I noticed an article over at PocketLint stating that Mozilla has admitted only 25% of users who download Firefox have become ‘active’ users. As Firefox is one of my favourite pieces of software - however I do use IE from time to time before the Microsoft zealots get started - I decided to try and dig deeper to find out a more info on this intriguing stat. Searching led me to Jack Schofield’s blog on the Guradian’s website, where he states
Firefox’s claims to success have been supported by clocking up the number of downloads, encouraged by payments from Google, but it turns out that 75% of the people making those downloads don’t “continue to use it actively.”
However I was still unable to find any reference to a quote from Mozilla themselves in his post or any reference to this stat on Mozilla’s website. This annoyance aside - Schofield does point out quite correctly that 25% take-up from downloaded free software is a very good result - I was still bemused by the validity of this stat, so I decided to make up research some of my own.
Whilst I have no way of providing you with any stats regarding Firefox download usage, I did manage to find some usage stats over at counter.com They showed, based on their clients data, Firefox usage at 13% for July 2007 compared to 10% for the same month last year. Whilst IE, both 6.x and 7.x flavours combined, dropped from 82% last year to 71% currently. Make what you want of the IE drop but Firefox increased its browser share by 30% over the last year, and that’s not a bad stat in anyone’s spreadsheet analysis.
So what does all this mean? Perhaps there’s a bit of Firefox bashing going on in the blogosphere, trying to make it all sound doom and gloom when it comes out that 75% of their downloads end up in the Recycle Bin? It seems a bit strange to highlight this (non-existent?) stat when all appears well with usage overall. What do you guys think?
The internet browser Firefox from Mozilla seems to be taking off in Europe, leaping from a 21.1% share to a 27.8% slice of all net surfers over a one week period at the begining of July in 2006 and 2007 respectively according to XiTiMonitor, a web analytics company. It claims that Microsoft IE usage has dropped to 66.5% from 73.3% in the same market over the same time frame.
Are European users breaking away from the MS vice like grip on browser users? I suppose it had to happen sooner or later, with Firefox features light years ahead of IE. However Mozilla will have to pull out all the stops with Firefox 3 or Gran Paradiso as the project is called. Software users can be very fickle and development laurels should never be rested on!
Some interesting figures came out in the ‘by country’ breakdown with Firefox usage at over 40% in Slovenia and Finland, yet notably the UK well behind the leading pack at a mere 18%.
ZenZui is the latest Web browser from Microsoft. The Redmond Company has announced yesterday the launch of ZenZui as an independent company focused on innovating Web content consumption and interaction via mobile devices.
I know, it sounds a bit weird, but its user interface uses a technology 100% developed and patented by Microsoft.
Conceived in the research lab by experts in human-computer interaction and data visualization, and refined over three years of development, ZenZui represents an entirely new way to discover and consume the mobile web. With ZenZui, your phone screen is a portal into your own customized Zoomspace, an information landscape of personalized, cached content in the form of Tiles that directly reflect your lifestyle. Using a single thumb, you fly in and out of your Zoomspace – two simple taps get you directly to any Tile. Through some clever engineering, we constantly refresh your Tiles in the background, so they’re always fresh, available, and ready to be Zoomed.
New phones launch every week, with a wild diversity of screen resolutions, input hardware, and orientation. They took this into consideration when they built the ZenZui adaptive rendering platform, which enables your tiles to work on a wide array of mobile devices and platforms, all with a consistent, intuitive, and gorgeous user interface.
Mobile browsing no longer needs to be a slow and painful experience. ZenZui: Choose your Tiles. Stop Surfing. Start Zooming.
Here’s an interesting video that proves ZenZui’s functionality. Also, Here‘s a small introductory podcast where you can hear from ZenZui’s founders about the project’s inspiration and genesis. Born out of years of mobile user interface research, ZenZui is a new kind of mobile media company and development studio. This Podcast will walk you through the adventure of bringing ZenZui to life.
After several discussions of Mozilla’s developers, during last week, the features for Firefox 3 were gathered and sorted out.
Gecko, the rendering engine upon which all of the Mozilla applications rely will be tweaked for better standards and support. What worths mentioning is the ability of saving documents as PDFs. Since the PDF should and maybe will remain the main format used in exchanging documents for the upcoming years, all of us will be monitoring the development progress for this feature.
Another important feature would be the enhancing of the navigation while going back to a form using the POST function. That annoying warning message won’t be visible anymore.
The guys at Mozilla are implementing a possibility for us to use a theme or a plugin without restarting Firefox. They might even implement a plugin manager, so things can get easier as it goes.
Since security is one of the most discussed topics related to browsers, Firefox 3 will have a EV certificate support, even if limited to accepting and/or displaying them. EV certificates are more reliable and have an extended validation.
On the other hand, Mozilla is planning to get rid of the browser crashes caused by not responsive plugins (I often get that when trying to display a PDF document within the browser window), but unfortunately that got scheduled for the Firefox 4. The feature would require major code re-writing, and that would delay Firefox 3′s release date.
Last but not least, they considered implementing a crash reporting tool called “Airbag” meant to replace Talkback, and they are going to release the MSI version of the installer as well for the whole package.
We’re looking forward to try the final version of what’s supposed to be the best browser out there.
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I noticed an article over at PocketLint stating that Mozilla has admitted only 25% of users who download Firefox have become ‘active’ users. As Firefox is one of my favourite pieces of software - however I do use IE from time to time before the Microsoft zealots get started - I decided to try and dig deeper to find out a more info on this intriguing stat. Searching led me to Jack Schofield’s blog on the Guradian’s website, where he states
