I sure hope that Blake Ross, Firefox’s brilliant co-creator, has it all wrong about the future of the browser he brought into the world…

I know many of you still stubbornly use Internet Explorer (hello, Carl). I used to, as well. But Firefox, with all its lovely add-ons and tweaks, is just more fun to use.

Let’s start with a something you might not know about: Firefox’s hidden visual tab switching tweak. Right now, you can use Ctrl-Tab to cycle through Firefox’s tabs. But if you’re using Firefox 3.6, the current revision, this tweak will give you a visual look at the tabs, just like using Alt-Tab in Windows.

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The browser wars have been one of the best things that ever happened to computer users–but so far, they haven’t spilled over from the desktop onto phones. (Yes, there are multiple browsers available for many phone OSes, but there tends to be one 800-pound gorilla and a bunch of obscure alternatives.) So I’m glad to hear that Mozilla says it hopes to have Firefox up and running on Android by the end of the year…

I’m generally well ahead of the crowd when it comes to Firefox. In fact, I’ve been running pre-release versions as my primary browser since the days when the Mozilla browser was known as Firebird. However, early versions of 3.6 were particularly crashy (along with the Flash 10.1 beta) and buggy in inconvenient ways (couldn’t access my work email due to some sort of cert issue). So I’ve largely abstained. And thus, have been uninformed. Two updates in particular have impacted my workflow – one positive, the other negative.

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Today, Mozilla released Firefox 3.6, a new version of the world’s most popular alternative browser. (Come to think of it, though, the concept of “alternative browser” is stale–for one thing, on many sites, including Technologizer, Firefox is the most popular browser.)

On the grand continuum from inconsequential bug fix to massive upgrade, Firefox 3.6 isn’t a biggie. But it could be very worthwhile: Mozilla is claiming a 20 percent speed increase (including faster startup and JavaScript improvements) and more stability. I haven’t played with 3.6 enough to form my own conclusions other than “so far, so good,” but just about the only things I don’t like about Firefox are that it feels slow to load, sometimes seems to bog down, and freezes and/or crashes more than it should.  A smoother-running Firefox could get me back on that browser more or less full time.

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Firefox 3.6 release candidate available.

Is the Android Marketplace secure?

Droid lock feature is flawed.

Nexus One gripes pile up.

USB 3.0: really, really fast.

LG’s Wii-like HDTV remote.

Make your iPhone a plane.

Definition of “e-reader” is changing.

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Internet Explorer may remain the world’s most popular browser by most measures, but StatCounter is reporting some numbers that put Firefox on top. One particular version of Firefox, that is: 3.5, which StatCounter says is now the single most popular browser version in the world.

Doing the math by version number rather than for all versions of a particular browser radically shifts the result, since IE users as a lot are clearly the browser users least likely to promptly upgrade to a new version: IE 8, IE 7, and IE 6 are all still in wide use, presumably because IE remains the default browser in the Windows world, and plenty of folks who find themselves with a default never bother to change it. Which is why Microsoft must still go out of its way to urge people to upgrade from IE 6--an eight-year-old browser that dates from an era before there was a Firefox, a Safari, or a Chrome.

So how does browser usage by version break down among Technologizer visitors? Glad you asked. Here are the top ten browser versions–Firefox 3.5 has a humongous lead, Safari 4.0 is in second place, and IE doesn’t show up until third place. The numbers below are percentage of visits to the site over the past month…

Happy birthday, Firefox! You’re vulnerable!

Firefox: the good, the bad.

NVidia won’t take on Intel.

Hey, where’s TweetDeck for iPhone?

Google invests in mobile advertising.

Android’s app storage problem continues.

AT&T’s faster laptop broadband adapter.

Will Google take on Skype?

Shazam launches a paid app.

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Mozilla’s Firefox 1.0 officially became available on November 9th, 2004–which means that the Little Browser That Could officially turns five today. It’s not the world’s dominant browser–while market share estimates vary widely, all show that Internet Explorer still has a sizable lead–but it’s surely the most beloved browser on the planet.

(It’s definitely the dominant browser in the Technologizer community–around 40 percent of visits have been made using it this month, via 28 percent with IE, 18 percent with Safari, and nine percent with Chrome.)

In celebration of Firefox’s first half-decade, here are some quick reflections on why it’s one of the most significant software products of this or any other era:

1. It reignited the browser wars. Back in 2004, Internet Explorer had more than ninety percent of the market and seemed to be on its way to as close to 100 percent as any product could conceivably attain. Other alternative browsers, such as Opera and earlier versions of Mozilla, had market shares that looked like rounding errors. Then Firefox appeared and quickly gained traction. Its strategy for success was a clever one: It was just a good browser, period. And today, there are more significant browsers than during any period since the inception of the Web: IE, Firefox, Safari, Chrome, Opera, and the Firefox variant I have a soft spot for, Flock. There’s probably some alternate world in which Firefox didn’t come along, IE’s market share is still monopolistic, and the Web is a much less interesting place.

2. It helped enable powerful Web apps. The leading browser of the pre-Firefox era, IE 6, was notoriously, willfully contemptuous of Web standards. Writing sophisticated Web-based applications such as e-mail clients that work with it was an exercise in frustration, albeit one which any company that wanted to write such apps had to go through. But Firefox set a good example by adhering to standards such as CSS and JavaScript that enable today’s Web apps. And Safari (which predated Firefox), Chrome, and even IE 8 all get it, too.

3. It’s the most mainstream open-source project to date. Linux is a remarkable accomplishment, but its domain remains servers and geeks who are passionate about software. Firefox showed the open-source community could build something that appealed to just about everybody–including folks who have no idea what open-source software is.

4. It’s spurned bloat. In many ways, today’s Firefox 3.5 doesn’t feel radically different from 2004′s Firefox 1.0. That’s a good thing–Mozilla has added features sparingly and avoided the temptation to lard its browser up with “improvements” that mostly add clutter. Instead, it offers one of the richest platforms for add-ons that the software world has ever known, allowing every Firefox user to build a browser that has exactly the features that he or she wants.

5. It gave the Netscape story an unexpectedly happy ending. The tale of the once-mighty Netscape Navigator was a sad one, whether you believed that its fall was due to unfair tactics by Microsoft or self-inflicted wounds (or a bit of both). By 2004, Navigator appeared to be well on its way to irrelevance. But Firefox, which exists only because of Netscape’s long-ago decision to open-source its code, is in effect the next-generation Navigator. With all due respect to F. Scott Fitzgerald, its success shows that there are indeed second acts in American lives. At least if the American in question happens to be a piece of software.

No, Firefox isn’t perfect–if I get a moment, I’ll write about five challenges it faces–but its huge influence made the world a better place. Even if you use IE or one of its other competitors.

Your thoughts, celebratory or otherwise?

[UPDATE: There's a great conversation spurred by this post going on over at Louis Gray's FriendFeed.]

Windows IT Pro’s Orin Thomas has a piece up with the title In five years will block Internet advertisements by default. He isn’t quite that extreme in the story itself, but he does say that he thinks the popularity of the Firefox add-in Adblock Plus will inevitably lead to most users blocking ads.

Putting aside for the moment the question of what that would do to the Web economy (including, er, ad-subsidized sites like Technologizer), I don’t think Thomas’s scenario will happen in the sweeping form he describes. For one thing, ad blockers have been around for a long time, and if their inevitable domination of the Web is in progress, it’s happening really slowly. For another, every major purveyor of Web browsers except Opera is either a major advertiser or a major seller of ads, or both–even Mozilla makes millions from the Google ads its default home-page search displays. (I’d be very surprised but not utterly disbelieving if Google were to build ad-blocking into Chrome–but if it turns it on by default, I’ll eat my MacBook.)

Of course, as with everything on the Web, it’s ultimately consumers who call the shots–if enough folks use ad-blockers, the Web will have to adjust, one way or another. (I continue, incidentally, to have no problem whatsoever with the fact that a meaningful minority of Technologizer readers block ads–I don’t need everybody to see the ads as long as a critical mass of folks do.)

What say you?

I love it when you write and pass along handy ideas. After I wrote about my favorite Firefox enhancers,  I received hundreds of messages (okay, 50, but who’s counting) sharing other Firefox add-ons, extensions, and tips–and I’m successfully using many of them. Here are some of the most useful of the bunch.

But first some advice.

The day after I wrote about my Firefox favorites, the world almost ended for Firefox fanatics: A major security hole was discovered in Firefox. Great timing, no? Not to fret, if you upgrade to Firefox 3.51, the world will be okay again.

You’ll be happy to know if you’re still using Firefox 3.06 or so, all of the add-ons I mention will work. But if you’re a worrier, and already upgraded to 3.51, you’ll find a few won’t install. My guess is that individual add-on developers are working overtime to satisfy your overwhelming need for updates. If you continue feeling stressed, just up the meds for a week.

Most important is that you experiment with these add-ons and extensions one at a time. I don’t want to hear any whining (you will anyway, I know it) if you enable them all at once, cause new sunspots, and feel faint.

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Clear the decks, I’m now an avid Firefox user. It took me a long time to give up my treasured Maxthon, an Internet Explorer shell that I truly loved. When Maxthon was first released, it had features years before they were added to IE8–tabs, multi-threading, groups, add-ons — things the kids at Microsoft should have copied eons ago, but didn’t.

When I first contemplated switching, my Firefox fanatic friends insisted it could do everything Maxthon did, only better. Firefox has a multitude of free add-ons, cool extras to whittle down your browser feature wish list. The add-ons let me modify Firefox to almost replicate Maxthon. (No matter what anyone says, Maxthon outshines Firefox in managing favorites, and saving sites and favorites in groups is wonderfully effortless.) The added bennie is that Firefox offers better security than Internet Explorer.

If you’re an Internet Explorer user, I encourage you to look at Firefox. It’s free; the transition for most people isn’t a big deal (see Switching is Easy); and you don’t have to give up IE to play around with it. (But I bet you will…)

Here are a few of the cooler Firefox add-ons I’m using. Give them a whirl and let me know what you think.

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4.7 million Firefox 3.5 downloads.

Twitter tweaks follower, following pages.

New iPhone Sykpe Skype: no notifications.

Sony iPod dock costs $1000.

Energizer’s USB clip charges batteries.

iPhone copy and paste: incredible!

The Walkman turns 30 today.

Dell netbook gets GPS navigation.

iPhone notification system isn’t perfect.

Remember the Milk gets notifications.

Writing about Firefox 3.5 got me wondering: What’s the breakdown of browser usage on Technologizer right now? So I looked it up, courtesy of Google Analytics.

Over the last month, 50 percent of visitors have come via Firefox. Twenty-one percent have used IE, sixteen percent Safari, seven percent Chrome, two percent Opera, and four percent something else.

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Was it really fewer than five years ago that Firefox 1.0 debuted? Its arrival ended the dismal period in which only one browser–Microsoft’s mediocre Internet Explorer–seemed to be viable. With Firefox, Mozilla proved that millions of people were itching to adopt a better browser. And today, we find ourselves with multiple better browsers:  Not just Firefox, but also Google’s minimalist Chrome, Apple’s flashy Safari, the ever-inventive Opera, the highly social Flock, and even the no-longer-calcifying Internet Explorer 8.

All of which means that Firefox 3.5–which Mozilla plans to formally release today–is no longer a shoo-in for the distinction of being the favorite browser of browser fans. (As I write, Firefox 3.5 hasn’t replaced 3.0 yet on the Firefox home page, but the Windows and Mac versions are live on Mozilla’s FTP site.)

After having spent months with various pre-release versions of 3.5, though, I’m convinced that The Little Browser That Could remains the best choice for the widest array of folks. That’s as much for the virtues that Firefox has possessed for years as for new stuff: Version 3.5′ s improvements are about better speed, useful tweaks to existing features, catchup with other browsers, and early support for emerging Web standards. In other words, the browser sports no knockout new features. But the moves Mozilla has made are smart, and they’re more than enough for Firefox to keep pace with its fast-evolving rivals.

After thr jump, a look at what’s new in rough order of importance. Continue reading this story…

Are you using Firefox 3.5?

Firefox 3.5 is almost done.

AT&T and Apple’s closed Web.

How not to use Twitter.

3.0? On most iPhones, no.

Your ringtone is a performance.

Two Engadgeteers review Nokia’s N97.

Fake Steve Jobs has returned.

FCC to target blogger freebies?

Google works on machine vision.