Posted on 07/02/2008 8:28:32 PM PDT by goldstategop
Mozilla has officially made history with a new Guinness world record for the largest number of software downloads in a 24-hour period.
The final record breaking 8,002,530 downloads for Firefox 3.0 took place in June with parties in over 25 countries.
"The enthusiasm and creativity of Firefox fans was key to making this happen" said Marketing head Paul Kim.
Gareth Deaves of Guinness World Records called it "an extremely impressive accomplishment".
The official figure was confirmed after logs from download servers were audited and checked to ensure duplicate and unfinished downloads were not counted.
Mr Kim told the BBC: "The notion of going for a world record, as gooky and nutty as it may have sounded, was a really sticky idea.
"It was an idea that translated really well across national borders and to all different kinds of people around the world."
Marketing manager Mary Colvig said no party is planned to celebrate the record until the actual certificate is presented by Guinness World Records in London next week.
"Here at Mozilla headquarters (in Mountain View) I think most of us are just going to try and get to bed early now that we have the confirmation. We are all tired."
Security flaw
On launch day some of the shine was taken by security firms claiming to have found the first flaws in the new software.
Within five hours of Firefox 3.0 making its debut, DV Labs/Tipping Point reported a flaw that potentially let an attacker take over a PC if a user clicks on a booby-trapped link.
Mr Kim told the BBC "Firefox users are safe. We have a patch in the works and hope to release it very soon."
mozilla hq at end of the download day Mozilla says the number of downloads surpassed their expectations
Another potentially disastrous glitch ahead of the world record attempt came when servers handling the downloads collapsed under the weight of visitors checking to see if the new version of the browser was available.
Once they were all up and running the clock started counting down.
At their busiest the servers were handling more than 9,000 downloads per minute. Within five hours the number of downloads for Version 3.0 exceeded the 1.6 million set by Firefox 2.0 in October 2006.
Market share increase
Another boost for the open source browser comes with the announcement that it has boosted its market share to over 19% making it the second most popular browser after Microsoft's Internet Explorer, or IE.
Net Applications says a chunk of the gain seems to have come from rival IE, although much of the growth came in users upgrading.
The company said while IE reached a record low last month, it predicted Firefox will break the 20% share bar sometime this month.
Mr Kim said "We offer the best browsing experience and this shows people are getting the message and voting with their browser choice."
Meanwhile Mozilla has shipped a high priority update for Firefox 2.0, warning that there are at least five serious vulnerabilities that could lead to code execution attacks.
Mr Kim said Mozilla will continue to support Firefox 2.0 until the middle of December.
After that users will be expected to switch over to Firefox 3.0 which since its launch over two weeks ago boasts 28 million downloads and counting.
nightly tester tools?
If you're still running 2.x, did you turn JavaScript off? Are you running "NoScript" (highly recommended)? Flash is Initiated through JS scripts, and if JS is turned off, you'll be prompted to download Flash even though it's installed on your system. Turn on (enable) JS, or if running NoScript, make sure you've allowed JS for that site.
I didn't realize Vietnamese people were known for mass downloading.
I use 44 extensions between 3 PC’s. 39 extensions have been updated. I had to replace 2 because the owner disappeared and a new owner made a replacement extension, and 1 I forced to update. I’m only waiting on 2 extensions to update at this point.
Colorzilla Updated last night.
Use any of the following?
Google image search
Dictionary.com
Froogle
Google Maps
Google News
Thesaurus.com
?
I use Map This! instead of Google Maps. Same functionality.
dictionary.com/thesaurus.com have been updated.
I don’t use the other google extensions, but I now have some insight as to how you post images of FR so fast.
Thanks!
nightly tester tools?
..an extension which will temporarily make your extensions compatible with new FF versions.
That rocks. Thanks. I may well have to go back to running nightlies again.
You over looked French Guiana and Western Sahara, both with 0 downloads. Admittedly, North Korea has many more people than these countries.
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