Firefox momentum
Paul Thurrott writes about Firefox:
The browser wars are back, and this time it’s personal: Upstart Web browser maker Mozilla Foundation now expects its surging Firefox browser to command 10 percent of the Web browser market by the end of 2005. “I think we’ll get to 10 percent over the next year,” a Mozilla Foundation spokesperson told ZDNET this week. “We don’t have 10 percent of the Web at the moment, but we have the momentum.”
I guess the readers of this blog are ahead of the curve. Nearly 25% of my site traffic comes from Firefox.
In fact, I use Firefox as my primary browser. I don’t agree with Paul T. that IE is “bug-laden and insecure.” Firefox crashes about as often as IE6 on my machines, which is to say not very often. Thankfully, I don’t have to choose one or the other on the basis of stability. And SP2 has taken care of most of the security issues with IE.
I think Firefox is more usable, and I absolutely love the extensibility model, which lets anyone write an extension that can add a feature to the browser. Tabbed browsing? Love it. Support for Blogger? Great. An extension that lets me right-click a page or a link to open it in IE? That’s smart. See the whole list here.
A lot of people are painting this as a battle between evil, incompetent Microsoft and a bunch of upstart genius programmers. I see it a little differently. The Firefox team has built a better browser. It works well with Windows. And they’re doing a great job of listening to their customers and improving it. That makes me appreciate Windows as a platform even more.
If you haven’t tried Firefox yet, I recommend it. More info and download links here.
