Download Day 2008

I was reading some science & tech news postings at google today and came across an article posted at ChannelWeb. The purpose of the article is to promote Mozilla’s efforts to set a Guinness World Record highest number of software downloads in a single day with the release of the new Firefox 3.0 web browser on June 17th, 2008.

For those of you living under or a rock, or hopelessly devoted to Microsoft, or if you just have never heard of it, Firefox is an award-winning open-source web browser from Mozilla. According to the W3C statistics, Firefox currently has a 39.1% market share of web browsers as of April 2008. When compared separately to the two major versions Internet Explorer (6 and 7), Firefox is the most popular browser in use on the internet. I can’t say for sure when I first started using Firefox, but it’s been at least 3-4 years, if not more, and I havn’t looked back since. I am a strong supporter of Firefox for a number of reason, most of which come from a web development standpoint. I thoroughly enjoy Firefox mainly because it has better support for web standards. (Read more about Web Standards in my post “We’re getting NAKED!! But don’t get too excited.“) Not only that, but as an open-source web browser, Firefox has a plethora of user-developed add-ons and themes available to customize your the look, feel, and performance of your browser. One of my favorites is the Web Developer Add-On (for obvious reasons). There are plenty of other add-ons for assisting with bookmarking features, managing feed subscriptions, toolbars, search tools, social networking management, and many more. See the full list of Firefox Add-ons.

As if all that isn’t enough, Mozilla is releasing the new Firefox 3.0 this Tuesday June 17th, 2008. Currently, Firefox 3.0 is in its 3rd Release Candidate stage, basically a testing version. I have been using Firefox 3.0 for the past couple weeks as it is the default browser shipped with the newest version of the Linux Ubuntu 8.04 Operating System. So far, I have been pretty happy with what I have seen. One of the first things I noticed was the improved history recollection. From the Mozilla website:

Location bar & auto-complete: type in all or part of the title, tag or address of a page to see a list of matches from your history and bookmarks; a new display makes it easier to scan through the matching results and find that page you’re looking for. Results are returned according to their frecency (a combination of frequency and recency of visits to that page) ensuring that you’re seeing the most relevant matches. An adaptive learning algorithm further tunes the results to your patterns!

Another thing I noticed is when you close the browser with multiple tabs open, you are presented with the option to remember the tabs for the next time you open the browser. This is a very useful feature when the browser needs to be restarted after a plugin or add-on installation so you don’t have to reopen all the pages you just had up. There are plenty of other new features in Firefox 3.0 and you can check them all out at the Mozilla Firefox 3.0 release notes page.

This Tuesday, June 17th, 2008 has been coined “Download Day” by SpreadFirefox.com and is Mozilla’s attempt to set a world record for the most software downloads in 24 hours and will occur on Firefox 3 launch day. To take part in the world record attempt, and to assist in spreading the word about Firefox, simply download Firefox 3 (preferably from the Download Day Headquarters) on launch day this Tuesday. You can pledge your support to download and help set the world record by going to the Download Day Home Page. As of the writing of this article, there are approximately 1.3 million pledges worldwide. You can view a breakdown of the numbers by country around the world there as well.

For more information about “Download Day”, visit the Download Day FAQ.

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