http://www.w3schools...wsers_stats.asp

I wouldn't call that dead...

Running a distant second place to a much newer Google product, and losing ground? I'd call that "circling the drain". It's mirroring the trend IE took over the last few years: dying, but with such a massive install base that it takes a long time to truly die.

Also, when you pull your statistics from a site aimed specifically at web tech geeks, the numbers are going to be a bit skewed. Wikipedia paints a less glowing picture for Firefox.

[quote name='abcdef44' timestamp='1350648629' post='4991759']
http://www.w3schools...wsers_stats.asp

I wouldn't call that dead...

Running a distant second place to a much newer Google product, and losing ground? I'd call that "circling the drain". It's mirroring the trend IE took over the last few years: dying, but with such a massive install base that it takes a long time to truly die.

Also, when you pull your statistics from a site aimed specifically at web tech geeks, the numbers are going to be a bit skewed. Wikipedia paints a less glowing picture for Firefox.
[/quote]

That graph also includes mobile browsers which are gaining shares quickly (Dominated by the stock browsers on iOS and Android) so Firefox has actually gained usage share on the desktop recently according to wikipedia, (the total size of the market is also growing so 20% today is quite a bit more(in absolute numbers) than 20% 5 years ago) it is not exactly bad in a working competetive market and very very far from dying.

Then there is ofcourse this (also from that wikipedia article):
*Browser users may run site, cookie and javascript blockers which cause those users to be under-counted. For example, common AdBlock blocklists such as EasyBlock include sites such as StatCounter in their privacy lists, and NoScript blocks all JavaScript by default. addons.mozilla.org reports 13.7 million users of AdBlock variants and 2.1 million users of NoScript.

Chrome is primarily taking shares from IE today so i think Firefox will survive just fine if they can just reduce the bloat a bit more. (It is however a bit odd that IE isn't stabilizing, it is still pre-installed and IE9 is pretty good)

As far as mobile OS:s go however i doubt we'll see a new competitor break in anytime soon, People in general want to keep the apps they've bought (or downloaded for free) and thus far the compatibility between mobile systems is pretty much non-existant.

The only "new/upcoming" mobile OS i can see that is interesting is Ubuntu for Android since it is intended to run side by side with Android (Sharing the same Linux kernel) and only activate if you plug in a monitor and keyboard (Effectivly turning the phone into a very small and potentially cheap Linux PC or thin client whenever you want with the added benefit of allowing you to run both Android apps and standard desktop linux apps on the same machine (It seems extremely well integrated). (They just have to get some manufacturers on board with the idea)

[quote name='Daaark' timestamp='1350636937' post='4991725']
The article you linked to was about Mobile OSes that are going to compete with Android. Firefox is dead. Not a Mac user. I'm actually using Android right now.

http://www.w3schools...wsers_stats.asp

I wouldn't call that dead...
[/quote]

Netscape went open source. It became the Mozilla suite. As per usual in OSS land, a group decided to for it into a new project. They wanted to remove the cruft and make it a small, fast, secure browser. But mostly, it gained ground just because IE wasn't being actively developed anymore.

Years have passed. Firefox has became a browser with a slow, clunky, interface, and jerky scrolling of web pages. It dies on anything with lots of tables too. Their attempt at smooth scrolling is a sad hack that doesn't work very well. It will also allocate 3 gigs of ram to show a 'hello world' page. I also have to install clunky, third party plug ins to make the tab functionality work correctly. Until recently, do to an oversight, those plugins had to cache their own versions of all tabbed pages too! They have failed miserably at their initial goal. They went from trying to make it a stripped down browser, to all kinds of other things.

Chrome came out. It does everything better. It's fast. It doesn't die on tables. It scrolls nice and smooth. It also syncs with Chrome on my tablet, even down to my currently open tabs. So Firefox is dead to me.

From time to time, especially if i'm watching a lot of videos, I'll get a "this app is using 3xx MB" from AVG. But other than that, it runs great. When I see people using Chrome or IE, I'll say things like, "when did YouTube have ads on their page". The response is, "it's always been there. For years now." My counter-response, "it never shows up on Firefox... ever.". Firefox and its plug-ins are the best thing since sliced bread to me. Ever since they updated and streamlined the browser (since 3.x I believe) it's gotten better and faster. Doesn't crash often either.

With that said, why are they making an OS?

When I see people using Chrome or IE, I'll say things like, "when did YouTube have ads on their page". The response is, "it's always been there. For years now." My counter-response, "it never shows up on Firefox... ever.". Firefox and its plug-ins are the best thing since sliced bread to me.

Chrome and Safari have AdBlock+ too, you know. Along with most every other extension you would care to have...

Ever since they updated and streamlined the browser (since 3.x I believe) it's gotten better and faster. Doesn't crash often either.[/quote]
3.x is about where FireFox started losing ground, in my experience. Everything since then has been increasingly bloated and unstable, while WebKit continues to become faster and more stable.

NaCl is a native code sandbox. Relations with HTML end at the fact NaCl can be displayed in HTML pages (4 and 5 I believe). NaCl itself does not rely on HTML in any way. I like the idea personally. Its open source I believe so technically anyone could implement it, they just haven't, it is already confirmed to be coming to android although I believe due to the nature of how it works NaCl applications have to be compiled on a per CPU architecture basis so NaCl on ARM will be incompatible with NaCl on x86.


FirefoxOS is a fork. Glade may be mozilla owned but its still not specifically written for the OS, its code pulled from elsewhere. The kernel is linux so yes forked from elsewhere. Now the only interesting thing about FirefoxOS in my opinion is the fact that it should be able to run with alternate backends other than linux with relative ease, could probably be run as an application on windows even if you bound the correct javascript API's to windows functions (accelerometer and camera etc use new non standard API's)