Reg readers in Firefox 3 lovefest Mozilla’s open-source Firefox browser accounts for 20 per cent of the worldwide browser market. So there’s no doubt Reg readers are outside the norm. In the first ten days of November, more than 47 per cent all of Reg traffic came from browsers using Gecko — the rendering engine at the heart of Firefox. The new Firefox 3 alone …
Linux distributions installs Firefox/Iceweasal by default, so this may have something to do with the high usage of the Gecko engine. Still I cant believe people are still using IE5,6 especially with such major exploits and bugs! Come on people, follow the crowd, join the revolution and install firefox today. Free yourself from the torment of IE.
I tried ff2 when it came out, but getting rid of the 'close tab' button on the far right made it a chore to use.
So when i open a lot of tabs (like for a days worth of webcomics), i can read and close each tab without having to move the pointer (trackpad on lappy).
Hell, it would still work if the tabs stayed the same size, as the little X would be in the same place.
But no.
That would be too consistent.
Yupp I own up.
I'm the one running FF1
Mainly because it come with this Linux distro( Fedora 6) and I cant be bothered to spend all my life upgrading stuff, tweaking it , finally after 4 weeks customising and getting it running just right, having to do it all again because they've released another version.
And besides... I use Mozilla 1.5 when running in windoze mode
welcome our new reg-reading firefox-using overlords, although I still worship at the alter of Opera.
How many people would constitute the 3.6% enjoyed by Opera? I do hope that's not just me!
Opera wins over FF in terms of startup time and performance when browsing with 20+ tabs open, although its inventory of Widgets is not quite as impressive. FF is getting closer performance wise, so I'll just have to be satisfied with the knowledge the FF and IE steal everything from Opera anyway. Although got to give them the credit for pr0n mode.
About 85% of my company still uses IE6 and I'm with the Reg, it is a ba$tard to code for. IE7 isn't great either but it is nowhere near as bad.
I've just got to convince IT to force an IE7 upgrade (FF or Opera preferrably) but I will settle for IE7.
Mines the one with the memory stick in the pocket containing Opera 9.6.
I use opera. I have 29 tabs open in my general interest window(when I have more open it is hard for me to see the icons and remember what is which tab), and in windows for specific tasks I keep more tabs open that work. When I shut (volentary or not) I re-open opera nad all windows re-open with all tabs intact.This has been the norm for years. I only use FF2 for google docs and to run an addon that gives me mouse over translation of Japanese(not available for FF3 ). I use Safari for plugin testing. But then for me a browser is tool I don't want to spend hunderds of hours installing add-on and answering daily upgrade messages, I just want to use it.
And yes IE6 is eviler than most MS software.
"And its better for 7?"
Yes, actually. FF has a lot of rendering bugs you know, but because people have now been indoctrinated with "firefox is standards compliant", they believe it does it right and everyone else is wrong.
Sure, IE7 and firefox disagree sometimes... sometimes ff is right, other times it's wrong. Yes, it would be easier if every browser shared the same bugs, but then that would lead to crappy code that just happens to look right on everything.
I hate it when people bash IE just because they're in the church of firefox!
Now, I'd even be prepared to use FF more, if it behaved better and it was faster to start up! I tend to double click on it, look up the site in IE, then see if FF has started, continue browsing in IE, double check, etc, etc
Flame away
Just program for web standards and be done with it. Screw any browsers that aren't compatible with web standards.
BTW, Firefox use is more like 23% in the U.S. and 30% or so in the U.K., but as always who knows what figures are really accurate, but something close to that seems to be the general consensus for many statistics sites. Maybe they just copy each other tho. ;)
Firefox 3 crashes on me regularly, and it's the only app on by Intrepid install that does so it's nowt to do with the OS or the machine, just Firefox being unreliable.
Opera on the other hand is 100% reliable. So maybe your figures show that your readers prefer behaving like sheep to having a reliable browser.h
I was thinking "If The Reg has a techie skew to its figures, who the hell's using IE6?".
Then I remembered I occasionally visit The Reg at work while using the stupid "Frontpage in a browser" web-site editor monstosity that still doesn't have IE7 or Firefox compatability. Annoys the hell out of me that all my projects have to cater for IE6 as that's what's rolled out around the business.
is the name of the extension. It is the ability to extend FF & the huge range of extensions that make it so useful. Some of the extensions like Greasemonkey allow you to write your own webpage-enhancing script, increasing extensibility even further.
Adblock & NoScript need to be shouted about as well. My boss uses IE7 at work & when i see the garbage adverts splattered ll over his screen, and all the time & resources they take up - I have to laugh.
Yes I know IE7 has extensions, but you don't hear a lot about them do you? Last time I looked (a while ago i admit) most of them were *for sale* lol.
"And its better for 7?"
7 at least has a semblance of understanding CSS, 6 is about as far off the beaten track as it's possible to go. We're considering an IE6 dedicated punchbag at work soon. I'm more in favour of the classic
if(IE6 == true)
{
alert("The eighties called and they want their web browser back. Now fuck off and update your shit, bozo");
}
We do still have a very large and well known client that has lots of IE6 users. Company laptops. Shameful
Thanks, Cade, for mentioning the non-standard IE development hell for web developers. If that same line was mentioned in every browser article, IE would die much faster and free up all that developer time for more cool things.
@And I Wonder:
Yeah, was wondering about user-agent masking also, since Opera has used that as a defense for years to web sites that cripple Opera users with bad entry scripts. (MSNBC, are you listening?) Do these stats check for the Presto engine (in Opera) or is FF and IE getting their stats padded? To get an idea of the amount of work Opera has to do to deal with mangled sites, via Opera's browserJS:
http://www.opera.com/docs/browserjs/
And userJS is another tool for Opera users also:
http://www.opera.com/support/tutorials/userjs/
@I use firefox1:
Just use Opera v9.6 since all those advanced tab features that you want are already built-in, without add-ons. (And, has Opera Link to sync your bookmarks, Speed Dial, and search engines, plus WAY more -- yes, a granular adblocker) ;))
This post has been deleted by its author
Well, 5.1% "other" so I guess that covers it. I mainly use Firefox 3, but have to admit having used elinks a couple times; the register is actually pretty text-browser friendly. I also have my phone pointed to www.google.com as a WAP proxy and read the register through that (which probably shows some google user-agent string that'll also show as "other".
"But we would argue that Reg readers exhibit a certain technical savvy you won’t find in the general population."
You can argue all you want, won't make it true. I argue that Red readers exhibit a certain gullability in believing marketing hype for technical items you won't find in the general populace. How else can you explain the support for that buggy and bloated browser... Firefox.
Which browser site distributed a trojan for months through their official add on site? Oh yeah, mozilla.
Which browser markets itself as 'safest' yet has still not patched all the exploits on its last version? Or for that matter, the current version according to secunia? Firefox!
Two browsers, covering versions from the same period of time. One has had 172 exploits, according to secunia, one has had 41. Guess which one's firefox (HINT start high!, comparing Firefox 2.x on, to opera 9.x on)
Really trying to think why people use firefox, beyond some intrinsic and unsubstantiatable point that 'open source is better' for some reason i've yet to work out, despite working on it for 3 years.
Me? I'll keep with my safer, faster, more secure and innovative opera.
Despite what you nerds might think, IE5 is still a consideration for any serious non-nerdy site.
There are lots of people out there who bought a computer within the last 10 years and it hasn't broken down so they're still using it. They can't see any problems with the pages they browse (whether there are indeed problems or not) so they don't see the point in spending a fortune on a new one. They don't run Windows update or bother with free upgrades because, again, they can't see the point of changing anything that doesn't need fixing.
These people are often middle aged or older, a bit clueless with technology at the best of times (You can replace their old site with a spangly new Web 2.0 site and the only thing that'll impress them is the fact that you changed the font or the colours) and unfortunately are either in charge or influential. So you can't afford to present them with a site that breaks when they try it, and then tell them it's *their* fault. They very rarely own a car or TV older than their computer too, and look at you like an idiot when you point that out in order to try and explain how out of date their software is.
I have Windows Media Player 9 and I don't want to upgrade to version 11. The damn think keeps pestering me to upgrade and there's no option to disable this warning. Why do MS think it's perfectly fine to pester the user over the program that plays their MP3s but not their web browser? If IE5 and 6 were popping up a message every week telling them to get an upgrade, I'm sure more people would have, and IE5 would be closer to being dead than it is right now.
Even if we could get the Windows 95 users onto IE5.5 and the 90 users onto 6.0 it would be better, but all my logs show that there are far more IE5.0 users than 5.5.
Also, major websites could help by providing 'incentives' to change browsers sooner. The BBC still lists IE5.0 as a supported browser. If the iPlayer didn't work in it, or too many news articles were unreadable people would soon upgrade. The same goes with every other major site around the world.
Ultimately, people only dropped NS4 in the end because too many sites broke. IE5.0 does dynamic rendering and AJAX so it's still more practicable to use hacks to get it working whereas with NS4 you were up against a dead wall. And how many posters here who make websites deliberately annoy IE5 users by inserting messages to upgrade on every page, or provide an alternative stylesheet that makes the site look more boring?
"But we would argue that Reg readers exhibit a certain technical savvy you won't find in the general population."
Er well this site ain't exactly Chat Magazine, Heat or Reloaded etc.
But it is reassuring to know that a good percentage of IT professionals are using the more secure browsing technology.
Now if the same survey were taken of sites such as The Sun, OK magazine and Nuts magazine I reckon IE will most certainly dominate. I have always believed that readers of such publications prefer to have their thinking done for them.
The reason there will be quite a few with IE 6 is that in some places like libraries, they have a fixed set of software installed and in my local library, they use IE6, Adobe Acrobat Reader 5 and most have Office 2000. So places like libraries where they do not want to update software are stuck in a time warp.
The reason that I have IE6 installed (although unused) is that I need the WGA in order to upgrade from IE6 to IE7.
I'd dearly love to use Operra, but they seem unable to make cookie-handling simple -- so I don't. There are a few interface things that always annoy me too -- but I could probably get used to them.
Until then -- Firefox all the way.
Perhaps most, if not all, of the people using IE5 and such are really using Opera and changing the user string? Would make more sense on a techy site than them being hold-outs.
I use Firefox 2 at work as not all the plugins I need work on Firefox 3. I use a mixture at home depending on what I'm working on at the time; Firefox 3 on openSUSE or WXP, NetSurf or Oregano 1 if I'm on RISC OS.
Yeah, I still have IE6 but it's only there to do things that lazy coders or greedy corporates with sponsorships to consider refuse to code up properly (hello, Juniper!)
Using Mac Os, I tend to use Safari out of inertia, but if visit the Reg using Safari, CPU usage goes up to 100% instantly. I have to use FF with NoScript to save the battery and my legs. I seem to remember I saw the same with IE, but I now use FF exclusively on Windows.
Too much Flash may be bad for your click-through rates.
"Really trying to think why people use firefox, beyond some intrinsic and unsubstantiatable point that 'open source is better' for some reason i've yet to work out, despite working on it for 3 years."
What utter nonsense. NEway, the main reason is extension support, notably Adblock. It is possible to block ads in Opera but it's very messy and doesn't update automatically. Opera is a decent browser, and the Wand feature is great, but I've given it a serious try several times over the years and I always end up back with Firefox - whether it was Ctrl-Enter on addresses not working (now fixed), websites not working properly, the annoying download manager... there was always something that annoyed me.
I'm more interested in Chrome, which is already very promising. With extension support (currently being worked on) and more features, particularly regarding privacy (I don't want it remembering my visited websites but I don't want to use the Incognito mode all the time), I can see it going places. The interface is superior. The features are great. It's based on webkit, which is more standards compatible and updated constantly (unlike Firefox, which takes aeons to make very little progress). I use Firefox 3 at the moment... it's far from perfect but it's currently the best out there.
On my site, which admittedly a travel site rather than a technical one, the bias is very different. On there IE users outnumber FF 10:1.
Almost every visitor is running Windows (XP or Vista), but what's interesting is the XP:Vista ratio: XP now outnumbers Vista by just 2:1.
Windows overall outnumbers OSX by more than 100:1, and the Linux share is effectively non-existent. I have more search engine indexing visits than Linux visitors ;)
Oh, and for those in favour of making any site say "get a browser that works"; you're the main reason the general population dislikes Firefox. They don't care what they browse with, but they *do* care when someone prevents them from doing what they want to do. Putting the shoe on the other foot, how would you feel if someone set their website up to force you to "upgrade" from FF to IE? No, didn't think you'd be so keen on that ;)
If you try these browsers on an ASUS EEE PC, with a slow CPU and a flash drive, you'll see how much faster than IE Opera really is.
The interesting thing to me is not that Microsoft has been passed up by Opera and Firefox. It's that the gap is increasing. Microsoft has many brilliant people but is today a huge multi-headed bureaucracy.
As soon as IE traffic drops below 25%, I'm guessing you can just put up a page saying "sorry, your browser is shite, get a better one" to any IE user. Just like so many websites did for so many years with regards to using Microsoft IE, where I got really tired of seeing the equivalent of "fuck off you non-Microsoft using pirate, we can't be bothered to create standards compliant websites and we're only coding for IE".
Turnabout would be SO sweet.
I use Chrome at the moment. It's not quite ideal, but I was getting a bit fed up with FF refusal to implement some kind of multi-threaded / process model. For some reason, at the time I was first trying out Chrome, something made my FF installation highly unreliable, so I've stuck with it.
I had FF tweaked very much how I like it. But it seemed to start a) crashing quite a bit on my system and b) saying stuff along the lines of 'oh hai, I've upgraded myself to version n+1e-6, and that means TabMixPlus won't work any more. kthxbye'. Chasing around fixing stuff like that is *dull* in the extreme.
Actually, Chrome has also had it's odd funny moment, with the interface not responding or the browser crashing.
Opera's a good browser. Maybe I should use that more. I used to be put off by not being able to replicate my FF setup, but I've trained myself to be less fussy now...
good.
btw, i can second that last comment about "coding for IE6". i do basic web dev and i write to FF and fix to IE...and it's usually quite a bit of fixing.
if i didn't have to do this browser compatibilty dance each time i got a bit of work, i could possibly shave 5-10% off the workload! (ahem, but obviously would still charge the same!).
i would also like to point out that the "first 10 days in november" thing, is not so exclusive. these sorts of 40+% figures for FF are echoed at w3schools.com:
http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp
..which i also like because you can look back over the progression/regression of FF and various other browsers, including the steady decline of IE, which is always nice to see! ;)
cheers,
bill
p.s. stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum
FF has had me worried ever since Mozilla decided that when I type w into the address bar on my laptop it should:
www.show-clients
www.everything-in
www.my-browsinghistory
Awesome indeed.
I also now use -f switched shutdown after a beautiful example of taking time off work / coming back to find FF3 asking: 'Are you sure? Wouldn't you like your browser to keep you logged in to Windows and your encrypted volume of security systems, banking and accounting details?' Aye, I was sure.
But I'll put up with anything rather than go back to flash overlays covering what I'm reading like some insane clown and monkeys asking to be punched.
Like you I found the transition from 2 to 3 to be a bit of a culture shock, what with the truly awful 'Awesome' bar and the childish 'Most Visited' features indicating that there is too much Google cash swilling around Mozilla at the moment. Bling and Web 2ness are the playthings of the marketing boys and they seem to be running the show now.
Fortunately the original developers of Firefox made it highly configurable and extensible so that it is relatively easy to get rid of the crap and still enjoy the security benefits of an upgraded browser. Go for it.
It shouldn't matter what browser you use to surf the web, within reason. The issue at stake here is lazy and ineffective web developers.
Internet Explorer 6 - yes, it's a pain, but if you can't code your way around it's problems, then your pretty dumb.
Compared with 5.5, it's a godsend.
As for Internet Explorer 7, no problems. If you know what your doing, you can use the same markup for ie7 as you do for Gecko based browsers.
The moment a website relies on Javascript/Ajax to render information is the moment you effectively "break" the web, especially when it uses code that isn't standards compliant.
Bottom line, a website should be able to deliver the same basic information to a text based browser as it does to a GUI based modern browser. If your site falls apart without Javascript, to the point where no information is delivered, do us a favour and go home and shoot yourself.
Indeed it would be nice to tell IE users to get lost. The most annoying example of "IE-only" sites I came across was when Royal Bank of Scotland introduced internet banking. I went to have a look at it in Opera, only to be told "For security reasons, the only supported browser is Internet Explorer". After laughing for about half an hour, I started looking for a new bank. For a banking site to say you must use the least secure web browser on the market was a bit scary, really.
One of the 3.6% Opera users here, though I do use Firefox occasionally for the sake of a couple of plugins. As for IE 7, I only ever use it for a single solitary website whose Shockwave content just won't play nice with either Opera or Firefox.
The Reg stats made me take a look at the stats for a little website I run that averages around 12,000 unique visitors a month, and I found we'd had 53.3% Firefox, 31.5% IE, and 5.3% Safari (what?)...
I use both firefox and Opera about evenly. The issue with firefox, where scrolling pages with fixed backgrounds is sooooo sloooow annoys me to hell - how come Opera can do it? Opera has annoying features too, eg why can't you right-click in the bookmarks menu and open a bookmark in a new tab/window like in Firefox? Horses for courses, I suppose.
Seriously though, what with all this talk of ABP, all I can say is that I disable it when perusing El Reg - this journalism lark doesn't pay for itself you know?
And, before anyone says it, don't fucking tell me about the wonderful world of volunteer citizen journalism - I don't want to get my news from an ill-informed 14 year old with too much time on their hands because they got bored of wanking, I already get my encyclopaedia from them after all.
Paris because she could make use of Cock Block Plus but has instead chosen to disable it entirely.
I don't what brand of browser people use, the differance between IE7 and Firefox is negligable to Joe Sixpack who only wants to check their hotmail/ebay/facebook.
I do wish people would upgrade from IE6, its a buggy backwards browser and makes the jobs of web-developers like myself miserable as we have to hack away at perfectly valid HTML/CSS to get it to work in a depreciated browser that AFAIK hasn't had an update in naerly 5 years.
Sadly, if we're asked to accommodate the Mac users in the 1-2% range then it will be a long time before the IE6 mob still in the 20%+ range gets phased out.
Might as well hide 'em, cos I sure as hell ain't gonna click 'em, sorry.
Companies (inc El Reg) know that a certain proportion of the readers will have ad blocking software and that some people just won't click obnoxious in your face ads, visible or not. They factor that into the positioning and amount of advertising to maximise the impact on the people left (a small percentage, I'd guess) that are likely to click.
Put simply, those of us who block ads ain't gonna bankrupt El Reg, so quit worrying.
Firefox is the officially supported / recommended browser for my employer (IBM) and most of use update often. Also at least 30% of my office colleagues are using Linux as their main desktop Operating system (despite the fact that we do a fair amount of windows development - but thats what VM's are for).
Hmm having tried to code a page so it displayed correctly in IE / Opera 6( it was a long time ago) and netscape...
I can confirm coding for IE was and still is a PITA, God bless the "CSS hacks" that get around the major bugs in the rendering of items... Still using FF2 as well some of the addons I love using don't work in FF3 and well it basically fell over when i tried to install it seperatly - I think they need to seperate out the "plugins" folder...
I love browser wars, I need a laugh sometimes..
Considering that this page passes W3C validation (4 warnings), any rendering problems you might be having with it is the fault of a shoddy browser. I'll admit I haven't checked EVERY page, on el Reg. Also I have flash, JS, and java disabled (which is always the case unless I have a need for them (when I do Tim Berners-Lee smashes an open standard on the pavement, with a sledge-hammer... all Gallager-like))
Yes, mines the one running Opera for Solaris, thanks.
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