June 09, 2005
Firefox sees extensive use in Europe
The use of Internet browser, Firefox, continues to grow across Europe, although growth has slowed.
According to French Web metrics firm XiTi, Firefox accounted for 14.08% of browsers used to access a large sample of Web sites that use its measurement software. This is a significant increase from 13.31% in April and 11.6% in March.
XiTi, which claims to monitor over 148,000 Web sites, identified Finland as the largest Firefox user, with over 30% of Web surfers using it; Germany followed with over 24% and Hungary was third with 22%.
Chris Hofmann, director of engineering for Mozilla, the company which produces Firefox, said "The numbers produced by XiTi resemble data from a variety of sources that we've seen". However, he was surprised at the market share in Finland.
WebSideStory, a US Web metrics company, showed that, in Germany, 22% of surfers used Firefox. WebSideStory's data also reflected the slowdown in adoption rates which has affected Firefox this year.
The slowing growth rate may be due to a number of factors -
- It is easier to increase market share by 10% per month when starting from a low level. There have now been over 60 million downloads of various versions of Firefox, making a similar percentage growth harder to achieve.
- Mozilla's original selling point for Firefox - that it was more secure than Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser – has been damaged by security problems.
Mozilla said that it was unconcerned about the market share data and that it had not noted a slowdown.
Posted at 09:54 AM
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May 17, 2005
Greasemonkey plays havoc with web
Greasemonkey, a Firefox extension which allows users to load custom scripts that modify a specific website anytime they visit it, is allowing Firefox users to tamper with the web. Users have added a delete button and search folders to Gmail and have even removed Reuters stories on the Michael Jackson trial from online newsreader Bloglines.
Greasemonkey was written by Aaron Boodman in December 2004. Users have submitted scripts for over 115 websites and 60 scripts that work across the web. Many of the scripts block ads, but more advanced scripts can link websites, eg adding links on a Yahoo Maps page to Google Maps. One script targets Amazon pages and tells you if a book is available in your local library.
A potential problem for Greasemonkey users is that they could reveal passwords if they install scripts from untrustworthy sources. The increasing use of Greasemonkey could also lead to some companies trying to disable it on their sites, or to sue users or scriptwriters.
Posted at 10:29 PM
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