Get it while it's hot! (and in 70 languages!!!)
April 2009 Archives
I spent an hour or two last week re-implementing the Mozilla "hack" artwork. The original art appeared on t-shirts and stickers. Now you can have it on your desktop.
The artwork was originally implemented by BLK/MRKT, Shepard Fairey's previous design firm. The red t-rex, the star, and the "revolution" font make for a compelling call to action and communicate as effectively as I can imagine our shared responsibility as put forth in the Mozilla Manifesto
I've tried to cover the most popular desktop sizes, and a range of 4:3 and 16:9 sizes should be scalable to whatever you're using. But, if I've missed a scale you really want, please let me know.
Deanna and I are in the final stages of purchasing our dream home in the forest.
We're about two weeks from the big move and we're finding ourselves singing the Wizard of Oz's "Lions, and tigers, and bears! Oh, my!" pretty regularly :-)
The 1927 log cabin in the Portola redwoods on the west side of the Santa Cruz Mountains of northern California couldn't be a more perfect spot.
We're half way through the month and I'm ready to make my predictions on what Net Applications will report at the end of the month for April browser share.
This month had a holiday extended weekend for a decent chunk of the world so that's going to favor Firefox somewhat. Firefox always does better than IE on weekends and holidays and we had our best day ever with almost 26% share on Saturday, 4-11. That bodes well for April overall.
Firefox ended March at 22.05% share and I predict it will end April at 22.55% for a gain of half a point.
IE ended March at 66.82% share and I'm predicting they fall 7/10th to 66.12%.
Chrome's March share was 1.23% and I think they'll rise a full 10th of a point to 1.33%.
Safari wrapped March at 8.23% and I think we'll see them end at 8.25% for an essentially flat month.
Opera finished March at 0.70% and will finish April at 0.70% for a genuinely flat month.
Not much excitement there. Now on to some wild speculation :-)
More interesting than Firefox continuing to outpace Chrome by about 4-5x is the arrival of IE8. This time last month, IE8 left beta with 1.33% share and has already climbed to about 3.75% without Windows Update (and as best I can tell, all at the expense of IE7) and will finish the month with about 5% share. Windows Update is scheduled for the end of this month so it's going to be exciting to see where IE 8 goes and whether or not it takes a bite out of anything but IE7.
When IE7 shipped, IE 6 had about 80% of the market. After a couple of Windows Update pushes over the span of two years (first one requiring WGA, second not) IE7 was able to pull in about 45 points directly from IE6. Now we're about to witness the Windows Update with IE7 at 45% and I don't think they'll do a lot better at migrating that audience than they did the last. I expect we'll see them take roughly half of the IE7 users in the first 3 or 4 months after Windows Update. After that, I think it's going to be slower going for them.
This puts the Web in a very different position than it was just a couple of years ago. In just a few months, we're going to see IE users split across three versions, likely with IE8 and IE7 each holding about 25% and IE6 holding about 15%. Firefox will have pretty much all of its 24% on Firefox 3.0, and Safari will be trailing back around 10%.
If things go as they have in the past, by the end of this year, we're likely to see IE8 and Firefox 3.5 leading the Web with 30% and 27% respectively, IE7 and IE6 next with about 10-15 points each, and Safari+Chrome+Opera rounding out the back with a combined 10-15%
We're really coming to the end of the majority browser era, and quickly. Good times!
The latest update I heard was that we currently have 70 locales participating in our upcoming Firefox 3.5 beta. That's just phenomenal. Congratulations to Seth, Axel, the rest of the team, and especially to all the locale teams.
Watching Bill Moyers Journal this morning, a program called The Legacy of President Abraham Lincoln, I happened to see for the first time a photograph of Horace Greeley the famed editor and politician.
Little did I know that on this morning I'd be witness to the fall of Henry David Thoreau from his long-standing neck beard championship.
Just compare and I'm sure you'll agree.
Henry David Thoreau
Horace Greeley
And just in case you still doubt the greatness of Greeley's neck beard, here's one more.
Horace Greeley
Another member of our family, Deanna's cousin, Rod Pierce is struggling with cancer, Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Things are looking good for him but he's fighting this battle without adequate insurance and as you can imagine the debt is piling up fast.
If you're so inclined, head over to the Cure for Rod blog and leave your thought or a donation.
Thanks.
The press has mostly died off with the Microsoft EU issue but that doesn't mean it's not still there and still moving forward toward some end that we can't yet see.
Mozilla, all of the other browser vendors, toolsmiths, and every Web users have a deep stake in the outcomes. Mozilla can help amplify your voice, but only if you join the discussion and tell us what you think.
That discussion is happening at Mitchell Baker's weblog and I strongly encourage you all to read each one of these posts and offer your thoughts. This is too important an issue for all of us to be sitting on the sidelines when we could be playing a role in shaping the outcomes.
We’ve had a reasonably full discussion of the harm to browser innovation and competition caused by Microsoft’s activities. It’s time to turn to the question of an effective response from the EC. There’s already been a lot of back and forth on possible remedies ....
EC: List of Potential Principles
This post is a list of potential principles derived from the various discussions so far, plus a clarifying example or two for some of the principles. In subsequent posts I’ll say a bit more about each potential principle and how it might be ....
EC: Principle 1: Respecting Previous Choice
Principle: Microsoft must not undermine consumer selection of non-Microsoft browsers.
Rationale: Once a person has chosen Firefox or Opera or another browser this choice should be respected. Neither Windows nor IE should use the presence of IE to ....
As I look at this principle (”Windows can’t provide a technical advantage to IE”), I’m sure that there will be a set of comments asking (a) why can’t Microsoft do whatever it wants with Windows, and (b) if there are limits on Microsoft, what about Apple? So I’ve added this post to ....
EC Principle 2: Windows Must Not Provide a Technical Advantage to IE
Microsoft has used Windows to make competition in browsers difficult in a variety of ways that aren’t obviously apparent to a consumer. These techniques are generally apparent only to other developers. Some of these will seem small when considered alone. But taken together these add up to ....
EC Principle 3. Windows must enable people to choose other browsers
Some examples of what this might mean in practice summarized below from the earlier post.
* Option to download other browsers must be presented when a user is updating IE or Windows.
* IE may not become the default browser except in specified legitimate circumstances.
* Windows must ship ....
EC Principle 4: Microsoft’s financial and other incentives to distributors must be browser-neutral
Microsoft has also used a range of techniques to encourage the distribution channel (often known as “the OEMs” for “original equipment manufacturers”) to ship IE. The OEM distribution channel is a funny thing. When I started working in this industry I assumed that the OEMs would pay software vendors for the right to distribute a ....
EC Principle 5: Microsoft must educate people about other browsers
One of the results of the Windows / IE integration is that millions of people believe that the “blue e” icon IS the Internet. They are unaware of of Microsoft’s control over their online lives through this blue “e” or that they have additional choices. This principle asserts that Microsoft should participate in correcting the ....
Over 90% of the personal computer operating systems in the world are Windows. As a result, application developers often use Microsoft tools to help write programs that work with Windows, and with related technologies or products that are integrated or often used with Windows. Microsoft has a history of using its tools to lock out other ....
This potential principle has received the most criticism from the Mozilla community to date; there appears to be little support for this principle as a basis from legal requirements from the EC. This is quite different from ....
This really is important and I hope you all will spend some time to think about it and contribute to the discussion.
I'll say it again, the Lunar Racer is HOT!
With the combination of Nike's Flywire technology and the Lunarite sole, this shoe sets a new bar. And in a LiveStrong colorway, man, nice kicks.
I'm going to start off by saying I'm not a statistics professional and the picture I'm presenting could be off, maybe way off. But I think there's still value in trying to understand the make-up of the Web over time and so I'm hoping this post will prompt more discussion -- and more data (please!)
The chart above is a mash up of about 40 different data sources from usage, to market share, to installed base, for browsers, internet connected computers, and operating systems. Working through all that data, I was able to come up with something that I think approximates the Web's user growth and browser changes over the last 13 years.
As I said in the opening, I might be off but I think it's still a worthwhile pursuit.
The first thing that really jumps out at me is that Netscape, for all its early success, was used by relatively few people. The pie was just a lot smaller at the end of the last century.
The second thing that jumps out is that the blue IE shape kinda looks like the Twitter Fail Whale :-) We just need a year or so of them actually losing users in absolute terms.
What do you all think?
Every day brings us a few signatures closer to our little cabin in the woods :D
I've put together a simple chart from Net Applications monthly browser report that shows absolute growth for the top 4 Web browsers over the last six months.
Firefox has been averaging about 5 points a year since its launch, so it's not at all surprising to see that this six month period shows Firefox picking up a little over 2 and 1/2 points.
Since its release, Safari's growth has been tied to Mac growth and so it's no surprise there either that line is trending consistently with Mac market growth.
I'm interested in what you all think about the other two browsers, especially any one from the Chrome or IE teams.
Is this in line with your expectations six months ago? We didn't have a track record for Chrome, but there were an awful lot of people writing Firefox's obituary when Chrome was released and more than a few articles and blog posts speculating that Chrome would surpass Firefox usage in short order.
The speculation wasn't quite as positive for IE, but with the IE 8 beta gaining rapidly, there were plenty of pundits that expected IE's share would stabilize and maybe even start taking share back from Firefox.
What were your predictions six months ago when Google "shook up the browser market" with the Chrome release? Is a 1 point per year growth trend what you all expected?
