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Firefox 2.0 scores big on the Internets

Mozilla's Firefox 2.0 browser was quite a popular download within the first 24 hours of its public availability. The new browser, which was introduced early last week, achieved 2 million downloads during its first day. Mozilla provided the following figures for its browser releases:

  • Firefox 1.0: 1 million downloads in the first 24 hours.
  • Firefox 1.5: 1.5 million downloads in the first 24 hours
  • Firefox 2: 2 million (actually slightly more) people using Firefox 2 in the first 24 hours.

There is definitely growing support for the browser and many have been anxious to see how Mozilla's latest and greatest stacks up to Microsoft's recently released Internet Explorer 7.0 web browser. Now if only the extension/add-on community would kick it into high gear and get all extensions up to 2.x compatibility.

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I use Firefox and IE7
By Christopher1 on 10/29/2006 6:50:06 PM , Rating: 2
I have to say that I use both Firefox 2.0 and IE7, and both are pretty good browsers. Though, for websites that I do not trust or that I am going to for the first time, I use Firefox with the NoScript extension turned on.

It's just a WEE bit more secure than IE7, though Microsoft might be able to make IE7 even more secure after it has been released with updates.




RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By IceT on 10/29/2006 6:55:03 PM , Rating: 2
I've to say that the new Firefox browser is very nice. For example, I like the built-in spell-check feature. In addition, search string suggestion is also quite helpful.

.IceT.


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/29/06, Rating: -1
RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By mlittl3 on 10/29/2006 7:00:53 PM , Rating: 1
I think you are thinking of some completely different software program. 2 versions back? Spy/malware?


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 7:09:23 PM , Rating: 2
The Firefox I had (how many versions is 1 1/2 Year?) from their site, got off the PC in say after 2 minutes...Even with SpybotSD, Router Firewall and AVG, as soon as I opened the browser (back then), 20 or so windows popped up under 3 sek. :O No joke! - So I haven't used it since.

But from your answer that's not the issue anymore see :)


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 7:11:02 PM , Rating: 2
"...issue anymore I see :)", the last sentence should say. Done no wher that I went??


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By mforce on 10/29/2006 7:12:20 PM , Rating: 2
Some programs can and do modify your homepage to one of their choice and that can happen in IE too. Then when you open the browser it goes to that set home page and you get all kinds of stuff , maybe that happened to you. Anyways if this happens again just check the homepage in Firefox unde Tools , Preferences .


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 7:18:33 PM , Rating: 2
Shure enough about hijacking and all that :) I ALLways set the startpage to Google before using the net for the first time on a new machine :)


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 7:21:20 PM , Rating: 2
Ooops - and locking changes of those IE settings etc... :)


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By mforce on 10/29/2006 7:09:39 PM , Rating: 3
Firefox is and always was open source . What that means is that the program is as free as they come , you can even modify and build a new verison of it yourself if you really want to.
It doesn't include any spyware and it never has. Just make sure you get your software from trusted websites otherwise they can add spyware to a program and offer it for download.
Firefox official site is here :
http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/
Try it. I guarantee it's safe.


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 7:13:55 PM , Rating: 2
OK - Trying then...:)


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Bonrock on 10/29/2006 8:10:42 PM , Rating: 3
Haha!

Firefox is indeed safe, but I find it incredibly funny that some random guy on the Internet writes "I guarantee it's safe" and that's apparently enough to make you go download it.


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 8:22:41 PM , Rating: 1
Hmmmm, when a "random" guy leads you to the correct webpage - why shoulkd I distrust??

BTW, I can say that I am pretty convinced with FF 2.0 - I've been using since install - works flawlessly :) And oddly enough the speed is ok now :)

ONE thing - the Bookmarks gets imported allright (!) but I have to rearrange the whole lot, since I'm not using strictly alphabetic sort :O

I must admit - I like until now.

- Claus


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By mforce on 10/30/2006 2:52:34 AM , Rating: 2
You're right here , just because a "radom" guy ( never been called that before ) recommends something you shouldn't trust him but Firefox is also recommended by other sites , persons , it's not just me.
I did what I could , offer my personal guarantee and give a link to the official homepage at mozilla ( surely that can't be a scam ) .
Anyway enjoy Firefox .


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Arrepiadd on 10/30/2006 3:14:34 AM , Rating: 2
Anyway, I find it odd that this guy needs you or anyone else to point him to the right direction to get Firefox. That seems like *not* a very good excuse. Every time Mozilla does anything to it's browser millions of websites post about it and link to the Mozilla website. It would not be hard to find it...

Anyway, and about Firefox having malware, I've been using Firefox since the version 0.1 (those days it was called Phoenix) and never came across any spy/malware. Don't know what the other guy got and where he got it, but it sure wasn't Firefox from Mozilla.


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Clauzii on 10/30/2006 10:14:45 AM , Rating: 2
Well, well,

YES - I know how to find stuff on the net myself. YES, I know of security stuff. Yes, I know how to put PCs together, install etc......

I didn't ask for the link, but was happy that Mr. "Random" put the link here :) Of course I could have found that myself, but as help, Mr. "Random" wrote a little about fraudulent pages, and gave the right one. (To B shure, that I was getting the right one this time :)

Thank You for Your help Mr "Random"!

Besides from all that, I am now a FirefoxUser again :)


RE: I use Firefox and IE7
By Xietsu on 10/31/2006 3:11:23 PM , Rating: 2
This man is a marketer from some advertising segment of "some" corporation. Audience profiling is fun!


Problems
By Exodus220 on 10/29/2006 6:54:21 PM , Rating: 2
I have been running Firefox 2.0 for over a week now and I keep having problems with random freezes. FF just stops responding and I have to close it. Luckily FF2.0 has the option to reload everything I was working on, but it is still such a pain to have it freeze on me so often. I love the new interface though, and I don't have any plans of changing my browsers. I would try IE7 but my Windows does not pass the validation test so I am left to wonder what it would be like.




RE: Problems
By Brandon Hill (blog) on 10/29/2006 7:03:59 PM , Rating: 2
I have problems with FF 2.0 freezing when a site tries to display a legitimate popup or sometimes when a site opens a new window. It got to the point where it was happening WAY too frequently so I went back to FF 1.5.0.7.


RE: Problems
By mlittl3 on 10/29/06, Rating: 0
RE: Problems
By Exodus220 on 10/29/2006 9:48:18 PM , Rating: 2
Not a troll mate, sorry to disappoint. I was hesitant when first introduced to FF, but then I quickly fell in love with it and have had my whole family change over to FF instead of IE. I am totally for FF and I would even download it on the University computers so I did not have to use IE6, it was just much nicer for me to have FF.


RE: Problems
By CheesePoofs on 10/29/2006 7:05:20 PM , Rating: 2
It's probably due to one of the extensions you're using. If you can reproduce the crash, disable all of them and turn them on one by one to see which causes it. Otherwise you might want to try going without the ones you don't need.


RE: Problems
By mforce on 10/29/2006 7:18:33 PM , Rating: 2
Well that problem with the validation can be solved ehem ... if you did buy it just contact MS and if you didn't just use the WGA crack ( look for it on the filesharing progs ). Of course it's not legal to use the Windows Genuine Advantage crack but since you pirated Windows anyway it might be OK , lol . Also watch out for viruses while getting the crack.
Still I recommend you give Firefox a change , maybe in future minor versions ( 2.01 ) it will get better. You can also try and report you problems on the mozilla forums ( mozillazine I think).


RE: Problems
By Senju on 10/29/2006 10:46:02 PM , Rating: 3
Main. I do not like this new version. I freezes all the dam time. What the F#### is happening? You know...I would not mind if it only freezes a few times but *EVERY TIME* and often. I have no issues with IE7 about freezes. I see I am not the only one having this issue so it must be this new version browser issue and I assume many people are having this issue. I hope they get a fix soon. At this point, it is not usable and I recommend people to wait. It feels like a beta version.


RE: Problems
By Arrepiadd on 10/30/2006 3:28:08 AM , Rating: 2
And I'm sorry to disagree but people *should* install 2.0. I've been using it since RC1 and it's rather stable. Sure it hangs once in a while (but not "*EVERY TIME*") and definitely not everyday or so frequently that I can make a pattern. It crashes less than 1.5.x and it has a better interface overall. But hey, this is just my opinion...


RE: Problems
By Xavian on 10/30/2006 6:38:51 AM , Rating: 2
been running firefox 2.0 final since release and i have yet to experience a crash, only thing of note was that flashgot released a buggy version :P an update which fixes the bugs in version 0.5.97 (0.5.97.01 is the fixed version) is available on the add-ons website.

But beside that i have NO crashes whatsoever, i would check your extensions and make sure they are up-to-date and compatible with FF 2.0.


RE: Problems
By wallijonn on 10/30/2006 11:20:34 AM , Rating: 2
One thing you may want to do is export the bookmarks, then delete the invisible (hidden) files in the My Data / Fire fox section. That should delete all your personal settings, themes and extensions. Then install 2.0.

As for the crashes, are they only happening when you visit adult websites or bank websites? The adult website may be trying to install a Trojan or virus.


RE: Problems
By splines on 10/30/2006 2:12:01 AM , Rating: 2
I've been getting the occasional lockup in FF and IE7 with Adobe Reader, but that isn't news by any stretch of the imagination.

Otherwise both seem to work very well. I do prefer Firefox's interface, though. The standard IE7 theme goes on with that whole garish chunky look from WinXP, and I don't think I've ever been a fan.


RE: Problems
By Aikouka on 10/30/2006 8:12:55 AM , Rating: 2
I'm actually really disappointed with Firefox 2.0 and how it's been running on my machine as well. Almost every other time when I click a link to download a file, select the location and then FireFox tells me, "Oh, you can't save to that disk." I open the link again, ensure I'm in the same location and it works. I've been running the browser since it came out and I've never had this issue. So yeah, I think I'm going to switch to something that works right or downgrade, because I hate annoyances like that.


RE: Problems
By Xietsu on 10/31/2006 3:12:52 PM , Rating: 2
My bets that this poster is a female reader of Daily Tech! LOL. Hahahahahaha


RE: Problems
By GoatMonkey on 10/30/2006 8:54:40 AM , Rating: 2
I've got IE7 and FF2 on my computers now. Both have some nice little improvements. IE's improvements are more noticeable, mostly because IE6 was crap and any improvements over crap are obvious.

However, I am also having trouble with Firefox on some pages. For example, I went to the ESPN scoreboard page for college football on Saturday and left it for a couple of hours. When I came back it had frozen up. I have also noticed memory leaks where the browser gets over 100mb. It is slow to load Yahoo Mail beta, especially if it is in a tab and I move between the tabs and back.

Overall though, the new Firefox seems pretty good, and I'm sure that these little annoyances will be fixed pretty soon.


RE: Problems
By bplewis24 on 10/30/2006 12:34:08 PM , Rating: 1
I haven't used Firefox, but I downloaded IE7 and I've experienced the same exact thing that you did when viewing gamecasts on ESPN.com and also cbs.sportsline.com (the better in-game coverage IMO).

It was really irritating with cbs.sportsline's game coverage because IE7 would crash about every 5 minutes. However, that is the only complaint I've had as of yet. So far it has worked well other than that.

Brandon


RE: Problems
By TomZ on 10/30/2006 12:46:25 PM , Rating: 2
What was the crash attributed to, an add-in (e.g., flash player OCX) or core IE7?


No save workspace?
By feelingshorter on 10/29/2006 7:07:31 PM , Rating: 2
I'm using Firefox 2 now and I would have thought that they would create a "save work space" feature. Imagine doing a research paper but your tired and need sleep. You'd have to bookmark all your stuff or just leave your computer on. On Opera, i can just save a workspace and continue my research later. Does Opera have that feature patented or something? I think firefox would be great with that feature so that people can turn their computer off and continue browsing where they left off. For some weird reason, firefox does tend to crash more than IE, although FF 2 hasnt crashed on me yet.




RE: No save workspace?
By mforce on 10/29/2006 7:21:32 PM , Rating: 2
Under Firefox 1.5.0.7 I have in Bookmarks , Bookmark all tabs . I guess that's close to what you're looking for , isn't it in Firefox 2.0 ?


RE: No save workspace?
By armagedon on 10/29/2006 7:26:12 PM , Rating: 2
New if FF2 ; Tools> Options >General >When Firefox start> show my Windows and tabs from last time.


RE: No save workspace?
By armagedon on 10/29/2006 7:30:44 PM , Rating: 2
oops!!! Tools>Options >Main >Startup >When Firefox starts > Show my Windows and tabs from last time.


RE: No save workspace?
By dreddly on 10/29/2006 8:07:17 PM , Rating: 2
awesome! When I tried to do that, I had my first spontaneous crash of FF2. Very strange given the above discussion. I don't know why that option isn't enabled by default.


RE: No save workspace?
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 8:26:04 PM , Rating: 2
OK, it must be other programs and stuff in the machines then... Here everything is good.


RE: No save workspace?
By Wwhat on 10/30/2006 8:26:14 AM , Rating: 2
It might be an issue with quicktime's MIME which displays wavs and some imageformats (and .mov's of course) in browsers.
Wild guess of course but something to test maybe.


RE: No save workspace?
By Clauzii on 10/30/2006 10:31:09 AM , Rating: 2
This is odd, 'caus the only mediafiles I can see in FF2, is those used by the Quicktime Plugs :O


RE: No save workspace?
By smitty3268 on 10/29/2006 7:50:02 PM , Rating: 2
This has been available for a long time with the Session Saver extension, and now with 2.0 it is a part of the default install. Just go to options and it is the very first setting you see under the Main tab.


Wow
By kextyn on 10/29/2006 11:30:03 PM , Rating: 2
Opera was only mentioned once in all these comments. And it's such a better browser than Firefox.

And who cares how many people downloaded it? Wait, scratch that...who cares how many times it was downloaded. You know over half of the downloads were people downloading on multiple PC's.




RE: Wow
By Samus on 10/30/2006 2:18:59 AM , Rating: 2
Opera constantly renders web pages incorrectly. Not to say it's crap, but as a web developer I find it unacceptable when it consistently won't run JS buttons in more than one frame that link to another frame. It also gets colors wrong on occasion and causes banding between frames (especially HTML 2.0 content, which its rendering engine clearly isn't 100% compliant)

Saying Opera is such a better browser than Mozilla shows how misinformed you really are.


RE: Wow
By TomZ on 10/30/2006 7:58:27 AM , Rating: 2
I agree with your statement - I used Opera 9 for a while, and I found that maybe 3-5% of web sites I visited had some kind of minor problems. That said, the main reason I think that people like Opera is for the good GUI and usability features it has built-in. What puts me off with Firefox is the need to seek out and install a number of third-party add-ins in order to get the same level of functionality as Opera 9, and the subsequent liklihood of encountering bugs in one or more of your extensions.


RE: Wow
By Mudvillager on 10/30/2006 8:26:59 AM , Rating: 2
Out of the bunch Opera is the one which renders most correct. Your problems with Opera are probably caused by you coding badly.

Speaking of which, have you heard of acid2? It's a page which tests standards compatibility and correctness. Firefox and IE are not even close to renedering it correctly. Opera has passed the test.


RE: Wow
By Xavian on 10/30/2006 9:12:31 AM , Rating: 2
yet its inability to render non-standard compliant code is severely lacking. Sure blame the developers, but if Opera wont tolerate slight deviations from standards and renders so strictly, then its not going to be popular at all.

Besides, since FF 3.0 passes the Acid2 test and is not as strict in rendering non-standard code, I'm sure FF will continue to get popular.


RE: Wow
By Xavian on 10/30/2006 9:13:33 AM , Rating: 2
Also i would like to add, FF 2.0 gets very close to rendering correctly, IE7 is way way behind though.


RE: Wow
By TomZ on 10/30/2006 10:30:48 AM , Rating: 2
I think that "rendering correctly" is not entirely an objective statement. Probably the IE7 development team thinks their standards compliance is high, as do the other browser development teams, even though there are differences in their implementations.


Ok,
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 7:49:12 PM , Rating: 2
Just DLed and installed FF 2.0. Until now it has been working smooth. It has allthough allso worked a little bit slower than IE6. The pages seems to be like double/triple the loadingtime compared to IE6. (XP2400/1GB-RAM/1Mbit net).

In the music world there is something called VST plugins, usable in a LOT of music programs. Here, now I have two different Flash PlugIns :-/

BUT - smooth anyway, and some nice features. Good :)




RE: Ok,
By sscilli on 10/30/2006 12:57:36 AM , Rating: 2
I used to use FireFox, but now have switched to Opera. I will probably check out the latest version of FireFox, but I don't really care how many people download it. I feel more secure using a less known browser because there will we less incentive for hackers to exploit it. As far as being slower than IE6 goes, why bother comparing the two. If your gonna compare Firefox 2.0 to anything microsoft compare it to IE7, at least that has tabbed browsing.


RE: Ok,
By Clauzii on 10/30/2006 10:25:17 AM , Rating: 2
Right on that one - IE6 is old, but it's been working like a Breeze for me :)

Basically I just wanted to try FF again, and I was happy, I only needed to DL 5.5MBs, that organizing Bookmarks works better in FF than IE, and the fact one can get rid of the PopUp bar, just hiding it. Haven't found out how to get rid of that in IE6 :-/

I have ONE problem though: F.ex. I can't see the Videos on CNN, and other places, that embed the media in the page.... How come??


RE: Ok,
By TomZ on 10/30/2006 10:35:49 AM , Rating: 2
The videos don't work in Opera either.


RE: Ok,
By Clauzii on 10/30/2006 7:59:47 PM , Rating: 2
OK, I've seen something about ActiveX controls, but only upto FF v1.5 until now. Maybe it will get to work someday. I can't throw IE away yet then :(


RE: Ok,
By Wwhat on 10/31/2006 9:40:31 AM , Rating: 2
"how come" eh, that's exactly what the EU's fight against microsoft is about.


deleted bookmarks
By Lazarus Dark on 10/29/2006 7:37:46 PM , Rating: 2
I dl'd 2.0 the day before "official release" and I like it. The spellcheck and search suggest is great. I've seen a few other fixes and improvements that are nice.

Unfortunately, I upgraded from 1.5.0.7 and it deleted half of my bookmarks! not all, just half; weird, huh? and stupid me, the last backup I have is like a year old. Anyone else experience this?




RE: deleted bookmarks
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 7:43:57 PM , Rating: 2
A one year old backup? No :)


RE: deleted bookmarks
By ChronoReverse on 10/30/2006 1:25:41 AM , Rating: 2
If you were using FF 1.5.x, look for the folder called backup in your profile. There should be a number of automatically made backups in there =)


RE: deleted bookmarks
By Lazarus Dark on 10/30/2006 6:15:34 AM , Rating: 2
ach. duh! thanks. don't know what I was thinking. restored my bookmarks now. brain not work good this week apparently.


Firefox 2.0 running smoothly so far
By fyahman on 10/29/2006 8:34:28 PM , Rating: 2
So far so good...haven't experienced that crashes i used to get when i used the beta [thats why its beta right ;-)]. Compared to IE 7....i still give FF the nod because of its extensions and themes though IE is no slouch. Gotta keep IE around because of the NT authentication i have to go through at work. Good work to both companies.




By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 11:02:47 PM , Rating: 3
Yes, it shows competition IS good.


By Xietsu on 10/31/2006 3:14:00 PM , Rating: 2
This viewer works for the government =/. lmao...just messin' =]


Good for them.
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 6:54:47 PM , Rating: 2
Does those numbers exclude retrys ie. when downloading doesn't work the first time?




RE: Good for them.
By TomZ on 10/30/2006 10:58:48 AM , Rating: 2
The FF2 download is only 5.6MB, so I doubt there are a large number of download failures and retries.


RE: Good for them.
By Clauzii on 10/30/2006 8:05:37 PM , Rating: 2
Your'e right, not a great concern there actually. It's just You know, all those numbers we read on the net. We have to be crirical once in a while :) 2 mill is pretty ok for a small browser then.


Apparent Correlation
By copiedright on 10/29/2006 10:40:14 PM , Rating: 2
Just a note:

Has anyone else noted the close correlation between the firefox version number and the number of downloads within 24 hours?




RE: Apparent Correlation
By Zirconium on 10/29/2006 10:52:43 PM , Rating: 2
Yeah. I was thinking they should just release Firefox version 100 to force 100 million downloads within the first 24 hours.


RE: Apparent Correlation
By Clauzii on 10/29/2006 11:01:13 PM , Rating: 2
LOL


crash
By cciesquare on 10/30/2006 1:32:55 AM , Rating: 2
Could just be my machine, but firefox 2.0 crashes a lot for me. When it crashes, i cant even launch another firefox unless i restart my computer. Never had a problem with firefox before 2.0 also many weird errors from websites that never had errors.

Again could just be me, but my Firefox 2.0 is very buggy.




RE: crash
By Samus on 10/30/2006 2:20:25 AM , Rating: 2
Sounds like a general stability error...does it happen on the same webpages or random web pages? When Java runs? Try reinstalling Java. I deployed Firefox 2.0 to 15 machines last Wednesday and haven't had a complaint about crashing.


some tips
By mforce on 10/30/2006 3:13:33 AM , Rating: 2
If you use Firefox I recommend you use both Adblock and the Filterset G Updated to get rid of those pesky ads. It works great and I can't live without it. That's why I'm not even considering another browser.
If you want to open a link , any link in a new tab just press the middle mouse button ( the scroll wheel ) and it always opens link in a new tab.
Finally I'd like to say that another good thing in IE 7 versus Firefox is that Firefox works on Linux also but I'm expecting MS to offer IE for Linux before hell freezes over.

P.S. : nice spell checker . No more spelling mistakes in my post now . :)




RE: some tips
By Xavian on 10/30/2006 6:45:01 AM , Rating: 2
Personally i use adblock and create my own filters, unfortunately filterset G isn't perfect and i often find large chunks of web pages missing because it decides to block something on a page that it shouldn't.


No 2 for me
By Orbitration on 10/30/2006 9:38:21 AM , Rating: 2
I've been giving 2.0 a chance throughout the beta stages, and kept hoping the folks who coded the extensions and themes that I like so well on 1.5.0.7 would fix them to work for 2.0.
No joy there. And until those items ARE updated to include 2.0, I'll stick with the older version, it works fine the way it is.
Sometimes, newer, bigger version numbers do NOT mean a better experience.




Love it
By Nik00117 on 10/30/2006 11:49:02 AM , Rating: 2
I tried FF 2 in the early beta days of it I hated it dumped it went back to FF 1.5. FF 2.0 is simply brilliant. I love the spell checker and all I downloaded it that Tuesday so I was one of the 2 million to downloads it. I think its quite a bit faster as well. I have used before IE7 and Opera I prefer FF 2.0




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