Firefox not browser of choice for long?

I almost exclusively use Firefox as my browser of choice these days, except for certain applications that can only run in Internet Explorer (IE). I recently saw this post about how Firefox may not be the mainstream browser for very long.

The state of the browser market pretty much proves that it’s impossible for an open source project to remain a popular front-end application for too long.

What do you think? I'm not sure that I agree with the above conclusion, but there's definitely stiff competition among browser options and more to come ahead as new features roll out.

I really like Firefox. but it seems each time I get an update it runs slower and slower, and for about 4 months now keeps "freezing" for 10-30 seconds at a time. It was also using too much memory until I found settings to keep that under control.

As far as that article goes, I don't buy it. While I have always used IE when I have to, my main browser was Netscape and then Firefox.

Last week I installed Opera and that is a pretty nice browser! I have not used it much since I hate to change unless I have to. But if Firefox doesn't control the bloat, I may change to Opera at some point.

I would have tried Chrome, but it won't run on Windows2000.

I've always used Opera as my main browser, and switch to Firefox if the page is not supported. With the new release of Opera Unite, the features just trumps other browsers in my opinion. Not too bad for a Norwegian company that has about 1 - 2% market share for browsers.

Megan,

It might be helpful if you were to cite the original source of the statement so that readers could see the context and reasoning behind the author's (Gaitonde/GigaOM?) conclusion.

-ENO 

ENO - I found this link on the article that Megan referenced - is that what you mean?

Personally, I don't agree.  I'm so against Internet Explorer at this point that I'll never use it unless I have to again (like for Windows Updates).  And I'll be recommending Firefox (as long as its still a good browser) to all my customers.

To what Christian said - maybe if you weren't so extension-happy Firefox wouldn't be a dog for you ;)  Give 3.5 a try.  (I'm assuming Christian uses a lot of extensions).  I used to use Opera, but dumped it when IE 6 came out - mainly because too many sites I was going to back then wanted IE in order to display properly (*sigh*).  I did like it, though.

The article Megan read quotes the CEO of Mozilla predicting a bleak outcome.  I think its just a spin.  Here's a CNET article that quotes him giving a much brighter outlook.  It also indicates that Google supports Mozilla with a whole lot of money.  So the claim that Firefox isn't backed lacks teeth.

Also, Firefox went from 0% to over 20% marketshare according to most sources (I only looked at this one myself).  That's nothing to shake a stick at when you consider how many people that really is.  I believe Firefox is here to stay.  It's like Bing from Microsoft - I looked at it and went right back to Google...  it's there, it might have increased Microsoft's search market share a little, but its not going away either.

Thanks, Chris.

The quote has popped up a few different places and your link is much better than the one I had.

The overall subject is pretty interesting, although I don't have strong preferences about one browser over another.   The secure and fast browsers don't seem to have all the features that I want.  By the time the additional features are added, they tend to become slower and less secure.  Firefox's rise to about 22% of market share has been impressive but it seems to have leveled off for the moment.

Any upcoming shifts in popularity might have more to do with strong tie-ins between browser and O/S.  There's a thread in the Emerging Technologies forum about Google's upcoming Chrome O/S.  That sort of thing might have more impact on success than the simple addition of a few features here and there.

For the record, I DO have strong feeling about companies that deliberately tie their applications to a single browser (or Java or Flash) for no good reason except that it furthers some goofy backroom partnership. I've had clients dump a popular accounting program because it required Flash and wouldn't install unless a particular browser was present and its security settings were lowered. They should be ashamed of themselves. 

-ENO   

ENO - on the last part about tieing software to a particular browser (and only after lowering security settings?)...  This is real pet peeve for me.  Technologies exist (and they have for a long time) to process data and still deliver W3C-validated HTML, XHTML and CSS (even, sigh, JavaScript) files to the browser.  Why people insist on programming outside given standards is beyond me.  It just narrows your possible customers down.

Chris, thanks for the better link than I found to give more context to the issue I was raising. I share this same pet peeve--to me it seems like it would ultimately hurt your business in the long run to do so, but who really loses out are the users who have to try to work around all the compatibility issues, esp. if they've already invested in a particular solution.

We have a Practice Management (billing and scheduling) software package that works exclusively with IE.  Luckily, we did not have to lower our security settings to get things working.  The vendor provided us a software utility to make the necessary adjustments. 

I have used Mozilla off and on since its early days.  I haven't noticed a huge performance change between versions and updates.  I don't really use many plug-ins, so that could be the difference for me.  I think it will be a viable browser for quite a while as it has a loyal following.   

That's because there are more and more open source options now available. There has been a fair amount of chatter about Google's Chrome browser and now that they (Google) have announced the Chrome OS things are starting to become interesting. Google is definitely moving the idea of The Cloud to a new level.

Opera has not kept up. They've been asleep as far as I can tell.

Firefox has had some bumps in the road recently with some bugs and security issues. I think they will get through this and improve soon.

Even Apple has gotten into the fray with a free version of Safari for Windows.

In all probability we are moving away from browsers toward more of a specific app model similar to what's been happening with the iPhone and other smart phones. People are now accessing content through many different applications other than browsers and I expect this trend to continue. People are finally starting to talk about some real standards out there for coding and this will allow us to stop the silly browser wars and concentrate on getting content into peoples' devices faster and smoother.

Notice I did not mention Microsoft or their browser...

I disagree with the app model on iPhone as the way the desktop is moving.  Less is best, less is not complicated, less puts more control into the hands of the developers if they have less to worry about on your desktop.  If all they have to do is program to HTML 5, and you are HTML 5 compatible, then the app model doesn't fit.  I see the iPhone as a stepping stone between old style desktops and newer style cloud computing.  Which is really just an upgrade from mainframe and VMS systems ;).

Eventually, I see you just needing something to connect you to the net and give you access to the servers you use.  Nothing downloaded to your desktop.

One other smart phone in particular (Palm Pre) is pretty much just web programming already.

Did they work the bugs out? I tried Opera two or three versions ago, and the frames didn't look right, and I received several messages that certain pages wouldn't load. I don't recall the specifics, but I uninstalled it and went back to IE just for the sake of convenience.

I figure most websites are created to run in IE and people who design websites can't be bothered with making them compatible with other browsers. Maybe I'm wrong about this, but it seems to me like that's what's happening.