Almost 66 million people have downloaded the Firefox browser, and whilst I’m sure those stats can be manipulated (lies, damned lies…) it’s still an impressive number, and it’s one that keeps on rising.
I know I’ve been banging on about it for ages now, but evidence that it is being taken seriously can be gathered from the fact that there is a link to a story about it on the front page of the BBC News website, which follows on from articles in most of the American mainstream media.
The story states that 1 in 10 UK websites fail to work properly in Firefox, listing some examples:
- Odeon.co.uk
- Jobcentreplus.gov.uk
- Insurance.co.uk
- British American Tobacco
- Mansell.plc.uk
- Companieshouse.gov.uk
- Flybmi.com/cargo
- bssuk.co.uk
I’m sure we could add many more to that list.
However there is one thing I’d just like to throw into this discussion, namely web standards. At present Firefox has the most compliant rendering engine of all the browsers (sharing that claim with Opera I believe) and THAT’S what can make a difference. If sites are designed to be compliant with the W3 specifications then they stand a much better chance of functioning properly across all browsers.
I wonder if the success of Firefox is just the long tail of the WaSP campaign?