Will democracy kill Firefox?

Mozilla has been talking about the next major revision of Firefox, version 4.0, which is slated for release some time in 2010. A series of ideas have come to light, including a "ribbonized" browser, using similar user interface ideas as Microsoft Office 2007. ComputerWorld reports that "users blasted the idea" and that Mozilla backed away from that terminology.

The great power behind Firefox is that it was created by a group of independent developers who were not bound by the requirements, biases, and pre-conceived notions of a major public company. But when a vocal minority hijacks the creative process, then those developers lose their independence. They are now being led by that minority and not by their own creativity. Their creativity may or may not produce the best ideas every time, but it will produce the most innovation. I suspect that the superiority that Firefox enjoys will begin to fade as the developers listen more to the voice of the "people" than they do to their own crazy thoughts.

Here is the Mozilla's Firefox Roadmap ...
Firefox in 2010

Microsoft still dominant in web browsers

With today's release of Firefox 3.5.6, I thought it would be worthwhile to look at the changes in market share for the major web browsers. Over the past three months, the data at W3Counter indicate that we seem to have entered a period of detente.

This chart shows that much of the bluster about Chrome's market share versus Firefox versus IE is just white noise. Over the past three months, Internet Explorer 8 has been becoming the most popular Microsoft browser, as well as the most used browser over all. While its 3-month average is still just below IE7, the trend is unmistakable. In aggregate, the family of IE browsers was the choice of over 51% of all web users.

Firefox is still the dominant #2 browser, with over 31% of web use being conducted with the popular open source Mozilla product. Google's Chrome has rapidly laid hold of just over 4.5% of browser use, and is holding steady at that mark.

There are web developers that insist on ignoring Microsoft's position in the market. Any expectations of significant success for their application are unrealistic.

Read more about ...
Firefox 3.5.6 patch at CNET.com
Global Web Stats at W3Counter.com

Firefox continues market share gains

In the epic struggle for browser share, Firefox continues to take users from Internet Explorer. Tristan Nitot, president of Mozilla Europe, claims that in 17 European countries, Firefox is now the dominant browser. Microsoft's enhancements to IE have simply not slowed down the open source browser's growth. I believe that their decision to restrict plug-ins in IE will prove to be as short-sighted as Sony's decision in the 1980's to not license VHS Beta technology.

Read more ... Firefox gains 30m users in eight weeks

Firefox 3.5 moves into "late" beta

Mozilla is moving closer to a general release of the next version of Firefox -- currently listed as v3.5. Most industry observers believe that the general release is still a couple of months away. The organization released a 3^rd beta last week ... on March 12, 2009 ... requesting feedback on a number of fairly technical features. For example, the Mozilla Blog includes the following as a feature for the testing community to review:

Support for new web technologies such as the <video> and <audio> elements, the W3C Geolocation API, JavaScript query selectors, CSS 2.1 and 3 properties, SVG transforms and offline applications.

Really ... don't worry if you don't know what that means.

The real news is that Mozilla is fully engaged in the browser war that's currently underway. Microsoft is on the verge of releasing the new Internet Explorer 8, Apple has offered Safari 4 in beta ... and of course no one can forget Google's offering in the browser market: Chrome.

For those of us in the technology world, it means that application architecture & testing plans must account for all of these potential delivery platforms. This will increase the importance of abstracting the application layer (logic) from the presentation layer (user interface).

Furthermore, business leaders will need to budget for the added development time & expense associated with being compatible with four browsers. This is especially important for customer-facing applications, for which the choice of browser is somewhat unpredictable and completely uncontrollable.

The Mozilla Blog: Firefox beta now available
The Webware blog @ CNET: Mozilla says next Firefox likely months away