Firefox RC2 was still buggy for me...
...as in it stopped responding quite frequently on my Windows Vista running laptop. So, if Firefox 3 final is the same as RC2, Thank god for Opera 9.5!!
Not that I can't just use IE7...
Firefox 3 Download Day began with a PR fiasco. For almost two hours after it was supposed to kick off servers were down and Mozilla Foundation websites either unavailable or publishing html error messages. The Mozilla Foundation had called on the world to start downloading the latest version of the browser at 10am PDT today - …
From the BBC news site:
<quote>
"It's a global effort to make history," said Paul Kim, head of marketing at Mozilla.
[...]
"There is actually no record for the greatest amount of software downloaded in one day, so for 24 hours from the moment we push the bits live, that's when the countdown starts," he said.
</quote>
Breaking a record which doesn't exist - sounds tough...
Well, I think the downloads have started - must be cos, at this moment (18:08 BST), it's totally impossible to get to either mozilla.com or spreadfirefox.com. What's the betting the only record broken here will be that this becomes the biggest Denial Of Service "attack" ever mounted ;-)
It's faster than M$ explorer, it's more secure than M$ explorer, it's more user-friendly than M$ explorer, more versatile than M$ explorer, cheaper than M$.
If it wasn't for firefox, m$ would probably have us watching xbox adverts like on it's live messenger or coughing up cash for it's half assed, buggy, insecure browser by now.
So quit moaning and go and download it now....
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/
at the moment www.speadfirefox.com has been unreachable for more than half an hour now from here and www.mozilla.com is returning "Http/1.1 Service Unavailable" when i can connect to it, but usually the connection just times out.
I think that mozilla might have achieved the first self-inflicted DDoS, on a global scale nonetheless... that's a really impressive record ... and the first legal one if i'm not wrong, as i cannot remember any software launch that has caused this worldwide gold rush, not even the launch of Fedora 9.
congrats Mozilla: Aim at foot, SHOOT !.
/using the dead vulture logo as there is no dead fox logo available.
Suppose a distributed network (or as this is El Reg, a "Beowulf cluster" even) of download clients tied to a many connections suddenly started downloading Firefox 3.0 repetitively and endlessly.
Oh, wait, I'm pretty sure that can be described as a DoS attack, and probably punishable under some criminal laws somewhere. So let's NOT really do it...
I wondered why there were a raft of updates this week to my seemingly lost forever extensions! Quite welcome too... I missed things like FireFTP, ReloadEvery and Trashmail.net.
p.s. RC2's working great for me on Ubuntu, I never seem to get the problems others do with Firefox. That's not meant as a gloat btw!
We're now 40 minutes past "release time" and RC3 is the only thing I'm finding on getfirefox.com. The one thing that can make you look foolish in a process like this is to generate a lot of hoopla and this misfire.
And, if you want to set a record for missing release deadlines there are some pretty big companies to compete with.
Yes I will be downloading Firefox 3.
With Firefox 2 being so far ahead of IE 6 when it launched, and heralding every significant feature of IE7 we can expect to see it looking fresher and brighter and once again leading by a broad street.
What I can't understand is the claim of 2 million users of Firefox. 200 million maybe. A slip of the journo's pen I suspect.
Good luck to the new version.
It's quite simple! If you don't like it, leave it alone! No one is making you download or use it. I like Opera it's cool, I like IE sometimes, for some things, Safari has some good points and FF has good bits. They all give us choice, simply say "It doesn't work for me, 'cos of XYZ. Thanks, but no thanks.".
Sorry but no way am I getting into a pissing contest over a browser, there are far better goals in life...peace out!
where's Roy Castle when you need him? (oh yeah, right, i forgot)
still, it won't be the same without him playing the trumpet as the credits roll
i still think it'd be far more fun if 2 million people all downloaded Opera or Safari on the same day
because as you say, there is no official record yet - so even if just one person downloads it, they'll have got the "record"
Well done the firefox and mozilla PR team - for making something so ridiculous as a new version of software being released "cool". Since when did nerds, *cough* define cool? I don't know which is more sad and pathetic - celebrating something like that or the 566 parties (see BBC article) that are gonna take place to commerorate it...
Anyhow that said, technically Adobe Flash Player is software. I think they'll win this hands down. Probably i-tunes too. /me gets out the big eye-glass and starts to investigate...
I'll leave with this thought in the meantime. Wierdly I get the same feeling as I do when I hear about Amy Winehouse or Pete Doherty every time I read about Firefox. I thought Harry Potter was bad and rest my eyes in wonderment as to how a CEO of an organisation can have the cheek of having a $500,000 USD/annum (http://valleywag.com/tech/jackpot/mozilla-chief-makes-500000+plus-a-year-322100.php) salary and get away with it.
Hey look, my genetically modifed cow with two redbull cans on its behind just flew across the window sporting some quite stylish XXXL Calvin Klein boxers! Hurrah! /me runs out and chases it with a big stick and the eye-glass to see if it'll burn, baby burn!
p.s. I prefer apple over firefox. viva la safari and her devil brother IE! (as you've probably guessed, this firefox hoo-ha annoys the hell out of me /end rant)
New World Record: Shortest time to failure of a published URL to achieve a download target. mozilla.com (including www.getfirefox.com is inaccessible -- I'm in California, I've been trying to get in since shortly after 10 a.m. PDT.
It'll be fun to read the "we had no way to anticipate the positive response" excuses. They are explicitly begging people to flood the site, and obviously do not have much of a plan for dealing with the traffic. They could have, for example, they could have a set up a small loader to download and then let that stream/torrent the download from mirrored sites. They could instructed webmasters on how to post the file and report downloads back to Mozilla (I'm sure more than a few anti-M$ folks would been happy to do so)
This is another example of my biggest problem with Firefox. For individuals, it's great. But it's management capabilities (centralized configuration control, update distribution, etc.) suck. As good as a browser Firefox is (and I've had pretty good luck with the ver 3 testing) they need to start taking the Enterprise more seriously.
"The firm claims it already has two million people worldwide running Firefox, today it will be hoping to scoop up a few more fanboys and girls in its latest onslaught against the might of Microsoft."
Only two million? Firefox is supposed to be used by over 15% of those online, are you sure you got this number right?
Hardly unexpected. Can no-one forsee these events and rent sufficient temporary server and network capacity for the 1st 24 hours ? I'm sure vendors like IBM would like the kudos and do a deal...
"There is actually no record for the greatest amount of software downloaded" - how about all those little bits of Javascript - software surely. I guess that would go to Google...
I dont understand why the intelligent would choose (Opera) a classic example of bloat ware (ala Office) that has so much crap inbuilt that most people won't use or care about.
I'd say the intelligent would choose a light weight browser then install one or many of the thousands of plug-ins that are of some use to them!
The British English Firefox download is run from servers in Sweden and the FRA's spying computer is overloaded apparently and refusing to accept any more connections to Sweden. ;)
WE BROKE SWEDEN! Sorry about that.
Anyway, I just downloaded and installed it, I've just checked mozilla.org (21:30 CET) and that works fine. Grab it from mozilla Europe instead of Mozilla.org:
http://www.mozilla-europe.org/
Yes, I am posting this from a Windows version of Firefox 3, though my Linux version is giving me a few problems, especially as installation instructions are conspicuous by their absence so I'm trying a few tricks that sometimes get things like that working (though usually I don't expect this sort of fun from a large scale update that has supposedly been tested over many months!)
Actually, I believe that part of the problem is that the folk behind the release forgot that June 17 starts at different times in different parts of the world, or at least didn't make it clear enough for users clamouring for the package, hence it was nearly 8pm BST before the Firefox 2 update page cme down for the last time and Firefox 3 went live. For us in the UK, therefore, June 17 is nearly over!
I'll give it a good hammering once I've sorted out the Linux problem.
I wonder, will they get in contact with all the major Linux distros to see how many downloads were made to the repos, or will they just count each distro mirror that adds it to the repo as one?
rc1 had one bug for me: sometimes it'd freeze up if I closed a tab with Gmail on it from another tab. That's not enough to make me switch to something else though. (I emerged Opera 9.5 the other day, and I was not impressed at all.)
As for the server being down, a friend of mine said the server wasn't responding but I told him to clear his cache and it worked.
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