Posted on 10/19/2005 8:13:16 PM PDT by Panerai
st shy of Firefox's first birthday party, the Mozilla Foundation celebrated the 100 millionth download of its Web browser Wednesday.
Mozilla has seen steady adoption of its browser since its release last November. After a somewhat higher download rate immediately following its release, the browser has settled into between 200,000 and 300,000 downloads a day, said Asa Dotzler, the Mozilla liaison to the SpreadFirefox community.
"This is a great milestone. Our massive, worldwide community of grassroots marketers and users--not to mention the developers--have helped to put out a product that's really kicking butt," he said.
Firefox has enjoyed an enthusiastic user base the likes of which few companies in the tech industry experience. Thousands of volunteers help spread the word about the browser, participate in free support forums and discussion lists, and scour its code for flaws.
But the browser hasn't been without its problems. The number of reported security holes in Firefox continues to grow, and Symantec recently released a hotly contested report claiming that Mozilla browsers saw more reported vulnerabilities than Microsoft's Internet Explorer in the first half of 2005. In what could be construed as a shift in attitude toward the browser, its marketing Web site, SpreadFirefox.com, was brought down by hackers just last week.
However, the open nature of the Mozilla browsers allows the group to respond to new security threats quickly, and these developments haven't stunted adoption. If anything, Dotzler said, the company has seen a slight uptick in the past two months, which he attributed to new interest in other browsers and a renewed buzz surrounding the upcoming Firefox 1.5 release. If announcements of new security issues affected consumer adoption, it did so in both directions, Dotzler said.
(Excerpt) Read more at news.com.com ...
In soite of Symantec's comments that Firefox is more insecure than IE, note that when an issue is found in FF/Mozilla, it gets fixed very quickly. With IE, Microsoft tends to wait until an announced flaw is actually exploited before they get their proverbial thumb out of their nether orfice and come up with a patch. Add to that, if any of the Firefox faults HAD been exploited, they still would not be as serious as any of the known exploits that target Internet Exploder, er, explorer...
I will continue to use Firefox, thank you!
If you have to reinstall all the extensions each time you update FF, maybe you're doing it wrong.. If you're on a Windows machine, use control panel/add-remove software to remove the old version. When it gets done you will get a notice that says something along the lines of 'not all files were removed' or 'directory not removed' or something like that (wording depends on Win version) and asks if you want to remove the remaining files/directory. Tell it NO. Then reinstall the new version of Firefox. It will find your old files, extensions, bookmarks, and everything. (Now, if you're not on a Win machine, maybe you should check Mozilla.org for info...)
Convoluted answer here... On the largest percentage of web pages that use web standard coding, FF renders the page faster than IE. HOWEVER, since MS has enjoyed a monopoly in many areas of software, there are a significant number of web pages out there that were coded using (for instance) MS Frontpage software and or Active X. These are non-standard pages (unless you are a die-hard MS koolaide drinker) and will give Firefox/Mozilla fits. (It should be pointed out that one of the BIG reasons that IE is so insecure is because it supports axtive-x - which allows web pages to download and execute stuff on your machine without your even knowing its doing it..) For these pages, you will need to keep IE handy (although I have started avoiding them. IF they want me to visit, they need to redo their pages to be more standard-friendly...)
I use Firefox, and have used it since before it was to the 1.0 version. I'm keeping it.
I'm not sure if it is recommended anymore or not. I just do it as a matter of course (and because I've learned that Windows is less flakey that way!) If you're on a Windows machine, it shouldn't matter anyway because, as you say, all the stuff that needs to be remembered is in the profile folder and not the program folder (as long as you don't tell add/remove to remove them!)
I should explain I mean they will be there, but I get a note saying I need an update for bugmenot or something....I don't know exactly, it has been awhile since I updated.
You need this:
One neat little feature of Firefox is the ability to increase {or decrease} the font size of articles simply by using the control + keys {or control - to decrease size}. This is really great when you flip from article to article on different locations. It is really a boon for people suffering from "old man's eyes" {such as USS Alaska}.
I use it also. I have had much less problems than when I had IE. However, the primary reason for that is because hackers are not writing viruses for it yet. If it becomes too popular, they will start. Wonder when that will be. Looks like soon as popular as it is getting.
If that was the case wouldn't their be more holes, viruses, and other serious security problems with Apache than with Microsoft IIS?
The extensions should be there after you update. When you first run Firefox again, it will look for updates to the extensions that are compatible with the new Firefox and warn you of which ones don't have compatible updates.
There only one thing for which IE is better than Firefox. It's not just MS-specific pages that render better in IE, but pages with broken HTML in general. IE is much more forgiving for these pages.
I've downloaded it several times. OTOH, I've also used the same downloaded installer on multiple computers. If you're a business, you've downloaded it once and installed in possibly hundreds. But then we have the people like you, and the people who have downloaded it only to remove it.
SWAG, maybe max 70 million computers running Firefox off of those 100 million downloads.
Just a thought... Many Linux distros package FireFox so there are workstations ouththere running it that have neverdownloaded off the site...
Have been using Firefox for a little over a year now, and it's probably the most reliable thing on my folks' computer.
Though I still can't convince my dad to switch over from Netscape 6 to Firefox :(
I got the Firefox download for Mac with no trouble, and it works fine - but your recommendation about the BBCode for fromatting was what motivated me to try it. And I'm having no luck getting it.
Same here. Way less problems with firefox..great browser
I am pretty sure the xpi is cross platform.
http://jedbrown.net/1.0/mozilla/extensions/
[I]is this italics?[/I]
I don't see any help for HTML
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