Tag Archives: Mozilla
Firefox Users Jump Almost 50% Within One Year
At the beginning of the year, Firefox was used by 9.6% of all Internet users. By the end of 2006, Firefox was used by 14% of Internet users, which is a 50% increase in one year. Despite releasing a new version of Internet Explorer (IE), Microsoft took a hit in the browser market this past year. Internet Explorer marketshare dropped from 85.1% to 79.6%.
Apple Computer Inc.’s Safari browser jumped from 3.1% to 4.2%. Opera Web browser grew from 0.6% to 0.9%. Lastly, AOL LLC’s Netscape dropped from 1.24% to 0.9%.
In October, Firefox Version 2.0 was released and since then Firefox users have been continuously growing. I believe that part of Firefox’s growth is also responsible for Internet Explorer’s application slower load time. I noticed that Internet Explorer 7.0 was exceptionally slower than Firefox. However, the new build of Internet Explorer definetely has catered to users that prefer tabbed browsing. For PC/Mac users that have 2.0 GHz+ processors, I believe that the application load time difference between IE and Firefox may not be as noticeable.
[Source: Computerworld]
Categories Firefox, Mozilla
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Blake Ross, Firefox Developer, Losing Faith In Google Search Practices
Blake Ross, a young software developer known for his efforts in the Mozilla’s Firefox development pointed out in his blog that Google is now starting to give “tips” to users about other Google-owned software. Ross also points out that Ask and Yahoo! have been doing this with their search services too, but Google has a reputation to keep in their TOS to not “be evil.”
If you search for ‘Photo Sharing,’ it tips users to use Google’s Picasa. If you search for ‘Calendar,’ users are tipped to “Try Google Calendar.” And if you search for ‘Blog,’ then Google recommends you to “Try Blogger.”
Ross wrote: “The tips are different—and bad for users—because the services they recommend are not the best in their class.” I couldn’t agree more. I think the best photo-sharing website is not the Picasa software, but Flickr. I believe the best blogging software is WordPress, and I don’t really use calendar software, I just e-mail myself upcoming important events in ALL CAPS.
But Ross gives a worthy suggestion for a fix. Ross suggested that when searching for stock quotes on Google’s search engine [example: GOOG search], Google Finance, Yahoo! Finance, MSN Money, MarketWatch, CNN Money, and Reuters are all recommended at the top.
“Would Google complain if Microsoft informed users about Live Search when they typed Google.com into Internet Explorer’s address bar? Don’t roll your eyes: it would just be another innocuous tip presented to a user en route to a destination. Google owns one of the Web’s command lines, and Microsoft owns the other” stated Ross. “How much does a result have to look like a Result to cross the line? Google promised not to be the type of company that needs to ask.”
Categories Google, Mozilla
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Firefox 3.0 Specs Released
It wasn’t too long ago when Mozilla released Firefox 2.0, but now the company has released the specifications that will be placed into Firefox 3 in a wiki format. The software development life cycle is expected to complete within 12 months. The team is developing Firefox 3.0 based on the Gecko 1.9 Roadmap format which is what Mozilla had followed for the Firefox 2.0 development as well.
One of the new expected features of Firefox 3 is called “places” which will be placed to the left of the tabs. This is similar to the “Add to Favorites” and “Favorites Center” feature in Internet Explorer 7.0.
As far as tabbed browsing goes, Firefox will also implement a feature so that new tabs will open to the right of the active tab, which is also similar to Internet Explorer 7.0. However, a new feature that is unique will allow a group of URLs to open on one click of bookmarks.
According to TGDaily.com, another feature that will be improved from Firefox 2 is a feature that the new Internet Explorer lacks, which is auto-saving data in forms and posts. As a blogger, I have experienced the loss of data when writing posts by accidentally clicking on a link that replaces the page that I am writing the post on. Microsoft has added an alert button to alleviate this problem, but in some circumstances the alert does not show up. TGDaily reports: “version 3.0 will have increased session saving capabilities, including the ability to save all data logged in a single session, such as data entered into forms and posts, and the entire page viewing history.”
Mozilla and Microsoft has been having a browser war for quite some time now. In my opinion, I think that it is somewhat frustrating that between both browsers, one supports a tool that another browser doesn’t, so it is difficult to settle on one browser.
The tools I am referring to is the Facebook and Alexa toolbars. Internet Explorer supports the Alexa toolbar, but Firefox doesn’t. However, Firefox supports the Facebook toolbar, but Internet Explorer doesn’t. In terms of speed though, Firefox is clearly the winner.
Yet when it comes to embedding videos from YouTube on WordPress and having it work properly, I have had the most luck with Internet Explorer. If anyone has had luck embedding videos on to Firefox while using WordPress, definitely let me know.
Categories Firefox, Mozilla
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