As Microsoft keeps delaying the release of Vista and along with it, the release of Internet Explorer 7, Firefox, the only other worthy competitor in the browser market, has been steadily marching ahead. There were some doubts as to whether the popularity of Firefox had reduced, but this Macworld story, says that it has not.Statistics at OneStat.com have proved that the number of Firefox users has increased in the month of June. A rise from 11.79% in May to 12.73% in June, is a considerable jump. All this at the same time that IE use has declined by 2.12% to 83.05%.

Niels Brinkman, co-founder fo OneStat.com, says “We thought that Firefox growth had slowed down. It seems it’s increasing again. That’s a little bit of a surprise to us.” OneStat.com uses real-time Web analytics to look at which broswers are being used to view Web sites and to determine their popularity across the Internet, Mr.Brinkman added.
All eyes have been on the Mozilla Foundation the last week, expecting them to release the browsers next version. Firefox 2.0 Beta 1, has been released and has some new features. The early reports are that the new build, although in Beta is pretty stable. There are some screenshots here of the beta and it does look promising. The challenge for Firefox will come in adding more features to the default browser, while still keeping the developer community interested in writing more extensions.

With its growing popularity, everyone seems to like Firefox more than IE 6, Firefox does face a huge responsibility of keeping its audience attracted. With its next version out, more features, more security and an active user community attached to it(some like me are also emotionally attached to it!), it seems like good times are here for Firefox. At least for now.