Firefox 4 Smashes IE9′s 2.3 Million Downloads in 24 Hours With 7 Million and Counting

March 23, 2011 By 1 Comment

Poor IE can’t catch a break. Last week they published a post touting the fact that IE9 had been downloaded 2.3 million times in the first 24 hours.

Just a few days later Mozilla responded with its official release of the long-awaited Firefox 4 along with a kick-ass interactive stats and download page with a live download counter as well as a world map showing where the downloads are coming from in real-time.

As of this posting the live-counter was only about 150,000 downloads away from the 8 million mark.

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IE9 Boasts 2.3 Million Downloads in First 24 Hours, 6 Million Less than Firefox 3′s World Record

March 17, 2011 By 1 Comment

Microsoft officially launched the final release of Internet Explorer 9 this past Tuesday at midnight. IE9 represents Microsoft’s biggest browser overhaul in quite a while.

The Official Windows blog announced yesterday that that IE9 was downloaded 2.3 million times in the first 24 hours.

Sounds pretty impressive until you consider that back in 2008 when Mozilla released Firefox 3 they set an official Guinness World record for the “largest number of software downloads in 24 hours”. Over 8 million copies of Firefox 3 were downloaded within 24 hours of its official release.

Firefox (and Chrome) users are generally considered to be more “tech savvy” than IE users as a whole. So, while IE didn’t blow the roof off the joint with first day downloads, IE users aren’t necessarily thought of as “early adopters” so it’s possible that, as the word spreads IE9 could indeed help Microsoft take back some of that browser market share Firefox has been slowly chipping away at.

Chart via: W3Counter

What’s new in Internet Explorer 9

Firefox and Chrome have been using compliant web standards for years but IE has been notoriously lacking in that area which has given many a designer and developer a headache or two trying to develop and design a site that renders the same across multiple browsers.

A few of the top issues IE9 has promised to address are speed, usability, standard web compliance, lack of a download manager and general sluggishness compared to FF and Chrome.

Nine reasons to get Internet Explorer 9 according to Microsoft

  1. It’s all-around fast — hardware-accelerated text, video, and graphics speed up performance and make websites perform like programs that are installed on your computer.
  2. Streamlined and simplified design — gives you the basic controls you need and puts the focus on your websites.
  3. One-click access to your favorite sites — with Pinned Sites, you can get to your favorite sites directly from the Windows taskbar without having to open your browser first.
  4. A combined search and Address bar — one place to either navigate to a website or start a search.
  5. Redesigned New Tab page — now you have quick access to the sites you visit most often, and you can also reopen closed tabs or your last browsing session, or start an InPrivate Browsing session.
  6. Integration with Windows 7 — with Snap, Pinned Sites, Jump Lists, and thumbnail preview controls, Internet Explorer 9 and Windows 7 bring you the best web experience for Windows.
  7. Improved add-on management — Add-on Performance Advisor tells you if an add-on is slowing down your browser and allows you to disable or remove it, helping ensure that your browser stays fast over time.
  8. Helps control your privacy — Tracking Protection enables you to limit the browser’s communication with certain websites to help keep your information private.
  9. Keeps your downloads in order — Download Manager keeps a running list of the files you download from the Internet, notifies you if a file could be malicious, and allows you to pause and restart a download.

I tested it for a day or two and I will say there is a noticeable improvement in speed and general responsiveness. I don’t like the tabs pushed all the way over to the right of the address bar although there is a way to change that default in the settings.

I also didn’t care for their implementation of the bookmarks toolbar, it looks like it was just slapped on there last minute and looks totally out of place. My regular, everyday browser is Chrome which, in my opinion, is an almost perfect mixture of minimalism, great UX/UI, speed and fantastic extensions that work flawlessly as an extension of the browser itself so the bar was set pretty high for IE9. Needless to say as much of an improvement IE9 is over previous versions I’m back to using Chrome, although I will check out IE from time to time to see what, if any changes/improvements they make over the next few months based on feedback from users.

What do you guys think? Do any of you use IE as your primary browser? If so, have you downloaded IE9 and what did you think of all the new features?

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How to make Bing your default search engine in Firefox and Chrome

June 1, 2009 By 9 Comments

bing-logoI read an interesting post the other day by someone explaining why they were changing their default search engine from Google to Yahoo. I can’t for the life of me remember where I read it because I would love to quote and attrubute it.  I very much identified with the point that the person was making, and was thinking Bing came around just in time to give it a shot.

I’ve had the same gmail account since 2004. I use it as my personal account as well as filtering all of my business accounts through there. It’s my one login for all of my email accounts.  I also use Picasa Web for all my photos, Google Docs for my documents that I store online, Google Reader knows all the feeds I’m subscribed to and my Enterprise calendar is synced up with my Gmail calendar and, when it’s an option, I tend to use Google Checkout for purchases. Now I even have a Google profile.

The point of the post I read was, with all that information, do I really want Google to know what I’m searching for? Search is the one part of your experience that really reveals the most about you and your habits. Are we giving Google too much information to build profiles on us to target us with eerily specific marketing data?  Sure, it may be a sound a bit tinfoil hat-ish but it also has its merits. Simply by switching search engines you can seperate much of your “anonymous” info from your “personal info”.

The one problem with that theory is that for some reason I really loathe Yahoo’s search. Now with Bing’s release last night I think I’ll give it a shot for a week and see what I think. For the next week I’ll use Bing as my default search engine thereby seperating my search for “hot japanese girls eating ice cream” from my Google overloards and the rest of my online personal info.

Setting up Bing as your default search engine in Chrome:

  1. Click on the customize and control wrench on the top write of your browser.
  2. Choose options
  3. Make sure you’re on the Basics tab
  4. Choose Live Search as your default search engine
  5. Click cloes and you’re all set.

Setting up Bing as your default search engine in Firefox:

  1. Go here and install the Bing plugin.
  2. Once you install the plugin Live Search will show up in your dropdown options in your Firefox searchbox.
  3. Click that and you’re all set.

I’m going to give Bing a try for a week and see what comes of it. Even if it’s only that Google can’t put my search for “rash cream” in the same vault as the rest of my personal information that I trust it with.

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Chrome 2 Adds Some Serious Speed and a lot of New Features

May 22, 2009 By Leave a Comment
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I’ve had Google Chrome installed since it was still in beta way back in November (it rolled out of Beta in November as well).

From the beginning I’ve said that my two favorite things about Chrome are it’s speed and it’s clean, friendly interface. Even in beta Chrome was by far one of the fastest browsers I had ever used and now, with the release of Chrome 2, it’s even faster and more stable.

One of my early complaints with Chrome was its weak contextual menu. If you’re a blogger and you use Firefox, you’re probably very familiar with the shortcuts your contextual menu provides you. While Chrome is still not quite up to FF standards their new contextual menu is beefed up quite a bit and definitely has many more of the basic necessities.

Surprisingly, one of the most requested changes that Google received about Chrome, and which has actually been addressed in Chrome 2, is the ability to hide the thumbnails on your tabs page. Now you can have all the joy of being able to quickly navigate to some of your most visited sites without all the embarrassment of friends coworkers being able to see that said site is The Hills Gossip Fan Club Blog.

Chrome 2 also features form autofill. This one is pretty much self-explanatory.

Chrome 2 may well work its way up to becoming my default surfing/blogging browser of choice but when it comes to taking care of business, Chrome can’t hold a candle to FF with Web Developer Toolbar and Firebug. Those are pretty much essential tools when I’m working on a project, which is practically daily. It’ll be interesting to see if Google even tries to make any headway in that area of FF.

All in all, if you’re not dependent on a lot of Firefox add-ons for your job, Chrome may well be a light, fast and intuitive option for your browsing needs.

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Trick Out Your Firefox with some Chrome Sweetness

February 1, 2009 By 5 Comments

While Google Chrome is a pretty sweet browser and it’s speed is hard to beat, Firefox still feels like home and has a lot more blogger friendly tools either built in or available as add-ons. So, for now I’ll be sticking with Firefox as my primary browser and occasionally toying with Chrome.

Fortunately the new Google Toolbar (BETA) for Firefox adds at least one nice tool from Chrome. The most visited thumbnail grid when opening up a new tab.

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If that’s not enough Chrome-like sweetness for you, you can head over and check out one of the Firefox Chrome themes to Google it up a bit more.

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How To: Double Your Firefox Browsing Speed with a Few Easy Tweaks

January 25, 2009 By 45 Comments

firefoxlogo-main_fullWhether or not you’re a hard core Firefox user or a casual surfer, you’re going to want to start using these tweaks. Now. You’re just a few steps away from reducing the amount of RAM that Firefox uses and cutting your page load times in half.

Some of you hardcore users may already have known about some of these tweaks but Gnoted has put together a few new ones that will make you forget about how fast Chrome was that one time you tried it.

[Read more...]

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What’s Your Primary Browswer?

January 19, 2009 By Leave a Comment

I have a feeling I know the answer to this, but I’m curious what most of the people tha follow me/I follow or in general use Twitter use as their primary browser.

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Firefox Browser Takes 20% Market Share

November 5, 2008 By Leave a Comment

I’ve been using Firefox since 1.0 was released in 2004.  Once I got used to tabbed browsing I never looked back.  

For me, Firefox blew IE out of the water.  By the time IE finally caught up with the release of IE6 it was too late, I was already hooked.

In 2004 it seemed like IE was going to be the default web browser forever.  Netscape was, for all intents and purposes, already dead at that point and the thought of an open source browser was unheard of.

It’s hard to imagine that almost exactly four years after it’s initial release 1 in 5 people are now using Firefox.  

I have no doubt that number will continue to grow thanks to Firefox’s excellent open source community and the phenomenal number of plugins available to customize FF to fit your needs.  

If you haven’t already, you should really do yourself a favor and get Firefox.

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Google Chrome not Compatible with Google Toolbar

November 3, 2008 By 3 Comments

As I’ve mentioned before I’ve started using Google Chrome as my default personal browser while at home.  Sometimes I slip up and go back to the warm comforts of FireFox but Chrome is so damn fast and clean it’s hard to put it down.  

I’ll admit Firefox is much more intuitive and allows me to blog much easier, but hopefully Chrome’s contextual menu will catch up to the curve set by FF.

I was going through some of my RSS feeds tonight when I saw a new post over at the Gmail Blog about some Google toolbar functionality.  Normally I hate toolbars with a passion, but Google toolbar is one I’ve been able to live with in the past and I was curious how it would work with Chrome.  Google Toolbar with Google Chrome?  It must be second only to sex I thought to myself.

Sadly, I was quickly given my comeuppance when I tried to install it and realized that toolbar and Chrome don’t play together at all, let alone nicely.

I’ve often heard that Google’s projects are very segmented which is why Gmail and Reader don’t coexist, even though they’re basically the same platform, but I have to admit I didn’t expect this.

I’m sure much of the functionality of Toolbar will be built into Chrome eventually if it isn’t already so it’s not a huge loss.  Besides, who really likes toolbars anyway?

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Note to Firefox: Please Put “Add Tab” Option Back in the Toolbar

October 16, 2008 By 2 Comments

After using Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 for a couple of days I have one request.  Please, for the love of god, add the option back to have an “Add Tab” button next to the other toolbar buttons.  I mentioned earlier that in this version they have removed this option and relocated it to actual tab bar.  It sucks.  I’m sure that left there I would eventually get used to it but why shouldn’t I at least have the option?

It’s like when IE6 came out and completely redid their design and moved the refresh button over to the right side of the address bar.  I rarely use IE and still haven’t gotten used to it’s new location.

The first thing I always do after downloading a new version of Firefox is edit the toolbar and put the “Add Tab” button in the exact same position every time.  Having it gone is just a pain and it seems silly to not give users the option to have it there if they choose.

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Firefox 3.1 Beta 1 is Looking Pretty Sweet

October 14, 2008 By 1 Comment

I have to admit, I’ve gotten more and more comfortable with using Chrome as my everyday browser while at home.  There are however a few key features in Firefox that I’ve grown extremely accustomed to which I have indeed been missing.  So, of course, word of FF 3.1 Beta 1 coming out was enough for me to drop Chrome for a while and come back home so to speak.

One thing that took me a few minutes to figure out was the “new tab” button missing off the toolbar.  I usually add it on manually and have grown accustomed to using it fairly regularly, even though I know I should be using the ctrl+t keyboard shortcut.  Don’t bother, that option is gone from your toolbar icons.  replacing it is a permanent spot over on the right side of the tabs.  The “+” obviously opens new tabs and the little arrow next to it allows you to skip to any open tab as well.

From a GUI point of view, one of the cool new features in FF3.1B is the ctrl+tab 3D feature to cycle through open tabs, which is sort of similar the alt+tab feature in Windows which cycles through open programs, and maybe even more similar to the cascading desktop feature in Vista.

FF 3.1 beta uses the TraceMonkey JavaScript engine which is most of the reason it’s so much faster than the current version of FF3 and more on par with Chrome for its Javascript rendering speed.

For whatever reason though, this feature comes disabled by default.  It’s fairly simple to turn on in three easy steps.

  1. Type about:config in your browser’s address bar.
  2. Type or paste javascript.options.jit.content into the filter.
  3. Double-click the preference to set the boolean to true.

FF3.1B will also be introducing geolocation awareness which is something you could get with FF3 but not without an additional plugin.  3.1 will have it baked right into the main product.

You can download and test drive a copy here.  Beware though, it will brick all of your plugins.  I’m sure those will be fixed soon enough and for now it’s nice to see an even faster version of FF rolling out with brand new features to boot.

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Top Firefox 3 Plugins I Can’t Live Without

June 23, 2008 By Leave a Comment

Here are some of my favorite plugins that are currently compatible with FF3.

  1. Adblock Plus – I’ve had this installed so long that I literally forget that I even have it. Many times it works so well that when I do need to find an ad on a page for my job or something I think the page is broken until I realize I need to greenlight the ads for them to show up.
  2. Better Gmail2 – Whether you’re a Gmail power user like me or just a casual Gmailite you’ll probably want to check out Better Gmail2. It lets you customize Gmail just the way you like it. From forcing Compose mailto: links to open in Gmail to hiding your spam count to some pretty sweet skins plus a whole lot more. Better Gmail 2 is updated frequently, and is definitely you’re best bet for fine tuning Gmail to fit your needs.
  3. Better GReader – If you’re a GReader guru you this is an add-on that will make you’re life a little more convenient. I basically use this add-on for three things. Auto Add to Reader which lets you automatically bypass the option to add the feed to iGoogle, show favicons and the optimized skin. The skin does a great job of maximizing screen real estate and making GReader even easier to navigate.
  4. Colorful Tabs – This add-on is super simple and does just what it says. It colors your tabs. “Colors every tab in a different color and makes them easy to distinguish while beautifying the overall appearance of the interface.”
  5. Forecastfox – The best thing about this plugin is the seamless way it integrates with the browser. Now when anyone asks, “what’s the weather like outside” or “is it going to rain tomorrow” all you have to do is glance to the bottom right hand corner and you’ll have your answer.
  6. IE Tab – IE Tab is probably only really useful if you’re a coder and need to check browser compatibility issues. IE Tab let’s you run a page based on IEs engine right in Firefox. It’s a quick and convenient way to make sure your page doesn’t fail once you launch it in IE.
  7. Picnik – I just added this add-on recently and haven’t used it much but from what I have used I’ve been pretty impressed. The coolest feature about the plugin is it adds a “Send page to Picnik” option in your right-click contextual menu. This will screencap whatever page you are on and send it straight into picnic and let you go to work on it. Extremely handy if you’re a developer and you want to capture some of your work, throw a nice matte frame around it and post it to your portfolio.
  8. Screen grab! – “Saves a webpage as an image”. That’s what it says under the add-on screen and that’s exactly what it does. This is sort of a trimmed down, streamline version of the Picnik plugin and one which I use way more frequently. This plugin also add options to your contextual menu. With Screen grab! you can either capture and save the visible portion of the page, the complete page or a selection. This is a very handy plugin that I find myself using often.

There you have it, many of you may have heard of some of these and some of you may have heard of all of these but you can’t fool the fooler once again.

On a quick sidenote in case anyone at Mozilla reads this, you really need to fix up your search function on your add-ons pages. For many of these plugins I typed up the exact name and they either didn’t come up at all or were way down on the list. A few I actually had to go through Google to find them on your add-on page.

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