the security issues in the old versions, but it's the issues that CERT hasn't announced that will bite you.

As FF usage grows, we'll see more and more exploits against it. Bottom line is - never depend upon one browser to be more secure than another - treat them all as threats.

EDIT: - link to CERT announcement - http://www.us-cert.gov/cas/techalerts/TA04-261A.html

[Brangwyn]

True true, I've seen Phishing exploits and all sorts of other things reported about FF (though they seem to keep most of them pretty hush hush). To be fair I guess technically its still "beta"

[dpyers]

FF has their 1.0 version available now - they call it a "Preview Release" but say they don't anticipate any changes to it. The CERT warnings followed on the heels of the new release because the 1.0 version adressed them.

The 1.0 version seems to be a little faster than previous releases.

On sites where I've access to stats, have only seen a small (2-6%)increase in FF/Moz useage over the course of the year. More of an increase on technically oriented sites though.

[MEELAN]

I don't think that FF will take IEs place.
Many windows users still do not understand the problems with IE and they are happy to use it just because it comes with Windows.

In my opinion, the hatreds to IE is a myth or hype or too small. :-)

[Brangwyn]

Not to mention SP2 has actually gone a reasonable way to preventing some of the flaws in IE .. buffer overflows etc.

[Vantage]

Its gonna be a lot closer then the netscape/IE war was..
There are a lot of OpenSource peopel using FireFox.. and it is pretty much the standard on mosts unix/linux systems now.
With IE not available for those systems and many govts taking IE out of the workplace.... Its hard to say what type of browser battle is shaping up.

[craigdunlop]

Everyone can shoot me for saying this but I like IE - have never had any issues with it and only use the other browsers for testing, as their interfaces, functionality & featureset don't impress me...

[Brangwyn]

Just means more work for developers really, another major browser to deal with, and no matter what anyone says I will guarantee there will be idiosyncrasies when it comes to FF's handling of things.

[mresell]

Well part of my spyware removal procedures, include installing ff as a back up browser, if nothing else. Some people still have W98, ME and having ff as a backup means they have an option so they can get on the net. I have had plenty of spyware calls this yr. Once you get some of them...you gotta wipe which can get messy with backups etc.. I feel like I owe it to them to give them an option. I have told many to stay out of ie. The whole update process is screwed up. They force you to use thier browser and if you don't have broadband your are also in trouble. Then you can't uninstall the browser really either and now you gotta have outlook express etc... M$ attitude can really suck. FF is not perfect, but the extensions are really cool.

[MEELAN]

Is FF compatible with http://www.bitstream.com/ WebFontPlayer to display dynamic fonts? I tried to browse two site that displayed in IE but the font is not displayed in FF !

May be I should ask this at their forum? I visited http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=forum/1 using FF and some of the texts are not displayed correctly (Seems to be an incorrect interpretation of nested tables). Anybody else see any overlaping taxts in that site? (Using FF)

[soky]

Originally Posted by craigdunlop

Everyone can shoot me for saying this but I like IE - have never had any issues with it and only use the other browsers for testing, as their interfaces, functionality & featureset don't impress me...

I won't shoot you! I'm with ya. Personally... I've been very happy with IE and I dev for IE primarily. My corporate clients (including the gov) are also happy with IE and Microsoft office tools.

RE: XPsp2 - I brought my home computer into the office to upgrade it before doing the others... I have to say I am most impressed. The new Security Monitor and other protections seem very good. The install took a little @ > 1mps so if anyone asks about doing it on dial up, I suggest ordering the "free" CD. You can take a look at my homepage for a short article about downloading the package for multiple computers.

<edit> I'll start a new topic with my blurb from my homepage.</edit>

[dpyers]

At least for the next year or two, I'm going to continue working under the idea that sites have to look good in ie and acceptable in the lizard browsers and opera.

I'll use ie as my primary browser because some sites are just broken in other browsers - including FF.
I use FF for gmail though. In order to keep it from locking up in IE, I have to set my seurity and privacy settings to Stupid.

For CSS stuff, no browser is 100% standards compliant, but they all may be someday. Current best practices in this area seem to be that you code to the standards and tweak for all major browsers. The thought is that when individual browsers get fixed, you don't have to recode anything to maintain compatibility across old and new versions. - e.g. If you code css so it looks good in the current version of ie without tweaks - what happens when they fix it and half your users are on the fixed version, and half on the old version.