Firefox passes 50 million download mark

CNet News ^ | 04/29/2005 | John Borland

[r5boston]

The Mozilla Foundation's Firefox Web browser passed a significant milestone in adoption on Friday, with more than 50 million copies of the program downloaded, according to its distributors.

To commemorate the moment, the foundation said on its Web site that it would create 50 limited-edition coins, to be distributed to people with stories of spreading the browser online. An additional, a still-unnamed prize will be given to the owner of the Web site responsible for the 50 millionth download.

"It's funny how the counter just blows by 50 million without a care in the world, isn't it?" Mozilla developer Blake Ross wrote on the foundation's Web site. "But it's not just a number to us. It's a validation of half a decade of work, and the beginning of half a decade more."

With its first full-fledged release last November, Firefox has shaken up a Web browser market that most analysts had deemed almost wholly mature. For the first time in years, the market share of Microsoft's Internet Explorer has begun inching downwards as Firefox adoption rises.

Much of the interest in Firefox has been driven by repeated security holes found in Internet Explorer. Some prominent security researchers have even recommended against using IE if possible, a criticism that has stung in Microsoft executive suites.

[UseYourHead]

clone???

Calling truth in advertising negative sounds like a DU tactic. You sure you belong over here?

[softwarecreator]

I've been running IE and Outlook for years and I've never had a virus or spyware infection.

Me neither.  The last virus I had was a C-Mos type in about 1998 or so.

[UseYourHead]

My empoyeer specified Netscape because that is what their intranet web pages were coded for.

???

html is html - unless they are scripted to reject IE I don't see the problem.

[softwarecreator]

You would think FF was defect free the way it is being trumpeted

The anti-Microsoft crowd would trumpet ANYTHING as being better than Internet Explorer.  Hate knows no limit.

[UseYourHead]

I also run many apps constantly and am not plagued by reboots and other problems - however, my machine will slow to a crawl until I kill FF and then its back up to full speed again. I thought it was something I was running at home but it does the same thing at work.

[softwarecreator]

html is html - unless they are scripted to reject IE I don't see the problem.

I can see them chosing to run only IE if they use Active X, but, to my knowledge, their is no technology that can only be run on Netscape.

[softwarecreator]

I thought it was something I was running at home but it does the same thing at work.

Same problem, also it sometimes freezes if you are using more than one instance of it.

[UseYourHead]

I do work with a lot of PDF files - I'll have to explore that aspect. However, the newer versions of FF and TB still haven't helped in my case.

[UseYourHead]

I think Microsoft gets much more of a free pass on such things than they deserve.

I agree with your take - and let me add: Much of the corporate client software written to run on Microsoft platforms REQUIRE the user to run the client as local admin and I think this is where the problem is. Billions of corporate dollars are preventing MS from doing the right thing and forcing software writers to obey the security laws that dictate that the end user NOT be allowed to run as local admin. It is the most annoying problem I deal with at work.

[UseYourHead]

No FF, no problems. I don't need FF.

[MikefromOhio]

what is your page file set too?

when I set mine to 1.4 GB, FF starting working just fine....

[Abcdefg]

html is html, but java script isn't. active-x isn't. Modern web pages do a lot more than just html.

[UseYourHead]

That's why I said unless someone specifically scripted the pages to exclude IE browsers then there should not be a problem.

[SengirV]

Apparently 'truth' is a relative term to some.

[frogjerk]

Nice try - running 2003 to 2005 just the last 6 months, FF is running about even and will fare worse as the year goes on. 50 million downloads means that FF is now worth the time of those who write malware

You asked me to go to Secunia and I did. These were your prefered stats. Also, I believe the 2003 stats are for Mozilla on which Firefox is based so the comarison is valid.

[Abcdefg]

Usually it's the other way around, people write webpages for IE and forget the other browsers. I know next to nothing about building webpages, but it looks like you need script to identify the browser, then write about 4 different websites for the different implementations to make them all look the same.

[UseYourHead]

Actually, you use one script to interogate the browser and one set of webpages to inclose your data collected by one of several methods and then write 4 or 5 different style sheets to render the webpages appropriately for the browser in question.

[UseYourHead]

At least you are basing your discussion on data - I can appreciate that.

[Musket]

Firefox and Thunderbird both run slower and slower and slower until I have to kill both processes to even be able to use the computer.

I had that problem once. Turns out the tools>options>privacy>download manager history was set to "manually". I changed that to "upon successful download" and POOF - no more problems.

[zeugma]

Much of the corporate client software written to run on Microsoft platforms REQUIRE the user to run the client as local admin and I think this is where the problem is.

Oh, absolutely. You are dead on with that. Further, how many intranet web applications have you seen that pretty much require you to run IE with a big "my security is almost completely turned off" bullseye pasted on your back? Almost nothing pisses me off more than that. I'm not just talking 3rd party solutions either. Microsoft itself is a major offender here. The worst, though is Siebel. God, what an unholy mess that is! I don't even want to talk about it, it is that bad.