Gartner says Firefox is the predominant browser in the IT department at one of the top five IT vendors, though the (unnamed) company in question doesn't have a formal policy supporting it. Recent data from Web analysis firm XitiMonitor shows a steady rise in Firefox usage during the workday, suggesting that many business users are installing the browser without official sanction. XitiMonitor's research puts Firefox's market share at above 10 percent, with other non-IE browsers together making up about 3 percent; other researchers put Firefox's share slightly lower.
Support from industry giants such as Google (which provides Firefox's download infrastructure), Amazon (Firefox support for the A9 search toolbar) and IBM is bolstering the browser's profile, and ISVs (independent software vendors) that have aggressively tied their products to IE are beginning to shift to a neutral stance. Nitot says Oracle, Business Objects and others have committed to delivering products compatible with Gecko, the HTML rendering engine that drives all Mozilla products.
A handful of businesses and large organisations have come out with significant Firefox deployments. Komatsu Canada -- a leading distributor of heavy equipment for the mining, forestry and construction industries -- says most of its 1,300 Canadian employees use Firefox as their default browser, switching to IE for sites that only support that browser; Mozilla's Thunderbird is also the company's main e-mail client. In a statement on the MozillaZine Web site, the company's CIO said improved security justified the deployment, despite the lack of enterprise management tools.
Several universities have large-scale rollouts of Firefox, according to the Mozilla Foundation, including Yale, MIT, Boston University, Western Kentucky University, Southern Oregon University, Pennsylvania State University, Duke University's business school and the UK's University of Bradford. The French Home Office is one of the major public-sector bodies evaluating the browser.
Security and features
The number one driver of Firefox's popularity is security, specifically a number of high-profile security scares around IE, according to analysts. Microsoft chairman Bill Gates, in announcing IE 7, acknowledged that "browsing is definitely a point of vulnerability". In the past, it was generally accepted that IE had more than its share of vulnerabilities per thousand lines of code, as a result of its architecture and Microsoft's corporate culture and development priorities, according to Gartner, although this has improved in the last two years.
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As an IT network sysadmin, I have watched the development of Firefox with interest. I have been using it since the 0.7 release and have had very few problems. Some sites don't display correctly, and when checked with the W3.org HTML validator, usually reveal that they are not HTML standards compliant. If the site if programmed exclusively for IE then you must use IE. If it is standards compliant then Firefox will work.
I like Firefox as it makes my job easier. I load up 6 websites in the morning to see what is happening, so when clients call up I am informed. I can do this in three clicks in Firefox (including loading the program itself), and uncountably more in IE - which do you think I use?
The integrated Google search gets used uncountable times per day. This and tabbed browsing are the killer features for me in my job as sysadmin and
tech support.
I use Firefox for Internet Banking as my bank uses a Java Console. As long as that is up to date, I am protected.
I like Firefox and have it installed on all the PC's I use - work and various home machines. My work is a Microsoft house, so I will never get it installed on anything else, but it saves me time and we know time is money, so my boss does not mind too much!