On the third day of the month, Mozilla released the Firefox 1.5 Release Candidate 1. However, shortly after the release, Mozilla faced numerous complaints from users regarding the browser’s update mechanism.
Users can now download Firefox 1.5 RC1 – a significant step before the official version of Firefox 1.5 is released later this year – through the FPT server or Mozilla’s website. This trial version is fully compatible with the operating systems Windows, Mac OSX, and Linux.
However, the automatic update feature of Firefox 1.5 RC1 – one of the newest features of this open-source browser – can only run at a speed of 690K, which is significantly lower than the 5MB speed of the Windows automatic update application.
Many users of the Firefox browser on the Windows operating system have encountered issues with the automatic update service of Firefox 1.5 RC1. “When I use the browser’s automatic update feature, sometimes the download speed is 686Kb and at other times it reaches 6MB with the message ‘Firefox is installing…” and after 20 seconds the browser restarts but the title still shows Firefox Beta 2,” reported one user.
The author of this article also tested the automatic update feature of the browser and received similar results. The only successful upgrade was by directly downloading the RC1 update from the website and then updating it.
According to Mozilla’s development center, there will be at least one more RC version released before the official version launches at the end of this year.
The Market Share Battle…
Recent statistics show that Firefox’s market share has surpassed 10%. Currently, Firefox’s global market share stands at 11.5%.
Since April, Firefox’s market share has increased by 2.8%, while Internet Explorer’s market share has decreased by 1.2%. The current market share of IE is around 85.5%.
“Firefox’s global market share continues to rise, and it seems that more and more users of the Netscape and IE browsers are switching to Firefox,” stated a research expert.
Forecasts suggest that Firefox’s market share could reach 14%, while Internet Explorer’s will drop to 80.7%, and Apple’s Safari will be at 3.6%.
HVD – (TechWeb)
