Comments on: 50,000,000

50,000,000

jikel_morten — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:24:05 -0800

At 8:58 AM PST this morning, we rolled over the 50,000,000 downloads line.

By: Busithoth

Busithoth — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:34:35 -0800

Hey, I love it, I use it, and am glad as anyone. Best of the web? No. In fact, the default page if you haven't changed your homepage after installing this fine program.

By: gurple

gurple — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:36:02 -0800

Hey, can somebody post when they get up to 57,298,100 downloads? I'd be really interested to know exactly when that happens.

By: homodigitalis

homodigitalis — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:36:43 -0800

I just hope FF keeps it's great momentum - even after IE7 ...

By: Mayor Curley

Mayor Curley — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:55:00 -0800

So 500,000 users times 100 critical new versions equals... (I use it religiously. But, come on...)

By: AlexReynolds

AlexReynolds — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:56:58 -0800

I'm with Surly. FF needs a better update process. 20 MB for a security patch? Totally bogus, dude.

By: Gary

Gary — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:58:24 -0800

Opera 8 has just been released. Plebeians.

By: mischief

mischief — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 10:59:21 -0800

I downloaded it and had as many problems with it as IE. I deleted it. Opera was even worse.

By: dobbs

dobbs — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:00:56 -0800

I used it for a good while. Now I open it and it immediately crashes itself. Reinstalled latest version. Same thing. So, I'm back to Safari (but I sure as hell miss the bugmenot plugin).

By: AlexReynolds

AlexReynolds — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:04:40 -0800

Mischief, check out lynx.

By: fenriq

fenriq — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:06:48 -0800

I liked Opera years ago when it was fast and usable, I tried a version a few months ago and it sucks even more than IE (which is saying alot since IE blows bunny shaped pancakes). FireFox has been giving me issues lately but overall its the best browser available, IMHO.

By: DevilsAdvocate

DevilsAdvocate — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:15:38 -0800

Mouse gestures are absolutely critical to browsing efficiently on a tablet PC. I find Maxthon's mouse gestures to be easier to use than Opera's or any of the various mouse gesture plugins for Firefox, so Maxthon is what I use.

By: Plutor

Plutor — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:16:22 -0800

Mayor Curley: "So 500,000 users times 100 critical new versions equals..." I know this is hyperbole, but there have only been three updates since 1.0. Would you prefer, maybe, no updates when security holes are found? And I've heard from Mozilla Foundation sources that roughly half of the downloads came from IE agents. (== new users)

By: clevershark

clevershark — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:17:44 -0800

DevilsAdvocate writes " Mouse gestures are absolutely critical to browsing efficiently on a tablet PC." Well what do you know, THE guy who bought a TabletPC is a MeFite :-)

By: Otis

Otis — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:20:45 -0800

50 Million Firefox Users Can't Be Wrong

By: Spencerinc

Spencerinc — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:27:23 -0800

I originally downloaded Firefox because IE was always targetted for popups and ads. Now, I love Firefox because of Tabs. You don't have to open a new window and have that window be active every time you click on a link.

By: eckeric

eckeric — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:30:58 -0800

Hey, I love it, I use it, and am glad as anyone. Best of the web? No. Yeah, but think of all the neat things that have happened since firefox showed up. For instance, metafilter loves firefox, greasemonkey, and library lookup, but look what happens when John Udell combines them. (second link is a "screencast" with audio using flash). I think the new Opera allows user scripts too.

By: eckeric

eckeric — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:32:31 -0800

Ack, I mean Jon Udell....

By: toochumpy

toochumpy — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:33:17 -0800

I doubt it's 50 million firefox users - i myself have probably downloaded it at least 15 or 20 times. Every time it's downloaded via ie isn't a 'new' user, i use ie immediately on new xp boxes to get firefox (what else are you going to use that's on the box??). But hey, if it's a tenth of 50 million that's still pretty good, yay firefox.

By: JohnR

JohnR — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:44:45 -0800

This is my fav browser now.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 11:55:54 -0800

I just hope FF keeps it's great momentum - even after IE7 ... It won't. IE7 will offer enough features to make FF's feature list for all intents and purposes, irrelevant. Add on that FF continues to offer buggy releases (memory leaks in my experience) and IE6 SP2 already offers even better popup blocking than FF, and there's no reason to switch from the "default" in Windows. I say this as a Firefox fan.

By: schyler523

schyler523 — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 12:11:08 -0800

I prefer FF, primarily for things like bugmenot and adblock, and don't really see myself going back to IE EVER. BTW, whenever i help my elderly neighbors with computer probs, I usually download and install FF, so I've bumped the downloads probably by about 20 or so...in addition to my comps at home/work.

By: mischief

mischief — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 12:59:11 -0800

Alex: I used lynx from 1993 to 1998. ;-P

By: zsazsa

zsazsa — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:11:09 -0800

toochumpy, you can download Firefox with Windows' built-in command line ftp client so you don't even need to start IE to get it! Btw, the page says that the 50 million figure "does not include upgrades," which I assume are those distributed by Firefox Update.

By: Al_Truist

Al_Truist — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:26:15 -0800

I've been using firefox since 0.7 was debuted, and have never looked back. the fact that it's JUST a browser is key to me: I use Outlook (because I want to, smartass) for email, so I don't need an email client in my web-browser, thanks. (And newsreading's done better with any of several widely available clients, too!) And the plug-ins are an awesome way to customize the browsing experience. there've been a few bumps on the road, sure. but when did you EVER get bug-free computing? When did you get it (legitimately) for free? BTW: Alex, what OS are you using that needed a 20MB patch? You can d/l the entire installer @ 4.7MB. Yes, the upgrade installer could be more elegant, but it's not really that painful, is it? And how much did you pay for it again? :) And Angry Modem, do you think that IE7's feature set is going to come in at less than 20 MB? (My work computer's install of FF, with a small collection of plugins and one skin comes to 17MB) Who'd be surprised at a 25MB installer and 60MB of hard drive footprint? Raise your hands. And who'll be surprised if it demands some elements of .NET to get full functionality?

By: srboisvert

srboisvert — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:30:27 -0800

half of the downloads came from IE agents. (== new users) I have downloaded firefox on the order of a 1000 times - everytime i logon to the deepfreezed computers at school I install firefox. the 50 million figure "does not include upgrades," That upgrade thing has never worked for me...I click to upgrade and it just spends forever saying it is downloading and installing but nothing happens.

By: Mitheral

Mitheral — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:36:07 -0800

toochumpy: I doubt it's 50 million firefox users - i myself have probably downloaded it at least 15 or 20 times. On the flipside my single download gets rolled out to 500+ PCs. Even if true I'm not sweating a 20MB download. Heck IE6 sp2 is 16MB and it oh so helpfully also installs lookout express. srboisvert why not stick the install on a flash drive. Or better yet run the flash drive version of FF (let's see that capability from IE7).

By: TNLNYC

TNLNYC — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:43:37 -0800

Another firefox user here... Beyond the obvious reasons is the Live Bookmark feeds, which, when used in conjunction with del.icio.us allows you to have a bookmark folder shared across multiple machines (basically, I bookmark to del.icio.us, create a live bookmark from the RSS feed and don't have to worry about porting bookmarks from work to home and other machines)

By: AlexReynolds

AlexReynolds — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 13:46:56 -0800

Alex: I used lynx from 1993 to 1998. ;-P I am flagging your post as "grumpy".

By: stenseng

stenseng — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 14:10:18 -0800

Firefox = Teh Sexay. However, it crashes hard randomly particularly whenever I hit up Google Images... which sucks. I hate having to bust out IE.

By: Mick

Mick — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 14:28:50 -0800

More good news: Firefox doubles market share as IE slips

By: zoogleplex

zoogleplex — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 15:50:14 -0800

Sheesh, FF is working great for me on every machine I've installed it on, ranging from my ancient P3 800 with Win98 2Ed to this one here at work with WinXP Pro and my dually G4 running OSX 10.3. I love it. Even more, I'm using Thunderbird as my mail client everywhere, and that works great for me too. They done a good thing at Mozilla. I don't know why some of y'all are having such trouble. Try doubling the RAM on your system! :)

By: mr.marx

mr.marx — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:05:10 -0800

AdBlock.

By: blacklite

blacklite — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:37:10 -0800

What Curley said. This is like McDonald's hitting 100 billion served. Okay, great.

By: ArunK

ArunK — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:37:56 -0800

How many of these downloads are multiple times? Not that FireFox hasn't gained popularity, but I doubt they have a system which tracks if users download it multiple times.

By: angry modem

angry modem — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 16:44:36 -0800

but I doubt they have a system which tracks if users download it multiple times they don't

By: damehex

damehex — Fri, 29 Apr 2005 21:05:05 -0800

I switched to FF when I got really sick of the IE security troubles. Alas, one of the indispensible FF extensions is "IEview" which adds a View This Page In IE to context menus. There are sites I have to use for work with built-in widgets that only work in IE, and every so often a rights-controlled embedded .wmv movie comes along. But I think I'm down to twice a week launching that old lump of crapple. Over the course of using it, I've come to rely on a bunch of extensions that will probably keep me in the FF camp even after IE7. Every time I think to myself "I wish the browser did [something specific]," one dev.mozilla search later it's doing it. These are in my suggested starter pack: googlebar, blank d/l window spawn control, formfield spellchecker, tabs preferences, dictionary search, download everything on a page, web dev toolbar (super awesome).

By: supertremendus

supertremendus — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 00:29:00 -0800

I tried to make the switch, but I couldn't get over the fact that you can't use the delete key to go back. Is there a way to control the keyboard shortcuts?

By: ralphyk

ralphyk — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 02:40:58 -0800

IE6 SP2 already offers even better popup blocking than FF Are you serious? I've tried using IE6 with the new special "features", it had me shouting and screaming within minutes. Hello! I've blocked a popup for you! Hello! This page had some content that confused me slightly, so I'm just letting you know. Firefox blocks all popups, and lets me quickly and quietly enable a site that I need them on. IE6 makes me want to break things and kill people.

By: dodgygeezer

dodgygeezer — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 05:00:38 -0800

I'm a mouse-o-phobe so I prefer Firefox because I can use type-ahead to navigate pages and I can use Greasemonkey scripts such as Google Search Keys which save we a lot of mouse abuse. I think Firefox has a very bright future. And people should remember that as consumers, our best interests are served by having two or more competing browsers not just one dominant one - so no, I don't want to see Firefox or anyone else take 90%+ of market share.

By: aqueousdan

aqueousdan — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 06:25:33 -0800

Alex: Mischief, check out lynx How do you get porn on that thing?

By: dodgygeezer

dodgygeezer — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 06:43:36 -0800

How do you get porn on that thing? You'd want this.

By: Sourcing-USA

Sourcing-USA — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 08:09:40 -0800

I tried 'SFX IRC Channel' link and it is not working.

By: CunningLinguist

CunningLinguist — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 12:46:13 -0800

Is anyone else's java completely fucked now on FF? I have to open IE for certain pages now. I tried going back to an older version of FF but that didn't help. It's happened on both my work and home machines.

By: Down10

Down10 — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 13:07:41 -0800

I insist all of my clients to download Firefox and view my Web page work for them in the application, just to show them what a Web page is _supposed_ to look like! ...Not one has ever complained.

By: jikel_morten

jikel_morten — Sat, 30 Apr 2005 17:43:09 -0800

I tried to make the switch, but I couldn't get over the fact that you can't use the delete key to go back. Is there a way to control the keyboard shortcuts? posted by supertremendus at 12:29 AM PST on April 30 [!] Backspace.

By: davy

davy — Sun, 01 May 2005 09:25:33 -0800

Isn't this stuff what they mean by "PepsiBlue"? Are you advocates of one or another browser getting paid for it? I mean I like Firefox myself, but still.