Firefox 3.5 Now the Most Popular Browser Worldwide

http://tech.slashdot.org/story/09/12/20/2048235/Firefox-35-Now-the-Most-Popular-Browser-Worldwide

by jmonegro • 17 years ago

36 15 17 years ago

tech.slashdot.org

timdorr• 17 years ago

To be fair, it's still a 30/60 split between all of IE and Firefox.

But the good news is that we should be under 10% for IE6 some time next year. That has me even more excited!

oneplusone• 17 years ago

Ignoring Asia, IE6 is at about 5% right now. It is small enough to start ignoring.

samdk• 17 years ago

The source for this story puts IE6 at 10-12% in North America and Europe and 20-35% in South America, Africa, and Asia.

Whether or not IE6 support is still necessary depends on who your target audience is. Are you targeting a young and tech-savvy crowd? Then drop it. But if you're working on a project intended to be used by non-profits and government agencies (as I am right now) then it's unfortunately still necessary.

Raphael• 17 years ago

Yeah, this is just part of the long trend of IE7 users upgrading to IE8. The real test will be how much market share Chrome will gain, and how it will impact Firefox vs. IE.

jsm386• 17 years ago

actual source: http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-ww-weekly-200827-...

rick_20472• 17 years ago

Its fascinating how decisions taken by companies can have such a long term effect. MS decided to give away IE for free before Mozzila and even now some how IE6 has a major market share even though Mozzila has a much better product

rick_20472• 17 years ago

A very interesting incident

In October 1997 Internet Explorer 4.0 was released. The release party in San Francisco featured a ten-foot-tall letter "e" logo. Netscape employees showing up to work the following morning found the giant logo on their front lawn, with a sign attached that read "From the IE team ... We Love You". The Netscape employees promptly knocked it over and set a giant figure of their Mozilla dinosaur mascot atop it, holding a sign reading "Netscape 72, Microsoft 18" representing the market distribution.

Poiesis• 17 years ago

Unfortunately, Firefox 3.5 is blocked by the company proxy. 3.0 wasn't, but I guess they're getting wise to those wily engineers trying to use a (arguably) more secure browser.

Reminds me of the sites they have blocked under the category "productivity", no joke.

acemarke• 17 years ago

Yeah. Earlier this year, while Firefox 3.5 was in beta, I noticed that the update check wasn't working any more. I finally figured out that our company proxy was blocking it (Firefox isn't officially supported at all, but many of us use it). I promptly browsed to Mozilla's FTP site and pulled down the installer manually. Silly admins.

kolosy• 17 years ago

how sad that firefox reaches its adoption peak while hitting an all-time low for stability. it took me 7 years to jump ship from ie to firefox. it took me 1 to go from firefox to chrome.

w-ll• 17 years ago

well from someone that has done a lot with Firefox since 2.0, i jumped the ship to chrome just 3-4months ago and simply love it. Firefox evolved into a FireBear.

nailer• 17 years ago

As of 6:45UK time on Sat BBC News has picked up this story. Interesting how mainstream this is.

MikeCapone• 17 years ago

I've personally just switched to Chromium from Safari. Firefox on Mac is a dog and doesn't seem to be getting better.

I wonder if Chrome will start rapidly eating at Firefox's share since more technically inclined users are probably more like to switch, and more likely to use FF in the first place.

Firefox 3.5 Now the Most Popular Browser Worldwide

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