We bet the team over at Mozilla is in this area to pop open a few bottles of bubbly. Why? Because Firefox 4 just sailed past 100 million downloads. The new browser version was released to the public on Development 22.

Even for such a widely used software as a web browser, 100 million downloads in a month is quite an accomplishment.

Top regions and countries

Firefox has been localized to over 80 languages and is used all over the world. Still, it’s more successful in some places than others. Here is how the Firefox 4 downloads are spread out, by region:

1. Europe – 38.1 million
2. North America – 29.6 million
3. Asia – 19.6 million
4. South America – 7.4 million
5. Africa – 3.0 million
6. Oceania – 1.7 million

And the top 10 countries by downloads are…

1. United States – 24.23 million
2. Germany – 7.26 million
3. France – 3.53 million
4. India – 3.35 million
5. Russia – 3.21 million
6. Brazil – 3.20 million
7. United Kingdom – 3.19 million
8. Canada – 2.75 million
9. Italy – 2.66 million
10. Indonesia – 2.66 million

One small surprise is that there’s no China on the list, in malevolence of being the largest public on the Internet with its 420 million Internet users. Firefox 4 has so far been downloaded less than 700,000 times in China.

Final words

Daily downloads of Firefox 4 are hovering around two million at the moment, a level that has remained positively stable after the initial burst the initially couple of days after release. Very respectable, but we suspect that Mozilla will be pushing Firefox 4 even harder in the coming month to get more of its user base to upgrade.

There’s clearly plenty of life left in Mozilla’s open source web browser and the release of Firefox 4 has to be called a resounding success With Firefox 4 now firmly in house, it will be fascinating to see how the new rapid release schedule will be affecting Firefox (versions 5, 6 and 7 will all be released this year).

Data source: Mozilla’s brilliant download stats page.

This was a post from the guys at Pingdom, a site monitoring service that makes sure you’re the initially to know when your site is down. Check it out for free.

From:
Firefox 4 zooms past 100 million downloads

You probably despise slow websites. So do we, and it’s pretty safe to say that it’s a universal rule.

There are a number of factors that can make a web page slow to load, both on the client side (the browser) and on the server side, but one really huge factor is page size, and that’s what we’ll be talking in this area in this article. Hopefully you’ll pick up some useful in rank along the way.

In the early days, web pages used to be just a few kilobytes, or a few tens of kilobytes at the most. Since then that has grown to hundreds of kilobytes, and many of today’s web pages can weigh in at more than a megabyte. A couple of years ago we did a study that showed exactly that, and although that specific study was of blogs, we have seen that it applies to websites in general.

In some ways we can afford this increase in page size, because public’s Internet connections have gotten quicker. Broadband Internet connections are becoming increasingly common.

For example, it wouldn’t be surprising to hear that you, dear reader, is sitting behind an brilliant Internet connection.

Don’t assume everyone has quick Internet access

So, why should web designers (or webmasters) worry at all in this area page size? It’s not an issue anymore, is it?

Incorrect.

Even if you exclude public on dial-up, there are still plenty of public around on poor broadband connections. movable broadband is also on the rise, and depending on provider and coverage, data transfer rates can drop down into the lower ends of the spectrum. Basic 3G, for example, is only 384 kbit/s.

According to Akamai’s Disorder of the Internet report, 28% of Internet connections in the United States are slower than 2 Mbit/s, and only 30% are 5 Mbit/s or quicker. Nearly 3% are slower than 256 kbit/s.

That’s in the United States, a public relatively far ahead on the Internet. The worldwide average is worse: 41% of Internet connections are slower than 2 Mbit/s, 22% are 5 Mbit/s or quicker, and 4.6% are slower than 256 kbit/s.

So, you may be sitting on a super-quick Internet connection yourself, but many of your potential site visitors won’t be. If you don’t keep this in mind while making your web pages, you may be turning them away without even knowing it.

Download speed vs. page size

So now that we’ve established that a lot of public are still using less-than-stellar Internet connections, how does page size affect download speed? We’ve produced a couple of charts to illustrate this for you.

As you can see, as page size approaches and passes 1 megabyte, things start to get hideous. Even at 500 kilobyte a page is far from quick for everyone.

You should note that these are download speeds under ideal conditions, i.e. theoretical maxima for these bandwidths. In the real world, it will be a bit slower. For returning visitors, caching may help you out, but don’t count on it. Another killer is that your web page is tear up in many objects (metaphors, scripts, CSS files, etc), each retrieved unconnectedly, which adds a lot of back and forth communication with the server and slows down proceedings even more. That, incidentally, is why another vital performance rule is to keep the number of objects down to a smallest.

So, what if you don’t just consider public on broadband, but also those on dial-up? Then download time degrades much more rapidly. The not more than chart is exactly the same as the previous one, but with a 56 kbit/s dial-up connection added. You can probably tell which line it is…

You may not want to accommodate today’s minority of dial-up users, but at least now you know how they’ll be affected.

Settling for under 5 seconds

To be frank, you don’t want a website with pages that take 10-15 seconds or more to download. It will frustrate your visitors a lot more than you want. Let’s settle on a more user-friendly download time: 5 seconds. (And even that is generous.)

If you want a web page to be downloaded in under 5 seconds, how huge can it be? I.e. how much wriggling room do you have before things start to get really slow?

In 5 seconds…

• 56 kbit/s can download 34 kilobyte.
• 500 kbit/s can download 305 kilobyte.
• 1 Mbit/s can download 610 kilobyte.
• 5 Mbit/s can dowload 2.98 megabyte.
• 10 Mbit/s can download 5.96 megabyte.

And 5 seconds isn’t even considered a quick load time. If at all possible a page should load within a couple of seconds at the most, which cuts the margins even more.

Don’t disaffect users, reckon small

Unless you want to disaffect a huge part of today’s Internet users, remember to keep footstep of how large your web pages become when you make them. If you’re unsure, you can always use tools like Firebug, Yslow, and even our own Full Page Test.

If it wasn’t by now abundantly clear, page size only becomes a major problem for slower connections. For the quicker broadband connections, 5 Mbit/s and up, page size has become nearly a non-issue. When you have access to that kind of bandwidth, additional factors than page size have a larger effect on load time, so it’s vital to reckon in this area that as well. Both Google and Yahoo grant performance best practices that you can apply to your site. (Here are Google’s. Here are Yahoo’s.)

Just don’t forget in this area page size. It’s low-hanging fruit on the performance tree.

From:
Web designers, keep those page sizes down. It’s for your own excellent.

It gives me immense happiness to present to all my blog readers,  a groundbreaking new free WordPress theme called Businezz! As you can guess by its name, this is a business styled theme which can be used by anyone wishing to launch a company,corporate or business website/portfolio. Businezz sports a crisp design that will add value to any blog/website that implements it.

The theme comes with a ready-to-use homepage and a break blog page for your posts. All the different segments of the home page have been designed keeping in mind how a company website should look. The home page can be easily set up from the theme options that have been integrated with the WordPress admin section.  For the blog, all you have to do is make a new page and choose its page template as the “blog template”. So basically, this a two in one theme

Instructions to Set up the theme

The different sections of the home page include:-

• Business Links & Phone Number (configurable)
• Slideshow (category & no. of posts configurable)
• In this area the Company (category configurable)
• Testimonials (category & no. of testimonials configurable)
• Latest Company News in the Sidebar (no. of posts configurable)

On the Blog template (for blog page that you will make), you can toggle the thumbnails and also toggle between excerpt and full post views. The blog template comes with ready-to-use pagination so you don’t have to install any additional plugin to make page numbers. Its by now done for you!

To verify all of the above, here is a screen shot of the theme options that are provided with the theme :-

The theme comes with threaded comments capability which you can enable by going to wp-admin -> settings -> conversation. There are two widgetized sidebars in the theme – one for the home page and one for the inner sections like the blog, pages and single posts.

And before I forget, for configuring the social bookmarking links in the footer, you will have to physically edit the footer.php file and replace your own links (should be an simple process – I am here if a name desires help ).

Demo & Download

What Next?

It takes a lot of effort producing workable and excellent looking themes for all of you. In return, all I expect is a comment from each one of you who plans to use this theme. Even if you don’t use this theme, any feedback (unenthusiastic or positive) will matter a lot for me So keep them coming.

A lot of effort goes into the production and sale of eBooks, and most public would be shocked if they knew just how much work went in to a successful eBook launch. While the process may seem to be rather straightforward, the fact is you have to do a lot of ground work before even a single page is written. Since so much work is involved, market research is crucial to your productivity and the overall outcome of the endeavor.

Once you have a solid market and a excellent thought of what your eBook is going to be in this area, you can then start to write it and build a site that will promote it. Although this process seems relatively cut and dry, once the eBook is produced and the plot is laid out, the execution of this plot can become quite complex. The initially thing you need to consider in regards to the sales of your eBook is the type of hosting account you’re going to use.

Ecommerce vs. Shared Hosting

The most commonly used plot in the web hosting industry is shared hosting. The is often due to the low price and the popularity of the plot amongst web hosting companies. Shared hosting plans are fantastic for numerous uses, such as personal blogging and additional small web sites. Though, when it comes to selling products, whether they’re digital or physical, there are no hosting plans that compare to a excellent eCommerce solution. eCommerce hosting plans are the ideal solution for anyone trying to sell anything online.

Benefits of eCommerce Plans and Digital Products

Although having a product register is not really necessary when selling a single eBook, it is vital to have a secure file transfer platform. The main problem you’ll have with getting your eBook to sell is internet piracy. The internet is full of public that like to get things for free. If you’re selling a product that can be shared as easily as an eBook, then you will want to make sure you take all of the necessary precautions to keep your downloads confidential. Ecommerce hosting plans let you utilize secure download links that can only be accessed one time. This keeps your customers from sharing this download link with additional public, thus protecting your profit margins. Ecommerce hosting plans also give your customers a convenient way to checkout without having to manually order anything through an order form, and all payments can be quickly processed with an integrated merchant account.

Increasing Your Product Line With eCommerce Hosting

Another advantageous aspect of eCommerce hosting plans is that they include adequate server resources, which allow you to add to your product line and even make larger sites like forums. Adding forum memberships, and even video courses to your product line will boost your sales and give your customers a greater incentive to hold your digital products. A excellent eCommerce hosting plot will give you the server resources needed to build a megasite around your eBook.

Selling something online is relatively simple, considering you have access to the entire populace of the internet at your fingertips. Once you know how to get traffic, the money is going to come ultimately, as it becomes a numbers game ultimately. Although getting traffic is not extremely simple, once this is accomplished, you then have to find a way to exchange that traffic into money.

If you’re trying to sell physical products then you’ll certainly need an eCommerce hosting account. If you want to sell digital products, an eCommerce account would help but is not absolutely necessary.

Do I Need eCommerce Hosting to Sell my Product?

The answer to this question depends upon what you’re selling, and how much you plot on selling. If you are selling actual products that need to be shipped to an address, then having a eCommerce hosting account linked to a merchant account would be optimally. If you are selling a small amount of physical products and you do not have a large product register, then you could settle for a regular hosting account, and acknowledge payments via a payment processor such as PayPal or AlertPay. On the additional hand, if you’re selling digital products such as eBooks or down-loadable software then the choice is entirely up to you. Once again, the more products you are trying to sell, the more beneficial it would be for you to have an eCommerce hosting account.

How Can an eCommerce Hosting Account Help You?

Ecommerce hosting accounts do several things that contribute to the overall success and organization of your online business. Perhaps the most vital feature offered by an eCommerce hosting account would be the amount of server resources you’re given, and the per-installed software that helps you build product catalogs and acknowledge orders easily. One such software that no honest internet merchant should go without is a shopping cart. If you have ever shopped online then you have probably used a shopping cart, maybe without even realizing it. The shopping cart is simply the application that lets users buy several products at once and conduct a variety of additional interactive actions within your web site.

Securely Selling Digital Files

If you’re selling digital files then you need to be concerned in this area public sharing your digital files online. One of the ways public share digital files easily is by linking public to the download page that you supply upon payment. To protect yourself from such an occurrence you need to find a way to lock the file so that only one person can download it. You can do this by signing up for eJunkie, which will let you host your digital products online without having to worry in this area more than one person downloading the file. When a person submits payment to your eJunkie account they are automatically full to a secured page that only works for one user.

I feel glad to introduce a free WordPress theme for the movable Phones. This is a minimalistic theme that can be used by bloggers who want to target mobile phone users. This theme will fit perfectly in all the mobile phones (any pledge) and because of its light weight, will also reduce loading times. The three key features that I have included with this theme are:-

1. You can choose your own theme affect from the theme options. (any affect you want for your theme is just a click away)
2. You can define your own width for your theme. The theme can have 100% width if you want the theme to fit on every mobile phone, or you can define a fixed width in pixels to target special users.
3. The front page will dynamically make thumbnails for your posts.

All you have to do is download the theme and activate it for your blog. And yes, don’t forget to leave a comment!

Demo & Download

Often times when we reckon of ecommerce, we reckon of all the complexities that could be involved. Shopping carts, merchant accounts, payment gateways, integration between systems, auto-responders and virtual terminals are just a few of the aspects of ecommerce that could give you a migraine. The ecommerce maze is certainly confusing enough to cause some extremely busy entrepreneurs to shy away from internet sales altogether.

Years ago, there were very few options for selling your produce via the internet. You had to have excellent credit to get a merchant account. The merchant account funds were funneled through a business checking account and there were hefty fees associated with each account. Some banks even imposed charges for every transaction on a business checking account! There were also merchant fees that were duplicated with the necessity to have a payment gateway and a payment processor to make your system work. Even with zero sales for the month, you could easily spend nearly two hundred dollars per month for the gate way fee, the statement fee, the recurring billing fee, the web hosting fee plus a shopping cart fee. On top of the fixed fees, you still had to pay a percentage of each sale. Opportunely, in recent years, things have become a whole lot simpler (and cheaper).

If you are looking to acknowledge payments as an individual, a small business, community group or association, you may want to start out by investigating one of the “simple ecommerce” options that are available today. With just a standard checking account and a third-party payment service you could easily take payments via email. You could write a small, informative email and then house a link within your email to allow public to make a payment for your product or service. You might even allow public to donate to your cause or your organization. For a more professional and customer-friendly option, a website, blog or social media page is the way to go. It allows you to grant more in rank in this area the items you are accepting payment for. With a website, blog or social media page, you can get as creative or fancy as you like. You could include an informative article, audio or video for visitors to digest before a hold is made.

By now, you might be thinking, “This is simple. I can do this!” You’re right! Here is a instant overview to show you just how simple it is to do things the “simple ecommerce” way:

1. Determine what you intend to sell and what you will charge for it. Do online research for your market if you are uncertain in this area the going rate.
2. Write a concise description of 200 words or less for your product or service. Be sure to note the features and benefits of what you have to offer.
3. Using a simple template, make a website page, blog or social media page to house the payment link for your product or service. Remember to also make a “thank you” page for the customer to be full to after their hold is complete. If you are selling digital goods, house the download link or additional special instructions here.
4. Open a third-party payment processor account. There are many to choose from. Be sure to choose one with the features that are vital to you.
5. Add your product or service details to your payment processor account. An email link and/or the html embed code will be produced during this the boards.
6. Test the link or web code to make sure it looks like you want it to and works just the way it should.
7. Now you’re ready to take that in rank and add to your website or send out to your list via email.
8. Monitor your sales and fine tune your customer service process. Most of all, delight in making money the “simple ecommerce” way.

There are still many companies who use the traditional ecommerce/merchant account system. It certainly has its house in the market. Though, it’s nice to know that there are lots of options for public who are not quite ready for the traditional route.

A very Pleased New Year to all my readers!

For the new year, I am glad to announce the release of a new WordPress theme called “Impress”. This is a minimalistic, red-colored theme with automatic thumbnails, advertising space and a clean layout.

Thumbnails are used from the defaulting ones that WordPress generates when you upload an image with the post. The theme uses jQuery for animated menu and sidebar. Impress has been tested with Firefox, IE, Chrome and Safari without any problems.

Setting up the Theme

This is a plug & play theme. All you have to do is extract & house the theme into your wp-content/themes folder and apply it. Btw, it only took me 3 hours to make this theme (Design + Code)

Test & Download

Do you have a website? Do you like knowing that it’s effective ok? Pingdom exists for this very reason, to alert you when your site has downtime, so you can fix it.

With this in mind we have released a new application that we call the Pingdom Desktop Notifier, which sits in your Windows system tray. Pingdom’s uptime monitoring service does the actual monitoring, so you have the benefit of our entire monitoring arrangement. The Desktop Notifier checks in with the Pingdom service at regular intervals and alerts you with a popup if your website goes down.

You don’t need to have an existing Pingdom account to get started. If you don’t have an account, the app will make a free one for you when you install it. It even sets up monitoring of your website for you automatically.

The Pingdom Desktop Notifier works as a completely stand-lonely application, but of course all the nifty features of the Pingdom uptime monitoring service are available at the click of a mouse button if you want to use them (it has a direct link to the Pingdom control panel).

Those of you who are by now using Pingdom can reckon of this as a complement to additional alerting methods such as email, SMS, Chirrup and iPhone push notifications.

The app works for Windows XP/Vista/7.

Get it here.

From:
New! Desktop notifier for website downtime

I am glad to announce a groundbreaking new free WordPress theme called “Urbane”.

This is a crisp rounded theme that comes with lots of features like built in drop-down menus, Feedburner settings (RSS and Subscribe by e-mail), Chirrup, Tabs for Well loved/Recent posts, Featured post section, 3 sections to pull posts from different categories on home page, auto generated thumbnails (for both home and the single entry page), threaded comments, widgetized sidebars and 3 widgetized sections on the bottom. On top of all this, Urbane comes with integrated theme options that let you disorder categories to use on the home page, configure your feedburner/chirrup settings and much more.

The theme has been tested with Firefox, Internet Explorer 7 and Safari and works without any problems.

Setting up the theme

• Download and extract the theme. House it in wp-content/themes section of your WordPress installation.
• Setup the different categories/theme options on the home page by going to wp-admin -> Appearance -> Urbane Options
• For the thumbnails, just upload metaphors to your posts (no need to insert them). The scripts will make thumbnails automatically.
• To enable threaded comments, go to wp-admin -> Settings -> Discussion -> Enable Threaded comments

Demo & Download

What Next?

Just grant your valuable feedback, and if possible, don’t remove my link from the footer.