Percy Cabello's blog

Today Firefox crossed the 400 million downloads mark as tracked by SpreadFirefox.com.

It has been 1001 days since Firefox 1.0 was released back in
November 9, 2004 which results in an average 400K downloads per day,
although in the last months it’s really been more like 500K downloads
per day.

It’s also a nice improvement compared to the 300 million milestone achieved in past February. At that time, the download rate was about 363,636.3636..downloads a day.

Quoting myself: “As usual, it must be noted that it says nothing
about the actual number of users (except they are a pretty big bunch)
as a single user may have downloaded it several times for his/her
different computers or a single download may have been installed in
several computers. So relax, smile (or curse) and move on.”

As The Simpsons Movie premiere approaches, 20th Century Fox has just released a Firefox theme to bring Springfield’s yellow and donut infested glory to your beloved browser.

Full story.

Matt Brown, a UK based artist has released Start at the Beginning, a painting featuring the Firefox shortcut icon, as part of his Painted web project, a collection that includes Vista icons and an R2D2 action figure listing on DK Antiques and collectibles.

“It’s our gateway into the world’s
collaborative fairground of cyber delights – our friend the internet.
So as an icon, it’s absolutely loaded with layers of imagery and
meaning.”, reads Brown’s blog post about his motivations and
inspiration.

The 7.5″ x 9″ (18cm x 23cm) acrilic and glaze on canvas painting is currently being auctioned on eBay UK and available for shipping worlwide.

From Mozilla Links. 

Firefox has been chosen as one of the top 100 Web 2.0 sites and services by about half a million people who participated in CNet’s Webware 100 2007.

Even further Firefox won in the Browsing category with about 50% of
votes, followed by Opera with 13%. Internet Explorer 7 and Safari
finished third and seventh respectively. Overall, Firefox was the
second most voted product of the 250 semifinalists that entered public
voting. Bebo an online community web site took the most votes. Gaia
Online, Gmail, Google, MySpace, Stardoll, Wikipedia, YouTube and
WordPress completed the top 10 voted products/services.

AllPeers, a file sharing Firefox extension, was a winner in the Data category.

I wanted a Firefox mug and this is what I did:

• Created a large image with the complete Firefox logo following the Firefox Visual Identity Guidelines.
• Uploaded it to dotphoto.com (but almost all online photo labs offer mugs as photo gifts).
  
• Found this coupon for $5 off: 5OFFCJ07
• Ordered the 11oz white mug (reg price $7.95) for a grand total of $8.71 shipping and handling included.
• Received it one week later and now I am enjoying lattes more than ever!

You can vote now in CNet's Webware 100
poll. They are looking for the best 100 Web 2.0 services in 10
categories including browsing, media, communications, mobile,
productivity, community, data, publishing reference and entertainment
and Firefox is a candidate in the browsing category. AllPeers, the
great collaboration Firefox extension is also featured in the data
category.

You don't need to register to vote so it's easy to share your preferences. 

To vote for Firefox, go to the Browsing category.

To vote for AllPeers go to the Data category.

While writing this post
at Mozilla Links, about the recent Secunia report on software updating, I couldn't help questioning myself why do some users stay in the past
branch (about 10% of ML's visitors) and why do so many users are not
using the latest versions of their respective branches (5% - 8%). Could
this numbers be improved? I am sure they can.

Regarding the first question, company policies may explain it in part but in the past, Mozilla Links' readers provided some other explanations: 

• Firefox 1.5.0.x users are not advised of a new major update,
  however this will change when 1.5.0.12 is released next week, as it
  will offer to upgrade to 2.0.0.4.
• Extensions compatibility, which at this time is already not an
  issue as most of them are already compatible. Furthermore, the newest
  extensions may not be compatible with older versions so extension compatibility should be a driver now.
• If it's not broken, don't fix it.

I wonder how could we address each of these ideas. Here are some thoughts on each possible cause:

• Firefox and Mozilla oriented web sites and blogs should advertise
  prominently about the availability of Firefox 2. When Firefox 2 was
  released I added one of the Firefox 2 banners available at Spread
  Firefox and kept it up for about 2 months, now I realize it was too
  short. So I'll put it back and see how the Firefox 2/1.5 ratio
  improves. I know however that the scheduled major update (1.5.x to 2.0.x) will have a deeper impact on its own.
• I will ask people at Mozilla Add-ons
  if they could provide some statistics or even better a web feed that
  reveals the percentage of Add-ons compatible with each version. This
  numbers would help push people to the newer version.
• It may be actually broken. Firefox 2 adds some very nice
  improvements: spell checking, anti-phishing, tab overflow, search
  engines management, support for feed readers and very long etcetera,
  that should be more heavily promoted. I'm thinking about more
  informative banners that quickly present the new features and not just
  announce the latest version.

What other stuff is holding users back and what can we do to take them forward?