Firefox 3.5 surpassed IE7 in global usage share last week, FF Beta Rolls On

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Firefox 3.5 surpassed IE7 in global usage share last week, FF Beta Rolls On

2 Stories in one, same source :)

At some time during the middle of last week -- quite possibly, on the very day that Microsoft announced its settlement with the European Commission -- Web analytics firm StatCounter registered more Web site hits coming from Web browsers announcing themselves as Mozilla Firefox 3.5 than from either Internet Explorer 7.0 or IE8.

According to the fairest interpretation of StatCounter's data, that means Firefox 3.5-branded browsers are more actively used, on all platforms including Linux, than any single version of any other browser, including IE. As of Monday morning, FF 3.5 was responsible for 21.93% of HTTP requests tracked by StatCounter, versus 21.2% of requests from IE7, 20.33% from IE8 (buoyed recently by Windows 7's success), and 13.89% from IE6.

Calling this a "market share" assessment is a stretch, since markets are typically comprised of users, not their transactions. Arguably, Firefox users are more active on the Web, thus it may not follow that there are more Firefox 3.5 users than IE7 users, nor that there are more Firefox 3.5 installed browsers than IE7 browsers. Nonetheless, it's another significant threshold for the leading alternative browser on the Windows platform, and the leading browser for Linux.

When you combine version numbers together, Internet Explorer still comprises 55.42% of Web traffic that StatCounter tracks, versus 30.94% for Firefox 3.5 and 3.0 browsers combined. Firefox 2.0 browsers have dropped off the chart.

StatCounter's statistics are not backed up by NetApplications, however, which strangely tells an opposite story. After having jumped over the 25% last week, all collective versions of Firefox dipped back to 24.72% usage share in the NetApplications count for this week. IE6 remains the most used browser tracked by that firm, with 22.08%; IE8 has 19.34%, jumping over IE7 with 16.86%. Firefox 3.5 has just 15.16% usage by NetApplications' count. It's believed that NetApplications tracks more "corporate" users.


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Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 moves ahead, but more work to be done

Betanews tests with the latest Beta 5 release of Mozilla Firefox 3.6 show some respectable performance improvements, in the race to catch-up to Google Chrome. One of those improvements -- the full impact of which we'll see over time, as Web servers improve their scripting to support it -- is asynchronous scripting. It's a feature added to the HTML 5 standard, and Firefox 3.6 will be the first browser to support it.

Ironically, however, our tests this afternoon with the WHAT Working Group (WHATWG) working draft page explaining HTML 5 features, including asynchronous scripting, consistently crashes Firefox 3.6 on our Windows 7 test machine. To certify that the problem was limited to the beta, we tried the same page (which we've read before with no problem) with the latest stable Firefox 3.5.6. That browser also crashed.

The page in question is a particularly long page with multiple concurrent edits, and a floating element along the bottom that enables reviewers to mark passages that may be in error and submit comments.

At first, in our tests, Internet Explorer 8 does not crash, but that's not to say it's out of the woods. IE8 doesn't display the floating element, and the vertical scroll bar can often remain stuck for seconds at a time before releasing its virtual grip on the desktop. Asking it to search for text inline in the page results in what appears to be a hang, at least for as long as a full minute, before IE8 responds.

The page's author is Google's Ian Hickson, but that's just coincidence. The fact that the leading alternative browser for Windows has significant difficulty rendering a large page with complex, collaborative content, shows that stability can still be improved.

That's not to say Mozilla's testers haven't already done a stellar job. Over 1,500 separate bugs and feature additions were made to 3.6 since the initial alphas, and about one-tenth of those were fixes to Beta 4. A handful of unresolved bugs are pending, according to the organization's Bugzilla database.

Preliminary Betanews tests on Firefox 3.6 Beta 5 running in Windows 7 RTM show some respectable performance gains, as Mozilla creeps into the territory blazed earlier this year by Google Chrome. Using our CRPI benchmark suite of 69 separate data points, Beta 5 scored a 12.59 in Windows 7, compared to an 11.12 for the latest stable Firefox 3.5.6. That means that Beta 5 is showing 13% improved performance over the current stable version, which is a little better than 11 times the performer of Internet Explorer 7 in Vista (the slowest browser we test, on the slowest platform).

By comparison, the latest alpha version (not yet accounting for "public" comments, at least not officially) of Firefox 3.7 scored a 12.95 on the same tests. The very latest dev build of Google Chrome (4.0.266.0) scored a 20.56, while Internet Explorer 8's score remains mired at 1.54. Again, these are the Windows 7 scores, and do not yet take into account Vista and Windows XP performance.

Our test suite, however, does not yet take account of asynchronous scripting. It's a feature that has yet to be seen in many Web pages and services yet, though Google is actually making some headway here. Last December 1, Google began offering an asynchronous tracking script for servers to add to their Web pages. In announcing the feature, Google Analytics team member Brian Kuhn credited Firefox 3.6 as the browser making this feature possible.

:source: Source: Firefox Passes IE In Usage | Firefox Beta
:view: Homepage: Firefox Beta Page | Firefox
:pic: Screenshots: Firefox Beta Crash

Nice!! I don´t use IE since almost 3 years and very happy with Firefox although it use a lot of RAM.

I would love to use Firefox but if I leave it idle for any length of time, it crashes. Nothing seems to fix the problem despite lengthy research online. Chrome can't read enough pages properly. Hopefully one of these browsers will put out a stable efficient version someday and I won't have to rely on IE. But alas, I've been saying that since IE5....

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Originally Posted by unclemilty74

I would love to use Firefox but if I leave it idle for any length of time, it crashes.

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Tried reformatting? A FF crash for me and many others is very rare. Has to be some kind of underlying problem with your setup.

I think I've never had FF crash or Chrome for that matter. Must be some underlying prob.

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Originally Posted by jedispork

Quote:

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Originally Posted by unclemilty74

I would love to use Firefox but if I leave it idle for any length of time, it crashes.

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Tried reformatting? A FF crash for me and many others is very rare. Has to be some kind of underlying problem with your setup.

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When it crashes you have the option to send them a bug report...it wills end the dump so they can see what's 'casuing in it :) Fucken Chrome decided to use it tonight now all the writing is tiny :lol:

IE still has 45+% of the market compared to FF's 22+/-%.

That's gonna change, just give it some time.

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Originally Posted by Skiz

IE still has 45+% of the market compared to FF's 22+/-%.

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That would change if FF came preintalled or at lest a option in M$ Alot of people don't know about FF,opera,chrome ....

Or they know about it but not where/how to install it just like most crap that come bundled with M$

^True. I still find it appalling that M$ has been forced to remove IE from copies of their own software in Europe.

What? I thought internet explorer was instinct

Although firefox nice, but I still choose IE