Firefox Now Ahead of IE in Europe

Firefox Now Ahead of IE in Europe

 

Gotta love the IE9 doomsday talk, surprised that the beta has scraped half a percentage, as if they expect most people to install beta software. Hello, half a percentage of market share for a beta browser is a huge amount.

At nearly half a percentage, Net applications states that IE9 is the most popular beta product. But then what would their cool headline be?

 

The good thing about that article is that "supporters" of most any browser can find some solace.

 

Key Points to Remember (behind the Statistics):

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[B]IE [/B]may still be the [URL="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/29/internet-explorer-top-browser_n_802108.html"]king of browsers[/URL], but it is more and more apparent that our prediction that
IE9 will get Microsoft more in trouble rather than bringing back the glory of IE in the near future
is more than credible.
IE is in serious trouble over the past two years.
It is somewhat surprising that IE9 has not  been able to stop IE’s decline:
It launched in September and is still in Beta, but Microsoft supported the launch
with a massive marketing campaign that, however, has largely evaporated.
IE9 is a very competitive browser, but consumers haven’t gotten the message yet.
Over the past few months, the combined losses of IE6+IE7 have been significantly higher than the gains of IE8.
From the public data it is impossible to tell that IE8 is losing users to Chrome or if we are seeing
Microsoft’s worst nightmare come true and many users are directly migrating from especially IE6 to Chrome.
Microsoft screwed itself by limiting IE9 to Windows Vista and Windows 7 users.
Once IE9 is out, many Windows XP users may simply drop IE and  pick up Firefox or Chrome for good.

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[B]Mozilla [/B]was down from the year by more than 1.5 points.
Given Microsoft’s aggressive IE9 campaign, Mozilla’s ability to defend its share is impressive.
Mozilla is taking its time with the release of Firefox 4.
We understand  the quality approach, but we also believe that Mozilla
is missing a big  opportunity and may be playing with fire.
Launching Firefox 4 ahead of IE9 could be an important tool for Mozilla to regain lost market share.
If Mozilla falls behind, it may bleed some  market share.

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Both Firefox and IE are losing market share to [B]Chrome [/B]in Europe, but IE is dropping faster than Firefox.
Chrome just doubled its market share during the year and despite predictions that
Google will not be able to keep the pace of growth.
Chrome is outgrowing every other browser in percentages and absolute gains.

 

What worries me is that IE9 comes out before IE6 is retired.
4 supported browsers could hurt adoption of IE9, developers won't be happy with yet another browser to support. Could potentially drive users away from IE totally regardless of it IE9 is a good browser or not.

Cheers, Nick

 

I think it is acceptable behavior from a developer to drop IE6 support. Just look at Youtube and other popular sites. Forget about that. Now there will be new problem. How to make "cool" new html5, css3 sites with support for IE7/IE8, Firefox 3.x They will become the new IE6 problem. Workarounds, exceptions required. What is called "graceful degradation" in dev lingo I think http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2010/04/28/css3-solutions-for-internet-explorer/ Difference to IE6 problems is?

In theory once all are on IE9, Firefox 4, Opera, Chrome level standards should overrule this and all code give same output.

 

Yeah, it's not new news. I worry about statistics anyway. I'm still not sure what's actually going on.

Who does? LOL!

 

While there's some truth in the statement above, I doubt certain aspects of its predictions. With the exception of browser enthusiasts (who then spread the words and try to convince their fellow friends and family members, etc), how many XP users out there do you think would be ditching IE and opting for Firefox or Chrome? Many who use older OS seems to be running older browsers, even in cases where they are no longer supported despite the constant nagging done by security/update gurus...

I'm thinking that IE previous versions is bound to lose market share in the long run whereas the future of IE9 is anyone's guess, depending on what it becomes in the final release and what other browsers bring into play at that period of time.

If Firefox is to gain or re-gain market share, imo it should focus/direct more of it's energy by challenging the likes of Chrome (and Opera) which are relatively more 'direct' threats to their user-base, seeing that these browsers are introducing new features while bringing about the "extensions/add-ons playground" to counter-game the long-held throne which Firefox has been widely known for. And the way I see it, Mozilla seems to be heading in that direction, albeit they're facing certain bumps on the road which is slowing them down...

P.S. I'm a Firefox user speaking my mind here. Feel free to disagree but no need to 'attack' me if you're planning to

 

@safeguy, I think it depends on if many XP users start to find that they are having rendering difficulties with IE 8. Their alternative is to upgrade their OS (& use IE 9) or change browsers. This depends on your individual economic situation of course. A lot of people (colleges, schools, institutions etc) are still using XP with perfectly good computers that unfortunately aren't powerful enough to run Win 7. They can always try a linux distro I suppose, but most people only really have a working knowledge of Windows. If downloading Fx 4 or Chrome makes their lives a lot easier, they are going to go for it. I just don't see Opera or Safari challenging Firefox or Chrome in this respect. Mozilla could genuinely gain from MS restricting IE 9 to Vista/Seven.

I've had a look at a couple of the Fx betas, I'm pretty impressed, I predict that Fx 4 will do very well. I don't blame Mozilla for dragging their feet a bit with this one, they need to get it right.

I still prefer SeaMonkey LOL! (the beta is pretty good )

 

Fx 4 beta 8 is no slouch.

 

Good to hear.

 

That really depends. It flies on my AMD laptop with a discrete GPU, but it's utterly horrible on my Dell Core Duo machine and Atom netbook, both with integrated graphics.

 

I've never used Chrome, and I'm quite content with Firefox.

I used to like Opera a lot but their last release turned me away and there are (IE) pages(popups) that opera won't do that Firefox will. When people get the "Can't find page" error with IE, most will load Firefox and keep right on browsing rather than trying to spend the time to find the activeX or javascript error that has affected IE!

Also whether or not people are turning to Chrome, or it's being installed as a sneaky slip in the back door browser, is in question.

When I see Chrome on people's puter and I ask how do they like it, a lot say they don't even recall installing it on their computer. and most will ask what is Chrome?

Seems as though Chrome is an magical addon to other app's the user is loading!

 

It's better than the Ask toolbar though! I found that when I updated PDF X-Change recently on both my 32 bit laptops I had inadvertently got a free gift! It was easily removed but still annoying. It didn't install on my 64 bit (Win 7) desktop however.

I like Chrome, I like Ask Jeeves.

I don't like uninvited toolbars though!

 

I've found that Winzip installs are good for that.

One version try's to install google toolbar/chrome and another version trys to install uniblue registry!

 

IE surpasses 20 million downloads ... FavBrowser.com

 

how many of those 20mil were duplicate or triplicate d/ls?

and how many of d/ls were the forced kind where MS says you NEED IEx to perform this function?

and in conclusion has MS EVER released and uninstall proggie for any IExplore version like they did for IE8?

 

You can probably gather that information by the fact it's the most popular beta browser, see my first post in this thread.

None, it's a beta....

Most likely when it's out of beta.

But I guess.. haters gonna hate.. right?

 

IE9 RC Will Beat Firefox 4 RC To Launch

And there's mention of Chrome as well:

 

'Extension battle: Opera 11 Passes Safari'

Yeah, but Safari's extensions work properly ...

 

Talking about extensions, I had to reinstate the little devil. He goes AWOL after each update to ABP for Chrome.

 

Well, I admire your dedication to the little devil! I do sort of miss the bloke.