Rise of the Fox

I may be really late on commenting on Firefox, but here it is anyways. Firefox has been a real hit with the markets and internet surfers. The users go on increasing with every moment. I was reading a couple of online articles on the next release and increasing adoption of Firefox as an option to Microsoft Internet Explorer and the numbers startled me. The report dated July 22 claimed 50 million download and the report dated July 27 claimed 75 million downloads. It is not the number increment that amazes me. I find it perfectly credible. Rather the speed with which the adoption is growing.

However, the adoption is still with the home users and people who want to explore options. That's it. It is still not the preferred browser in the corporate environment. For one, I still think the browsing experience on Firefox is still scratchy and not as smooth as Microsoft Internet Explorer. Secondly, no matter how stupid or hegemonistic the Microsoft standards seem, it would make sense for the Firefox developers to conform to them. At least to start with.

Currently sites designed with Microsoft standards and techniques do not appear correctly on Firefox. For example, Microsoft Exchange 2003 OWA site, sites built with ASP / ASP.NET. Conforming to those standards would mean instant approval / adoption from the corporates for Firefox. It is harder to convince all these companies to adhere to open standards rather than convince the Firefox community and conform to these standards.

Is somebody listening?