It is good to see Firefox support going strong, since I believe it to be better than IE. IE will still have the greatest total share for a long time to come because Microsoft is the main browser supported within business. At least Microsoft have been addressing standards compliance in their most recent IE versions, the Microsoft way, by having a separate standards compliance mode, which was initially turned off. At least they now have a standards mode :) It is better than prior versions which only supported their own proprietary standards. The Internet was badly damaged due to the browser wars of the past where everyone wanted their own standard, rather than using a single standard. I still occasionally encounter sites that I can't browse because they Microsoft only sites, but they are much fewer.

I'm still using IE6 at work, but not by choice! Apparently, we have applications that don't work with newer versions of IE. I don't think I'm using any of them, but still, we're not allowed to upgrade.

I've installed Firefox 3.5 alongside IE6 a few months ago, and I'm much happier for it. :)

This should be a warning flag to Microsoft in that the browser wars are very much active. If MS is not careful, Opera, Chrom and Firefox all are slowly eating their install base down bit by bit. And now in Europe to appease the EU there, MS has included install options for other web browsers. A sign of things to come me thinks.

What I wonder is if say firefox was the default already installed web browser instead of IE. What would the market shares look like then? How many people would actually go out of there way to download,install and use IE. I'm willing to bet that IE would be around the market share of chrome and safari.

Well for me it is only Google Chrome (Dev Release) though it crashes now and then, but it has the best response times I have yet to see in a browser, though I still use Firefox when the need for its extensions arises and IE, I only use it to test if the web sites I design are looking okay in it and all my sites will prompt the user to switch to chrome or Firefox.

As for Safari and Opera, Safari is on my Mac and the only time I used Opera was to try its Unite(or was it called something else) service, it has a good server setup for the likes of me, who just want to show a client his site....

Chrome rules, and Firefox is the Ultimate King, until extensions for chrome surpass those of Firefox, or if Google finds a way to use Firefox extensions on chrome....oh that would be just too cool.. but I can dream, can't I.. :)

Chrome is surely the one I would prefer if it did not have some much incompatibility problems.
It is light and I like the UI.
Firefox is my "every day" browser and I like all the plug-ins available.
IE8 is installed by default so I keep it and I use it when I need it for special web sites incompatible with FF. It is a shame to see that some we sites are still incompatible with FF.
MS should concentrate on their OS and let others companies develop browsers.
But as Google is going to release next year an OS with a browser completely integrated (I think) and with Web Applications replacing Office. MS will not let that concurrent come in his "garden" without fighting.
So let's hope something new and completely amazing will come from MS with their next browser...

I dunno why Opera is last. It's by far the best browser. Firefox is so overrated.. just like google.

The reason for IE to having most of the share is because most of the corporate world supports only IE. But the way firefox is growing , i don't think that day is very far where firefox will be having atleaset half of market share.

first of all firefox is a far better browser than opera you obviously dont know what you are talking about i mean look at the shear number of firefox downloads vs opera not one person i know uses opera and i work at an internet company everyone uses firefox and for some things IE8 but mainly firefox.

Props to Firefox for taking the fight to the big gorilla on the block and giving us users some choices. I've been using it for years on my home PC but am stuck using IE7 at work. Firefox's functionality and speed blows IE6 & 7 clear out of the water.

Tell me about it. I wouldn't have even known about firefox if it hadn't been for using it on my brother in laws PC while on vacation at their home last year. Once I used it and saw how much better of a browser it was I would hooked and as soon as I got home I immediately downloaded it and haven't looked back.

I would like to use Chrome more often, but google's habitual collecting every bit of data about you doesn't appeal to me. There's another browser which is based on Chrome called SW Iron which looks pretty good, and it has everything Chrome does, minus the data collecting.

""about i mean look at the shear number of firefox downloads vs opera ""

I've downloaded Firefox on a couple occasions over the years to see what the fuss was about. I deleted it the same day...and yes I DO know what I'm talking about. One thing we can all agree on is that IE sucks.

Hooray for Firefox and my thousands of addons! That must be the biggest reason why I could never switch to Chrome or any other browser for my day-to-day browsing, I just couldn't live without all those addons, although I do have Chrome installed for the just in case moments.

I've tried using opera and for whatever reason it's much slower loading up my homepage (which is igoogle) than firefox, chrome or IE. I like opera's features though, but the load up time is the dealbreaker for me. And to be honest I only know one person who uses opera, and that's because he works for opera lol.

Woot! go Firefox!

I tried Firefox but return to Opera. Opera has the best mouse gesture features. For those sites that don't play well then IE6 it is.

Once again FF FTW!!! IE continues to be beyond shoddy coding so it needs to DIE

I never heard of Opera but it seems to be doing horribly bad. Im not surprised IE is doing so good people consider it a default and most/all schools use it because they don't care about quality just providing an option to students. My college has more than 1,000 computers and every single one has Windows Xp professional installed and main browser is IE. Safari and firefox are more personal use. I don't really see firefox ever being on top though as long as schools and such just keep using IE.

It's great Firefox has surpassed Internet Explorer 6's market share, but Firefox these days isn't exactly a stable browser. Firefox 3.5.4 repeatedly uses excess amounts of CPU and sometimes over 1gb of RAM with minimal extensions, maybe that's why some people still use Internet Explorer 6 most likely? Who knows.

I am a web developer, and nothing makes me more happy than seeing the market share of the world's most evil web browser dwindling, but I can't help but feel that Firefox isn't going to always be the saint we think it is.

Nothing can ever be as bad as IE6.