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Firefox Popularity Waning?


V.T. Eric Layton

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While Mozilla has hopes to become a mobile operating power with Firefox OS, it's made little progress against the two mobile operating system giants: Google with Android and Apple with iOS.

 

This may be part of the problem. While Firefox is a great browser, Mozilla is devoting resources into developing a mobile operating system when they could instead be devoting those resources to making Firefox the best browser out there.

 

Why is Chrome beating firefox? Why does IE still have such a large share? These are the questions Mozilla should be asking.

 

Adam

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This may be part of the problem. While Firefox is a great browser, Mozilla is devoting resources into developing a mobile operating system when they could instead be devoting those resources to making Firefox the best browser out there.

 

Why is Chrome beating firefox? Why does IE still have such a large share? These are the questions Mozilla should be asking.

 

Adam

I think the answer about IE is the large number of users who simply use what comes on their system, and for all of them that would be IE. Never used Chrome, so don't have an opinion there. :P
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Although the "Other" browser number hasn't increased a lot, it has gone from 0.39% to 0.41%. From the number of people I've encountered in forums, I'll bet that 0.03% are Pale Moon users. As far as I'm concerned, Firefox's reputation has been tarnished by a lot more than ads and the CEO nonsense. I know I certainly became disenchanted with the rapid release cycle, changes that do not seem to have any legitimate purpose (e.g., the change to the search function in Firefox Version 25.0 resulting in the "find bar" is no longer shared between tabs) and, most recently, Australis, which people either love or hate.

 

As to the increase in Chrome users, how much can be attributed to the pre-checked options to install Chrome and Google Toolbar with the Adobe Flash Player installer? Want Google Earth, Ad-Aware, Any Video Converter or RealPlayer? They include Chrome pre-checked. (Avast includes Chrome too but at least it isn't pre-checked.) So, folks who don't pay attention get another browser with the software they install and contribute to the increase in Chrome's numbers..

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Probably quite a few are getting the browser and don't even know it, but if that were the case, it would not show up in the web stats. ;)

 

Adam

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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, personally speaking, FF became a little less popular for me because I'm just sick and tired of the bloat, the resource hogging, and the crashes. I've experienced none of that, not a whit, with Chromium/Chrome.

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I remember back when Netscape was still around and everything was bloated. Then all of a sudden Phoenix came out. It was super light, and extremely fast. I left the old browsers behind very quickly. Then Phoenix became firebird, and then Firefox. Firefox was great for a long time, then started to have issues and become more bloated. This seems familiar, right?

 

Adam

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V.T. Eric Layton

Yes. It does seem familiar. It's the same thing that happens to Americans as they age. They start off quick and slim and end up slow and bloated. :(

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I'm using Palemoon but I suspect that when I go to a website, I'm identified as running Win 7 and the Mozilla engine so wouldn't Palemoon and Firefox be lumped together as FF?

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Guest LilBambi

Quite so as it's the gecko engine as well and likely identifying it as such.

 

But Palemoon still opens/loads faster than Firefox. Maybe Firefox should have hired Moonchild. ;)

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V.T. Eric Layton

You can check to see how your browser is identifying itself to websites (user agent) by clicking here --> http://whatsmyuseragent.com/

 

Here's what mine looks like...

 

Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux x86_64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.153 Safari/537.36

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V.T. Eric Layton

It can't get it wrong. That website just reads your user agent string directly from your browser's page request. If it's wrong, your browser is lying. ;)

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I remember back when Netscape was still around and everything was bloated. Then all of a sudden Phoenix came out. It was super light, and extremely fast. I left the old browsers behind very quickly. Then Phoenix became firebird, and then Firefox. Firefox was great for a long time, then started to have issues and become more bloated. This seems familiar, right?

 

Adam

 

Either you were looking over my shoulder, Adam, or I was looking over yours because I did the exact same thing! :D

 

UserAgent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1; WOW64; rv:24.0) Gecko/20140610 Firefox/24.0 PaleMoon/24.6.2

 

It correctly saw the ESR 24 that Pale Moon is built from.

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<meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=no" />

 

Telling me to use this .Dunno why . Swings and roundabouts

 

Then this

  1. IE.gif You!! Mozilla/5.0 (X11; Linux i686; rv:30.0) Gecko/20100101 Firefox/30.0

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V.T. Eric Layton

Well, it got your flag right. :)

 

You're running 32 bit Linux using the newest FF.

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V.T. Eric Layton

Maybe your browser is blocking something because this is what that page should look like...

 

Kk2oqC8.png

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Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; Intel Mac OS X 10_9_4) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/35.0.1916.153 Safari/537.36

 

Looks right for me. :)

 

Adam

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A firewall will not block browser user agent data. That data is part of the standard handshaking with a web server. EVERY web server knows what browsers are accessing it.

 

Adam

 

Ninja Edit: Unless you instruct the browser to lie.

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A firewall will not block browser user agent data. That data is part of the standard handshaking with a web server. EVERY web server knows what browsers are accessing it.

 

Adam

 

Ninja Edit: Unless you instruct the browser to lie.

The old Konqueror used to let you choose your user agent. Seems to me there used to be a FF plugin to do that too.
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I feel serious trouble on my horizon . FF30. is taking ages to load the main page and the tabs are crawling , Not the zapper it was yesterday .

I'll know for sure tomorrow . It could be my ISP is messin about .

 

Cant find anything on Mozzie's site that may indicate problems with the browser .

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