There's a part of me that just simply doesn't care about these metrics anymore. It's not like the early days where the non-techies were suspicious or when websites were being created IE-only. The web is just very different - partially thanks to FF - but do you see the web looking different when FF is at 30% vs 20%?

Sites now do accommodate multiple browsers. We aren't going to get to a situation where we stop supporting IE as long as it's the default install on Windows. Is there progress to be made (in a way that changes my experience as an FF user)? By that I mean, when FF was at >1%, lots of sites didn't work right for me. That changed as FF grew larger. Do you think a jump from 20% to 30% would help me?

If IE6 were to drop below epsilon, it would greatly help me.

I use FF because it's better. But also for political reasons.

Using other browsers prevents a monopoly, and helps the evolution of the web.

It's kinda funny how it differs between different market segments. Diffle (casual games, launched on Digg) had 90% of its visitors use IE and only about 7% on Firefox, while WhatShallIDoNow (to-do list, launched on news.YC) has 70% of its visitors on FireFox with less than 10% on IE. In the first hour after launch - when it was just news.YC traffic - there were a couple hundred Firefox hits and one visitor with IE.

Who is the bastard reading this site in IE?

I'm the closest thing to a MS fanboy in these parts, and I've been using Mozilla since it was called Phoenix.

I had issues with FF2, so I went to IE7 when it launched. It wasn't so bad and I actually thought it was beneficial to be running the same platform the majority of my users were running. But eventually I couldn't take it anymore, and FF3 came out so I've switched back.

Probably a web developer that happened to have IE up at the time.

I've worked at a fortune 500 company whose IT departments won't allow Firefox. Security concerns was the official reason. Needless to say, I'm not there any more.

I'm on IE7 at work. I am a little too lazy to go through the paperwork to get Firefox on.

For a while I was forced to use IE6. I'll give this to IE7, it's no IE6.

It's the only browser allowed at my day job :-/

As Firefox gains in popularity and the ever popular AdBlock Plus being a regular fixture for installations I wonder if anyone has done any research or speculation into what effect this will have on the internet free with ads based revenue that so many people have built their success around.

So to get off my own butt and google it I found a few articles that talk about the same issue (http://www.roughtype.com/archives/2007/09/adblock_plus_th.ph..., http://www.hhcc.com/?p=450) but nothing seems to really go very deep. It is always "users are too small a population to worry" but it is always a good idea to start thinking now on this before it becomes a problem.

I don't think there is all that much correlation to be honest between firefox, and adblock.

I've used firefox for years but would never dream of installing adblock. I can see there's a sort of person that would, probably the same people who like to tell you how they don't own a TV...

Also, adblock only blocks irritating 'obvious' adverts. There's a ton of adverts you wouldn't even recognize as being adverts. "Ad-Blocking" isn't really a threat to the net.

I use adblock. (I do also own a TV.) It's a matter of sheer usability for me. I've never been able to develop that "ad-blindness" which others seem to have. When I don't block ads I almost literally cannot focus enough on the actual pages content to read it coherently. Flashing images and giant swaths of color are just painful. I often surf with page colors disabled and images blocked as well.

On a totally related note, I like the low-impact styling of HN.

I hate ads. Even if i didn't have AdBlock Plus or flashblock, i still would just ignore them. Internet users seem to be good at that. They are annoying and sometimes if there is too many of them they make Firefox slow(i usually have 20+ tabs open) Ads are broken, and users don't care about them. And those little Google ads, i don't read them, i know they're ads and don't even look at them.

Don't be ridiculous. Ads work. People click on them. Sites make millions. Ads are useful to the users, providing links you might not usually see.

Sure there are irritating flash popup music ads, but they are just spam.

I wonder what Opera would be getting if they actually listened to their users. Plus, right now any site with fancy AJAX would have some rendering/performing problem under opera (most of google stuff does, not gmail though). So that's another terrible sin.

I love Opera and think they deserve more success, but somewhere up in their hierarchy someone is making all the wrong decisions.

I have noticed in my web stats FireFox is now even with Internet Explorer 6

http://www.officezilla.com/most_used_browsers.png

IE7 32.23%, FireFox 29.09%, IE 6 25.94%

SearchYC.com stats:

  Firefox  75.7%
  Safari   12.9%
  IE        7.6%
  Opera     2.2%
  Mozilla   1.3%
  Other     0.3%

Good. Slowly, but surely...

e.g. FF is already #1 in .hu

Firefox 48.9% Internet Explorer 46.8%

http://www.adverticum.com/article/1063/

I think Firefox has increased the market-share mainly because of launch of Firefox 3 before the launch of IE 8, also Firefox got very good press before the launch. I think we can come to a good conclusion only when IE 8 launches. If it is good enough, i am sure lot of people will switch to IE.