Firefox Is Heading Towards Success

Posted Mar 9, 2005 22:11 UTC (Wed) by Lou57 (guest, #12083)
Parent article: Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble (eWeek)

Sometimes it is amazing how folks don't get it.

Mr. Vaughan-Nichols states that "Firefox Is Heading Towards Trouble" and then after relating several items that need to be overcome, equates the success of Firefox with market share. It is either going to continue to increase or "we can only wiat for the ebb to begin."

And if market share was THE measure of success ... then that might be true.

But Firefox's success should NOT be measured by market share. That is what is done by those looking to make a profit, by those that know that there are only X number of dollars truly available for purchasing a browser.

Firefox's success should be measured by how well it does it's job. Mr. Vaughan-Nichols has pointed out some important Firefox issues, including quoting a significant contributor to the Firefox project. But then it is up to the Mozilla Foundation and others to "start spending money - right now". So close, so close. But missed it altogether.

This is an open source project. What have you done Mr. Vaughan-Nichols (who makes putting Firefox on every PC he has one of the first things he does) to help with the very problems you pointed out? At the least, you pointed these issues out.

What have YOU (reader) done? (asked rhetorically) What have I done? I'm in the boat to do more than install on my own computer.

Time to put some time in.

to post comments

Firefox Is Heading Towards Success

Posted Mar 10, 2005 9:40 UTC (Thu) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link] (3 responses)

The trouble is that how firefox does its job does depend on market
share: standards compliant browsers _need_ enough market share to be
taken seriously by web designers or the web will drift slowly towards
IE-only pages.
Your comment works for things that are not dependent on processing
content produced by other people: a text editor could have just one user
and still be a superb text editor. However, a web browser is useless
to most people if it can't browse most pages on the web. And for that
market share is needed. It doesn't have to be firefox, what matters
is probably the total of non-IE browsers but firerox is currently the
largest of these, and serious loss of share would be a real problem.

IE-only pages? heh

Posted Mar 10, 2005 11:32 UTC (Thu) by gvy (guest, #11981) [Link] (1 responses)

Not "towards" but "quite there for several years". JFYI

So the question is whether this trend changes -- or not.

IE-only pages? heh

Posted Mar 10, 2005 12:17 UTC (Thu) by gnb (subscriber, #5132) [Link]

On the whole, I think things have got a bit better. But this could
easily go into reverse if IE reestablishes its position as the only
browser worth worrying about from a web designer's point of view.

Firefox Is Heading Towards Success

Posted Mar 11, 2005 20:35 UTC (Fri) by XERC (guest, #14626) [Link]

Well, I guess that one of the questions is, what is a standard?

De facto standard: anything that just IS USED AND PRESENT IN
"LARGE" SCALE. We may hate it, but Microsoft DOES DEFINE
the standards, IE IS T H E STANDARD.

Then there are those "office clerk business project"-style
standards like most of the ISO ones. It's not that people
of a given field come together to settle on something to
benefit everybody. It's like, people come together, INVENT
SOMETHING, SUCK IT OUT OF THEIR PENCIL and try to plant
as much of their employer's patents in as possible duering
the process, and then declare: we have a standard!!!
Now, everybody, please pay ISO to
get a copy of this "standard" and then, please pay us,
for what ever reason, starting with patent license fees.

And of course, then there are those idealistic organisations
like the w3c and IETF, who have a nice, hognest and human, vision and
who's practical role tends to be fighting against the enslavers who
want to take over a whole area or field, for instance, networking.

OK, now, when somebody talks about, "nonstandard" browser, like,
IE, or a "standard" browser, like Firefox, then, the real debate is,
shall we approach the topic from real world and business point
of view or from idealistic, may be even evangelist's, point of view.