Yesterday morning we decided to download Firefox 3 which was officially released 17/06/08. It turns out that 5.5 million other users had beaten us to it. SpreadFirefox.com are trying to set a world record for “most software downloaded in 24 hours” and the tracking counter has maintained pace and surpassed 8 million worldwide downloads by the time of writing this blog.

Such a rapid acceptance of a new browser shows the consumer support Firefox now has. Considering this Firefox users are likely to represent a substantial percentage of site visitors. Designing site that is compatible and maintains functionality when viewed in Firefox is no longer a benefit of a site design but a necessity.

Firefox is an open source project that allows developers to create additions (add-ons) to increase Firefox’s functionality and allow users to personalise their browser. Managing to understand how these add-ons (and updated features) of Firefox 3 affect a users browsing habits is difficult task but may lead to new or improved ways to market websites or increase brand awareness.

EDIT – 25 June 2008 – Firefox downloads are up to 20million one week on from release, and its been announced that Firefox’s market share increased last month by 0.75% to 19.17% and IE lost ground down to 72.95% (A 0.8% drop)

EDIT – 07 July 2008 – Its offical firefox have got the world record 8,002,530 copies of firefox 3.0 were download on launch daya.

The company’s server logs have been verified by Gareth Deaves, of Guinness World Records, who commented that it was ’an extremely impressive accomplishment’.