It is hard to imagine, but I am sure someone out there is still using Internet Explorer, though I cringe every time to even think someone on Mac OS X would even dare open up IE 5, but I am sure that still occurs once and a while. I have been running Deer Park (Firefox 1.5) for a few weeks now on Windows, but on Mac OS X, I still use Safari about 60% of the time, with Firefox coming a close second. With Apple updating Safari recently I started thinking about what makes a browser useful and popular among those of us who get in six plus hours of internet browsing a day?
Updates Versus Stable Fixed Releases
Undeniably there has to be a certain mystique of freshness. But no application can ever stay at .9 or even at 1.0 for very long. Progressive users want progressive upgrades, in a sense this is what is missing from Apple’s Safari and Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. Now I am not talking so much about feature load, no one wants to load a browser that is overblown with features, but tech-savy users do in fact crave constant updates. Firefox and Mozilla come in stable releases and in nightly builds that anyone can try out. Thus the constant updates helps build the mystique and momentum that makes the stable fixed releases even more popular.
If Apple and Microsoft adopted this same two-fold release schedule, I am sure it would have the same effect on their browsers, but since both browsers come pre-installed on their respective operating systems already, it would seem rather unnecessary to mimic Firefox and Mozilla, when you already have an audience, right? User base is one thing, perception is quite another. The Deer Park Alphas have shown something new in Firefox, namely that the browser is not so much being reinvented, but that it is being fine tuned for a generation of internet users who want simplicity and expandibility in ways that previous users never imagined. What is happening is that while Apple is great at user interface and Microsoft is great at adding features, neither of them is great at both. Firefox is trying to do both, along with everything else, and while the 1.0 release was short on many areas, the 1.5 release is a remarkable improvement on everything.
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