back to article Firefox 3 downloads hit 7m despite server FAIL

The Mozilla Foundation’s servers yesterday buckled under the strain of its own PR stunt to convince World+Dog to download Firefox 3 and set a new record over a 24-hour period. So far, at the time of writing, the open source organisation is claiming just over 7m downloads of its latest browser - despite the fact that at launch …

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  1. Sam

    I think

    ..I'll wait until the zero day exploits are over, they're getting to be a bit microtoss....

  2. Pie
    Paris Hilton

    Firefox 3.0 doesn't work that well for me

    It fires up ok, but once I have clicked on something in on the page I have to alt tab out and back to allow me to click/input again. Of course it's probably all my fault for using windows XP but hey I'm young...

  3. Simon
    Alert

    X-S

    Speaking of servers failing, but apart from that being completely off-top.

    The BBC news website at the moment appears to be straining due to something, I cant get a webpage up right now. No error messages, but the pages refuse to finish loading.

    Sorry off-topic, but when does the BBC news website *ever* go down?

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Troll

    Grouchal? Cock

  5. Robert Grant

    El Reg bias up to the extreme, eh!

    Let's have a look.

    "So far, at the time of writing, the open source organisation is claiming just over 7m downloads of its latest browser - despite the fact that at launch the Mozilla’s servers went titsup, apparently under the weight of demand."

    Why's the word "despite" in there? Can 7m downloads not have happened if initially the servers didn't cope?

    "No matter though, said Mozilla, which decided instead to simply bypass the small detail of its servers spitting out html errors and being largely unavailable at launch by starting the official download day once the site finally went live nearly five hours later than planned."

    What's wrong with this? If the records people accept it, then it's fine. It's still within a 24 hour period.

    "Mozilla will make the record books for the most software downloaded in 24 hours, seeing as there’s no Guinness World Record to beat."

    7.2m downloads (as of 16:33 BST) is pretty impressive. Glad you gave it its due.

    As you then go on to quote someone who exactly reiterates that point (do you have a minimum word count?) it doesn't sound as though you thought this was a good thing. Thankfully the sound of 7.2m people not caring is a pleasant one, and it all bodes well for raising the profile of alternative browsers, so that people like me can write better websites.

  6. Happy Snapper
    Thumb Down

    Firefox 3 + Flash = Borked

    I've been running Firefox 3 beta for a while with no problems. I 'upgraded' today to Firefox 3 and flash websites started reporting that I needed to install flash. So, I dutifully REinstalled flash from the Adobe site and now ALL flash based content is borked in Firefox. In IE7, it all works fine. My (photography) website uses simpleviewer. Consequently, it doesn't work with Firefox 3 Some upgrade, eh ?

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Coat

    I don't see the point...

    So what if they get the all time, world record for downloads ever in the whole Universe? They're giving it away free. Seven million downloads don't mean the program even works, or that if it works, it does a good job.

    I'm not impressed at being able to give something away for free to a lot of people. I'd be much more impressed if someone *sold* seven million browsers in one day, even if they only charged a small fee.

  8. Leon Prinsloo
    Gates Horns

    @simon

    Since they moved from a linux server to a windows server!!! :D

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    So does that mean....

    ...that me downloading at around 9pm (launch +3) last night won't count towards the record?

    Oh well.... it's generally working well over here, apart from some of the features I liked of Tab Mix Plus being unavailable, but that's not a bug.

  10. Shinku

    What I don't get is...

    ...why people were so desperate for the official launch. Look at it this way - it's a browser, that's all, and it won't kill you to wait a few more minutes to get it. Sure, you might really wanna support Mozilla, but taking down their servers isn't a good way to go about that. Oh, and if you had RC2 then you pretty much had the real deal anyway, so it was even more pointless (though that's not to say you shouldn't have bothered supporting the record). Still, they succeeded regardless and kudos to 'em for it, I just didn't quite understand the "omfg eye needz mi feyerfocks n ur usles coderz r stopin mi!!" vibe going around.

    Ho-hum, there's fanboys and trolls for you I guess.

  11. dgurney

    English, maybe?

    "...despite server FAIL"?

    The word is FAILURE. "Fail" is not a noun, just as "transition" is not a verb.

    Sad.

  12. Marvin the Martian
    Dead Vulture

    Wow, so here's ElReg's loony bin!

    OK, just waiting for Webster P. and Amanfrommars to check in...

    Really not a single comment so far makes any sense and/or resembles coherence and/or has anything to do with the article, but they're the cream of the crop, having passed moderation? Worrying.

  13. Michael Sheils
    Thumb Down

    RE: El Reg bias up to the extreme, eh!

    I think the use of 'despite' was fine, they were simply meaning if the servers has coped imagine how many downloads could have been registered. Why do you seem to think that Mozilla deserves such praise for this epic fail of a PR stunt?

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Unhappy

    ...and no x86 64-bit package...

    ... (for GNU/Linux) when the connection does work.

  15. jai

    7,000,000 and one, so help me god

    i couldn't resist the temptation to find out if it's worth it or not

    and my AdBlocker plugin doesn't work so now - but interestingly, i mainly installed that to stop the poxy adverts on theregister because they would take ages to display before old firefox would render the actual news text. however, FF3 isn't doing too badly and loading all the items quickly

    but what on earth is the point of the HUGE, highlighted green back button?

    is Mozilla suggesting that it's users are too stupid to work out which way is back and which is forward?

    it's very ugly and i'm hoping that a theme comes out soon that can make it look more like the old interface

  16. Mike ECI
    Flame

    7 million in 1 day not impressive

    Adobe serves over 8 million downloads of flash player every day of the year with far higher peaks on new release dates.

  17. Steven Raith
    Happy

    "Sorry off-topic, but when does the BBC news website *ever* go down?"

    I don't even recall it shitting itself during the 7/7 and 21/7 incidents - mind you, I only checked it about two hours after the event after extricating myself from Kings Cross and chewing the fat with the hundreds of people wandering around aimlessly for a bit, before walking to the office.

    All thanks to the unique way it's funded, eh?

    Back on topic, 7m ain't a bad figure, be interesting to see how it compares to other 'elective'* downloads in the future.

    Steven R

    *IE not Flash player/Adobe Reader, as you *need* those these days...but open source OSs, film releases, stuff that you want, rather than need.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    7m Clueless sheep..

    Downloading Firefox 3, just because Mozilla says so...

    Bet they also run Vista because Microsoft says so..

    Anyone with any sense can clearly see that Opera 9.5 is far superior in every aspect to Firefox3, just not as much hype.

  19. Sheldon Huelin

    FireFoxing

    I have been a Firefox user for ~2 years, and I am never going back to IE. I tried Safari for Windows but there were too many incompatibilities and random freezes. This new version of FireFox is super fast and appears to be stable, hopefully more people will give it a shot.

    http://thegooglehouse.blogspot.com

  20. Gis Bun
    Thumb Down

    Ho Hum

    As mentioned, world record my a_s. There has never been any record before - so how can you say it's a record?

    Mozilla disabled 2.x users from using the update utility in 2.x to check allow downloading 3.0 because Mozilla wanted 2.x to download 3.0 and not get it from the browser's update. Almost cheating there.

    Some are claiming that the 2+ hour outage was because too many people wanted to get a copy. But according to a site meter, the problems occured BEFORE the 10am PDT time. I can't see a whole bunch of requests that are just text and images bogging down a site unless the site can't handle the traffic.

    Oh ya. Installed 3.0 over my 2.0.0.12. At the end of the install, kept the checkbox to run 3.0 after the installer finishes. Up comes the title bar saying 3.0 RC2. And release notes 3.0 RC2! I close it and re-open and now it shows the release 3.0. Huh?

  21. Bucky
    Black Helicopters

    Still Can't Find It

    I'm still looking for a proper download link.

    I mean, I've found links that SAY they're to the new version 3.0, but when I follow them, they're to tarballs dated as of 10 June. Well, THAT can't be right. It was released on the 17th, right? Mid day on the 17th! I'm SURE I read that somewhere. Moreover, they spent all morning rebuilding it or something. I'm sure I remember there was some kind of 2 hour delay.

    Okay, maybe the timestamp's just wrong. And you know how the wrong time setting on a computer can wreak all kinds of network havoc, right? Okay, let's test that therory:

    If I install the tarball anyway, why, the "Back" button isn't bigger, like they said it should be ("They" being the "they" who have seen the real software, while I am seeing some kind of falsification). It's exactly the same size as the "Forward" button. The proof? About:Firefox says "Gecko/2008052912".

    Why, this was built back in May! This isn't the June 17th thing at all!

    This is all just a tissue of lies. LIES, I say!

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Well ...

    I've downloaded and been running this new improved FireFox now for over 24 hours. Its is riddled with CSS rendering and JavaScript bugs which were not there in V2.

    Not any better than the beta. At ALL.

    IE7 renders the same pages without a glitch. I say IE7 — its actually IE8 Beta in IE7 compatibility mode. So does Safari.

    FF3 is a turkey, at least in this incarnation. I'm not at all impressed with Opera 9.5 either.

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    WHO IS USING FIREFOX, WITH --OPERA-- AROUND

    oPERA IS SO GOOD THAT I HAVE STOPPED USINE ff YEAR AGO !!

  24. Peyton
    Happy

    For the unobservant, vision impaired, etc.,

    like, I dunno, Robert Grant

    "Biting the hand that feeds IT"

    That's in the top-left corner of *every* single page on this web site... hope that clears things up a bit!

  25. Anonymous Coward
    Gates Halo

    Should've waited for IE8

    There would've been none of these problems if Microsoft did such an event.

    Leave to the experts next time hey?

  26. David Gosnell

    Tried it, didn't like it

    I contributed to their "record", but am sticking with 2.x for now, thankyouverymuch.

    No add-on support to speak of, seriously hideous default skin, really screwy history.

    Thankfully doesn't seem to have borked the profile it unwisely still shares with 2.x.

  27. fluffy

    @Robert Grant

    The announcement came at the close of the original 24-hour window anyway. If they were to change the window in retrospect the number could be even higher.

  28. Test Man
    Stop

    @Bucky

    Actually the final builds were the RC3 build which is dated a week ago. These were passed so were simply copied into the "3.0" directory as is without any rebuilding.

    Anyway, I got my copy on the morning of the 17th, as they were up on the official FTP server already. Wasn't going to wait till 6pm BST to download it for some silly stunt. A stunt which sounds like didn't do too well, because think about it, 7 million "hits" for 24 hours for the entire world? Well well too small.

  29. Edwin Greenwood

    When does the BBC website ever go down?

    Last time I remember this happening was 9/11. Had to go to the boozer at lunchtime and watch the telly to find out what was going on.

  30. Elmer Phud

    what have I done wrong?

    Apart from my favourite set of pretty buttons not working it seem to all work O.K. Adblock, Flash, Flashgot etc. There must be something that doesn't work.

  31. Tim Wesson
    Coat

    BBC Site

    Re: Sorry off-topic, but when does the BBC news website *ever* go down?

    On the 11th September, 2001, the BBC served their "low graphics" site to all comers.

  32. White Bread

    Little help please

    I just Dled FF3 and now I cannot access the net. It acts like there is something preventing it from getting on...I can connect just fine with IE browser, but the FF browser no luck.

    Failed to Connect

    Firefox can't establish a connection to the server at www.google.com.

    Though the site seems valid, the browser was unable to establish a connection.

    * Could the site be temporarily unavailable? Try again later.

    * Are you unable to browse other sites? Check the computer's network connection.

    * Is your computer or network protected by a firewall or proxy? Incorrect settings can interfere with Web browsing.

    Is the error message I get. What gives? anyone know a setting I should change? I Dled it on my desktop this AM and had no problems. But when I try from my laptop...I got screwed. I have re-Dled, re-installed and re-booted as well. If I had know this would happen, I would have left everything alone...sigh...

    Any help you can provide would be appreciated. Thanks

  33. David

    Still, 8 mil is impressive

    Regardless of opinion or distaste, 8 million in one day (current estimate from spread http://www.spreadfirefox.com/en-US/worldrecord/) is quite a number. In terms of market share it's big considering the life of the product. Call it a stunt but even with the stunt there is still a lot of polarized views where either the user loves it and will download it or hates it and will not even think of downloading it.

    It somewhat surprises me though that the US had the most downloads world wide, not to mention Japan being third. I guess what surprised me even more was how many downloaded from Iran and how few downloaded from China. This brings up some information that I wouldn't have expected.

  34. jai

    re: WHO IS USING FIREFOX, WITH --OPERA-- AROUND

    Just a shame Opera can't stop you typing in caps-lock or fix your spelling mistakes, eh?

    @Robert Grant

    The problem with the server failure is that they postponed the 24-hour period. All other Guiness Record attempts are strictly monitored. You don't see someone going for the domino records, knocking over a couple of hundred, and then saying, it's alright, we'll just reset them and try it again, eh? Land speed records have to be two consecutive runs, there and back - you can't go one way and then say, well the cars a bit pooped, we'll let it cool down over night and try again tomorrow.

    So Mozilla moving the 24-hour period like that makes a mockery of the whole event.

  35. Angus Ireland

    "Sorry off-topic, but when does the BBC news website *ever* go down?"

    Frequently. At least since they redesigned it.

    And I've got FF3 - and had all the betas/rcs/etc - simply because if 7million people are downloading it in the first 24hours, my website should work in it.

    Same with IE8 - although with its new "Standards Compliance" nothing works in it :D

  36. Ian Michael Gumby
    Thumb Up

    Works fine for me!

    Hey!

    I waited a bit until a co-worker said to check it out.

    For what I use it for, its faster than firefox2 and works ok.

    Maybe I'm just not going to the right sites where all those fancy features tell me I'm borked?

  37. Steven Raith
    Stop

    @WHO IS USING FIREFOX, WITH --OPERA-- AROUND

    "oPERA IS SO GOOD THAT I HAVE STOPPED USINE ff YEAR AGO !!"

    Your headwand appears to have whammed the caps lock key - remember to use your eyes and look for the pretty light where it says 'CAPS LOCK' on the keyboard itself, and ensure it is extinguished before letting your random, pointless, coherent-argument argument free, stream-of-consciousness piss pollute Teh InterTard.

    Hope that helps.

    Anyway, I like Opera, but as noted on another article, I use it as my JS free browser to get around annoying adverts and some of the more interesting exploits. it's not a perfect workaround [I could use Lynx, arf] but I like it for what it does. I just wish it had a 'reload all tabs' option. There's probably a plug in for that somewhere though.

    Steven "Has keyboard, can type" Raith.

    PS: If anyone is interested - and that's a figure of speech, rather than a question - Flash 10 beta seems to work relatively well with FF3 on Ubuntu - the installer is *much* friendlier as well. "./flashplayer10-installer" as root terminal, give it the location of your firefox installation [/usr/lib/firefox-3.0 probably], and it's done. Sweet.

  38. Andy Livingstone

    This article

    Congratulations. You look as if you have won a prize as the shortest article with the greatest number of weasel words.

  39. Stuart Castle Silver badge

    Meh..

    Never could get on with Firefox. Don't like having to install addons just to get a decent browsing experience.

    Much prefer Opera (a browser that is lacking somethings, but is a decent browser out of the box).

  40. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    mate installed it

    My mate has it installed on his machine, I stared at it and noted that like every other browser, it was indeed, just a browser. I also noted. That like most browsers it was ugly.

    The greatest discovery though was that it used 4 times as much memory now.

    But yeah, just another browser.

  41. Randy
    Stop

    Re: Wow, so here's ElReg's loony bin!

    Really not a single comment so far makes any sense and/or resembles coherence, but they're the cream of the crop, having passed moderation...

    Couldn't agree more!!!

  42. Rasczak
    Thumb Up

    @ Steven Raith

    <Quote>

    Anyway, I like Opera, but as noted on another article, I use it as my JS free browser to get around annoying adverts and some of the more interesting exploits. it's not a perfect workaround [I could use Lynx, arf] but I like it for what it does. I just wish it had a 'reload all tabs' option. There's probably a plug in for that somewhere though.

    <\Quote>

    The Reload all option is something I have liked about Opera for years and haven't easily found an option to do it in any other broswer, I am ready to be correct on that though.

    Try CTRL and F5 in 9.27 or earlier, and by looking at my shortcuts, CTRL-ALT-R should do it under 9.50. Even if it doesn't, go to Preferences, Advanced, Shortcuts, and Under Keyboard Setup, Duplicate and then rename the standard setup, then edit the new setting. Under Applications choose New, type in the keyboard shortcut you want to use under input, making sure it isin't in use already, and then type "reload all", without quotes, under action, OK this and then select your new setting and OK again. I have also edited my menu files, this has t be done in a text editor, to give me reload all otpions from various right clicks as well.

  43. Dave

    BBC

    The BBC site is very resilient to heavy load, but it's had the occasional broken stint because I remember emailing them about it. It was serving up some content, but generally not working properly.

    As for FF3, I don't intend to install it for a while but I guess I've got some spare bandwidth to use for downloading it to help their ego trip.

  44. Stuart

    Opera - MEH!

    @ Stuart Castle

    "Meh..

    Never could get on with Firefox. Don't like having to install addons just to get a decent browsing experience.

    Much prefer Opera"

    Exactly the inverse of my reaction. I have tried Opera several times, and just can't get over my revulsion. It's bloated, unimpressive and no faster than FF. YMMV of course, and clearly does, but whenever I read endless paeans to that nasty noxious norwegian nightmare I have to speak up in defence of FF. I even prefer IE7 to Opera. For me, opera is to be seen and heard, not used on the Web.

  45. Anonymous Coward
    Happy

    What's all the fuss about?

    So what? New Firefox. Great. Opera is still better.

    Just because more people download Firefox does not mean it is the best. People seem to be mistaking corellation and causation.

    For example: IE is the most popular browser in the world but NOBODY here would argue that it is because it is the best browser!!

    So maybe, just maybe, Firefox gets more downloads than Opera because it's had more hype.

    Opera is one of the world's best kept software secrets. That and Windows Live Photo Gallery (perhaps the only decent piece of MS software in the past 5 years).

  46. Dominik Stansby
    Happy

    What's all the fuss about?

    So what? New Firefox. Great. Opera is still better.

    Just because more people download Firefox does not mean it is the best. People seem to be mistaking corellation and causation.

    For example: IE is the most popular browser in the world but NOBODY here would argue that it is because it is the best browser!!

    So maybe, just maybe, Firefox gets more downloads than Opera because it's had more hype.

    Opera is one of the world's best kept software secrets. That and Windows Live Photo Gallery (perhaps the only decent piece of MS software in the past 5 years).

  47. Edward Lilley
    Thumb Up

    @English, maybe?

    It's an old, lame, joke from teh Intarwebs... Google "Epic fail", and you will be rewarded with... meh.

    Seeing as Firefox 2 crashed on me every 15 minutes or so, Firefox 3 is a welcome improvement (hasn't gone done once yet). It loads pages approx. 2x faster as well.

  48. This post has been deleted by its author

  49. Robert Armstrong
    Paris Hilton

    Give me Netscape 3.0 or give me....

    pointy sticks right into my eyes.

    I'm with Paris, we are way, way too busy to download right now.....

  50. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I kind of like it

    Seems pretty "snappy". Lot's of little tweaks that make it just that much easier to get around and most of my "must have" extensions are working fine.

    I could live with any of the browsers to be honest with you and since I'm a web developer I have to test on them all, but I guess I still like FF best once I factor in the extensions and customizations that I have now.

  51. stuart Thompson

    @AC

    "Anyone with any sense can clearly see that Opera 9.5 is far superior in every aspect to Firefox3, just not as much hype"

    Well for me on OSX 10.4.11(MBP 2.4Ghz 2Gb ram) Opera is being kinda sucky, after loading approx. two pages the browser will just show a blank page which i have to refresh to show the page content.

    I have re-downloaded Opera and trashed all the prefs to no avail, i accept this may be isolated however ALL my other browsers work fine, and FF3 is pretty goddamn snappy.

    Not saying anything against Opera, i've used it before and its great, i'll just use whatever works best for me at the time

    Mines the one with the anti fanboy attack system built in

  52. SilverWave
    Linux

    No silly enlarged back button on Ubuntu :)

    FF3 works fine with TabMixPlus but you need to pick up the dev version from the web site.

    http://tmp.garyr.net/forum/viewtopic.php?t=7031

    Got all my extensions working (even Boox!) and FF3 is fast and stable.

    The places\history\bookmarks thing takes a little getting used to but is well worth the effort.

    Not sure Google will like it though, as it has cut the searching I need to do by at least a 1/4.

    Oh yeah the download stunt... it worked didn't it... you reported on it, but more importantly so did the BBC :)

    Its FOSS a great product and stops all the shitty adds that so clutter up some sites... what's not to like?

    :P

  53. Damir Colak
    Thumb Down

    It's UGLY!

    I just downloaded FF 3.0... Damn, it's so UGLY!!! Where's the "Vista look" several bloggers were talking about?

    The first thing I did after installing it was to go searching for a new skin... and... of course, I found not a single one worth installing...

    The second thing I did after installing FF3 was to go to opera site and download it...

    Well... it looks MUCH better...

    Mozilla, WTH?! Who does your UI design?!

  54. Neoc

    Records naysayers

    I keep on reading about people saying that it wasn't much of a record as nobody else had done it before.

    Congratulations - you've just uttered the favourite Luddite expression "if it was worth doing, someone would have done it before."

    Come ON people - as with *every* record, *someone* had to be the first. In this case, it was the FF team with FF3. Maybe next year it'll be the Opera team. MS and IE are unlikely to *ever* come up for this record - IE is bundled into Windows and as such cannot be considered as it would be impossible to differentiate the number of people who install by choice from the people who have it forced on their PC and then do not use it.

    For the record, I download FF3 last night (didn't get my certificate, damn it), installed it without a problem (ABP asked to upgrade itself) and used it to successfully surf the net afterwards. Admittedly, I have an internet-connection problem this morning (LAN works fine), but since it also affects Thunderbird and *ping*, I'll investigate further before placing the blame on FF3's doorstep.

  55. Rex Alfie Lee
    Thumb Up

    Single Company Downloads

    7m Clueless sheep.. By Anonymous Coward -What would you know? The fact that someone uses Firefox in itself means they are unhappy with Windows & IE. If you hadn't realised that then you are not a very thinking person rather a dufus.

    Also this doesn't take into account the companies who pulled Firefox down & many of its employees just copied the download rather than repeating the exercise. This company for one would have at least 20 to 30 who use Firefox rather than IE & yes there are a few who use Opera.

    Well done Firefox, it's an incredibly better product than IE will ever be as was Netscape in the dark days before it was squashed by a monopolising cretin. For those of you that haven't tried the Add-ons available you're really missing something that makes surfing far more efficient.

  56. Tony
    Paris Hilton

    @ Dominik Stansby

    I sort of agree with you but, I feel that if someone is clued up enough to know that IE is not the only option then there is a good chance that they realise Opera exists.

    I use Opera (since version 6) but I accept that the actual usage is pretty low. It has fans for its speed but FF's customisation by extension just beats Opera in every department.

    I'm using Firefox 3 now in Ubuntu and I am impressed with the stability - the better FF gets the less Opera gets loaded.

    That obviously is just my experience - I have friends who love Opera and hate the new Fisher-Price FF theme... I'll get a new one soon.

    Ho-hum.

  57. Nordrick Framelhammer

    Hmmmm

    Seems like the Operas fanbois and fangrls have got their knickers in a collective knot.

    If Opera was all that great then it would be sitting on a market share much greater than 0.5 to 2.5% (depending on the stats sites).

    I have tried various iterations of Opera since way back when it was first on the scene when you had to pay for continued use after the free trial. I went back to Netscape.

    Now I use Firefox and have been using it since 1.0. Looks like I will keep doing so with 3.0.

  58. Trix
    Black Helicopters

    @Anyone with any sense can clearly see that Opera 9.5 is far superior ...

    ...if you don't like add-ons. Get back to me when there's a *decent* ad-blocker (that, wow, blocks ads), or a Gmail checker that can check multiple accounts, nab mailto links and will actually log onto your Gmail instance when you select it. And many more (although admittedly some add-ons replicate built-in Opera functionality).

    I like FF, but I still think the download day was a pointless stunt. Who gives a shit about a "world record" that doesn't exist? There's no guarantee that Guinness will accept it for inclusion

  59. Karen Cullen
    Happy

    Well I like Firefox 3!

    I am very happy with this latest version of Firefox. I have used Firefox through every iteration possible; however, I have struggled with the various Betas of Firefox 3 and was even on the verge of going back to Opera. However, Firefox 3 itself is great, finally the Beta bugs seem to have been sorted (for me at least). And as for looks - well I'm sure it won't be long before someone comes up with an attractive theme I can use instead.

  60. Simon
    Flame

    Epic Fail

    I know its just a publicity stunt for firefox, that uses all kinds of tactics to coerce people to download its browser, but surely the most times a file is downloaded in 24 hours from the internet goes to www.yahoo.com/index.html or cnn.com/index.html on 9/11 or www.windowsupdate.com after that virus caused millions of people to visit that site?

  61. Bruce Sinton
    Thumb Up

    Hmmm- Nordrick Framelhammer

    I tried Opera a couple of years ago and gave up on it when Firefox came along.

    As you say if it is now so magnificent , why does it rate in the low single digits?

    I smell a conspiracy ! Perhaps however the ordinary user is not like the nerds that get onto this site in large numbers, and who enjoy difficult things.

  62. Steve Howe

    Firefox 3 Vulnerability 5 hrs after release

    BIG BIG fan of the "high" level vulnerability in the firefox v3 I just downloaded yesterday, found by Tipping Point..... what's that, two records set in one day by mozilla, fastest critical-ish vulnerability?

  63. Schroeder
    Stop

    and still the shill fest ....

    Whole bunch of 'em, still bleating away.

    Sorry, Microsoft boys, but even the most recent revisions of you browser still don't do the standards right and are malware magnets.

    And to the Opera whiners, you paid for a browser and your whining about Firefox? .... go gripe at the Microsoft shills, their paymasters decided that the best price for a browser was £0.

    Hey nothing in IT is perfect, but at the moment Firefox seems to be winning the hearts and minds of the computer literate simply because of the combination of price, speed of fixes, openness, expandability and standards compliance.

    Until your proprietary closed browsers can match all of those factors, I think you can look forward to Firefox eating up more of your market share, especially if it continues to pull simple advertising stunts such as this one.

  64. Anonymous Coward
    Stop

    @Gis Bun

    "There has never been any record before - so how can you say it's a record?"

    You mean that entire Guinness book is full of people who couldn't possibly have set a record as there wasn't a prior record to beat?

  65. Kevin Gurney
    Stop

    Really ?

    "This company for one would have at least 20 to 30 who use Firefox rather than IE & yes there are a few who use Opera"

    Not in my company they wouldn't. They'll use the browser that I allow them to have and if they try and install any non approved software they'll quickly find that they don't have admin rights to do it.

    What kind of nightmare must it be when users can install whatever they want without any checking that it might screw up their - or rather in true BOFH style -MY systems and networks.

    Your sysad needs to get a tighter grip.

  66. Dom McIntyre

    @Mike

    "Adobe serves over 8 million downloads of flash player every day of the year with far higher peaks on new release dates."

    Really? Three billion downloads a year, not counting the peaks? Around three times for every personal computer in the world? Where did you make those numbers up from?

  67. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    So what? Opera 9.5 @ 5M downloads...with no publicity!

    According to the CEO on the Opera community website... Still waiting for The S60 mobile version tho' .. Yawn..

  68. Secretgeek

    Call me a sheeple if you like.

    But I've been using FF2 for a while. Quite liked it so I downloaded FF3 last night. It's working fine, though no adblocker yet of course and I've added a nice little app that arranges images in an interesting way that may or may not get annoying after a while.

    So everything pretty much same as really.

    Meh.

    What's the fuss?

  69. Mike ECI
    Flame

    @ Dom McIntyre

    Unfortunately for desperate firefox apologist Dom McIntyre, Adobe's claimed figures were published long before mozillas pathetic hyping of their record attempt.

    e.g http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Application-Development/Adobe-Floating-on-AIR/

    http://www.onflex.org/ted/2007/07/2320000000-flash-player-9-installs.php

    Whichever way you try and spin it, firefox's download record is at best dubious and at worst blatantly dishonest.

  70. herman Silver badge
    Dead Vulture

    FF De-uglification Howto

    To everyone who has their noses out of joint due to the ugly green button - Right click the tool bar, select Customize and Use Small Icons.

  71. Dom McIntyre

    @Mike EC1

    Firefox apologist? No. Spin? No. You're the one taking sides. I'm just querying your assertion that there are more Flash installations than there are personal computers in the world (your second link claims 2.3 billion Flash 9!) I'd say that's at best dubious and at worst blatantly dishonest ;)

  72. cd

    Question for the FF3 users

    Does it still have that insipid Postdata warning? i sometimes think Moz products are a bit Soviet, and that's one of the culprits.

    Also, "This Document Contains No Data" (I actually submitted a bug titled that with the same for the bug content, it was not appreciated).

  73. Dick Emery
    Thumb Up

    Plugins

    Amazingly most of mine work when using the compatibility addon. The only addons that are pretty much broke Noia skin and TorButton. Hoping they update that soon! As for speed. Seems a bit sluggish on some operations, like saving an image file for instance (Have to wait a while before I can hit return to save it as it just ignores it otherwise). Otherwise I think I like it.

    BTW nice addon if you like some eye candy is Personas. I actually like the simplistic skin of FF3. I cut down on most toolbars too so there is more webpage space.

    If you don't like it of course then don't use it!

  74. Aetyr
    Coat

    @Rasczak & Kevin Gurney

    @ Rasczak: Firefox has had a Refresh All Tabs option for as long as I can recall on the right click menu of any tab - so that's not an Opera-only function.

    @ Kevin: While I agree that letting users install their own software willy-nilly is pretty dumb, it doesn't change the original argument that some IT departments will install Firefox on multiple PCs from one downloaded file saved to a pen-drive or network share - even if they're sensible enough to do it themselves instead of giving local admin rights to any users.

    Mine's the one that originally has no pockets, but unlike other coats can have as many different sized ones as I choose to add to it later. ;)

  75. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Blind people vs CAPS-LOCK?

    Someone wrote in regards to the all-caps fiend:

    "Your headwand appears to have whammed the caps lock key - remember to use your eyes and look for the pretty light where it says 'CAPS LOCK' on the keyboard itself,"

    Maybe the person is blind (literally) or something - can they tell, I wonder, does it beep or something if caps-lock is on?

    Or maybe they're just typing with eyes closed while engaged in... oh nevermind.

    Either way, one shouldn't make fun of the handicapped. ;)

    That having been said, the only thing I use Opera for is to test my webpages for compatibility. I don't actually surf with Opera though; can't see what the advantage is supposed to be. Maybe I'm just dense or something.

    Paris, 'cause she can probably do it flawlessly with eyes closed.

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