There are a number of articles popping up in the last few days that are making a big deal about the recent uninstall survey results showing that a decent number of Firefox 2 users who refuse to upgrade to Firefox 3 or 3.5 are concerned about the Awesomebar revealing some of their "private" bookmarks to anyone looking over their shoulder or using their computer.
Most of this coverage is overblown. Articles and blog posts that contain both "firefox" and "porn" probably get a lot eyeballs and I think that's what's going on here.
Why do I say it's overblown?
As of this week, 94% of Firefox active daily users are on Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5.
(I don't have absolute user numbers for other browsers, but usage is a reasonable proxy here and if you look at Safari, they still have about 16% of their usage coming from two versions or more behind the current release. If you look at the other browser with a significant number of users, IE, a whopping 37% of that share is two versions or more behind.)
If you didn't have any numbers, reading most of the coverage around this would probably lead you to believe that a large percentage of Firefox users were still using Firefox 2. Compared to the other two mainstream browsers, Firefox users are actually very current.
Then there's the actual survey data. If the survey is representative of all of the people still on Firefox 2, then what we're actually talking about is ~1.5% of Firefox users citing the Awesomebar as holding them back.
So Firefox has more users on the current versions than the other browsers and about 1.5% of Firefox users don't like a new Firefox feature. Is that really worthy of all this coverage?
Posted by: Lee Mathews | August 27, 2009 9:33 AM
What you say might be true, but just because most people upgraded to 3.x doesn't mean they like the "awesome" bar. I think some of the reason this story is popular may be from people's frustrations with it.
Posted by: Jonathan Louie | August 27, 2009 9:59 AM
Although I disagree with yellow journalism as a whole, to say "look, most people don't care about this issue, so no one should care about this issue" seems to be exclusionary.
If FF is to maintain its high horse about being good for everyone, then issues like this need to be addressed and not casually dismissed.
Posted by: Evan | August 27, 2009 10:25 AM
Although I disagree with yellow journalism as a whole, to say "look, most people don't care about this issue, so no one should care about this issue" seems to be exclusionary.
If FF is to maintain its high horse about being good for everyone, then issues like this need to be addressed and not casually dismissed.
Posted by: Evan | August 27, 2009 10:25 AM
Do these people even look at relevant preferences before kicking up a fuss about something so easily changed?
Posted by: Takarii | August 27, 2009 10:48 AM
Well, it brings attention, and then it brings money, and then its worth a story if that was the question ;)
Posted by: Ivan Ičin | August 27, 2009 1:06 PM
"If the survey is representative of all of the people still on Firefox 2, then what we're actually talking about is ~1.5% of Firefox users"
That's right, IF, and it can't possibly be "representative of all of the people still on Firefox 2" so it must be an even smaller percentage especially since a lot of people still using Firefox 2 more than likely have auto update check disabled. Unless Mozilla has another way of knowing the number of users still using Firefox 2?
And if fear of the Awesome bar exposing their history and bookmarks is the main reason for people not upgrading, well, there's Private Browsing mode, Location Bar display preferences, Clear Recent History > Last Hour, plus does one really need to bookmark YouPorn.com? Is it really that hard to remember? (no pun intended)
I thought that people simply didn't like the Awesome Bar's presentation/interface and preferred to just have plain old URLs displayed. That is why I initially didn't like it. Now, I love it.
@Jonathan, you're probably right about that but unlike other browsers, at least a user can get an add-on or apply their own hacks and tweaks. Let's hope that the same holds true for the new UI for Firefox on its way.
@Evan, I don't see this as Asa dismissing the actual issue of people disliking or hating the Awesome Bar, I believe that his point is that it isn't a massive percentage of Firefox users refusing to upgrade because of it.
"If you didn't have any numbers, reading most of the coverage around this would probably lead you to believe that a large percentage of Firefox users were still using Firefox 2"
Posted by: Ken Saunders | August 27, 2009 2:00 PM
Ken, we can count Firefox 2 users pretty accurately with auto-update disabled. There's still a bad extension/plug-in check. And, conveniently enough, this is one case where the user versions percentage matches up quite nicely with the usage versions percentage reported by Net Applications and others.
- A
Posted by: Asa Dotzler | August 27, 2009 2:36 PM
C'mon Asa, you know this storm was generated inside the propaganda labs there in Redmond.
"Google invades privacy"
"iPhone explodes"
"Apple sells overpriced snow leopard"
"AdSense stealing your money"
"AppStore kicking open source developers"
You know, if you can't compete fairly, at least confuse the consumer to keep them away from the competition.
Posted by: Propagandist | August 27, 2009 4:34 PM
Actually, 1.5% is quite a lot. After all, it IS a product's responsibility to satisfy as many customers as possible. Even if it's just 1% of the total customer base, it is still very important to care for their user experience. The saying goes like this : "for you it's just 1%, but for the customer it is 100%". If you produce a product that has a 1% fail rate, for the customer who happens to get the bad product, it is 100% bad for him/her. So I do think 1% is still quite a lot, and a good product should strive to satisfy 100% of its customers.
And about the "porn" thing, well, it is nowhere near when IE8 announced its "porn mode" last year, that's when everyone seemed to get crazy about "IE8" and "porn". Now this "firefox" and "porn" thing gets not nearly as much hype as the "IE8" and "porn" thing back then.
Posted by: kaixin001 | August 27, 2009 9:27 PM
i deleted my bookmarks and i simply don't bookmark pages anymore. i don't even visit pron sites. i simply just don't like the awful bar freqency thing.
signed
a 1.5 percenter
Posted by: sexysofie | August 27, 2009 10:40 PM
i deleted my bookmarks and i simply don't bookmark pages anymore. i don't even visit pron sites. i simply just don't like the awful bar freqency thing.
signed
a 1.5 percenter
Posted by: sexysofie | August 27, 2009 10:41 PM
i deleted my bookmarks and i simply don't bookmark pages anymore. i don't even visit pron sites. i simply just don't like the awful bar freqency thing.
signed
a 1.5 percenter
Posted by: sexysofie | August 27, 2009 10:41 PM
a 1.5 percenter: You do know in Firefox 3.5 you can get the url bar to search bookmarks and history, just bookmarks, just history or nothing at all, right?
Posted by: Damian | August 28, 2009 12:08 AM
Damian, It's actually suggest.
"When using the location bar, suggest:"
Selecting "Nothing" prevents both History and Bookmarks from being displayed.
I'm not nitpicking at your use of the word search, I just want others to know that they have the option to have nothing shown.
Tools > Options > Privacy > Location Bar
Thanks Asa, I (obviously) didn't consider add-on checking and Net Applications etc.
Posted by: Ken Saunders | August 28, 2009 1:06 AM
I can't speak for the other authors, Asa...But my post was intended as a gentle ribbing of this issue. Generally, any time the word "porn" appears in a statistics related news item, it's worth making fun of it.
I'll try to include an actual image of the girls in panda suits next time to emphasize the sarcasm. ;)