Why the average user won't switch
Originally posted as a comment on Adot's notblog
Asa wonders how people can continue to use IE, and one of the comments says if everyone was forced to spend 10min. with firefox, 95% of users will switch.
Actually, 10min with firefox wont make 95% of users switch. It'll probably make only 5% switch.
If you read San Jose Mercury News, there was a full page article on alternative browsers. Granted, the author is dumb enough to believe that being open source is mozilla's major shortcoming. However he does make a valid point:
Quote:
I'm comfortable with IE and the relatively small benefits of switching to opera aren't enough to overcome my inertia.
Link to article
That's the killer. For most users, the benefits on switching to an alternative browser are minimal.
Reason? Google toolbar does popup blocking. Most sites work well with IE. They've never used tabbed browsing. Firefox does NOT block ads out-of-the-box. It does NOT play flash/java out-of-the-box.
What is needed is a marketing strategy. It should include a 'distribution' with all the useful extras bundled.
I personally consider adblock to be one of the killer features of firefox. Its insanely powerful, and insanely underrated. It is easier to use than usercontent.css blocking and more powerful. Not to mention that usercontent.css hacks are 'geeky'. If there is one extension that must be built into firefox, then adblock it is.