By Andy McCue, 25 January 2005 16:00
NEWS A fifth of the UK's 35 million business and home internet users are predicted to switch from Microsoft's Internet Explorer (IE) browser to Mozilla's open source Firefox product before the end of the year, according to a new report.
Consulting firm BDO Stoy Hayward claims figures from some sources in the US of over 20 per cent of internet users converting from IE to Firefox could easily be replicated in the UK because of increasing concerns over security and privacy.
Dr Peter Chadha, technology expert at BDO Stoy Hayward's business systems advice group, said the innovation and security of Firefox is a significant development for both business and home users.
"Firefox isn't totally secure as no browser can be, especially if it runs on Windows, which is the world's top digital target. But, in short, Firefox has better security and privacy, and we are actively working with clients to reduce their IT costs by incorporating Firefox into their environments," he said in a statement.
He also accused Microsoft of letting IE become out of date since the last major upgrade to the browser with version 6 in 2001.
A US study from earlier this week also shows Firefox continuing to gain market share at the expense of IE. Online measurement company WebSideStory found Firefox use among surfers rose to 4.78 per cent from December and January.
However, while IE usage declined 0.7 per cent, it still retains a massive dominant share of the market at 92.7 per cent.
Comments
There are 26 comments. Join the discussion
1. Ryan Fisher
Being a web designer i know that Mozilla Firefox is a very bad browser. If you visit www.Rysin.info in IE and compare it to viewing it on Firefox, spot the difference next to the header. This is because if you insert a paragraph into a dreamweaver document, and add something into it; and Dreamweaver re-sizes the paragraph automatically, Mozilla Firefox only reads the size that has been inputed, not the new size that dreamweaver made auomatically.
2. Joel Watson
wow... 4.78%! look out bill, almost 1 in 20 people uses Firefox now... it won't be long before you're bankrupt!
what a load of nonsense. honestly, IE still has over 90% of the market share, and the simple fact of the matter is, it works. not only that, but it is there, as soon as you have installed windows. How do you reckon 90% of these people obtained firefox? by downloading it in IE! no IE = no firefox. come on people, use your brain.
3. Niall Flaherty
Web Designers should work to meet full compliance with w3c, not expect Dreamweaver to take care of it for them.
Mozilla (Safari/Firefox) is most compliant. IE just what we're used to. We should expect better, now we can.
You should expect next version of Dreamweaver to be heavily revamped for Firefox!
4. Joel Watson
wow... 4.78%! look out bill, almost 1 in 20 people uses Firefox now... it won't be long before you're bankrupt!
what a load of nonsense. honestly, IE still has over 90% of the market share, and the simple fact of the matter is, it works. not only that, but it is there, as soon as you have installed windows. How do you reckon 90% of these people obtained firefox? by downloading it in IE! no IE = no firefox. come on people, use your brain.
5. Eric Mitchell
check it out Ryan, they fixed the problem, could you supply another example, instead?
6. anonymous
Ive noticed the same with firefox, a lot of my asp applications, dont display properley in firefox, but in ie they do.
i have several people using it around our office, 50% of them use both browsers for the above reason, and i know it least 1 person who stopped using it as it completely crashed his system.
one more thing, firefox is being compared against IE, what about the AOL users, slightly different i know but still something to think about
7. richard westlake
Is this an IE or Mozilla problem, how do other browsers display www.Rysin.info
Was this caused by Mozilla Firefox failing to follow the published standards or does IE differ in interpretation or compliance to the standards?
Try submitting the page to some of the html validation service, for example
http://validator.w3.org/
8. Dan
I'm a PROFESSIONAL web developer (i.e. I do it for a living and not just work on a cheesy personal site on a dodgy version of Dreamweaver) and know that although Firefox has a few flaws, at least it has had some rendering engine development in the last 4 years.
Some lazy web developers complain things sometimes don't look right in Firefox, but that's because they can't code properly. IE tolerates bad code to a shocking degree - Firefox is less tolerant.
More people using Firefox will hopefully mean web developers going back to basics and writing better code.
9. Ryan Burrows
lol wow Ryan, firefox displays web pages as they were made. If a web page is not displaying correctly, it is not in compliance with standards. Out of compliance = crappy web designer = you. Sorry, but I guess you just suck at web design if you couldn't figure out a simple fact like that. I sure hope nobody is paying you.
10. aasgier
support firefox make a donation
www.steunfirefox.nl
Thanks
11. The Crowbar
I dunno.
www.Rysin.info looked almost identical to me in FireFox and IE.
However, as soon as I ran IE I caught 18 spywares and was infected by a virus, so I am now at the local library writing this message since my computer is dead.
12. anonymous
Richard is onto something. The validation check at W3C says:
This page is not Valid HTML 4.01 Transitional!
There are 12 errors in it!
13. anonymous
Your web page is not not Valid HTML 4.01 code.
Checking your page at http://validator.w3.org/ shows 12 seperate incidents of violation of the HTML 4.01 standards and recommendations.
14. SmartITGuy
That's like complaining that Quicktime
can't play WMV files properly.
Or that it's SUN's fault that some java applets only work using
Microsoft's JVM engine.
If the webpage was written with W3C compliant HTML, then Mozilla will show
the page properly.
Don't blame Mozilla for Microsoft's
poisoning the internet with it's own proprietary HTML standard.
It's not Mozilla's fault they are not helping to perpetuate Microsoft's
non-compliant standards.
Anyone that creates webpages that can only be viewed with Internet Explorer
is a complete loser who doesn't deserve the web traffic of SMARTER
users!
Anyone that won't write W3C compliant
webpages should not be in the
programming business.
15. SmartITGuy
Joel Watson said "Come on people use your head"
Hmmm...
Which do I use?
Mozilla/Firefox/Thunderbird...?
OR
I can use Internet Exploder, Outlook,
AND Spybot Search and Destroy,
AdAware, ZoneAlarm, and Antivirus
software?
THAT is the no-brainer question!!!
16. d_sticks
hi Joel Watson,
i downloaded mine off Mozilla 1.7, and no, i didn't use IE to download mozilla, i used Netscape off my linux box.
Get real, there are numerous ways to download Firefox.
-Sticks
17. anonymous
Agree with all the 'bad workman & Tools' comments above, if you code correctly you should be able to get everything to work correctly in all browsers give or take a pixel or two.
But on the extra's supplied in Firefox ... isn't this EXACTLY what microsoft is being put through the ringer for - supplying free extra's with their operating systems??? Will I be able to replace the FireFox pop-up blocker with the Google one easilly enough ? etc ...
Like the idea of FireFox coming along :), hate the idea that we have yet another browser to have to check stuff in :(.
18. Joel Watson
d_sticks:
Isn't it lucky that everyone who uses the internet is as savvy as yourself and uses unix? oh no wait... the vast vast majority are not and use windows. ho-hum
SmartITguy:
Do you not use/recommend using and AV solution then? not concerned about any spyware inadvertently downloaded? well more fool you.
19. Goten Xiao
Ryan; no web CODER in their right mind would use Dreamweaver for the final product. I refer you to these links:
http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//www.rysin.info/
http://jigsaw.w3.org/css-validator/validator?profile=css2&warning=2&uri=http%3A//www.rysin.info/
The reason you consider Firefox "bad" is because IE actually forgoes standards compliance. Firefox doesn't.
Incidentally, use CSS for the margin attributes. And while you're at it, look into converting your site to XHTML.
Now stop spreading false rumours, and look into using a decent editor for HTML editing (e.g. a simple text editor).
20. Roy Judd
You might be interested to know that Opera doesn't display any Silicon pages correctly, but "Hey... who cares?" Firefox is simply a better browser; nobody claimed it to be perfect.
21. Nick Quanantti
Not so smart, SmartITGuy.
Are you not using anti-virus or spybot awareness programs?
You must do this with WHATEVER OS/Browser combination you may be using or your computer could be hijacked by virus writers.
By not having these protections it sounds like you're part of the problem.
Disconnect and sort yourself out.
22. anonymous
So: Joel works in 'support' & recommends Microsoft? Trying to keep himself in work, I think!
23. Steve Willetts
JOEL: Surely almost 5% loss of market share is considerable when you have dominated a market for over 10 years? The reason Internet Explorer is dominant is because your average PC user has had no choice in the past as IE has been forced upon them. Freedom of choice creates more competition which in turn challenges Microsofts dominance which has got to be a good thing.
24. Ian Savell
Whatever the purists may say, the fact is a browser has to work with the web pages that are out there.
I use Firefox for all my general browsing but have to keep IE around for the many useful commercial sites that only work with IE. Strangely I've noticed that things usually go wrong when you get into the secure area of the site - to pay for instance. The risk of losing 5% of their sales might just make them fix things.
Interestingly, most Microsoft sites seem to work with Firefox - there's a business that knows how to keep market share!
25. Keith Miller
I wish Mozilla well but ..... it is still immature ... try sending an e-mail from Hotmail while using it and see what a mess it has made of your address list as an example !!
26. anonymous
Firefox does have a problem with Hotmail. It won't empty the junk folder correctly and has some other problems. I still like it better, though. MS has just distorted the standards beyond all recognition.