Asa Dotzler: Firefox and more

Too bad that, for nearly half the world, "Firefox Tuesday" occurs either on Wednesday, or after they've gone to bed on Tuesday night. Marketing was a little off there.

Firefox 3 should have been made available Tuesday morning at either 00:00 GMT or 00:00 PST. I'm sure you all have very good reasons (or at least I sure hope you do) for delaying it for ~10 hours, but from a global perspective, SFO centric 10am PST is just plain silly.

Please don't get me wrong. Since early Phoenix days, I've used the browser and reported bugs, and will continue to do so. Just pointing out that some of this could have been better from the "customer" perspective (and I think you would have set an even higher download record).

Uhm, no matter what time you pick, half the world will have gone to sleep. For instance, had they picked "your" more appropriate time of 00:00 PST, I would have been in bed.

Sean, you can't avoid that - and I dare say it doesn't matter. What you can avoid is advertising that "Firefox is coming on Tuesday", when for a good percentage of the world, they won't be able to download it until Wednesday.

Ah, I missed your point.

spreadfirefox.com is giving mysql errors, guess nobody bothered to check if the site will be able to take the load.

one suggestion, spreadfirefox.com should be temporarily replaced with a static page linking to the firefox-3 download during download day

Looks like mozilla.com is down!

Error message:

Http/1.1 Service Unavailable

Incidently, this site claimed Firefox 3 to be availble from 5pm

http://www.mozilla-europe.org clearly has Firefox 2 available and it's 5.55pm here

What a screw up!

It's been released

We need a set of valid URLs (that point to different/balanced) servers.

spreadfirefox.com and getfirefox.com are just getting hammered. I fear that once some folks get it, they'll redistribute it from somewhere else, and folks will go to get it from there instead, thus not get counted. :-(

IMHO, there should be 1 site name (e.g. spreadfirefox.com) that just does redirection to 1 of 25?, 50? other servers, to present download options, that in turn point to dozens and dozens of separate distributed download servers.

@Lizzard: 5.55pm pm here? Where is here?

@chief dan: Don't use the ftp - those don't count towards the record.

@Steve:
HTTP (Win) : http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=win&%20lang=en-US
HTTP (Mac) : http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=osx&lang=en-US
HTTP (Linux): http://download.mozilla.org/?product=firefox-3.0&os=linux&%20lang=en-US

421 There are too many connected users, please try later

so much for the world record. I think the record is that all mozilla sites I know are down. Sounds like a wanted DDoS attack!!

Same with me. I can't reach Getfirefox.com. Bad, Really bad.

I just got through to http://www.mozilla-europe.org/de/products/firefox/, which offers Firefox 2.0.0.14. Like I said: Bad, really bad.

So... why does Mozilla.com still have Firefox 2.0.0.14 all over it? A small static page with download links, MD5 hashes, and a link to the rest of the site would have been much better.

Too bad servers are overloaded - try this address:
http://releases.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/releases/3.0/

This thing really sucks big time. You and your bouncer! Everyone knew the servers would be overloaded but oh no... let's play the PRIDE game and set some friggin' record. Try setting up mirror sites. All I've gotten so far is a fat pain in the ass.

What's going on? The official Mozilla Blog says the download counting hasn't actually started yet...?
http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/2008/06/17/firefox-3-coming-soon/

Hmm, getfirefox.com says FF3 but links to FF2, and has a CVS conflict in the header...

I'd definitely recommend throwing up something on the official blog and mozillazine asap, because lots of people are going to be confused.

So WHERE does one GET FF 3???????????? You'd think if they were serious about setting some record, they'd provide the URL; the CORRECT URL.

The best I can find is "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable"

:-(

en-GB version done and dusted from mozilla-europe.org

Well...I give up. I've wasted enough of my time on this poorly co-ordinated fiasco.

I´ve tried this one and worked: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/

that just redirects me to-- http://download.mozilla.org ... which doesn't resolve in dns.

Some downloads should come with fresh nappies, dummies, and bibs...I've never seen so much whining in my life! Cranky much? Time for a nap.

I just downloaded with no problem. If there would have been one, I simply would have tried again later.

Congrats to Mozilla for the fine software!

Even after 3 hrs, I still get directed to 2.0.0.14 link.
Seriously, this is a shame.

I just could recommend all of you to first clear all your browser cache, then go again to getfirefox.com. As of now, and after approximately 90 minutes of downtime, I can get to mozilla.com, getfirefox.com and spreadfirefox.com. I think we should understand downtime was caused by all the enthusiasm in getting a Firefox copy. Even if they started to make the update live at 0000 UTC, there would be TONS of people trying to download no matter what. This was VERY expected, coming from someone who has already survived two Ubuntu releases.

Thanks Asa and Mozilla for such a great day for FOSS enthusiasts worldwide! The certificate PDF is a nice touch.

At 11:14 PM on the 17th of June... I got it here in Almere, The Netherlands :-) Cool.

Finally got hold of it! What a chore!

One thing though...

This new feature called 'Places'...

...why is the places window headed up 'Library' ??

Well.. I finally got something. The question is... is it still the RC or is it the final? The problem is... when I went to About FF in the RC there was nothing indicating it was a Release Candidate. Now that I click on About FF in this, it's the exact same thing. So... how does one know?

RC2 and RC3 on Windows and Linux, is the same build as Final, no reason to update, only download ;)

RC3 on Mac, is the same build as Final.

Yes, Firefox 3 is certainly better and faster than its predecessor and makes Explorer look even more like a pedal-powered relic. However, no-one seems to notice that Apple's Safari leaves them all in its dust. I just tested Firefox 3 against Safari 3.1.1 on my iMac G5 Intel. Over three attempts, Firefox took 8-10 seconds to launch, then a further 7-8 seconds to open a bookmarked BBC weather site, while Safari launched almost instantly (1+ seconds) and opened the same BBC page in a further 4 seconds.