

Why you (probably) won’t be using Firefox a while from now - emontero1
http://www.rahulgaitonde.org/2009/07/06/why-you-probably-wont-be-using-firefox-a-while-from-now/

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semiquaver
This assertion is made almost entirely without support.

A good counterexample to his argument is Firefox itself.

(edit: although I do see HTML5 as being a potential threat to firefox and open
source browsers in general if h.264 becomes the dominant codec for <video>,
but this is another matter)

~~~
zimbabwe
<http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp>

Firefox is currently the most popular, yes, but Chrome's been growing
(slightly) faster and it's still in beta, not to mention it has the full
support of Google behind it. How profitable would Mozilla be if it wasn't
being paid by Google? (That's not snark, that's a genuine question that I
don't know the answer to.)

You can't offer Firefox as a counterargument when his point is that _soon_
Firefox will begin to slip. Right now, it's arguably at its peak. It's
competing with two browsers that really are seen as experimental among Windows
users: Chrome is still in beta and doesn't support several things; Safari
really only got production-ready on Windows with its latest version, and Apple
hasn't focused much on promoting it yet. Firefox, meanwhile, has 6 years'
community behind it, and inertia alone states that it'll spread as Internet
Explorer disappears, and IE seems to be quickly dwindling.

The real thing to check is what the early adapters are using: Not the pure
experimentalists but the people who are "browser enthusiasts", the people who
recommend browsers to other people. Three years ago they were all recommending
Firefox, myself included, and now we see Firefox is the dominant browser. Now,
however, all the adapters love Chrome, and the elitist Mac snobs have shifted
from loving Firefox to praising the much more native Safari 4, and for good
reason. If we assume "a while from now" means 5 years, his argument is
correct: Mozilla can't afford to compete with a company as talented,
merciless, and rich as Google.

~~~
calvin
These statistics do not show Firefox is the most popular browser as they are
specific only to W3Schools which is primarily a developer/designer-trafficked
site.

    
    
      The statistics above are extracted from W3Schools' log-files
    

I'd recommend looking at StatCounter's chart of current browser stats (for the
US) as of July 2009 (found this earlier today via TechCrunch):
[http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-US-
monthly-200807...](http://gs.statcounter.com/#browser_version-US-
monthly-200807-200907)

~~~
zimbabwe
Thank you very much for the link! I'd just Google'd "web browser usage" and
took the w3 link.

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evdawg
I'm sorry, but the author is misinformed. His "points" are based on the common
(mistaken) belief that Firefox isn't commercially backed. Firefox _is_
commercially backed, just like Chrome. And he seems to think/imply Chrome
isn't open source. Chrome _is_ open source. Chrome development is very
transparent too.

So this article and the points he's trying to make don't hold up.

~~~
dflock
Correct. Also, a fair bit a the Mozilla Corporations funding comes from their
search box referral kickbacks from Google, ironically.

------
timcederman
I think Chrome and Safari have both got a long way to go until they get the
right mix of usability. I just switched back from Chrome to Firefox 3.5 and
it's like putting on an old pair of very comfortable shoes. Chrome and Safari
are definitely "designer" browsers, while IE is still slow as buggery.

Firefox hits the sweet-spot for me, and just about everyone I know (not just
tech-savvy folk either). So long as they keep improving the way they have, I
think that plus inertia will carry Mozilla for a while to come.

~~~
zimbabwe
I've had the opposite experience: Many frustrated friends have abandoned
Firefox for Safari and Chrome. Very few of my friends ever use add-ons,
either, and that's the only thing Firefox is good for anymore, what with its
shitty UI and relatively mediocre speeds.

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dflock
Ok, I read the 'article' but I'm not sure I agree with the apparent
conclusion, not for the reasons given, anyway.

I'm a linux user and a web developer - and I've already abandoned Firefox for
everything except FireBug - after having used every version of Firefox, on
several platforms, since it was called Phoenix, I just use it as a vehicle for
using Firebug (and occasionally Flash) now.

For everything else, I've switched completely to Chromium (the open source
platform which is released as Google Chrome). Even though it's currently pre-
beta on linux, and doesn't really support plugins yet, it's just such a vast
improvement over FF, I've already completely converted.

Firefox's huge memory issues - regularly sucking up 3Gb+ after a week or two
of use - constant CPU usage (even when idle) general slowness and occasional
instability, make it such a pain in the ass for professional web development
that Chromium coming along was a massive relief. Chromium is _much_ faster
than Firefox and it's process-per-tab model is genius, making transparent the
direct link between tabs and RAM; it also means that it never bogs down, no
matter how many tabs & windows you've got going and closing a tab ends that
process and free's that RAM, unlike Firefox.

I'm running Chromium nightlies from the Ubuntu PPA and it's coming along
rapidly - they've recently made the webkit developer tools available (right
click, Inspect Element), which are nearly as good a firebug, so it won't be
long before I completely phase out Firefox altogether.

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yangyang
It does seem to be rather fashionable to slate Firefox at the moment.

I've tried using Chrome and Safari 4 but have gone back to Firefox (on mac).
It looks fine on a mac with the GrApple themes Fission and the PDF Plugin. The
addons I use are few genuinely useful (lasttab, FireGestures).

Safari still doesn't even remember the tabs I had open last time.

I'm all for competition though, I just don't think that it necessarily means
that Firefox will disappear. IE still has by far the largest share of the
market.

~~~
emontero1
Allow me to suggest Glims. I've been using it for a while now. I can't
understand why Safari doesn't come with Glim's extras by default (e.g. full
screen mode and better tab handling). Anyhow, here's the link:
<http://www.machangout.com/>

Hope it helps.

------
rythie
Last time I checked neither Safari, Chrome or IE ran on Linux. Opera is not in
the Ubuntu repositories. Also I couldn't do without FireBug or AdBlock+. I am
only qualified to speak for myself, but I expect I'll be using Firefox for a
while still.

~~~
jmtulloss
Chrome is in alpha for Linux.

~~~
dflock
And it's excellent and rock solid too. They've started talking about a beta
and marking blocking issues in the public bug tracker:

<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/wiki/LinuxWeeklyNotes>

------
Oompa
I already stopped. Firefox was just too slow after using Safari for a little
bit. Now with Safari 4, it's even speedier, and the web development tools make
a decent replacement for Firebug.

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jakewolf
After upgrading to 3.5 I thought the article was going to be about how memory
problems are getting worse with firefox. It was using over 1gb today!

~~~
semiquaver
Crazy. My instance has been running for days, with dozens of tabs open at once
and I am currently at 89Mb with 4 tabs open at the moment i.e. it scales back
the memory like it should. I've found that memory usage has improved
significantly in recent builds.

If you're using more than a GB under normal conditions there's either
something wrong with one of your extensions or your profile is messed up. Try
starting a new profile with no extensions and see if the problem remains.

