29/04/2008 by swordfish.

A new study by European web metrics firm Xiti has found that the Firefox browser is used more frequently at weekends.

The study claims that Firefox has a 29% share of the European browsing market overall. But that figure exceeds 30% at weekends, suggesting that people are using Internet Explorer at work and opting for Firefox on their machines at home.

Many companies don’t allow employees to install software on their work PC’s, of course, and with Microsoft’s Internet Explorer pre-installed on every Windows machine, the company has a natural advantage.

However, while Firefox continues to grow in popularity in Europe and Australasia, its market share has been dented in North America, where it saw a slip of 1% in March.

Firefox is nearly the dominant player in several European countries, with countries such as Finland and Poland giving the open-source browser a market share of 40% or more.

Source: PC Pro

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03/04/2008 by swordfish.

The fifth and final beta version of Firefox 3 was released on Wednesday, ahead of the updated browser’s final release in June.

The new beta includes more than 750 changes from its predecessor, according to Mozilla, the maker of Firefox. The company has claimed that security, stability and web compatibility have been improved, and suggested that Firefox 3, which is based on the new Gecko 1.9 web-rendering platform, will be the fastest-ever version of the browser.

It also appears that one of the most significant issues with Firefox in recent times, its heavy memory leakage, has been fixed. The memory footprint is now also smaller than that of competing browsers, such as Safari and Internet Explorer.

Source: ZDNet

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19/02/2008 by swordfish.

Mozilla is to beef up its open-source Thunderbird email client, and plans to develop its calendar and search capabilities.

To put some muscle behind the move, Mozilla on Monday launched “Mozilla Messaging”, its “mail-focused subsidiary”.

Mozilla Messaging will initially focus on the development of Thunderbird 3. A small product-development team, together with a community of contributors, will concentrate on integrated calendar functionality, search, easier configuration and “a set of other user interface improvements”, Mozilla Messaging chief executive David Ascher wrote in a blog post.

Source: ZDNet

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29/01/2008 by swordfish.

Firefox continued to make ground on Internet Explorer in 2007, even threatening to overtake Microsoft’s dominance in several European countries.

Figures released by Xiti Monitor reveal that Firefox is close to toppling Internet Explorer in countries such as Finland, where it enjoys a 45% market share, as well as Poland, Slovenia and Hungary where it also enjoys market share between 40% and 42%. In Western Europe, Germany leads the way with a 34% share.

While Firefox continues to grow, the figures reveal that Internet Explorer is still by far the dominant browser holding a 66.1% share of the worldwide market, as opposed to Firefox’s 28%, which still represents a new high for the open-source browser.

Of the remaining browsers, Opera fares best with a 3.3% share, while Safari trails with only 2%.

Source: PC Pro

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28/12/2007 by swordfish.

Have just read a great review of the soon to be launched Firefox 3. This is available from Computer World and mentions five key improvements - easier downloads, an enhanced address bar, easier bookmarking, a much improved bookmark organizer and better memory management.

At QBS PC Help we love Firefox and promote it heavily to all our customers and friends, so this new version will be tried and tested once its on general release. Look out for our own review of Firefox 3 in 2008!

Source: Computer World

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03/12/2007 by swordfish.

Firefox currently has a staggering 125 million global users, according to figures released by a Mozilla executive.

The figure comes courtesy of John Lilly, Mozilla’s Chief Operating Officer, who arrives at the result by analysing the statistical data collected through the browser’s update service.

As explained on Lilly’s blog, Firefox pings the update servers every day to check for patches and new versions, and by counting those pings he says it is possible for Mozilla to make a rough guess at how many instances of the browser are running.

He labels these Active Daily Users (ADU), and says that taken as an average over seven days, the number of ADUs has skyrocketed from 23 million in October 2006 to 48 million in November.

Source: PC Pro

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