Posted on 02/28/2005 5:17:34 PM PST by West Coast Conservative
Mozilla's Firefox keeps chipping away at Microsoft's massive lead in browser usage, two Web metrics firms reported Monday.
San Diego, Calif.-based WebSideStory, which last released usage numbers in January, said that in the last five weeks, Firefox has gained an additional 0.74 percent to account for 5.7 percent of all browsers used in the U.S. Microsoft's Internet Explorer, meanwhile, now stands at 89.9 percent, a drop from January's 90.3 percent, and the first time WebSideStory pegged IE as falling under the 90-percent mark.
"That 7/10s of a point compares well with previous increases," said Geoff Johnston, an analyst for WebSideStory. "From June to November [2004], Firefox saw a pretty steady half-a-percent-point increase each month."
While there are indications that Firefox's growth rate is slowing -- the latest numbers show a growth of about 15 percent over the previous period, while that period had grown by 22 percent over the one before that -- Johnston saw it differently. "I don't see [the growth] stopping or flattening," he said.
"The buzz around Firefox keeps growing, and it's buzz that drives people to change," Johnston added. "Mozilla's marketing has been very guerrilla. You're not seeing it spend millions of dollars on TV. Instead, it's a powerful ground swell."
"Firefox keeps plugging away with new features," said Johnston, of Firefox. "That's what got them where they are today. Microsoft's lack of development on IE left open a window of opportunity, and Firefox took advantage of it. Microsoft didn't think that window was there, but with the announcement that it's working on IE 7.0, they've realized that they had left the window open."
(Excerpt) Read more at informationweek.com ...
Hmm, at that rate Firefox will catch up with IE round about 2014 or so.
Still, Firefox doesn't have to take over the browser world as far as I'm concerned. It just has to have enough share that webmasters will be deterred from writing IE-only code.
And if we do get a version of IE in which ActiveX OFF is the default setting it will do a lot to cut down on malwar regardless of how many people switch to Firefox.
The guy that does our network stuff put this on my computer and I absolutely hate it.
What do you dislike about it?
I am a Firefox heretic. I think it sucks.
Why? What do you find so bad about it?
Netscape remnant here.
It's way too slow and sometimes never gets me where I want to go.
i use both.
you hafta use ie because many banks and the federal government do not accept firefox.
See if you feel the same way after your PC is compromised and your bank account is emptied out.
Using IE these days is just not safe.
Which banks and fedgov sites have you had trouble with?
I like Firefox and use it most of the time. Some stuff at work requires IE for the ActiveX garbage. At home I use Firefox about 99% of the time.
I will confess to having been a longtime Netscape user who only begrudgingly switched to IE.
I haven't had any problems.
fafsa
and
capital one
I haven't had any trouble with Capital One and my wife has used firefox on the fafsa site before. What errors are you getting?
Firefox is nowhere near infallible. Many of the same vulnerabilities that affect MSIE also affect Firefox.
Please compare # of remotely exploitable bugs between IIS and Apache. Seeing as how Apache has much more of the market it would stand to reason, using your way of thinking, that it would have a higher rate of compromises. But it doesn't.
The IE code is badly written and needs a major overhaul but one isn't scheduled to be made available to the public till 2006/2007.
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