Firefox's popularity repeats Microsoft's dominating mistakes all over again

I don't even know where to begin on a rebuttal for this one...

erm... what are you trying to convey? I can't get your idea... if possible, would you please summarize a bit?

Well, wait a minute.

Browser extensions are possible in IE and FF and NOT in other browsers. In fact, the reality is that you can't do everything with magical web standards -- sometimes you need software code for more integration. Firefox has provided a fantastic, open platform for that. Tools like Safari have not. Some Safari users don't care, which is why they have a significant market share. But you have a choice.

And blaming Firefox for standards issues seems a little ... counterintuitive.

In fact, it seems like there's another party here ... let's see, we've got the standards, the browsers, and the websites. Where do the websites come from ... ah, yes. Designers. I have about 35% market share for Firefox on my site, for instance, maybe 45% if you count related browsers. Just how insane would I have to be to shut out the other half? And how would we blame Firefox for that problem? Because they "dominate" ... erm ... less than half the market?

So confused.

Designers: test multiple browsers. Install virtualization software on Mac. Try Opera. Try Safari for Windows. Whatever.

I don't get it, are you saying that plugins are bad? Specifically Firefox ones or all plugins?

Possible summary: because of Firefox's popularity, website creators are creating services that are tied directly to that browser, rather than creating services that work on all browsers. This is what happened in the 90s with Internet Explorer, and could lead to a backlash against Firefox. Through no fault of their own, the popularity of the browser, combined with short-sighted entrepreneurs, could mean the downfall of the browser.

And I agree that Firefox is becoming the everything to everybody browser. It's already starting to showcase the feature bloat, and every time I hear about people who use it, invariably somebody talks about greasemonkey or some other plugin.

So it was good when people only wrote sites that worked in IE. And it is now bad that people write sites that focus primarily on IE and Firefox. I am looking for the logic in there, but I can't quite find it.

I have run both Safari and Flock at different times this morning, but rely on Firefox as my primary browser because of the plugins. Does that make me a bad person?

Here's a summary: The web is supposed to be usable by any device that conforms to the X/HTML standard, potentially enhanced by standard CSS and Javascript. We also tolerate plugins like Flash when they are provided as an optional replacement to the original standards-based page.

The old IE and, to some extent, the new IE, is condemmed because it did not follow the standards. Worse, since it enjoyed a monopoly on the web, developers had to ignore the standards too. Thus, the web was only usable in IE. Other devices were out of luck.

Firefox changed this by adhering to standards and gaining enough market share that most sites are now written to work in Firefox as well, which implies that they are largely standards-compliant. Thus, while there is obviously much more that needs to be done, the web is now more usable by any device.

The risk stated is that Firefox wil cause the same problem IE did, that of making the web usable in only one device. It won't do this by forcing developers to write error-filled pages that can't be viewed outside of Firefox. Rather, the fear is that it will encourage them to substitute standard web pages for sites that only function if you are running the appropriate software locally, such as a toolbar or a Firefox extension. Cell phones, screen readers, and others can't compete in that world.

I absolutely love Firefox and its extensions, and they are exactly why I was unable to take IE7 seriously. It was a massively-improved browser, but without all of my extensions it was useless. As well, it doesn't have the wonderful profile structure that makes backing up, sharing between multi-boots, and transferring of my profile so incredibly easy.

That said, that does lead me to realize that I am tightly tied to Firefox now. And if there's anything I've learned from the past, it's that the top dog in browsers rarely stays that way for long. I used Netscape exclusively until IE3, then switched back to Netscape for their painful "Netscape Communicator" 4.0 phase before switching instantly to IE5 and sticking with it through IE6 until enough people online convinced me that I absolutely had to try Firefox. After forcing myself to use it exclusively for 24 hours I never looked back. IE7 was a nice effort, but still didn't have the same effect previous IE updates had in causing me to switch back. But IE8 very well could... and yet I'd be unlikely to be able to make the switch due to everything I have tied up now in Firefox.

I would love to see some standardization in the world of certain types of add-ons. But it's unlikely to occur simply because most of them make use of software functions of the browser. Still, toolbars like StumbleUpon really shouldn't be that hard to make for multiple browsers. And I'm surprised StumbleUpon hasn't made an IE version yet (I bet eBay's acquisition will change that), as they could drastically increase their userbase (although perhaps opening it to the vast world of people clueless enough to still be using IE could severely dilute the community).

And of course now we have this effort by Apple to push Safari into this space as well, and I can't help but laugh at that one. Anyone who wants an alternative to IE on the PC already has Firefox, and with the exception of improved speed in a virtualized copy of XP running on an iMac in a benchmark suite, Safari has nothing a Firefox user doesn't already have. So again, no real incentive to switch, and plenty of reasons not to unless Safari gains the rich range of add-ons we're used to.

So for now, yes, we are getting pretty tied to another browser, and down the line that could become a problem. Let's just hope that Firefox continues to remain the highest-quality it can be and doesn't continue down the path all the other browsers have in the past.

Both Stumbleupon and Clipmarks have toolbars for IE and Firefox. In fact, any service that uses a browser plugin almost certainly targets both IE and Firefox. At least everything isn't tied to IE anymore.

I have to disagree with you here. Yes it sucks that not all browsers render developers code the same (I am a developer), but the fact of the matter is if Firefox keeps claiming more of the market, Windows will be forced to make there browser more standards compliant which they did with the release of IE7 (still has a long way to go). And when it comes to coding it isn't that hard to make a site compliant with all browsers b/c if you use a language such as PHP you can use a different CSS for each browser to make it render properly in each. This is what I do and my sites render correctly in IE, Firefox, Opera, and Netscape. Not sure about Safari or a few others b/c I haven't tested my sites for them. So basically Firefox is a good thing but I guess you could argue it has caused more work on the developers end, but honestly Opera and Netscape both render sites differently than IE so even before Firefox if a developer wanted to be browser friendly then they still had to do something such as what I said I do.

Great article David. I'm a big fan of Firefox but I think you have a strong point here. However, I don't think it's Firefox and Microsoft's fault for having a open enough system to all users to create extensions or plugins. Out of the box I actually like Opera much better than Firefox, Flock too for that matter. But there are a handful of extensions that I use every day that aren't running on anything else. A universal standard for plugins would be awesome! But it sounds idealistic and I too doubt it will happen anytime soon.

Firefox wiped out Microsoft's browser near-monopoly. Competition broke out. Browser prices fell from $100± to zero. Browsers and websites improved. Adherence to standards improved. How can that be a bad thing?

OpenOffice is poised to do it to Microsoft Office.

Its time we both have fun, love you so much but its time I do it to love will still be there!!!!!!!

I am not sure about this...

Isn't this like blaming Apple's iPod for it's success due to the saturation of after-market accessories 3rd party companies have chosen to develop?

It is not Mozilla's responsibility to send the memo to developers of add-ons (extensions & plugins) to not forget ... their competition.
It is the competitions task to get their developers community interested in product again and then redeploy with a new campaign.

Off left:
If Mozilla would really want to stick it to other browsers, they would resume the Mini-Mo project and launch a firefox mobile to compete with Pocket Internet Explorer, or the paid version of Opera Mobile.

So the StumbleUpon toolbar for IE on their homepage is a myth, then?

Every plugin I have for Firefox makes things easier to use, because they've made their plugin system easy to use; Opera have done the same with their widgets. If other browsers don't want to open up their API for whatever reason, then their users don't get the enhanced experience - but they have the choice to switch. Similarly, if a website is silly enough to want to rule out 75% of their users from being able to access their enhanced content, that's their problem. It's not even remotely similar to the case of web standards and interoperability.

Firefox has been nothing but a boon to the web; it helped reignite interest in standards, and without it the majority of users would still be using IE6 with the extreme limitations that entails.

David, sorry for being harsh, but you had no clue what you are talking about.. Where is your logic? Please THINK before you write.

I didn't have time to read all the comments, so I'm not sure if somebody mentioned this, but...

The problem with web apps is that they're trying to take what was originally a static-document-only syntax (HTML) and graft on more and more dynamic features, each harder to standardize than the next, and each with less cross-browser support. The reason you can't have StumbleUpon for Safari (or can you?) is that SU is not just a web site, it's a service with both client and server side components, and I think it would require serious abuse of a browser's scripting abilities to do what SU does without a plugin.

Consider the WarpPipe portal for the Wii browser -- it's basically a 100% JS/AJAX "plugin", but it's a bit ugly and a bit buggy and a bit slow, just as one would expect from what *has to be* a hack like that. I think it's perfectly OK to make browser-specific *applications*, as long as one doesn't carry that idea into an entire content-providing (vice service-providing) website. The problems of the late 90s came from web sites that took advantage of IE's (overly?) forgiving nature and wouldn't render right in other browsers. I think we've gone a long way towards fixing that now, and that's really something we should be highlighting more -- and it's lost when you confuse the issue with posts like this one.

Thanks, Steve, for the concise summary -- the article was confusing.

Now we have another competitor. I hope Safari will capture a considerable amount of the market share in the following years.



Jenny
http://www.spaml.com