Earlier in November, Firefox surpassed 25 percent usage share of Web browsers, according to Net Applications.
(Credit: Net Applications)Mozilla released a third beta of Firefox 3.6 on Wednesday, adding stability and performance features, and said it hopes to lock down the code soon for its first release candidate.
The new beta, for Windows, Mac, and Linux, includes a component directory lockdown that makes it harder for other software to meddle with the open-source browser's state by preventing that software from sidling into the same folder as the browser's own components. The result should be fewer crashes, said Mozilla's Johnathan Nightingale in a blog post, and Firefox still is open to third-party extensions via its official add-on mechanism.
The change should improve security, too, added another Mozilla programmer, Vladimir Vukecevic, who wrote in his own blog post that Mozilla is considering bringing the change to Firefox 3.5, too.
"Creating binary components to interface with the operating system or with other applications is fairly straightforward, though ultimately dangerous. Binary components have full access to the application and OS, and so can impact stability, security, and performance," Vukecevic said.
Also in the latest beta of 3.6 is a feature that lets the browser run some Web-based JavaScript programs asynchronously, which is to say without being so picky about the order the scripts run. This can improve the speed that Web pages load, Mozilla said.
The biggest Firefox 3.6 feature most folks will notice is Personas, the reskinning add-on that's now being built in. More than 10 million Personas have been downloaded so far, Suneel Gupta and Myk Melez of the Personas team said Wednesday.
Mozilla is working to release a final version of Firefox 3.6 before the end of the year, and one sign the project is wrapping up is that the developers are locking down the features and changes that can be added into the release candidate 1. Code freeze for RC1 is scheduled for Wednesday but might be at risk, a Mozilla planning site said this week.
Firefox is steadily gaining in use. Last week, Web traffic monitoring firm Net Applications announced Firefox cleared 25 percent share of those using browsers worldwide--not dethroning Internet Explorer by any means but still winning over new users. Mozilla estimates there are more than 300 million Firefox users total, and this week said there are more than 300,000 testers using the Firefox 3.6 beta
Google's Chrome, meanwhile, is appealing to some of the same browser enthusiasts who were Firefox's first users. One of its big selling points is speed, and Google is working on other ways to make the Web faster, too. Chrome gives it a vehicle to test such ideas out in the real world, a strategy that Apple, Opera, and Firefox have employed to advance the Web state of the art.
One Mozilla programmer, Alexander Limi, revealed a speedup technology called Resource Package for Mozilla, too, on Tuesday. His proposal calls for bundling many Web page elements up into a single compressed file that can be retrieved in a single Web-page request action. Browsers are limited in the number of such actions they can take in parallel, so consolidating the interactions can make pages load faster. The approach is backwards compatible with existing browsers that don't support the feature, he added.
"If the feedback is good we're likely to try and get this implemented for Firefox 3.7," said Mozilla evangelist Christopher Blizzard in a blog post Tuesday.
Google's Chrome is still the fourth-place browser in terms of usage, but it gained more than others in October when it comes to stealing usage away from the dominant Internet Explorer.
According to Net Applications' browser usage share statistics, Chrome gained from 3.2 percent to 3.6 percent from September 2009 to October. The company bases its statistics on visits to a global network of 40,000 Web sites, dusted with some statistical processing.
Next was Mozilla's Firefox, which rose from 23.8 percent to 24.1 percent. Apple's Safari rose from 4.2 percent to 4.4 percent. Opera was essentially flat at 2.2 percent.
The big loser was IE, which dropped from 65.7 percent to 64.6 percent, according to the statistics.
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Mozilla's open-source Firefox browser has gained 30 million users over the past eight weeks, as it continues to gain on Internet Explorer.
Chief Executive John Lilly revealed the increase in user adoption in a Twitter post on Monday, and Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, confirmed it to ZDNet UK on Tuesday.
"We've seen a significant increase in the number of users for Firefox," Nitot said. "Firefox checks for new versions every 24 hours, when it's running, and when it checks, it pings the Mozilla server. We count the number of pings."
Read more of "Firefox gains 30m users in eight weeks" at ZDNet UK.
From August (top) to September (below), Internet Explorer lost a bit of usage share compared with rival browsers.
(Credit: Net Applications)All four of Internet Explorer's main rivals gained a larger share of users worldwide from August to September, new statistics show.
According to Net Applications, which tracks browser usage globally through a network of 40,000 Web sites and some statistical processing, IE slipped from 67 percent to 65.7 percent of users.
Firefox has steadily won over more users since version 1.0 arrived nearly five years ago, and it continued the trend with an increase from 23 percent to 23.8 percent. Apple's Safari rose from 4.1 percent to 4.2 percent, Google Chrome from 2.8 percent to 3.2 percent, and Opera from 2 to 2.2 percent. Although a few tenths of a percent may sound small, multiplied by the millions of browser users over the Internet, it can mean a large absolute number of people.
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Net Applications changed its methodology, with Apple faring worse in the new statistics and Opera and Chrome getting a boost. These figures are for July.
(Credit: Net Applications)Apple's share of the installed base of Web browsers has plunged in half--but because of a methodology at a firm that produces the statistics rather than anything Apple or computer users did.
Net Applications, which compiles statistics based on the 160 million unique visits to a network of 40,000 Web sites using its analytics service, dramatically lowered Apple's browser share when the firm concluded its methodology needed refining. Specifically, the company concluded that there was a disconnect between visits to its site network and actual Web use in some areas such as China, said Vincent Vizzaccaro, executive vice president of marketing.
To try to better reflect reality, the company adjusted its statistics through use of the CIA's estimates of Internet population, according to its explanation. Consequently the company took a month to change course then released updated statistics from May and earlier that dramatically changed some figures.
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Apple gave up a sliver of Internet market share last month, according to preliminary figures released Sunday by Web metrics company Net Applications.
February figures from Net Applications on operating system share amid Internet use.
(Credit: Net Applications)The Mac OS had been hovering around the 10 percent mark among operating systems accessing the Web. But in its Operating System Market Share report for February, Net Applications showed the Mac OS at 9.71 percent, down from 9.93 percent in January. Meanwhile, Microsoft Windows' Internet share increased to 89.37 percent from 88.26 percent in January.
February figures from Net Applications on Windows 7 beta usage.
(Credit: Net Applications)In a separate report, Net Applications reported spikes in usage share of Windows 7--the follow-on to Windows Vista potentially due out later this year--after Microsoft released the public beta of the operating system in January. In the report, Net Applications attributed these spikes to weekend users:
Similar to Windows Vista, Windows 7 usage share is showing a pattern of being much higher on weekends than on weekdays. In contrast, Windows XP has an inverse trendline. XP's share is higher on weekdays due to Microsoft's relatively high business vs. residential share of Windows XP.This is an indication of strong interest in Windows 7, since it does not come pre-installed on a computer like Vista. Beta users are taking the time and effort to install it on their home computers, since corporations generally prohibit beta operating systems to be used in production environments.
February figures from Net Applications on mobile browsing market share.
(Credit: Net Applications)In the mobile browsing arena, Net Applications reported that it had taken its first detailed look at market share and pronounced Apple's iPhone as having a "commanding lead" with 66.61 percent of the market. But, Net Applications noted, "Android and BlackBerry are rapidly gaining market share. This does not mean that iPhone web browsing is shrinking, because the overall market is growing rapidly."
Upstart Android, which Google released in October, came in fourth with 6.15 percent, following No. 2 Java ME's 9.06 percent and No. 3 Windows Mobile's 6.91 percent.
MapQuest has forestalled Google Maps' steady encroachment on its online mapping market share over 2008--for now.
"In late December, it looked like Google Maps was ready to overtake MapQuest," said Hitwise analyst Heather Hopkins in a blog post Wednesday. But MapQuest has added some new features in recent months, "perhaps...helping MapQuest regain a foothold," she said.
Google Maps has steadily carved away MapQuest market share in the U.S., but hasn't attained the No. 1 spot.
(Credit: Hitwise)By February 7, MapQuest had 39.5 percent online mapping visits in the United States, compared to 35.7 percent for Google, Hitwise said.
MapQuest gets most of its traffic directly from its own site, but Google Maps gets a lot of traffic from small maps blended into Google's search results. "Sixty-one percent of visits to Google Maps came directly from Google last week," Hopkins said. And perhaps needless to say, Google remains the dominant search company by far, vastly outpacing AOL, which operates MapQuest and actually relies on Google for its own search results.
MapQuest is adding more new features, too. It plans to widen the map on its new map-focused site and add local blog feeds to its MapQuest Local site, for example.
The iPhone has risen to prominence on Flickr, rivaling most SLRs in popularity. These statistics from Yahoo cover the last 12 months.
(Credit: Yahoo)
The iPhone is the mobile device of choice these days for doing most things that need a network. So it shouldn't be a surprise that the phone has carved out a prominent place on Yahoo's photo-sharing site, Flickr.
The Flickr Camera Finder, Yahoo's statistical counter of camera use among its members, shows that since the arrival of the iPhone 3G model earlier this year, the phone has vaulted not only over all other camera phones, trouncing the Nokia N95 in second place, but also almost all ordinary cameras.
That's a notable accomplishment. I've been watching the Flickr Camera Finder for two years, and that's the first time I recall a camera phone placing so highly. The top ranks have been dominated by SLRs, the camera of choice for many of Flickr's heaviest users.
With the debut of the 3G model, Apple's iPhone surged to a commanding lead among camera phones used at Flickr. These statistics from Yahoo cover the last 12 months.
(Credit: Yahoo)Right now the iPhone is in a virtual tie with Canon's Rebel XT and Nikon's D80, two SLRs whose popularity is waning with the arrival of newer models from the dominant makers of such cameras. Only Canon's newer Rebel XTi outranks the iPhone.
Though the trajectory is clear, there are caveats. First, Flickr measures popularity on the basis of the number of users who've uploaded a photo on a given day. In other words, the camera used by a person who uploads one photo a day will fare better than one who uploads 100 pictures one day a month. Second, many camera phones don't identify themselves to Flickr, so their use isn't logged. Last, these statistics fluctuate daily, and who knows what kind of anomalous behavior is going on during the holidays.
The total number of photos uploaded from the Rebel XTi is about 51 million, compared with 5.8 million for the iPhone. However, there are nearly 3,000 people uploading daily from their iPhone compared with about 6,500 for the XTi.
My guess is the iPhone's better-than-average network abilities are responsible for the prominence. For the same reason, iPhone users also use Google Maps and other online services more than most mobile device users. The BlackBerry is good at e-mail, but the Internet has other attractions.
What's more interesting is extrapolating from the trend. Certainly the iPhone's image quality doesn't hold a candle to even old point-and-shoots, much less new SLRs, but the phone taps straight into the social features of Flickr--the ability to photographically share with friends and family what's going on in your life, for example. There are innumerable expert photographers at Flickr, but it looks like the yet larger herd of ordinary snapshooters are going to leave them in the dust once liberated with the ability to post pictures at will.
I sent my iPhone photos to Flickr using the site's upload-by-e-mail service (see Yahoo's instructions), but there are several iPhone applications that will do it for you if you prefer. Apple's photo e-mailing software scales photos to 640x480, but I don't mind, given feeble image quality and the unlikelihood that these shots will ever make their way beyond a computer screen.
Search queries served by Yahoo's BOSS service have been steadily growing since the program's July launch.
(Credit: Yahoo)Yahoo's BOSS (Build Your Own Search Service), which lets others use the company's search technology, is getting some traction.
The service, announced in July, now handles 10 million queries per day, Yahoo announced Monday. And with Google still king of the heap, and Microsoft breathing down Yahoo's neck, the company needs every scrap of influence it can get in the search market.
"We believe growing to more than 100 queries a second in just over 5 months says something about the demand for an open search platform," Bill Michels of the BOSS Team said in a blog post.
"As a point of reference, the total queries from these developer-built, BOSS-powered search engines would rank ahead of the combined searches done on both Facebook and Amazon, and just behind Ask.com," Michels said, citing ComScore statistics.
BOSS queries don't count toward Yahoo's market share, but they could help the company out. That's because heavy-traffic partners using the search infrastructure must either show Yahoo search ads or sign some form of revenue-sharing partnership.
More changes will come to BOSS next year, including the revenue-sharing initiative. "Since launch, we've been focused on adding features and building up the ecosystem. We'll maintain that emphasis in 2009, as well as adding monetizing capabilities to the platform," Michels said.
With BOSS, partners get extensive leeway with Yahoo search results. They may reorder them, mix them with their own results, or filter out particular results, for example. Yahoo handles much of the heavy lifting, including crawling the Web, indexing the pages, and delivering the search results through the BOSS API (application programming interface).
Chrome doesn't have much market share among CNET News visitors, but it's climbing.
(Credit: CNET News)Is Google's Chrome browser mainstream?
Certainly not. But I've been curious how widespread its use is, in particular because I'm curious if I have any company in my choice to set Chrome as my default browser.
So I persuaded CNET's tech guys to give a window on what's going on here at CNET News. The result surprised me: 3.6 percent of those visiting the site in October used Chrome, up from 1 percent in September, when Google launched Chrome.
That's higher than I expected. It lagged Microsoft Internet Explorer, with 40.7 percent, Firefox with 37.4 percent, and Safari with 18.2 percent, but beat out Opera, with 1.2 percent in October. (Other browsers bring the total to 100 percent.)
Of course, CNET News has a more adventurous and techno-savvy audience than the average Web site. For comparison, I looked at data from Net Applications, which releases browser statistics based on the 160 million different people who visit a network of 40,000 sites using its Web analytics service. The company's data skews somewhat toward usage in North America and Europe, but it's still a more mainstream view of browser use than our site's.
Net Applications gives Chrome's share at 0.74 percent, essentially tied with Opera at 0.75 percent for October. Leading the pack is IE with 71.3 percent, followed by Firefox at 20 percent, and Safari at 6.6 percent.
So it doesn't look like Chrome is crushing either of the major powers. But second-tier browser companies should certainly be paying attention, given how rapidly Chrome ascended to striking distance. Google has a strong brand and a lot of programmers, even though most folks still aren't convinced they need to switch.
Chrome is rarer, with 0.74 percent share, in Net Applications' measurements of millions of browser users.
(Credit: Net Applications)
