firefox and facebook users

Just an observation: Firefox and Facebook have pretty much the same number of users.

i have a beard again

A couple of people who see me regularly in person noted that my profile photo and other photos of me around the Web are a bit misleading because I've been sporting a full beard for the better part of this year. It probably won't survive 2009, but that's no reason not to share, so here's a quick iPhone snapshot that my friend Rey took.

It's getting a little bit (some might say that's not emphatic enough) out of control but I'm kinda digging it.

is google playing dirty with logos?

A Google search for "Firefox 3.6 beta" offers this helpful result:

What's wrong with this picture?

security response time - mozilla kills it

The Zero Day Initiative has reported that Mozilla leads the industry with the fastest vendor response time to security bugs. Scroll down to Vendor Patch Time Statistics.

No surprise here, but nice to see it documented.

chrome has 30 million active users

Today the Google folks disclosed that they have 30 million active users.

Chrome shipped its first public release 14 months ago and has managed to achieve a pretty large number of users in that time.

(For comparison, it took Firefox a full 8 weeks to add its most recent 30 million new users).

I've said this before, but really does deserve repeating that Google should go back to providing browser usage statistics for Google Search. They have a very large and globally distributed user base and that data would really help us all get a better picture of the global browser breakdown.

Remember when the Google Zeitgeist rocked?!

When the two primary sources disagree as much as Net Applications and StatCounter do, (Net Applications says Firefox has 24% of usage and StatCounter says it's almost 32%) adding a third big source seems like it could have nothing but a positive impact on understanding this world a little better.

Google, if you're reading this, please return to providing browser usage share in your Zeitgeist reports like you did before you started the Chrome project.

update: Wow. "Larry and Sergey recently gave the Chrome team a Founders Award, a multimillion-dollar stock bonus" That's pretty sweet. Lest anyone forget, Google has LOTS of money.

update2: Awesome tweet from @joedrew

tour of firefox

I narrated a tour of Firefox. Check it out.

call for design/illustrator help

Hey friends. I need some help. As many of you know, we're coming up on the 5 year anniversary of Firefox 1.0 and as part of the celebration, I'm trying to get together the evolution of the Firefox brand (from way back in the Phoenix days through Firefox 3.5).

For the Firefox logos, we've got vector art, but unfortunately the Phoenix original art was lost long ago.

So, I'm hoping that someone reading this, with decent Illustrator skills, would be willing to re-create the old Phoenix logo for me.

update: Yeah, I tried Illustrator's live trace but there's just not enough data in this small bitmap to produce something that looks solid.

We're on a bit of a tight schedule so if this is something you'd be able to get to this weekend, I'd be eternally grateful. (my gratitude comes with a free classic mozilla "Hack" t-shirt if you're interested.)

net neutrality wtf of the day

OMG.

This guy is sponsoring legislation to block Net Neutrality.

WTF?

videopress supporting open video

This is good news. VideoPress supports Ogg.

children are stronger

Brilliant.

Reporter: "What do you say to parents who think the Wild Things film may be too scary?"

Sendak: "I would tell them to go to hell. That's a question I will not tolerate."

:D

I love Maurice Sendak.

remember that microsoft silent add-on install?

Microsoft silently installed a security vulnerability in Firefox. Not only was the install not requested by users (malware) but it opened Firefox users to a critical remote exploit flaw. Thanks, Microsoft. Appreciate that.

update Read more about this:

Microsoft exposes Firefox users to drive-by malware downloads by Ryan Naraine
Microsoft Plug-In Makes Firefox Vulnerable by Robert Evans
Microsoft plug-in for Firefox patched byPaul Mah
Sneaky Microsoft plug-in puts Firefox users at risk by Gregg Keizer

a thumb on the scale

"Nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser...."

That's the text of of the first sentence of the tenth paragraph of Microsoft's proposed settlement with the European Commission over its illegal tying of Internet Explorer with Windows.

The same proposal specifies the actual layout and design of the "ballot screen" that will be presented to approximately 170 million European Windows PC users sometime in the next few months and probably another 200-300 million users over the next 5 years.

Unfortunately, the proposed design of the ballot expresses a huge bias for one of the 5 browsers listed. The ballot, as described, will list the browsers in a static and alphabetical order.

And. It is common knowledge among usability experts, explained in quite solid detail and well cited by our very own Jennifer Boriss, that the first item in a list of choices will receive very disproportionate attention.

It is for this reason that the ballot cannot be static, regardless of criteria for ordering, and also be unbiased. The ordering of the choices on the ballot must be randomized. Failing to randomize those choices expresses a clear and strong bias to the first item on the list leading hundreds of millions of users to favor that item over all others.

There is simply no other way to eliminate bias. Anything short of randomizing is just shifting from one bias to another.

are you safe? are your friends?

The tech savvy among you know that web browsers are no longer the number one target for malware and other online scams. Browsers are all getting much safer much faster since Firefox entered the market so the bad guys are targeting the less frequently updated and often times far less secure browser plug-ins. Most browser vendors don't control those plug-in so your browser can't completely cover that aspect of your Web safety. (Some browser vendors even knowingly ship insecure plug-ins.)

Well, at Firefox, we're not just punting and telling our users to contact their plug-in vendors. We're going that extra mile to try to help you keep those plug-ins secure.

The first step was our Flash Plug-in check that we rolled out with a recent Firefox 3.5 update.

Today, we're helping you take the second step with a much more comprehensive plug-in check.

Right now this page only works with Firefox, but we care about all of you and we're working to support those of you on other browsers as well. We're also working on integrating these checks directly into Firefox.

Outdated plug-ins are the number one source of crashes on the Web and leave more users open to security exploits than any program. Please tell your friends, family members, and co-workers about this new Plug-in Check service from Mozilla. The Web thanks you.

firefox breaks 24%

Looking at a rolling 1 week average, Firefox has been above 24% global usage share for for several days now. We probably won't break 24% for the month of September but we're going to come pretty close and I think this puts us on track to easily reach 25% of global usage by the end of the year.

That's going to be pretty amazing. This year, Firefox will account for a full quarter of all browsing on the planet. Statistically, if you approach a group of 4 people, one of them is a Firefox user.

Mozilla's global community of contributors sure does have a lot to be proud of. A special thanks to all of localizers who have built amazing communities on top of an amazing product. With more than half of our users and our usage coming from outside of the US, you all really did make this possible.

theora 1.1 crosses the finish line

w00t

Theora 1.1 has been released. This release includes huge updates to the encoder and some pretty solid updates to the decoder.

Read all about it over at the Mozilla Hacks blog.

don't dream it. be it.

If you didn't see tonight's Dancing With the Stars, you missed a magical moment.

Actually, several moments.

The first was Macy Grey's waltz. It was genuine and engaging, if not perfect.

The second was Macy's green room commentary. Brilliant!

The third was Kelly Osbourne's waltz. Kelly just about brought tears to my eyes. She really does have the most to gain from this and she obviously put her everything into it.

webgl in firefox

Check out Vlad's blog. WebGL has just landed in the Firefox nightly builds. OpenGL for Web pages!!!

half of all users have firefox?

InfoWorld is reporting on stats from exo.performance.network that Firefox is now on more consumer computers that not.

It finally happened. After years of building momentum -- and more than a few false starts -- Mozilla's Firefox Web browser has finally reached critical mass. There are now more users running some variant of Firefox (50.6 percent) than not running it, according to the latest statistics from the exo.performance.network, which tracks the actual usage and configurations of thousands of PCs globally, providing a real-world snapshot.

google chrome targets and a better web

In an interview with Reuters, Chrome Engineering Director Linus Upson went on record with some usage share targets for Chrome, stating "If at the two-year birthday we're not at least 5 percent (market share), I will be exceptionally disappointed."

Chrome launched just over a year ago and jumped immediately up to 1% global share. In the year since, they've added 2 points to that total and it sounds like they're shooting for another two points in their second year.

This would put Chrome in the second best growth position behind Firefox which is gaining about 5 points per year. Safari is in third place gaining about 1 point each year. Opera follows Safari with about a quarter point growth per year.

Here's what that looks like for the last year, according to Net Applications.

The good news for Firefox and the feisty gang of niche browsers (and the entire Web) is that IE is the big loser here. In the last year, the ~8.75 points gained by Firefox and the others all came at the expense of Internet Explorer which went from owning almost 3/4ths of all web traffic to less than 2/3rds. That's a pretty positive year of change.

update: A couple complaints about the graph so here's an alternate view on the same data that might be easier to digest.

sparky the mozilla wonder dog

I learned this week that Sparky, beloved member of the Hofmann family, Mozilla icon, and all around good dog, has passed away.

He's seen as much of Mozilla as any one, from the Netscape campus, to our space on Villa Street, to the Landings buildings, and most recently, downtown Mountain View.

He was with us for the first Mozilla releases, for Firefox 1.0, and up through the most recent Firefox 3.5 release. He was known to many at Mozilla as a tenacious, and scrappy but fun terrier with a fiery (as in Firefox) personality.

We miss you Sparky, and we're thinking a lot about your human family and their loss. We love you all.

Rest in peace, Sparky.

Sparky, covering my duties at Mozilla while I take a break.

planet mozilla theme update

A big thanks to Sam Sidler for stepping up to update the Planet Mozilla theme.

The update moves Planet Mozilla forward to the style of the recently updated mozilla.org website. I really like this new look for mozilla.org. It seems to me just the right mixture of the classic Mozilla call to action style and the contemporary feel that represents of Mozilla's amazing global reach.

net applications august update

Net Applications has released their August update.

Firefox gained half a point to land a hair shy of 23%. IE dropped 7/10ths of a point to a hair shy of 67%. Chrome grew a quarter point to achieve 2.84% global share on its one year anniversary. Everything else was pretty much flat.

It looks like the summer slowdown is ending for Firefox. For as long as we've been tracking users and usage trends, summer has always been slow for Firefox. I attribute some of it to many of our European users taking their nice long summer breaks and to school being out. Once Europe returns from vacation and students return to class, we start to see solid gains.

The other interesting bit is the 1 year anniversary of Chrome. Chrome jumped right up to 1 point immediately on launch, and in the 11.5 months since then has added less than two points to their overall share. They're getting close to Safari levels and pushed Opera into fifth place so that's gotta make the Chrome folks happy, but I think that most people expected more than 2.84% share a year after the big release.

Finally, on the browser versions front, for the average of the month of August, IE was splitting its users three ways, with ~25% on 6, 21~ on 7, and 15% on 8. Firefox usage was split with about 12.5% on 3 and 8.9% on 3. Firefox 2 usage is well under 1.5% and it's probably time for Web developers to consider whether or not it makes sense to continue supporting Firefox 2.

browser usage version update

This last week was a good one for new browsers versions. In terms of global usage, IE 8 has just crossed IE 7 and Firefox 3.5 has just crossed Firefox 3. This won't show up in tomorrow's August report from Net Applications, because they average the whole month and for most of the month, the newer versions were still behind. Septeber's report should show the newer versions well ahead of the older versions (with the exception of IE 6 which still holds a several point lead over IE 8 and IE 7.)

measuring global browser share

I've recently been bad-mouthing the browser usage share data from both StatCounter and Net Applications. There remain some really strange internal inconsistencies with very serious and unexplainable spikes and dips for some of the browsers they're monitoring and I'm discouraged by that.

But until we find some better sources of data, I think it might be useful to try to figure out what we can learn from these sources, if anything. My first pass at this task was just to do some rough comparisons between the two and what I found was both surprising and I think positive.

Here's a chart comparing the last year of data for Internet Explorer and Firefox.

The first thing of note is that the two sources come up with radically different shares for Firefox and IE. The difference between the two is nearly as large as the sum of all the other browsers they measure. I have no idea which of the two sources is closer to "the truth" and I don't think that just averaging them gives us any better picture of "the truth" so I don't think that's a productive avenue but maybe some statistician can show me otherwise.

The second issue worth remarking on is that there's some consistent seasonal changes. Firefox has considerably stronger growth in the winter than it does in the summer and that shows up in both data sources.

The third thing of note is the surprising and more positive bit. Over the course of a year, the two sources are in reasonably close agreement on the trends. Net Applications reports that for this time period, Firefox gained ~4.6 points of usage share and StatCounter reports a gain of ~5.4%. Looking at the IE losses during the period, Net Applications sees an 8.7% loss and StatCounter sees a 9.9% loss. That's really not too wide a gap in the trend, even if the month to month deltas are a little wackier and even if the two pretty firmly disagree on the total share for each browser.

So, my first conclusion, probably an obvious one, is that it's probably not a good idea to fret over the month to month variations but that the longer term changes are probably worth paying some attention to.

This doesn't address any of the geographic disparities, but I think that's a problem we're basically stuck with until we get more representative sources. Given the general agreement between these two sources on at least one front, are the longer term trends worth giving credence to? What do you all think?

fear of the awesomebar overblown

There are a number of articles popping up in the last few days that are making a big deal about the recent uninstall survey results showing that a decent number of Firefox 2 users who refuse to upgrade to Firefox 3 or 3.5 are concerned about the Awesomebar revealing some of their "private" bookmarks to anyone looking over their shoulder or using their computer.

Most of this coverage is overblown. Articles and blog posts that contain both "firefox" and "porn" probably get a lot eyeballs and I think that's what's going on here.

Why do I say it's overblown?

As of this week, 94% of Firefox active daily users are on Firefox 3 and Firefox 3.5.

(I don't have absolute user numbers for other browsers, but usage is a reasonable proxy here and if you look at Safari, they still have about 16% of their usage coming from two versions or more behind the current release. If you look at the other browser with a significant number of users, IE, a whopping 37% of that share is two versions or more behind.)

If you didn't have any numbers, reading most of the coverage around this would probably lead you to believe that a large percentage of Firefox users were still using Firefox 2. Compared to the other two mainstream browsers, Firefox users are actually very current.

Then there's the actual survey data. If the survey is representative of all of the people still on Firefox 2, then what we're actually talking about is ~1.5% of Firefox users citing the Awesomebar as holding them back.

So Firefox has more users on the current versions than the other browsers and about 1.5% of Firefox users don't like a new Firefox feature. Is that really worthy of all this coverage?

lockheed fire fully contained

As of August 23, at 7:16 p.m. the Lockheed Fire is 100% contained.

Unburned islands of vegetation continue to burn inside the perimeter of the fire. Fire crews have contained the remaining open fire line in the southern region Threat levels remain low in the Bonny Doon and Swanton areas however, residents should remain alert to possible fire activity occurring in and around the fire area. If anyone who witnesses a large amount of smoke production in the burn area should call the Lockheed Fire Information Line at 831- 335-0378.

Major problems and concerns continue to be the, steep terrain and limited access. Lingering smoke will be present as fire crews continue to fully control the incident. We would like residents driving in the communities affected by the fire to remain cautious of the fire personnel and equipment working to extinguish the fire. Additionally, residents need to be cautious when walking in or near the burned area. Smoldering brush and stumps may be found and are still dangerous.

On behalf of the CAL FIRE Incident Command Team 9, we would like to thank the residents of Bonny Doon, Davenport and the Swanton and Last Chance areas. Your patience and understanding during the evacuation assisted the firefighters in extinguishing the wildfire that threatened the area. To date there have been no lives lost and all homes were saved. We encourage all residents to comply with the 100 foot clearances around all structures. Those interested in learning more information on brush clearance should visit the following website. http://www.fire.ca.gov/communications/communications_firesafety_100feet.php

Residents who need more information can contact the Lockheed Fire Information L0378, or go to www.fire.ca.gov.

For the last week or so I've been maintaining a Google Map of the Lockheed Fire perimeter for the good folks at the Santa Cruz Sentinal. SCS has been an amazing online resource for locals trying to get up to the minute information on the fire, thanks to the long hours of the staff and the many residents that have been checking in there with regular updates on the fire.

As you can see from the map, this was a pretty good sized fire not at all far from thousands of homes. That not a single home was lost is a testament to the 2000+ fire personnel that put their lives on hold and on the line to contain this fire. A huge thank you to everyone that played a role bringing this thing under control.

(And three cheers for a single payer government program that saves thousands of lives and untold billions in property every year.)

blog metrics update

In case any of you were wondering, this is my 3,936th post at this blog. I've written about 450,000 words here over the course of 88 months.

measuring global share is hard

Recently, Net Applications updated their methodology to weight their browser share by the Internet population of the countries they monitor. This had the effect of knocking Apple's Safari down quite a bit, presumably due to Apple's weak numbers outside of the U.S. and of lifting Opera up some, presumably due to Opera's stronger showing in Europe an Asia.

As of August 1st, we have implemented retroactive country-level weighting in our reports. This means that we adjust our reports proportionally based on how much traffic we record from a country vs. how many internet users that country has. For example, although we have significant data from China, it is relatively small compared to the number of internet users in China. Therefore, we now weight Chinese traffic proportionally higher in our global reports. This change produces a much more accurate view of worldwide usage share statistics.

That sounds like a change for the better, but it also seems to have had some unfortunate side effects. Net Applications obviously does not have equally good sampling in all of the countries it monitors. Where that sample is weak and likely to produce unrepresentative results, the effect can be either magnified or diminished depending on the Internet population of that country or region.

Before the new methodology, presumably, they just reported raw data -- their weighting was tied directly to the strength (size) of their sample. So if they had a relatively small (not likely to be very representative) sample in a particular country, that less good sample had less of an impact on their overall numbers.

Now, though, crazier and unrepresentative numbers in large Internet population countries have a quite dramatic effect on the overall global share reported by Net Applications.

Here's a good example:

Several weeks ago, I saw an odd spike in the Netscape usage share. Netscape hasn't shipped a new browser in ages and their global share has been pretty steady at around half a percentage point for as long as I can remember. Then, for the week of 07/19, their share shot up to over 1%. A doubling of share seemed a bit odd for a browser that's been out of circulation as long as Netscape but when you're dealing with half a percent or less, it's not unreasonable to imagine that it wasn't growth of Netscape so much as a slow week of usage for all the other browsers. I could sort of picture a situation where modern browser users as a cohort all did a bit less browsing for a few days while ancient browser users were unaffected. I didn't think too much about it but it did catch my attention.

Well, this week's numbers just came out and Netscape is showing a global share of almost 4% !!!

Here's what the trends look like for the last couple of months of global share.

My first thought was "this can't be right" so I looked at the U.S. share (subscribers only) and it looked stable and steady with Netscape well under 0.05% for years. So I turned next to share by continent where Asia showed a big Netscape spike. I drilled down a bit further and looked at just China browser share.

Here's what the trends look like for the last couple of months of China share.

So what's going on here? Well, it could be one of a couple of things. First, it could be some kind of spider that identifies itself as "Netscape 6.0" that's crawling the Chinese Web for search engine indexing or something like that. That's something Net Applications could dig into and if it is a spider, just add it to their list of not-counted hits. All competent stats packages can exclude that kind of traffic from their metrics.

Second, and potentially more problematic, Net Applications' sample in China, those Websites that have deployed the Net Applications site analytics package, could be just so few that it only takes a trivial number of site visitors switching browsers to have a very large impact on their measurements.

Either way, this kind of error now has a much larger impact when it happens in a country like China which happens to have the largest Internet using population of any country in the world.

I don't think there's really any good solution to dealing with small sample sizes and any commercial analytics package is going to suffer from that problem. Perhaps a second weighting based on sample size would help in reflecting more accurately the actual data, but that doesn't help us understand Internet populations any better.

I blogged a few months ago about similarly disturbing spikes in IE 6 usage in the metrics reported by StatCounter. I can only conclude that these providers simply don't have a good enough sample to describe global internet populations.

What we really need is measurements from organizations that have much more representative usage and there are only a few that I can think of. That cold come in three forms, as I see it. One, we could find the top measures for every locale and build ourselves a global picture from the bottom up. Two, we could look to a few heavy-weights for large regions (Google would obviously be really good for much of the planet, and combined with local powerhouses like Yandex in Russia and Baidu in China, we could probably get a pretty good global measure.) Or three, we could find one source that had solid global representation.

Ben Chuang, in my previous post on this topic had this to say:

I would also suggest that we don't need data from the absolute largest site in the universe, we just need data from a very-large-site-that-is-very representative. What about a more "open" site, like Wikipedia?

I think that's actually a really good suggestion. Wikipedia has articles in more than 250 languages and is regarded as the online encyclopedic authority by most nationalities. Wikipedia also has a huge amount of traffic, billions of visits every month, so it's not as likely to be swayed by the occasional odd visitor patterns.

So what do you all think? Would Wikipedia's browser breakdown be a better measure than the various analytics providers that we've all been using for the last five or six years?

google should return to providing browser usage stats

There was a time, several years ago, when Google included browser usage stats in its Zeitgeist reports. Probably some time before the Chrome project started, Google stopped including the browser breakdown in those regular reports.

Google is in a pretty special position with the breadth of their usage so their browser breakdown could give the entire industry a much better picture of the Web than what we currently get from analytics firms like Net Applications and StatCounter.

Google search is available in more than 125 languages, is in widespread use in almost every geography on the planet, and Google obviously has the resources to produce solid metrics reporting. So, why don't they? What commercial value is there in keeping that close to their chest?

We really do need something more globally representative than what we have. Google could really help out here.

lockheed fire update

The Lockheed Fire is nearly contained. Cal Fire reports 80% containment, there are no further dangers to structures, and the last of the road closures has been lifted. This has been a phenomenal effort by more than 2,000 fire personnel that really couldn't have turned out any better.

I've been maintaining the SCS fire map for almost a week now and as you can see, things are looking really good. The southern end of the fire is the last bit to come under control and I expect tomorrow's reports to show that line becoming stable.

A huge thank you to everyone who put their lives on hold to tackle this massive wildfire. Your efforts are deeply appreciated. You all deserve so much more support than you get.

mozilla creative collective

The Mozilla community finally has a solid design hub. If you're a designer interested in getting involved with Mozilla, you'll want to check out the Mozilla Creative Collective.

paul thurrott's misunderstanding

Over at Windows IT Pro, Paul Thurrott is confused about one of the points that Harvey and Mitchell brought up.

Like Baker, [Anderson] raises a somewhat nonsensical issue—that IE will somehow try to become the default browser when a user accesses Windows Update—without acknowledging that Windows Update in Windows Vista and Windows 7 doesn't require IE, and that Microsoft has already committed to changing Windows XP accordingly.

Paul, it's not about Windows update requiring IE. It's about Microsoft using Windows Update to launch a just updated IE which triggers the "Make IE the default" advertisement. That's using Windows Update to attempt to undo the user's default browser choice.

Here's the scenario: A person gets a new machine with Vista on it in the spring of 2008. He decides IE 7 isn't to his liking so he downloads, installs, and makes Firefox his default browser. A year later, Microsoft releases IE 8 which comes to the user via Windows Update. The user believes it's smart to keep all of his software, even software that goes unused, up to date for security reasons so he agrees to update his IE 7 to the new version, IE 8. At this point, Windows Update not only updates IE, but it launches the new version and the new version prompts the user to make IE 8 the user's default browser.

You've got a situation here where a user has opted out of IE, chosen Firefox as his default browser, and is now being prompted by Windows Update to return to IE as his default browser. The user didn't launch IE 8, didn't ask for it to be launched and wasn't considering changing his default browser. Windows Update did all of that.

That's an abuse of Windows Update to trigger a reconsideration of the user's defaults. That's what we're concerned about.

update: The eminently reasonable Ryan Paul also misunderstood Harvey's comment. This is tricky territory and it's easy to jump to conclusions, but I think with careful consideration, both Ryan Paul and Paul Thurrott would agree that Windows Update is a Windows feature and using Windows features to regularly re-advertise IE and pressure Firefox and other browser users to make IE the default is a bad behavior.

microsoft's ec proposal follow-up

Harvey Anderson and Mitchel Baker have both posted some responses to Microsoft's proposed settlement with the European Commission. If you care about the browser landscape, especially if you're in Europe, I highly encourage you to go give these two posts a read and offer constructive feedback.

Harvey Anderson: Thoughts on Microsoft’s Settlement Proposal in the European Commission’s Tying Investigation
Mitchell Baker: Proposed Microsoft – EC Settlement

I'll be sharing my thoughts at those two posts and that's a much better place for you all to share (rather than in comments here) if you've got something to add to the conversation. If you just want to rant or cheer, then feel free to do that here.

lockheed fire to the south of us

A few people have asked and I'm sure a couple others are wondering so I thought I'd blog a quick note to say that our home is probably safe from the Lockheed fire.

The Fire, which now covers about 8 or 9 square miles, started about 8 miles south of us and the winds have pushed it further south.

Bonny Doon, Swanton and Davenport are immediately affected and we're hoping the best for all of the people and animals down there.

update Friday @7PM the latest report from Lockheed Fire Incident Command Center puts the wildfire at more than 5,000 acres. Command Center also notes that there are 1,500 firefighters on the scene.

update Saturday AM the latest report is 6,800 acres with 30% containment. Progress!

update Saturday PM the latest report is 40% containment with 2,165 firefighters on the scene (and 295 engines, 31 bulldozers, 21 water tenders, and 14 helicopters.)

update Sunday AM, 50% containment and some strong optimism that they'll be able to pull off full containment a few days earlier than expected. The perimeter actually contracted some between last night's map and this morning's. Some great progress, thanks to the 2,165 brave personnel on the scene. Our thoughts go out to the four (presumably firefighters) injured and everyone affected down there.

update Sunday PM, at 3PM they lifted the mandatory evacuation for the Bonny Doon area. Residents returning will need IDs. This is definitely another great sign that things are getting under control. Go Cal Fire! (note: this does not include the Swanton Road area, yet.)

update For any locals in need of more specifics about where the fire is burning and where it's contained, this map from the Davenport Fire Station (via local resident JH) shows the dozer lines and the uncontrolled fire lines. Map legend here.

update Sunday 6PM update from Cal Fire confirms 65% containment. Mandatory evacuation lifted though only residents can return and must present ID. Swanton Road and Last Chance Road still closed.

update Monday PM update from Cal Fire says 80% containment and mandatory evacuations were lifted in the Upper and Lower Swanton areas, including the community of Last Chance. Awesome!!! Sounds like Warnella and Blodgett are still blocked off but great progress.

hilarious

This is just hilarious. ... and kind of sad.

firefox 3.6 alpha 1 is here

With faster start up and improved responsiveness, Firefox 3.6 Alpha 1 is ready for testing.

microblogging at mozillaca

As is obvious from my grand total of three posts to twitter, I'm not huge into the microblogging scene. But, for those of you who are, you should definitely check out mozillaca.com where you can find out about cool stuff like the new code coverage project logo just whipped up by long-time Mozilla contributor (and mozillaca founder) Jame Boje.

big story of the day?

This could be interesting. Google buys On2

29 vs 20,000

Looking to customize your browser appearance? Well, if you're a Chrome users, and you're willing to jump through some hoops, there are 29 themes available at the Google Chrome Themes gallery. If, on the other hand, you're a Firefox user, there are about 20,000 themes available via the Personas Gallery.

new net applications methodology

Net Applications has just released their usage share report for July and with this release they've introduced a new methodology. They're now weighting their browser share by the size of the internet population in the top countries they measure. You can read more about it here.

In the new calculating, Internet Explorer gains a couple of points in share over the old methodology (and a huge change within IE versions -- IE 6 is showing a 10 point gain, for example). Opera also picks up pretty significantly, going from just under 1% share to just over 2% share. Chrome does about half a point better with the new measure, and Firefox gains about a third of a point over the old measure. The big loser is Safari, which saw its share drop from almost nine percent down to just over four percent.

This also has the effect of bringing the Net Applications numbers a bit closer to the StatCounter numbers for the non-mainstream browsers. There's still a pretty big disparity between the Firefox and IE numbers at Net Applications and StatCounter, though.

I'll have more in a follow-up post.

why we count

The 1 billion Firefox downloads celebration has generated a lot of buzz and some questions around browser metrics. Rather than addressing each question individually, I figured I'd just wrap them all up in a single post that I hope explains why we count things.

Right now, we keep a pretty close eye on three global measurements. The first, and all the buzz today, is the Firefox download count. The second is active Firefox users. And the third is market or usage share.

We count downloads, and we're celebrating 1 billion downloads today, not because it's a good proxy for how many people use Firefox or how much they use Firefox. It's not. We count and celebrate download milestones because it's something our community of advocates can directly contribute to and see the actual results of their work.

Firefox doesn't ship on every new PC like IE or on every new Mac like Safari. Those guys don't actually have to do any work at all to put their browser in front of users. That's not the case with Firefox. Virtually all, more than 95%, of our growth comes from people downloading Firefox.

We've never had the budget to rely on advertising as a primary driver of Firefox downloads the way other successful software companies do. As a matter of fact, more than 80% of our users say they found out about Firefox from a friend, co-worker, or family member.

So, people helping other people download Firefox is critical. It's how we've achieved the success we have. Take that away and there is no Firefox phenomenon. In that light, it would be a huge insult to all of the Firefox contributors that have been helping other people get Firefox if we didn't celebrate their work.

The second number we watch is active Firefox users. This is a bit more difficult because Mozilla has never and never will track individuals using Firefox. At the same time, it's fundamental to our mission that we empower people with more control over their Internet experience. If we don't keep an eye on how many people we're actually helping, it's somewhat more difficult to know if we're getting better or getting worse.

So while the methods are indirect, we have come up with a pretty good way to get an approximate number. Every Firefox browser makes a security check with Mozilla each day. This mechanism is fundamental to keeping users secure, but it can also tell us how many users were running Firefox in a 24 hour window. From that number, we can extrapolate how many people use Firefox in a given month.

Today we have about 300 million active users. That's actually a pretty large percentage of all of the people on the Web and we're rightly proud of that because it says that for 300 million people and growing, our mission of promoting choice and innovation and empowering participation is succeeding.

The final number we watch is called either market share or usage share. I think "usage" is a better way to describe it so as to avoid confusion with the more traditional definitions of market share which are usually measured quarterly and in terms of sales.

Usage share, more precisely, the percentage of Web traffic that comes from a particular browser, is reported by several large analytics companies and widely reported on in the press. For browsers with increasing share, it can have a positive impact on raising awareness, but more important, I think, is that it helps us understand if we're actually improving the Internet as a whole.

The Web moves forward when Web developers believe that a new Web capability is widely deployed enough to start building sites and apps that can take advantage of that capability. It's not enough to know how many users a particular browser has, though. The Web is growing by about 100 million new users a year so you actually need a percentage here. Sites measure that kind of platform deployment with analytics packages that can identify different browsers and what percent of their traffic comes from those different browsers.

But not all projects have representative sites where they can make those measurements themselves so they turn to the analysis from companies like Net Applications and StatCounter. These companies aggregate website statistics from all over the globe and publish some or all of that data publicly.

We look at the numbers for almost the same reason as a Web developer would. We're interested in how much of the Web's traffic comes from people who are using a modern, standards-compliant browser. Because we're not just about improving the online experience for individuals, but also advancing the entire Web platform, the bigger that percentage, the better we're doing in our mission.

So, each of these measures has a somewhat different purpose, but all of them help us measure and celebrate our accomplishments and taken together, and over time, they help us understand what kind of impact we're having on people and the Web.

1,000,000,000 firefox downloads

1 billion downloads is pretty amazing when you consider that the overwhelming majority of those downloads resulted from word of mouth. Mozilla's advocacy community is unmatched in the software world.

Now, of course that doesn't translate into 1 billion users. Some of those downloads were second or even third downloads onto the same machine (though there were also many large-scale deployments at huge companies like IBM where a sysadmin made one download and pushed it out to tens of thousands of desktops.) But we're not talking about automatic updates either. These are real user-initiated downloads and that's a lot of pro-Firefox activity no matter how you slice it.

A couple of other measures that are relevant: Firefox's global usage share is somewhere between 22% and 28% depending on who you believe, and the Firefox active user base is north of 300 million users.

microsoft's settlement proposal

(Note: This is my personal opinion and does not necessarily reflect Mozilla's position or any formal statement from Mozilla. I expect that Mozilla will make some kind of public comment on this topic, but this is definitely not that.)

On Friday Microsoft released a statement and a number of documents that they hope will lead to a settlement with the European Commission with regards to the ongoing legal case against Microsoft for violating EU anti-competition statutes.

The first collection of documents, on "Browser Choice", directly addresses the EC case and, if accepted by the EC, would presumably become the legally binding settlement with the EC.

The second document group called "Interoperability" is scoped beyond just the EC and the EU and is not intended, as far as I can tell, to be a part of any binding settlement with the EC.

When Mozilla became a participant in all of this, Mitchell Baker started a series of blog posts to develop a set of principles that Mozilla believed should be addressed by any remedies in the case. The principle discussions were not about specific remedies themselves, rather they were about the goals that we though any remedies should meet.

As I read through the Microsoft settlement proposal, it looks to me like Microsoft has at least made a nod to each of Mozilla's principles and I find that encouraging.

But I suspect there's two ways to read this. The casual reading, as if it was a press release or a blog post, may suggest that Microsoft has responded favorably to most of the concerns that most people voicing concerns (including Mozilla) laid out. From that reading, things probably look pretty good.

There's potentially another way to read this, though, as an excruciatingly precise legal document. Reading it in that light might elicit a different reaction -- it did for me and I'm not even a lawyer (though I presume to be able to think like one.)

Assume for a minute that Microsoft's exact language here was codified as the legal settlement document with the EC. What might lawyers on either side be able to assert or defend based on the exact language in the document. How do things look in that light?

I've tried to convey some of both readings in my reactions and I encourage those of you with the interest to try reading it both ways as well and to share your thoughts here in comments.

I structured this blog post by trying to connect each of the principles that Mitchell described with the part of Microsoft's settlement proposal that most closely aligns with that principle and I'm interested 1) whether or not you think there's really alignment between the two, and 2) whether the remedies Microsoft is proposing would, in your view, effectively satisfy each Mozilla principle.

From Mitchell's EC Principles: Synthesis blog post:

Of the various principles I proposed, the ones that get the strongest positive response are those that protect the choices people have already made or are trying to make. These are outlined in principles 1: Respecting Previous Choice and 2: Windows Must Not Provide a Technical Advantage to IE.

Let's take the first one first. Windows cannot subvert a person's choice of an alternative browser. Here's how Mitchell described the principle:

Once a person has chosen Firefox or Opera or another browser this choice should be respected. Neither Windows nor IE should use the presence of IE to encourage or promote a return to IE, or to automatically open a different web browser than that which the user has selected. Otherwise, the monopoly presence of Windows on 90+% of the world's personal computers means that people are forced to choose alternative products over and over again.

Mitchell went on to describe some specific area of concern:

• Use of IE for operating system purposes cannot bleed into web browsing
• IE must close after OS purposes complete
• IE may not ask to become the default browser or make itself the default browser except in specified legitimate circumstances, like perhaps when a person downloads IE separately from Windows or from a Windows update

It will be useful to identify the ways in which Microsoft products -- including Office, as suggesting in a previous comment -- lead people to IE, or open IE as the browser even when another browser has been selected as the default. Feel free to add them here or let me know through other channels.

And here's the relevant text from Microsoft's settlement proposal:

1. (1) Microsoft will make available a mechanism in Windows Client PC Operating Systems within the European Economic Area (EEA) that enables OEMs and end users to turn Internet Explorer off and on.

1. (3) Within Microsoft's PC Productivity Applications [Microsoft Office 2007] distributed in the EEA, Microsoft shall not include any icons, links or short-cuts or provide any other means to start a download or installation of a Microsoft web browser. Microsoft shall not use Windows Update to offer any new version of a Microsoft web browser to users within the EEA unless Internet Explorer is turned on on the user's computer.... Windows Client PC Operating Systems shall enable end users to choose their preferred default web browser. Windows Client PC Operating Systems, including Windows Update, and Internet Explorer, shall not override the user's choice of default web browser.

So how does that sound to you? Will that put an end to Microsoft's ability to use Windows to undo or otherwise subvert user's choice of browser?

Here's what I see in this part of the Microsoft proposal:

Microsoft will provide users a switch to turn IE off at which point it disappears from the system and won't be turned back on by Office 2007 or Windows Update. That sounds good, but I don't think it will have much practical impact. For this to be meaningful, I think Microsoft needs to to do one of two things. One, they could make the IE off switch a public API so that it can be offered as a checkbox in browser installers ("Would you like Opera to replace Internet Explorer?") where it might actually get used some. Or, two, they could change the language to say they will not use Windows Update to ask users to make IE the default browser if the user has already made another browser the default. Microsoft has a long history of using Windows Update to undo user choice and they're basically saying here that they'll continue those practices unless IE is fully turned off. So, in my view, it needs to be really easy to turn off, or they need to extend the language to cover the case where IE's on but not the default browser.

Microsoft agrees to not advertise IE, either through links, icons, or shortcuts, from within Office 2007. That's a good start but I think it doesn't go far enough. What about Microsoft programs other than Office 2007 (I read that Office 2010 is just around the corner, for example,) and what about non-Microsoft programs that call IE directly when they really should be calling the default browser? If Microsoft wants this provision of their settlement proposal to matter, I think they need to cover more than just Office 2007.

The second principle that Mitchell articulated was Windows can't provide a technical advantage to IE.

Windows has provided technical advantages to IE through techniques such as those listed below. This list is not meant to be conclusive. It is meant to illustrate the range of ways in which Windows can and has made it difficult for other browsers to provide a competitive experience on Windows.

• Making information available to IE before or differently than that information is available to others.
• Making it difficult for other browsers to access browsing information stored in Windows, thus making migration and syncing painful for users and difficult for other browser makers to implement well. This includes information such as formats and metadata related to IE favorites, website passwords, and website cookies.
• IE use of undocumented Windows APIs.
• Providing APIs to IE available to Windows developers as part of the "Windows" API. As a result applications developed by third party developers can send URLs directly to IE rather than to the browser the user has selected as his or her choice.
• Requiring the use of IE to use the Windows update service. (Microsoft appears to have phased out this practice, or to have provided alternatives. I include it as an illustration of the ways Microsoft has, and could again, use Windows to damage competition in the browser space.)

The ubiquity of Windows brings this artificial competitive advantage for IE to almost every single person using a personal operating system. Redressing this setting will help refocus competition on the merits of the browser itself.

And here's what Microsoft is offering the EC:

1. (1) Microsoft will ensure that if Internet Explorer is turned off, then (i) it can only be turned on through user action specifically aimed at turning on Internet Explorer; (ii) the user interface cannot be called upon by applications; and (iii) no icons, links or shortcuts or any other means will appear within Windows to start a download or installation of Internet Explorer

2. (14) Microsoft will ensure that all the Windows APIs on which Internet Explorer relies are disclosed in a complete, accurate and timely manner, so that non-Microsoft web browser suppliers would not be at a competitive disadvantage compared to Microsoft when designing a web browser for Windows. For purposes of this paragraph 14, Internet Explorer consists of the code that is distributed separately from Windows and trademarked or marketed as Internet Explorer.

3. (17) For Windows Vista and successors, Microsoft shall ensure that access and the full functioning of the Windows Update online service (currently available at www.update.microsoft.com) is not dependent on the use of the Internet Explorer user interface.

What do you think? Does that go far enough to mitigating the IE and Windows integration technical advantages?

I personally think this, on the face of it, represents reasonable steps in the right direction, but I'm bothered again by the fact that IE simply won't be turned off all that often so applications will continue to launch IE at which point IE will attempt to undo the user's default browser choice.

The API commitment sounds strong to me, so long as one assumes that the APIs are scoped in such a way that they were actually usable by browsers from other vendors. I'm also a bit concerned about their definition of "Timely Manner" which is "as soon as Microsoft has developed a sufficiently stable 'beta' testing version of Windows (including Service Packs and Updates) and has made this implementation available to third parties for testing purposes for the first time." There are two issues I'm concerned about here. First, is the first beta really early enough for third parties to take advantage or to alert Microsoft about concerns with the API that could negatively impact browsers from other vendors. The second issue is that I do not see a provision for the situation where there's an API that's new to a new Windows release but isn't yet utilized by Internet Explorer. If the requirement is to disclose only APIs that IE is using at the time of the Windows beta, what happens if the API isn't used at the time of the Windows release but IE later takes advantage of that API?

Windows Update is already pretty well separated from Internet Explorer with the stand-alone Automatic Updates program, but if I'm reading this right, Microsoft is saying that the online version will also not depend on IE. I'm a little unclear though, because they're not saying it won't require the IE rendering engine, just that it won't require the IE user interface. A more explicit "Windows Update online service at www.update.microsoft.com will work in Firefox, Safari, Chrome, and Opera" would have made me feel a lot better here.

The third Mozilla principle was Windows must enable people to choose other browsers

Mitchell put it like this:

How much distribution advantage can Windows provide to IE? If one answers "as much as Microsoft wants with no limits" then this principle wouldn't be implemented. If one answers "Windows can't provide any distribution advantage to IE" then one would likely end up supporting a remedy that requires Windows to install a browser separately, based on a consumer's decisions. If one answers "some" then one looks to a type of "must carry" remedy; a remedy that has been reported as of interest to the EC.

In her synthesis post, Mitchell added,

The more direct, product based Principle 3, Windows must enable people to choose other browsers, generated some very positive feedback and also some concerns. The positive response comes from the idea that one can't address the problem without addressing the product. The concerns seem based in (a) complexity of user experience concerns; (b) concern over unintended consequences.

Here's what Microsoft is offering the EC for browser choice remedies.

2. (7) Microsoft will distribute a Ballot Screen software update to users within the EEA of Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows Client PC Operating Systems, by means of Windows Update

2. (8) The Ballot Screen will give those users who have set Internet Explorer as their default web browser an opportunity to choose whether and which competing web browser(s) to install in addition to the one(s) they already have

2. (11) The Ballot Screen will be populated with the most widely-used web browsers that run on Windows with a usage share of equal to or more than 0.5% in the EEA as measured semi-annually by a source commonly agreed between Microsoft and the European Commission

2. (12) The Ballot Screen will in a horizontal line and in an unbiased way display icons of and basic identifying information on the web browsers

2. (9) ...Microsoft may offer tools to volume license users that prevent the Ballot Screen update from being installed on all computers covered by the licence

2. (10) Nothing in the design and implementation of the Ballot Screen and the presentation of competing web browsers will express a bias for a Microsoft web browser or any other web browser or discourage the user from downloading and installing additional web browsers via the Ballot Screen and making a web browser competing with a Microsoft web browser the default.

This remedy had supporters and detractors both inside and outside of the Mozilla community. Whether you came down for or against, since Microsoft has put this on the table as one of their big offers to the EC and since it's getting the lion's share of press coverage, I'm interested in what you think Microsoft's offer would actually accomplish and whether or not it would address the principle involved, Windows must enable people to choose other browsers.

I'm of mixed feelings on this one. I think that a lot will depend on the actual implementation of the ballot. In the current incarnation, I'd be surprised if any major changes resulted.

First, by putting IE in the left-most spot, they're directly contradicting paragraph (10). That layout makes IE the "default" choice because it places it first in a horizontal list. For real unbiased ballot, the primary offerings should be in randomized order, or some other order that doesn't recreate the priorities that MS obtained unlawfully.

If the ballot is to go beyond just offering a real choice and the goal is to actually effect real change, IE should be placed last on the list so that users arrive at IE after evaluating the descriptions of the other browsers first.

IE has essentially twice the representation on this ballot screen as the other browsers, maybe more. Since it already is the default browser for Windows, "no user action" is the same as choosing IE. That means there are two ways to achieve IE as the default, either by selecting it, or by ignoring the question. That's a very large advantage for IE.

(Most common user behavior when confronted by roadblocks is to take an action they believe will most effectively remove the roadblock. We've learned this lesson well in dealing with browser security warnings and other dialogs that interrupt the user's flow. Users are going to instinctively dismiss the entire window or pick the default or most prominent choice.)

But even with all those items addressed, there's still the very large problem with this implementation. If we assume that the user choice to pick a different browser in this ballot is a clear signal of the user's intention to actually get and at least try out that alternative browser, then we have to have some better mechanism for fulfilling that intention. Clicking a download link does not guarantee that the user will achieve the goal of getting and trying a new browser. Far from it. There are quite a few steps between clicking the link and a new browser window in arriving in front of the user. At Mozilla we're very experienced with this and we probably have the most effective system in place for helping a user through the process of clicking a download link and having a first run experience with the a new browser, but we still see significant drop off at every stage of that process. For example, if you count the number of people that click the "download Firefox" button at our Website, and then you count the number of people that actually completed the download, located the downloaded file, launched the installer, and completed the installer, you'll find that only about 57% of the people make it through that process and ever even get a first look at Firefox running. And we're really really good at this. There's even further fall-off when you look at people who can still locate and use Firefox a month later resulting in a conversion of only about 35%. So, if you want to fulfill the user's intention, it's simply not enough to put a download link on the page. The effort a user must understand and put forward to achieve a browser change is significantly larger then the effort required to maintain the status quo and that just isn't a recipe for meaningful choice or real change.

Finally, even if a user does manage to acquire a new browser, IE still has the advantage of starting out with the default status and the most prominent placement on the Windows Desktop and the Start menu. For ever after, even something as simple as an accidental or habitual click on the "blue e" will result in another easy opportunity for Microsoft to undo the user's choice.

It's my view that to make the ballot meaningful, Microsoft would have to address all of these issues, and possibly a few more I haven't thought of.

The fourth principle, Microsoft's financial and other incentives to distributors must be browser-neutral, didn't generate a lot of discussion in the Mozilla community. I think this is because the OEM channel is opaque to most people, or even worse, works almost precisely opposite from how one might guess.

Here's Mitchell again:

(This [OEM] distribution channel is *so* valuable that Microsoft's early efforts to promote IE in the 1990's included threatening the OEMs with the loss of their ability to ship Windows (and thus the end of their business) if the OEMs didn't ship IE exclusively. This practice stopped after the US judicial system determined a set of these sorts of practices to be illegal.)

Historically, software vendors generated revenue on upgrades and the licensing of subsequent and additional products. Today the models are diverse and complex, and may also include revenue-sharing between OEMs and software or service providers. For example, if you use a desktop search functionality, chances are high that the company you bought the machine from is getting a piece of revenue from the search provider.

This principle does not challenge these general business models. Like the other remedies, it is tied to the monopoly status of Windows, which requires all PC OEMs to work with Microsoft. In addition these programs cannot be matched by others because the Windows monopoly gives Microsoft a raft of unique tools. This principle prohibits the use of those tools to promote IE in ways that are unavailable to other browser manufacturers. It asserts that Windows monopoly status cannot be tied to financial incentives that further damage browser competition.

Microsoft's settlement proposal says:

1. (4) Microsoft shall not retaliate against any OEM for developing, using, distributing, promoting or supporting software that competes with Microsoft web browsers, in particular by altering Microsoft's commercial relations with that OEM, or by withholding Consideration.

1. (5) Microsoft shall not enter into any agreement with an OEM that conditions the grant of any Consideration on the OEM's refraining from developing, using, distributing, promoting or supporting any software that competes with Microsoft web browsers.

1. (6) Microsoft shall not terminate a direct OEM license for Windows Client PC Operating Systems without having first given the OEM written notice of the reasons for the proposed termination and not less than thirty days' opportunity to cure.

So what do you think? Is this sufficient to calm fears that Microsoft would strong-arm PC makers into distributing IE or making it the default browser rather than some alternative?

This sounds to me a lot like what Microsoft was already forced to agree to in the U.S. after they were convicted of anti-competitive practices for exactly this kind of behavior at the turn of the century. If this wasn't already the status quo, it certainly would be a good thing to make it so.

Mozilla's fifth principle was Microsoft must educate people about other browsers.

Mitchell introduced this principle saying

One of the results of the Windows / IE integration is that millions of people believe that the "blue e" icon IS the Internet. They are unaware of of Microsoft's control over their online lives through this blue "e" or that they have additional choices. This principle asserts that Microsoft should participate in correcting the misconception that it has created. The monopoly of Windows and Microsoft in people's computer experience means there is no other entity that can substitute for Microsoft here.

And here's what Microsoft is offering that aligns with this principle.

1. (1) Microsoft will maintain a web page on www.microsoft.com that explains how users can turn Internet Explorer on and off, and will maintain that page so that other browser vendors can link to it if they wish.

2. (8) The Ballot Screen will provide two links associated with each web browser. An "install" link will connect to a vendor-managed distribution server, which, upon the user's confirmation, can directly download the installation package of the selected web browser (and only a web browser, including software to update the web browser only) for local execution (the resulting situation will therefore equal a scenario in which the user himself had downloaded and executed the installation package without being aided by the Ballot Screen). An "information" link will connect to a vendor-managed web page from which the vendor can offer users more information about its browser and installation options. Users will be able to select one or more of the web browsers offered through the Ballot Screen. Microsoft shall ensure that in the Ballot Screen users will be informed in an unbiased way that they can turn Internet Explorer off.

This is obviously not a major education campaign, but I'm interested in whether or not you all think these documents will address the principle that Microsoft must educate people about other browsers.

In my view, this principle was always going to be difficult to put into practice outside of what could be accomplished in some implementation of principle 3, but Microsoft does have a pretty big footprint in publishing and education so there's no shortage of places Microsoft could create and deploy content that educated people about Web browser choice. I think, though, that the most effective education would be delivered through Windows itself with something like the proposed ballot. The information included in the ballot would need quite a bit of improvement over what Microsoft has proposed, at a minimum prefacing the choice of browsers with a clear description of what a Web browser is and how they can differ from vendor to vendor.

The sixth principle, Microsoft tools for developing content must not produce IE specific or Windows-specific results and the seventh "potential" principle "IE must comply with web standards" (Opera has suggested that Microsoft must support web standards they have promised to support) go un-adressed in Microsoft's remedy offer to the EC but are somewhat covered in an accompanying proposals that Microsoft calls a "Public Interoperability Undertaking" which as I noted in the intro to this post isn't legally binding.

Still, Microsoft is on record saying that it will support a set of Web standards and that it will do more to increase interoperability between its products and products from other vendors.

How do you think that will work out? Do you think Microsoft will follow through with this Public Undertaking? Will it have the impact that Opera and other advocates of using legal pressures to force standards compliance were hoping for?

I think that six was actually a pretty important principle and I would have liked to see Microsoft address this specifically in its settlement proposal. Microsoft's IE hegemony has been consistently bolstered and supported by the IE-specific or IE-advantaged Web content that is produced from other Microsoft products. When you save an Office document for the Web, for example, it has always favored the IE browser and disadvantaged competing browsers. When you produce a Web site or even a simple Web page using Microsoft's Web development tools, that site or page has always worked better in IE than in competing browsers. This has the very real impact of discouraging the use of competing browsers and persisting Microsoft's dominance in the space.

The idea of legally mandating standards never appealed to me. I think I understand what Opera and other supporters of this principle were trying to achieve, but I think there were always just too many pitfalls here. It's even more than just the question of which standards and what "support" actually means. If, for example, the EC mandated that Microsoft fully support CSS standards that were ratified by the W3C. Well, Microsoft is a member organization with standing on the CSS Working Group and they could simply derail useful CSS advances in order to avoid having to comply with the EC. No one wins there. In my view, the standards bodies are already problematic enough and I really wouldn't want to see them further perverted by member organizations seeking legal or political gain.

I'll just close by re-stating that I think Mozilla's involvement in this has been quite positive and I believe that Microsoft's settlement attempt addresses many of the concerns that Mitchell spelled out. Whether it addresses them well or effectively, I'm interested in hearing from you all. I'll reserve my judgements for a later post.

mozilla feature article

In case you haven't seen it, there's a great feature on Mozilla this weekend in the New York Times called For Mozilla and Google, Group Hugs Get Tricky. Ignoring the headline, which doesn't do the article justice, it's really quite a good take on what we are and what we're about.

mitigating the flash player vulnerability

If Adobe is to be believed about the reach of the Flash Player plug-in, then virtually every computer connected to the Internet is vulnerable because of this Adobe security flaw.

The good news for Firefox users is that there's a very simple way to avoid risk while we all wait on Adobe to fix their flaw and roll out an update to the billion or so people affected.

In Firefox, simply go to Tools -> Add-ons and select the Plug-ins tab. There you'll find a list of your installed Firefox plug-ins. Protecting yourself is as simple as selecting the Flash plug-in by clicking that row and then clicking the "Disable" button. (When Adobe has updated your system, you can restore Flash by repeating these instructions and clicking the "Enable" button.)