New Year's resolution for Firefox: Grow

Published on December 27, 2004 By Black Xero In WinCustomize News

Forty-five days and some 13 million downloads after its official release, Mozilla's Firefox browser is showing undeniable momentum--but does it signal the beginning of the end to Microsoft's monopoly over the basic software used to access the Web?

Even as Firefox gathers steam, powerful brakes are poised to kick in that could limit its long-term growth: Interoperability has long dogged non-Microsoft browsers, which are often glitchy on some Web sites. Firefox claims some significant progress on this front, but a handful of sites, including Microsoft's Windows Update site, are still inaccessible.

In addition, Microsoft's deep hooks in corporate IT departments could make it impractical for many businesses to consider switching from Internet Explorer for the foreseeable future. Microsoft, for one, sees those hooks as a staunch bulwark against corporate defections, keeping its most profitable customers close to the fold.

Since its launch last month, Firefox has already nudged Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser below the 90 percent mark for the first time in years, according to one survey. Now the question is whether the Web browser can surmount thorny market dynamics to become more than just another niche player among the crowd of lilliputian rivals that have long stood in IE's shadow.

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With the success of Firefox in winning market share, Mozilla is finding Web authors more receptive to its message about standards and compatibility. The group is now fielding between 10 and 15 calls per week from individuals and organizations asking how to make their sites work with Firefox.

These are only exerpts from C|Net News. Read detailed article at Link

Comments (Page 1)

CerebroJD

on Dec 27, 2004

Firefox is gonna go huge.

Randahl

on Dec 27, 2004

As a developer, and one who sunk to coding with IE specifically in mind; now that I have left the fold of the professional field and am only coding for my own enjoyment, I can understand this from both sides. I have begun the long process of re-developing my sites to be standards compliant, and this means a lot of re-coding from the ground up. But I feel this is for the best, as this will enable my work to be seen by a greater amount of people (even though these are mainly personal projects!) and therefore impact more on the common ground that is the internet.
I for one think this is a great happening and am pleased to see Microsoft's hold on the market lessening even at the slow trickle that is now. Let's hope the trickle rapidly becomes a deluge!

Cheers for the heads up!

Tombiepoo

on Dec 27, 2004

Hmmm, let's see... 90% of computers use "non-standard" browsers and the other 10% are "the standard"? Sounds like somebody needs to revisit standards and stop being so goddam stubborn. Programmers are sick of everyone playing their own game. Yes, standards are good but seeing that 90% of the market is not abiding by them, the standards creators should adopt and reformulate. Why go against the grain and try to redefine stuff that the market has already grown accustomed to using? If you don't agree with the majority of the market, then the majority of the market is not going to agree with you either. What a pile of $#!~ for web developers!

CygnusXII

on Dec 27, 2004

Tombiepoo, you are buying into the Strategy employed by MS, and are proof that their Marketing, and Corporate practices are working.They've subverted Web Standards, are attempting to establish Media dominance, and their Business Model / Practices will be deployed into any area MS enters. Web developers took the lazy way out and coded to MS, and screwed everyone else. There used to be a day when you went to a site and it was optimized for Netscape or IE, then things started getting standardized, and guess what Netscape got whacked. Now IE is the defacto Standard. The KEY is the defacto standard, not the established standard. There is a difference. If you are a gold miner, the price of gold is roughly $400 something per ounce, but add 2 feet of snow, and the only available grocery store says the price equals 2 sacks of groceries, per ounce. That is the defacto standard price per ounce.

Psikotik

on Dec 27, 2004

I have been using Firefox since version 0.7 and also use Thunderbird, and both are far superior to MS products. Tabbed browsing is very useful, and the extensions you can get are very nice (FoxyTunes and WeatherFox being excellent examples). I do however find it kind of funny reading this article here as certain functions at JoeUser.com don't work with Firefox.

Go Firefox

GhoS

on Dec 27, 2004

I used to create webpages and it really bothered me that I had to test code in more than one browser to see if the code worked everywhere. Certainly it got easier once IE was the most popular browser, however IE also made it necessary to do things MS's way. Using other programs to create your webpages could cause code that IE didn't like.
I am glad that Firefox is here. I never did like IE, but for the longest time I had no choice but to use it. Alternative browsers that used the IE engine were an improvement, but Firefox is the one to use for me. I love it. I will never go back to IE.

Kobrano

on Dec 27, 2004

There is absolutely no reason to not use Firefox as a primary browser anymore. 1.0 is rock solid, feature packed, and is almost 100% in preventing machine infestation by spyware and malware.

Add in a few extensions like "Tabbed Browser Preferences" Link and "SearchStatus" Link and "DownloadManager Tweak"Link and you have the perfect browser.

I'm HIGHLY annoyed when I run across the rare site that doesn't have full Firefox support - its quite annoying. Hopefully the last couple holdouts, will wakeup..

paxx

on Dec 27, 2004

Been a web developper for years, and I have always made my sites compatible for all browsers on all plateforms. Every site I have ever made were tested:
- On a PC with the prior version of IE (if IE6 is out, the site works with IE 5.5, etc.)
- On a PC with the prior version of Netscape (Netscape 6 at the moment, but have only stopped supporting Netscape 4.7 about 1 year ago)
- On a PC with the latest version of Mozilla (my thinking is that Mozilla users probably update their browser much quicker than casual computer owners)
- On a Mac with Netscape, IE, and recently Safari
- On Linux with Mozilla, Netscape and Konqueror

CygnusXII

on Dec 27, 2004

paxx I think you are the exception.I wish my bank and other online utilities, followed your example.

DesignCaddy

on Dec 28, 2004

i find it annoying when i run across a site that says it DOESNT support internet explorer. why not? what extra bells and whistles has the developer added that i NEED to use, which i can't use in a basic browser? why does my bank and all my credit cards use sites that explicitly require explorer? ..

"buying into the Strategy employed by MS, and are proof that their Marketing, and Corporate practices are working.They've subverted Web Standards"

...internet explorer has been around since the dawn of graphical internet browsers. so was netscape. look at which one the developers chose to develope for. there are differences in the coding and one is more 'economical' than the other and that is why it was adopted. and its not because "microsoft forced everyone to do it their way" they didnt force anyone to do anything. nobody forced people to buy a pc and use windows, or use windows and use IE. they had explorer on macs anyway. the web evolved around a certain style for a reason.

there is something seriously flawed in the statement that 90% of the internet is 'unstandard' and that 'everyone is waking up to the call to standardize their code.' the standard is what worked wonderfully for years. the standard was explorer, or mosaic based coding. it had its limits. but anyone could jump on the html boat and make something that worked, did its job, and didnt require a degree in web programming. now you have to cover your butt and worry about loose ends that new mozilla and netscape based browsers can not work through. you have to call mozilla and ask them how to make things compatable? you have to ask how to change your coding style to fit their new browser? that's not MAKING A STANDARD! that's going AWAY from stanards.

for better or for worse with mozilla becoming more popular, xero, i'm really dissapointed in this article. it's very amature to say that these new technologies are the standard and everyone else in the internet is wrong and has to not only switch their browsers, but that likewise developers need to change their coding style.

----

people say microsoft is evil, and they've brainwashed the web so that you have to use their programs to view the web properly. so what's with the call to make everything a style only mozilla can view? isn't that a contradition? the goal should be to make a browser that views netscape, explorer, and all other languages with the best stability. not reinvent the wheel and introduce bells and whistles that -personally - i've never seen any developer choose to use with the code but makes life harder for the programming trying to get compatability.

additionally, xero, there are many browsers out in the market non microsoft and non mozilla and they are wonderful, secure browsers with all the features that make people happy that are compatable across the board. and they have the same stability the internet has known for years, using the same code style the internet has known for years. browsers display web pages. outside of rendering these faster, i have never noticed something that firefox does that other browsers can't do. on the other hand, i notice often sites that have features firefox can't use.

--

for the record, i am presently using firefox. on this computer, its the only browser.. more for research than anything.

paxx

on Dec 28, 2004

A note regarding "standards". If you design your site in compliance with W3C standards, your site will most likely work with every browser, including IE. Note also that Microsoft wasn't the only "evil" to add extra non-standard code to their browser, Netscape was at the time very guilty of that too. But when the most popular browser changed, a lot of web sites had to be recoded in order to now support the growing IE users. You'd think that web developers would learn and avoid doing the same mistake twice. By abiding to the standards, you'd avoid ever having to redo your code. But now, if Firefox (or another browser) ever comes to hold a 20%, a lot of developers will have to go back to the drawing board and recode their sites. It's not Firefox's fault, any more than it was Microsoft's fault back then, that web developers are sometimes too lazy to make sure their site is conform with the HTML standards.

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 28, 2004

Any non-standard code support in IE was designed for the explicit purpose of providing compatability with sites written for Netscape Navigator back during the first round of browser wars. Microsoft, as usual, won the market by offering a better, cheaper product that offered perfect compatability with its competitors - and focused on making the USER happy.

Since then, the web has evolved around IE. IE does implement many W3C standards, and can even be run in "strict mode" to force it to adhere to them. The main argument about IE from the Mozilla community is that it hasn't been updated for the newer W3C standards. And when users complain about Firefox's inability to cope with countless web pages, they blame it on "poor coding" or "problems with Internet Explorer."

But the average user isn't going to buy that. They're not going to blame the product that works for their inability to use the product that doesn't.

As several users noted above, IE is the standard whether you like it or not. And for a great many corporations (and users), it's not going away anytime soon.

But don't mistake my meaning here. I think competition from Firefox is a great thing. Anything that forces Microsoft to make a better product is very welcome by me. I fully expect that sometime during 2005 we'll see Microsoft's answer to Firefox. And then the real Browser War II can begin.

paxx

on Dec 28, 2004

Wrong. IE had (and still has) its own non-standard code support. It never supported Netscape's non-standard code. In the great cycle of [Internet] life, things go on, companies comes and go, browsers come and go. Today, one is popular, tomorrow it's a different one. IE won't be the exclusive browser forever, just as Mosaic wasn't and just like after that Netscape wasn't either. Coding to support only one specific brand is being short sighted. A standard needs to be (and IS as far as HTML goes) company independant. Imagine roads being built to only support one specific car brand... Even if say the Ford Explorer represented 90% of the cars used on the roads, it would still be a bad idea...

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 28, 2004

To further your analogy...

What if 90% of the country was connected via roads that worked fine with current vehicles. Then some group comes along and defines a new "standard" for roads that's different than those 90%. Soon, someone builds a car around this new "standard" and claims that it's better. But when someone buys this new car, they find that driving on most roads is a very unpleasant experience.

Whose fault is that? According to you, the manufacturer's who made cars for the original 90% of roads are at fault, because they didn't upgrade their cars to the new "standard." And you'll also complain about those "lazy" road builders who didn't follow your precious "standard" either (even if the road predated the so-called standard).

No... I think that's a very shakey argument to make. Especially when the new "standard" doesn't really offer anything of value to users, and breaks compatability with the installed base.

Brandon Paddock

on Dec 28, 2004

"Wrong. IE had (and still has) its own non-standard code support. It never supported Netscape's non-standard code."

Well, Raymond Chen (along with some of the IE devs) would disagree with you:

http://weblogs.asp.net/oldnewthing/archive/2004/12/21/328759.aspx

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