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a worldwide survey in late November. The survey shows that Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. FireFox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.
I'm talking about when you are actually get into the cyworld mini-homepys, and the many functionalities of the sites/portals (which most people are here).
Just in caes, I gave the Korean FF version a shot at cyworld and daumplanet.
nope.
FF screws it up BAD. (again, I'm talking about "the mini-hompies"--which is the core product and heart of the soul of these sites--not the index page)
I also tried some larger cafes and some naver search features.... same grossness. :(
These are giant and very popular markets here in korea.
If FF can't handle these...it will quite simply, never catch on here.
Bummer, looks like I'm stickin to maxthon or something IE based until FF is up-to-par for korean sites (which won't be anytime soon I suspect).
I'm wondering what versions of Windows you're using?
Are your systems "Designed for Microsoft XX"?
Have you tried FF on a Linux box?
What about FF on a Mac?
My point here is not to jump on what may seem to be an obvious conclusion: that FF is having trouble. The problem is more than likely with the OS, and how it allows non-MS apps to interact with it.
If I remember my MS guts right, rendering the fonts required for cuniform languages (Chinese, Hebrew, etc.) is strictly handled by the OS. Likewise, the page code is handled initially by the OS, then passed on to the app for rendering. The OS has to do the right thing, before the browser can hope to do it.
Do you think MS spent as much time tweaking the Asian versions of its OS as it does on its English versions? Do you think they are worried about lawsuits arising from anti-competitive behavior in the Asian market? Remember they intentionally built in roadblocks for many other non-MS apps in the past, but are all of those issues gone from the many Asian versions of the OS?
I'm not trying to create some fantasy conspiracy, here, but MS' behavior and programming practices for their entire history do not inspire confidence.
And if the programmers who are making the sites you refer to have their heads up ... um ... prefer to only program for MSIE, then it has even less to do with how FF performs and more to do with the programmers' limited (or simply slow) embrace of the world community.
You raise some good points, GrendelKhan TSU.
I'm wondering what versions of Windows you're using?
Are your systems "Designed for Microsoft XX"?
Have you tried FF on a Linux box?
What about FF on a Mac?My point here is not to jump on what may seem to be an obvious conclusion: that FF is having trouble. The problem is more than likely with the OS, and how it allows non-MS apps to interact with it.
If I remember my MS guts right, rendering the fonts required for cuniform languages (Chinese, Hebrew, etc.) is strictly handled by the OS. Likewise, the page code is handled initially by the OS, then passed on to the app for rendering. The OS has to do the right thing, before the browser can hope to do it.
Do you think MS spent as much time tweaking the Asian versions of its OS as it does on its English versions? Do you think they are worried about lawsuits arising from anti-competitive behavior in the Asian market? Remember they intentionally built in roadblocks for many other non-MS apps in the past, but are all of those issues gone from the many Asian versions of the OS?
very interesting points. good food for thought too.
However, if this is true, then its even WORSE then I thought as most Koreans netizens and businesses don't even want to attempt to go around MS (for many reasons...many of them not-so-scrupulous).
Note: to some degree I'm sure its still the browser...because of activeX and other issues I didn't lay out as to the exact problems I was referring to...not just encoding. And belies the point that plug-ins that MIGHT FIX the problems lag in Korean version and are too complicated for the average user. ie: needs to integrated as part of the default browser.
But in the end, the result is the same. Korean NETIZENS certainly won't get their brains around any of this...
it just needs to work.
NOW. And korean web sites are made accordingly. (ie: So why NOT just code for MSIE?)
Koreans are VERY impatient about such things, especially given the high level of internet apps/technology here.
"What the hell kind of site nowadays doesn't work?" is a direct thought (even your professionalism will be based directly on the design of a site--much more literally than in the US, as I've talked about before in other threads)
Maybe, like I said...down the road....after many many many factors and stars align..... sites here will code for more international and less up-MS-b@tt FF will catch on and we will find that it does indeed perform better on a level playing field.
I am in fact praying for this myself and UTF-8 and EUR-KR issues give me a burning headache.
But this is Asia....and Korea in particular....
if you want a level playing field might as well just wish for the billion dollars right off the bat.
I'm not trying to create some fantasy conspiracy, here, but MS' behavior and programming practices for their entire history do not inspire confidence.And if the programmers who are making the sites you refer to have their heads up ... um ... prefer to only program for MSIE, then it has even less to do with how FF performs and more to do with the programmers' limited (or simply slow) embrace of the world community.
again, probabaly, true....
the sad(?) or advantageous(?) fact is....korean's and korean sites in many many many ways.....do NOT embrace the world community for such things (not over generalizing).
Perhaps on purpose, perhaps because they don't feel they really have to.
Some of the largest and most successful sites (with worldwide status--like Daum, cyworld, naver, etc) became so under the "limited/restrictive" boundaries of "doing it the Korean way" (which in this case, means the MSIE way).
As inconvenient as it makes things for "outsiders" it makes for GREAT and CREATIVE development of new and different technologies here...which imho are often BETTER than the original. Cyworld being the salient example.
Whether those things will translate back to "outside" the korean internet borders is another story (see my threads on cyworld and Kroean search engines and SERPS).
Sure...in the meantime, it sux for the "greater good" of the open development or level-playing field, or whathaveyou, but "oh well" I think is the prevalent attitute. These companies are happy making millions upon millions in the meantime.
The telephone was not viewed as a practical device when first invented. Today American's own 1.75 telephones each! And use them for totally non-practical reasons!
Y'all assume Mr. Gates has to realize something tomorrow morning. In reality MS has a plan that far exceeds the lifespan of Bill Gates. That plan is good for the company, good for the stockholders, and the only way Bill can achieve a legacy beyond his natural existence.
Only the inferior assume something must be created in their lifetime, the others attempt to create immortality by ensuring it will happen when they are six feet under!
She like's "Carl's Jr."....so do I.
I also like a couple other "burger-joints"..she doesn't!
I'm big on "mexican food", she ain't.
Guess where we
"grab a snack"?
Yep!
Your intuitive!
Carl's Jr.
Ain't diversity wunnerful?
Good night.
If we all only surfed reputable web sites then there would be next to zero viruses.
Many people assume this to be true, but it's not. The Kelly Blue Book site was cracked and sending out infected files that auto-installed in Internet Explorer. The Register, a newspaper in the UK, was also auto-infecting IE but through no fault of their own... the 3rd party that shows the banner ads on their site was cracked. And we don't forget about spreading a worm back and forth between Internet Explorer and IIS using known exploits. (IIS ones were admins that hadn't yet patched as opposed to the IE ones that just didn't have a patch available from Microsoft) The author did a poor job of it last time, relying on a single web server to spread the infection, but if it were better written... who knows what would have happened.
[edited by: encyclo at 2:44 am (utc) on Mar. 31, 2006]
>Easier to maintain? Definitely.
Disagree. I had to upgrade 4-5 machines from 0.9 to version 1.0. It is VERY annoying that 3/4 of all extentions do not work between versions and have to be reinstalled. I can see this to be a really serious drag on FF.
FireFox team needs to develop an extention standard, that will include path forward and compatibility for at least one future version.
Disagree. I had to upgrade 4-5 machines from 0.9 to version 1.0. It is VERY annoying that 3/4 of all extentions do not work between versions and have to be reinstalled. I can see this to be a really serious drag on FF.FireFox team needs to develop an extention standard, that will include path forward and compatibility for at least one future version.
As has been mentioned before, the extension standards hadn't been finalized before 1.0, so, of course, some extensions had to be updated as the standard matured. It *is* now standardized.
The other good thing is that, even when it disabled those extensions, when it checked for updates, it would update them. So, once there was a compatible replacement available on the Mozilla update site, the extensions could be auto-updated in Firefox to the 1.0-compatible version of the extension.
Other browsers are making market share gains. When does this become a problem or an issue for you guys?Well, people get confused about browsers. You can have as many browsers as you want on your PC, just like you can have tons of music players and things like that.
So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people's systems, that's true, but IE is also on those systems. Firefox is new, and people are trying it out. There's a certain percentage of people who do that - it's very easy to download.
We need to keep IE the best. We need to innovate in IE, do more add-ons, do improvements. We have some very exciting plans there. Some percentage of users are going to try Firefox and IE side by side, and use the one that's best. So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead. In terms of our agility to do things on the browser, people who underestimated us there in the past lived to regret that.
Yeah-but... you can actually install those other useless media players you don't use anymore. Imagine being unable to install a >60MB media player you do not use anymore?
"So when people say Firefox is being downloaded onto people's systems, that's true, but IE is also on those systems. Firefox is new, and people are trying it out. There's a certain percentage of people who do that - it's very easy to download."
It's very easy to download indeed, partly because it is 10x smaller than IE.
"We need to keep IE the best."
*Keep* IE the best? What the h*** is this guy smoking? Must be good stuff.
"We need to innovate in IE, do more add-ons, do improvements. We have some very exciting plans there. Some percentage of users are going to try Firefox and IE side by side, and use the one that's best. So no big problem; it's not that people have stopped using IE, it's just we've got lots of good ideas that can match and move ahead. In terms of our agility to do things on the browser, people who underestimated us there in the past lived to regret that.
IMO, the only thing those people underestimated was their bully tactics.
I see the spinmeister have been hard at work again.
You can have as many browsers as you want on your PC, just like you can have tons of music players and things like that.
LOL!
You can put anything you want on your computer ... but how will the OS respond to it?
Ask Real Networks, Netscape, Sun Microsystems, etc.etc. It didn't matter that people put them on their computers ... the MS OS was biased against those products!
BG's "humility" in the face of competition belies their fear of true quality-based competition. They never saw a quality product they didn't attempt to buy out or destroy when it threatened their "own" (another LOL moment) products.
Perhaps MS would spend their time better if they just forgot about the browser and focused on making a quality, reasonably secure operating system. It would be the greatest challenge their "programmers" have ever encountered, and is the single thing that might slow their downward spiral.
