OMEN
02-09-2008, 12:57 PM
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Market share ... XiTi's December report on the percentage of Firefox users in each region / XiTi
THE proportion of Australians using Mozilla Firefox to surf the web is among the highest in the world, according to internet trend research.
Firefox, the main competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, is an open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation that is free to install and use.
The Oceania region, which includes Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, had the highest percentage of Firefox browsers in the world at the end of last year, according to French web survey firm XiTi.
Almost one in three web users in the Oceania region – 31 per cent – were using Firefox, compared to 28 per cent in Europe and 21 per cent in the US, XiTi said.
Internet Explorer, which comes bundled with the Windows operating system, remains the world's most widely-used web browser.
Firefox is available for three operating systems – Windows, Mac OS X and Linux – while new versions of Internet Explorer are available for Windows only.
XiTi reported that the overall number of surfers using the Mac OS and Linux operating systems increased slightly during 2007, but Windows remained dominant with 95 per cent.
The percentage of Firefox browsers in Oceania has risen from 19 per cent to 31 per cent in the last year and a half and is currently growing faster than in Europe, according to the company's records.
The monthly surveys also reveal some interesting information about the online habits of users based on their web browser. In September, Europeans using Firefox tended to spend more time reading each page opened, while Internet Explorer users opened more pages per visit to a website.
A survey in June found that the percentage of overall website visitors using Firefox rose over the weekends, suggesting that some people prefer to use the browser at home but use Internet Explorer at the office.
XiTi's December report was based on the traffic figures of 112,018 websites around the world.
Almost one in five people read NEWS.com.au using Firefox in January, with the browser accounting for 18.6 of the website's overall visitors.
Readers of the Technology section were more likely to use the browser. Among visitors to this section the percentage of Firefox users jumped to 28 per cent.
Market share reports from websites such as Net Applications and W3 Counter put the worldwide percentage of surfers using Firefox at between 16 and 27 per cent.
Firefox was first released in 2004 based on code developed by the Mozilla group, which was originally created and funded by Netscape.
Later versions of the Netscape browser used Mozilla's model, before the once-dominant brand became defunct. This week marks the final death knell for Netscape, as its owners AOL drop support for existing versions of browser. Future releases have been ruled out.
Firefox is one of the most well-known examples of the open source code ideology, a principle of software development that states that the technology behind a product be made freely available and encourages community development.
XiTi
Market share ... XiTi's December report on the percentage of Firefox users in each region / XiTi
THE proportion of Australians using Mozilla Firefox to surf the web is among the highest in the world, according to internet trend research.
Firefox, the main competitor to Microsoft's Internet Explorer, is an open source web browser developed by the Mozilla Foundation that is free to install and use.
The Oceania region, which includes Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea, had the highest percentage of Firefox browsers in the world at the end of last year, according to French web survey firm XiTi.
Almost one in three web users in the Oceania region – 31 per cent – were using Firefox, compared to 28 per cent in Europe and 21 per cent in the US, XiTi said.
Internet Explorer, which comes bundled with the Windows operating system, remains the world's most widely-used web browser.
Firefox is available for three operating systems – Windows, Mac OS X and Linux – while new versions of Internet Explorer are available for Windows only.
XiTi reported that the overall number of surfers using the Mac OS and Linux operating systems increased slightly during 2007, but Windows remained dominant with 95 per cent.
The percentage of Firefox browsers in Oceania has risen from 19 per cent to 31 per cent in the last year and a half and is currently growing faster than in Europe, according to the company's records.
The monthly surveys also reveal some interesting information about the online habits of users based on their web browser. In September, Europeans using Firefox tended to spend more time reading each page opened, while Internet Explorer users opened more pages per visit to a website.
A survey in June found that the percentage of overall website visitors using Firefox rose over the weekends, suggesting that some people prefer to use the browser at home but use Internet Explorer at the office.
XiTi's December report was based on the traffic figures of 112,018 websites around the world.
Almost one in five people read NEWS.com.au using Firefox in January, with the browser accounting for 18.6 of the website's overall visitors.
Readers of the Technology section were more likely to use the browser. Among visitors to this section the percentage of Firefox users jumped to 28 per cent.
Market share reports from websites such as Net Applications and W3 Counter put the worldwide percentage of surfers using Firefox at between 16 and 27 per cent.
Firefox was first released in 2004 based on code developed by the Mozilla group, which was originally created and funded by Netscape.
Later versions of the Netscape browser used Mozilla's model, before the once-dominant brand became defunct. This week marks the final death knell for Netscape, as its owners AOL drop support for existing versions of browser. Future releases have been ruled out.
Firefox is one of the most well-known examples of the open source code ideology, a principle of software development that states that the technology behind a product be made freely available and encourages community development.
XiTi