3 ms·

No, the other option is for your customers to install Firefox. Now this isn't always something you can demand/expect of your users. But for example for a free s

No, the other option is for your customers to install Firefox. Now this isn't always something you can demand/expect of your users. But for example for a free service or during a beta period it's perfectly reasonable. Most IE market share is not early adoption friendly. If they wouldn't fear new technology they would be on Firefox already. Either they never heard of Firefox or don't want to try it out. Neither one is a quality that indicates early adopter.

greendestiny 19y ago
I actually considered doing the web application I'm doing at the moment as firefox only, purely because it heavily relied on SVG. It's very much a niche market where my competitors are desktop applications, and it will be a fairly expensive subscription service so it didn't seem unreasonable to demand users download firefox. Eventually though I just came to realise that the biggest advantage of the web was the ability to have anyone come to my site and be ready to use the product. So in the end I've gone with flash.
- mixmax 19y ago
  Good decision :-) And all the best of luck...
  - greendestiny 19y ago
    I know its not sort of cool, but actually using flex on rails is great.
    - mixmax 19y ago
      Ithink it's cool that you made that decision. But hey, I'm just the business guy ;-)
      - boucher 19y ago
        See, I wholeheartedly agree with you about IE, but flash suffers from many of the same problems. It's a plugin, so right out of the gate a whole class of people won't be able to use it. Plus, even though many have flash installed, versions vary widely, so unless you code for flash 6, again, good luck working with everyone's computer. There's a right way to do things, with built in browser support, across all the major browsers. We spent time up front to make sure things did work, and now we continue to reap the benefits.
        greendestiny 19y ago
        Admittedly this is adobe propaganda, but their website has stats on flash penetration, its pretty impressive: http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer I did once see on a comment here that more people had flash in their browser than had javascript turned on, but I can't vouch for that. Of course I am using SVG which means firefox or a badly supported plugin for IE. If you didn't need flash's interactivity, graphics or sound it would be pretty silly to use it.
        BrandonM 19y ago
        Flash may "reach" my desktop, and even work sometimes, but I find myself having to kill and restart Firefox a few times a day when it quits working. Even when it's working, there are a lot of sites that don't work correctly. Of course, if you're going for market share and don't care about people like me, Flash is just fine.
        greendestiny 19y ago
        I only care if you're an Orthodontist :) Really though, if you can realistically use html and not flash I'm sure its better. For my application, I've tried it both ways and flash outperforms native firefox SVG support, let alone trying to get it to work in IE with the adobe plugin. I think the big flash question remains whether to use long polling AJAX or flash for server push type applications.
- cstejerean 19y ago
  That's likely a good decision. I wonder what Firefox's market share would be though if sites like YouTube or MySpace required the users to download Firefox first. Most of these people are the same ones that install random "free" screen savers and games that their friends send through email. I doubt they would mind having to download just another piece of software.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    I would turn the question around: What would Youtube or Myspace's market share be if they required theur users to download firefox first. My bet is that you would never have heard of either of them.
mixmax 19y ago
>"No, the other option is for your customers to install Firefox. Now this isn't always something you can demand/expect of your users. But for example for a free service or during a beta period it's perfectly reasonable" So you think that users will go through the trouble of installing a new browser to see a free website or a product in beta? Good luck with that... It seems to me that a lot of really good programmers (of which you seem to be one, judging from your comments) don't mingle a lot with "normal" people. These are the ones that have normal lives, use their computer only as a tool that is expected to just work, and use IE because it came with the computer. And they are the ones that will pay for products. Early adopters are a really hard crowd to make money from, they expect everything to be free, and they will move on as soon as something more exciting comes along. I would never launch a product, not even in a beta, that only works in firefox, Not only do you lose more than half of your potential customers, but it also sends a signal that either you are not very good at what you do since you only seem to be able to make it work in one browser, or else that you don't much care. Both are pretty bad.
- brlewis 19y ago
  I interact with "normal" people, and at one family I know switched to Firefox because of the piclens plugin. It's actually not that uncommon for Windows users to install software on their computer off the Internet. They do so more than I do, actually. If I can't apt-get it I usually pass.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    I didn't say that you won't get any users, just that you could have had roughly twice as many if you properly support all browsers. And this is all about business, yes ?
    - akkartik 19y ago
      That's as simplistic as arguing a startup should go for the largest market it can. Focus is worth a lot.

greendestiny 19y ago

I actually considered doing the web application I'm doing at the moment as firefox only, purely because it heavily relied on SVG. It's very much a niche market where my competitors are desktop applications, and it will be a fairly expensive subscription service so it didn't seem unreasonable to demand users download firefox. Eventually though I just came to realise that the biggest advantage of the web was the ability to have anyone come to my site and be ready to use the product. So in the end I've gone with flash.

mixmax 19y ago
Good decision :-) And all the best of luck...
- greendestiny 19y ago
  I know its not sort of cool, but actually using flex on rails is great.
  - mixmax 19y ago
    Ithink it's cool that you made that decision. But hey, I'm just the business guy ;-)
    - boucher 19y ago
      See, I wholeheartedly agree with you about IE, but flash suffers from many of the same problems. It's a plugin, so right out of the gate a whole class of people won't be able to use it. Plus, even though many have flash installed, versions vary widely, so unless you code for flash 6, again, good luck working with everyone's computer. There's a right way to do things, with built in browser support, across all the major browsers. We spent time up front to make sure things did work, and now we continue to reap the benefits.
      - greendestiny 19y ago
        Admittedly this is adobe propaganda, but their website has stats on flash penetration, its pretty impressive: http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer http://www.adobe.com/products/player_census/flashplayer I did once see on a comment here that more people had flash in their browser than had javascript turned on, but I can't vouch for that. Of course I am using SVG which means firefox or a badly supported plugin for IE. If you didn't need flash's interactivity, graphics or sound it would be pretty silly to use it.
        BrandonM 19y ago
        Flash may "reach" my desktop, and even work sometimes, but I find myself having to kill and restart Firefox a few times a day when it quits working. Even when it's working, there are a lot of sites that don't work correctly. Of course, if you're going for market share and don't care about people like me, Flash is just fine.
        greendestiny 19y ago
        I only care if you're an Orthodontist :) Really though, if you can realistically use html and not flash I'm sure its better. For my application, I've tried it both ways and flash outperforms native firefox SVG support, let alone trying to get it to work in IE with the adobe plugin. I think the big flash question remains whether to use long polling AJAX or flash for server push type applications.
cstejerean 19y ago
That's likely a good decision. I wonder what Firefox's market share would be though if sites like YouTube or MySpace required the users to download Firefox first. Most of these people are the same ones that install random "free" screen savers and games that their friends send through email. I doubt they would mind having to download just another piece of software.
- mixmax 19y ago
  I would turn the question around: What would Youtube or Myspace's market share be if they required theur users to download firefox first. My bet is that you would never have heard of either of them.

mixmax 19y ago

>"No, the other option is for your customers to install Firefox. Now this isn't always something you can demand/expect of your users. But for example for a free service or during a beta period it's perfectly reasonable" So you think that users will go through the trouble of installing a new browser to see a free website or a product in beta? Good luck with that... It seems to me that a lot of really good programmers (of which you seem to be one, judging from your comments) don't mingle a lot with "normal" people. These are the ones that have normal lives, use their computer only as a tool that is expected to just work, and use IE because it came with the computer. And they are the ones that will pay for products. Early adopters are a really hard crowd to make money from, they expect everything to be free, and they will move on as soon as something more exciting comes along. I would never launch a product, not even in a beta, that only works in firefox, Not only do you lose more than half of your potential customers, but it also sends a signal that either you are not very good at what you do since you only seem to be able to make it work in one browser, or else that you don't much care. Both are pretty bad.

brlewis 19y ago
I interact with "normal" people, and at one family I know switched to Firefox because of the piclens plugin. It's actually not that uncommon for Windows users to install software on their computer off the Internet. They do so more than I do, actually. If I can't apt-get it I usually pass.
- mixmax 19y ago
  I didn't say that you won't get any users, just that you could have had roughly twice as many if you properly support all browsers. And this is all about business, yes ?
  - akkartik 19y ago
    That's as simplistic as arguing a startup should go for the largest market it can. Focus is worth a lot.