I made the move to Firefox because of security concerns with IE and stayed because of the customisation features inherent in the product. I love the fact that I now have a browser that does what I want not what some analyst or software engineer thinks I want - a vanilla flavoured version at that. The open architecture of Firefox is the thing that in my mind will ensure its continued growth amongst more sophisticated and demanding users.

Mozilla, in addition to being multi-platform, features an intuitive installer under Windows, which has been a key feature to its wide desktop adoption.

However, it is likely that a majority of users will continue to use whichever browser is pre-packaged with the OS. As such, IE and Safari will always maintain a reasonable market-share on their respective home platforms...that is, of course, if ALL OEM builders don't all suddenly start suppling Firefox with new systems.

Opera just recently (with release of version 9) changed default identification to Opera from Internet Explorer. So, pretty soon we should see some increase of this browser share.
Also don't forget that Opera Mini and Opera Mobile popularity raised.
And finally we will see Opera browser for Nintendo DS and Wii - that can significally increase Opera stats numbers.

I think it was Opera 8.5x that changed the default UA string...

Two years ago, I dropped Windows 2000 and XP , including IE in my computers at home (3 PCs & 1 Notebook)
Today I use ubuntu Dapper , PCLinuxOS 0.92 and of course firefox, thunderbird, evolution, KDE, gnome, openoffice, xine, xmms, k3b, etc

Even at the office, wher i'm forced to use windows, I use Firefox & Thunderbird.

I never been so happy, all my old machines (that were in a closet) are runing today fine, speedy and stable for days , not reboots required.....

I'll never go back to windows, I want to be free of the pressure to continue spending not neccesary money on hardware upgrades or changes to make this unsafety, slowly piece of sotware called "windows" work.

Windows is the only Operating System in the world (that i knew about) that destroy itself gradually month after month because of all the junk on it, forcing you every year to reinstall it , as the only way to run fast and well again.

I hope anyone who reads this, be encourage to take the journey of a new world of freedom and "peace of mind".

You use KDE and Gnome?

And contrary to popular belief: Windows can be maintained. It's just that, as with all OSes, you have to know what you're doing. The difference is Windows tends to target the crowd that doesn't always know what they're doing...

I applaud the fact that you have made Linux work for you. It serves me fine as well. However, I don't tout it over Windows. I feel the two are in different categories aimed at different users.

I dropped em before win98 became the status quo
I still have windows computers running win2k and server 2k3.
My OSes of choice are Slackware on the server, Fedora Core on one, Gentoo on the two in my room and SuSE on the others throuout the house. Mozilla on the Slackware machine cause I love to rework it. FireFox on the rest gotta love it! :)

The reliability of Windows depends on how much you know about it. My machines have been running over 2 years without a reinstall and run the same as the first day I installed them.

Thats not quite true...because windows is more vulnerable at the moment than any other operating system. Even microsoft uses Linux behind the scenes to protect its networks...

I have been administering and re-installing windows for years and I am contantly tweeking firewalls to stop malicious windows viruses. Its not just because it used more...it basically boils down to the unmaintainable code base which is now just becoming a huge burden for microsoft.

I also hate the way that windows os trys to call back home with all your information. The EULA is a damn menace in disguise...Any new company that is starting up would do well to go straight with linux...I only have one windows machine at home that I keep for testing web sites with IE...IT IS NOT USED FOR ANYTHING ELSE...I use Linux on everything else...if I can help it I leave the windows machine gathering dust as much as possible because its just so damn useless to use...

Plus...phew getting there...I just don't like the Microsoft.

but that is where the myth rears its ugly head...Tell me what you use Windows for that you can't do with Linux? Linux is surpassing Windows in leaps and bounds, especially over the last year...anyone who can't get Linux working for them just don't know how to place DVD linux installation discs into DVD readers!?

There are multiple live installation that you can try out that let you just boot straight from the disk and if you don't like then you can just remove the disk...

Alot of people say that they have to tweek the inner workings to get everything just right but let me remind you all that you have to do **exactly the same** with windows its just because Microsoft has a hold over the distributors that they must pre-install windows...which has been fully tweeked by the time you buy it...this is something, finally, that is being knocked on the head...

I just think that windows is going in the wrong direction and Linux is becoming a defacto standard. Ahh man its like a breath of fresh air when I start my Linux servers...nice, clean, fast and virus free...lovely!

I also do web development and one of the main reasons why IE is such a constant high ranking browser is because it tiptoes round proper cache handling...I have seen IE request data from the server even though the cache version as not expired...and I won't even talk about the VARY header which will only work correctly if it just specfies the USERAGENT as the header that was used to return the content...it just ignores anything else in here and on some versions will crash if you put anything other than USERAGENT or * in the vary header.

IE ignores caching in subtle ways that make it basically hit your server more than if your clients where any other browser so it makes it look like more clients are accessing your webserver with IE...you have to specifically code for IE caching if you want to make sure that your caches are not continually wacked over with IE clients...bloody thing!

GO OPERA GO,
Still looking for something better than opera.
from dillo to Sleipnir, found none.

I really hope that Opera's share will go past 5% soon. It really deserves it.
crashoverride you overlooked one important thing. Opera has more features but is smaller and is more effiecient when it comes to memory usage.
Btw, for all you guys saying that Opera cant be configured : http://www.pallab.net/20...de-to-customizing-opera/

Indeed, I am sick of how Firefox fans continually rant about how great extensions are in Firefox, when the vast majority of these extensions are available built in to opera, and in many cases better. For examp,e, UserJS is far better than GreaseMonkey for example. There is even GreaseMonkey UserJS compatability UserJS, to so you can run UserJS AND FireFox greasemonkey scripts in Opera.

Another example, is the endless amount of Firefox extensions that extend the tab features. Opera already has all of these, you can undelete closed tabs in Opera without an extension, you can use Linked tabs, duplicate tabs, tile tabs, lock tabs etc etc...

Canone anyone identify Firefox extensions than cannot be achieved in Opera? (I'm sure there may be a few, but not many..).

Not ranting about how great extensions are. Just stating the simple fact that Firefox gives me some thing that no other browser does. The freedom of choice....the choice to have the features that I want....not the features that some programmer thinks I want. Don't get me wrong, Opera is a good browser but it's not for me.

*shrug* I've tried both Opera and Maxthon and neither one had the built in ad blocking functionality as good as firefox's ad block extension and filterset.g updater. Maxthon came close but had stability issues and did random wierd s***. Opera didn't cut it at all.

Those 2 are the only Firefox extensions I use and they are the only thing that makes me stick with Firefox over anything else. Opera is nice and all, but I can't live with out good, solid, and non-interactive ad blocking.

Maxthon is the only one with built in ad blocking capabilities. Opera unlike Fx doesnt require you to install adons to block content. However, it doent provide any filter ( and rightly so ). You will need to download one yourself. If you had bothered to go through the link I provided you would have known that there are some excellent filters (urlfilter.ini)already available for Opera.

A typical lame excuse given by Fx fanboys.
In Opera you can either disable/ignore features you dont want. And remember Opera's memory usage is more efficient, and its .exe is also much smaller.

My problem with with IE was the lack of customization or I should say the fact that what little customization there is to be had costs you an arm and leg to get. Opera is a nice browser speedy and plenty stable but it just has features that I never used that were just there taking up space. With Firefox, sure you may have to install several extensions to get all the functionality you want, but at least you have a choice of what functions you get and what you don't get. It also doesn't cost a small fortune to get it.

I personally don't think there is a good browser out right now. IE sucks in some ways but so does Firefox. I do web developing and there are so many incompatibilities between broswers I am constanly changing my code (especially with dynamic content).
On my personal computer I have all 3 browsers: IE, Firefox, and Opera installed and I finally made the decision a couple days ago to use Opera as my default. However, quite frequently I come across pages that will not work on Opera so I still need to keep my IE and Firefox. I like Opera because it is very quick to launch, fast to navigate, being able to reopen tabs that were just closed by accident, and saving browsing sessions.

Edit: I also forgot to mention that Opera can re-open all your previous tabs and sites when you re-open the program WITH the back and forwards histories too! True even after it crashes.

go opera

I'm currently using Maxthon (http://www.maxthon.com), and I'm beyond satisfied with the browser. What I'm wondering is why Maxthon is less popular than Firefox; is Firefox THAT superior?

Maxthon uses the IE engine. It is also not nice in terms of usability.

Firefox is not that superior, it's only IE 6 is too damn old. I am a FF user, I like it because I am able to customize to my own need. With IE or Opera, I cannot do that, at least not easily. When I open FF, I am see instantly if I have any new email, current weather, and it block 99% of the ads from website. They are very important to me and same me a lot of time.

Firefox isn't a wrapper around an outdated browser. ;)

..just sayin'.

Firefox is a wrapper on the Gecko engine :).

browser_engine != entire_browser

The words IE in the introductory web page just made me close my FF tab as soon as my eyes passed over it! Also if its based on the IE code then its an offshoot of MS which means its just another IE in disquise trying to hi-jack users away from whatever browser they are using...

Damn! I bet those guys had to sign their eye sockets over to microsoft when they copied that code!? Who in their right mind would base a new browser on IE code!?

What an utter waste of money and development time!?

Nobody mentioned it, but for some of us, it is the most important factor:
Firefox is free software: You can use it, for any purpose, you can copy it to your friends, you can study how it works and made all the modifications you want, you can distribute the modifications.
IE and Opera are not free software. I would not use them no matter what.
Personally, I use Konqueror, it is faster and better integrated with my desktop (KDE). Otherwise I use Firefox.

Another important factor for which I consider Firefox acceptance great is because Firefox is much more standard than IE. Today many web-designers make IE-only web pages without realizing it (I won't consider a web-designer a professional one unless he understands standards, like the ones at w3.org). That leads to a monopoly of IE and since IE interpret some things wrong, that means that when developing web sites you have to expend lots of time braking your site to make it fit with a broken IE; last time I measured it, it was 50% of the project time, the other 50% included programming, database design, standard validation, testing, etc.
I eventually left the web business and started looking for something else. Seeing Firefox rise makes me wonder if I'd come back to web some day.

"IE and Opera are not free software."

You are wrong on both. You can download Opera for free and use it at home, work, school, wherever. Just go to http://opera.com/download/ and get your free copy.

IE is also free. Granted, you have to buy Windows, but IE is still free. http://www.microsoft.com...8de6&DisplayLang=en

Perhaps you have confused "free" with open source. Those two things are very different.

Free software isn't the same as freeware.

It is standard for web-designers, it definitely isn't for the manufacturers of software. Documentation about plug-ins and extensions is a nightmare! Nothing works as it is written in documentation! You have to invent your own ways, analyzing the source code (there is NO other way to do something valuable)! Sinnergy with software manufacturers which COULD be a driver of wider adoption apparently is not there!

uh....

Who called it freeware??

The problem is that "free" has more than one meaning; there's free as in "cost" and free as in "freedom".

The term "libre" for free as in freedom is unambiguous and while its not as recognizable, should be used in the latter case.

Firefox is free and libre.
Opera is free but not libre.

I'm glad you picked up on the fact that Internet Explorer is only free with the purchase of Windows (in fact, it is not legal to use without a Windows license). That makes it of dubious cost-freedom in my mind, since it comes bundled with Windows and is extremely hard to remove.

here is Europian stats from 29.6.06
http://www.xitimonitor.com/etudes/equipement16.asp

Firefox, a bolt of fresh air a great browser. Far more stable than IE. IE being prown it would seem to far more attacks, it crashes, allows Mal code overall IE is in the past. Go Firefox

Go Firefox!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!...

That's great. I'm anxious to see how this will escalate once FF2 and IE7 come out. I wonder if our pals at Opera will have something to enter into the wars by that time.

Good news for firefox. The thing I love most about it is the layout, it just seems to have everything in the right place. Ctrl-F and search bar appears at the bottom (that's how mine is setup anyway). Add tab-mix plus and you have x's on the tabs and will restore sessions if the browser shut's down unexpectedly. Yahoo notifier and I know when I have email. Web developer gives some awesome tools for those of us that build web sites, and the themes for FF look great.

It takes longer than IE to load initially, but I can deal with that.

I just downloaded Alpha 3 of Firefox 2 and it has those exact features you're speaking of built in (x's on the tabs, session restore etc). Wholy crap as i'm typing this it's checking my spelling. I'm pleasantly looking forward to Firefox 2.0 now.

Are you looking forward to it having built in click tracking that will tell any number of third party servers what links you click?

my god. X's on tabs, and session restore, and ability to move tabs, linked tabs, tab locking.... Opera's had them all for years.. Can you undelete closed tabs in Firefox yet? Or is that planned for FF3?

Haven't heard of that, do you have a link?

Yeah, you can...with a session manager extension.

Again, just because *you* think it should be built in, does not mean everyone else does. 90% of the people would never use session history. Why should it be bundled if it's just going to take up space?

Please, do tell us where you got such information. We'd all love to know...

And even less Firefox users know how to use extensions....

I read some stats somewhere (forget where) about how many Firefox installs actually have any extensions installed, and it's pretty low..

And that has anything to do with what? I answered your question. I quoted no stats, nor did I ask for them.

That said...

Do tell.

What stats? Where?

How were they gathered? Is it anecdotal, or statistical?

Hey, I've got stats too. I can honestly tell you that 100% of the folks I know using Firefox have extensions installed. Multiple extensions, even.

Claiming to have stats and then failing to back it up with *any* further information leaves you looking a tad...questionable.

As mentioned when I made the claim, I don't recall the site. I was upfront about that.

I doubt the stats are gathered automatically, as the UA sting does not reval what extensions are installed as far as I am aware. So it must have been a manual research gathering.

I assume the people you hang out with, are techies, so that's not a very typical spectrum of FF users.

I don't think this statement is without merit:

Most Firefox users tend to be more technology savvy than the average PC-user.

"Wholy crap as i'm typing this it's checking my spelling."

O RLY?

30.0+% use it in some countries in Europe. That's the threshold that needs to be broken.

Its about time! I for one think it is better than IE (but not by much) and more people should ues it.

Firefox is not without problems, especially it's memory handling but it's FAR more secure than Internet Explorer which still insists on automatically opening things it shouldn't.

Go Firefox! That's great news about Opera too. Safari is pretty painful to use; even with Saft it isn't nearly as configurable as it could be. On Mac, I still prefer Firefox.

Trebor, you should try Mr Tech's Local Install and force the extensions to work. I don't know how I ever lived without Mr. Tech. Get it here:

http://www.mrtech.com/extensions/

I find Safari just fine to use. Of just about any browser, it is the most standards compliant.
Although I do like the web developer plug-in for Firefox.

Check your browser for compliancy here.
http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

It is equally as standards compliant as Opera 9 and the latest Konqueror.

Passing Acid2 does not indicate you are the most standards compliant browser. It merely means you pass Acid2. Read the site carefully;

http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/guide/

"Acid2 tests features that web designers have been requesting. Everything that Acid2 tests is specified in a Web standard, but not all Web standards are tested. Acid2 does not guarantee conformance with any specification."

"Acid2 is a complex web page. It uses features that are not in common use yet, because of lack of support, and it crams many tests into one page."

I guess the strange thing is what the heck is the rest of the 85% of people doing? Why do they live shackled with an old browser, riddled with security problems and that is just plain old quirky.

I switched to Firefox since day 2 or 3 and always cringe when I am forced into using that abomination of IE.

Now if we could get to the 50% of coprorate who use IE and get them to understand Firefox is actually safer and faster, and better and on, and on, and on...

happily using ie?

unfortunately some larger percentage of the population doesn't care enough to use anything besides ie because they don't use the web as anything more than a simple tool.

Unfortunately most people know nothing about installing or upgrading a thing on their computer. I do tech support for a number of folks and they call with the simplest of things that with a little initiative could be acommplished by oneself. They are just using what was default on their machine. They're using the "Big Blue E" which stands for the internet in their minds. Sad but true.

I am wondering how they measure these usage. I am a primary FF user, but occasionally have to launch IE for those IE only pages.

IETab.

Search for it on mozilla's extension site.

;) it's good stuff.

Just got ffx 2.0 Beta 1. Stable as a brick-house, integrated spellchecking a boon.....only thing to follow are the upgrades of the many extensions (now called add-ons) of which their functions were not absorbed in the core of Firefox. Been up since early morning and no slowdown or memory hogging or CPU time eating or craching whatsoever, opposed to IE7Beta 3 which has to be shut down regularly due cache clogging and page update freezing and whatnot

Oh and FFx's page rendering is fast, fast. Zooming pages keeps them in-screen, opposed to IE7 where they scroll of the right side!

Hmm, been up since early morning with IE7 and no slowdown or memory hogging or CPU time eating or "craching" (thought you said you had built in spellchecker) whatsoever. I must get a gold star.

How do both those browser handle the acid2 test?

http://www.webstandards.org/action/acid2/

No.

I find it ironic that everyone is so concerned with web standards nowadays, yet neither IE7 or Firefox support Acid2.

While HTML-ala-IE6 has become an almost default standard for HTML, it's sad to see that Microsoft still refuses to become even close to standards compliant due to compatibility. I think they should do it: most 'important' sites are now standards compliant, and while many sites may be broken, it's the only way to overcome this problem in the future.

I had actually been switching over to IE7 as I thought Beta 3 was pretty nice. Until I went to Neowin today and got attacked by WMF exploits. After all that happened with that a while back I'm astounded that IE 7 Beta 3 still opens them. I'm back to using Firefox, Microsoft is just pathetic when it comes to security. By the way if you don't have the WMF patch yet you need to get it because forums are being hacked right and left.

Wait, so there is a WMF exploit which has a fix and you didn't update and that is MS fault?

No, my copy of XP is completely up to date, including the wmf patch. The patch only prevents wmf files from infecting your computer, but it does not stop IE from automatically downloading and opening wmf files. That's unacceptable behavior.

Try it with IE yourself:

http://infosec.ufl.edu/wmf/test/

I got IE's yellow security bar at the top..

I'm using IE7 Beta 3 and it opened the file without asking me. My security is set to medium-high for both security and privacy btw. This is unacceptable.

I am set to medium-high on security and medium on privacy on IE7 B3 and it displays the security bar for me.

Woah... I have a fully patched XP Pro SP2 system, and IE6 opened it right up.

Never saw anything like that before (on my computer anyway). Kinda crazy.

**EDIT**
I forgot to mention: my anti-virus caught it when it tried to download, but still... that's insane.

Go and ask the average IE user what medium security is and MS wonders why so many viruses move about the web... Its just a great big steaming pile of crap that keeps morphing every 3 years...Windows is like an incubator for viruses and it just gets worse!

Yaaaaaaaaay for web browsers of user preference!!!