Mozilla in Asia

Jon Russell at the Asian Correspondent points us to a Bangkok Post article, Internet use increases but Thai sites lagging behind, covering statistics on Internet usage in Thailand taken from Truehits.net (a Thailand-based firm tracking many key statistics.)

For web browsers, Microsoft’s Internet Explorer controlled a 65.6% share last year, a decline of 13 percentage points from 2009. Mozilla’s Firefox increased its share from 2.7% to 15.9%, while Google Chrome rose from 8.4% to 11.8%.

Truehits also provided a list of the top 10 Thai websites which are: sanook.com, kapook.com, mthai.com, dek-d.com, exteen.com, teenee.com, manager.co.th, truelife.com, gmember.com, and playpark.com.

Here are my notes on my “introduction to WebGL” talk from BarCamp Bangkok 4.

NOTE: I said that Firefox 4 beta 6 shipped with WebGL on by default. That’s not true. One needs to go into about:config, search for ‘webgl’ and switch “webgl.enabled_for_all_sites” to ‘true’. Hopefully beta 7 will ship with WebGL on by default.

UPDATE: excellent overview video by Mozilla engineer Vlad Vukićević:
WebGL: Bringing 3D to the Web – 2010 GPU Technology Conference

Introduction to WebGL: 3D on the web
BarCamp Bangkok 4 (2010), Sripatum University

Presenter

• Gen Kanai
• “The Cost of Monoculture” (Microsoft monopoly in Korea)

What is WebGL?

• Web platform API for accelerated 3D rendering
• OpenGL ES in JavaScript
• available in Firefox 4 beta, Chromium, Webkit nightly

History of WebGL

• early prototype by Vladimir Vukićević (Mozilla) in 2006
• March 2009 – Khronos Working Group: Mozilla, Google, Apple, Opera
• December 2009 – WebGL draft

Architecture

• Web browser: WebGL
• OS drivers: OpenGL, OpenGL ES, Direct3D
• Graphics Hardware

Mobile?

• Firefox on Android, Maemo/Meego
• Webkit? (Android?)

Applications of WebGL

• gaming
• visualization
• marketing
• other?

WebGL developer libraries

• WebGLU
• GLGE
• C3DL
• Copperlicht
• SpiderGL
• SceneJS
• Processing.js
• XB PointStream
• others?

Demos

• WebGL-Particles-Demo
• WebGL Walker
• ChemDoodle
• Shader Toy v0.2
• SpiderGL – Streaming LoD Terrain
• SpiderGL – HDR Texture
• many others

Thank you

• Vladimir Vukićević (Mozilla)
• WebGL community

References

• http://www.khronos.org/webgl/
• http://planet-webgl.org/
• http://learningwebgl.com/blog/
• https://developer.mozilla.org/en/WebGL

In preparation for attending and participating in BarCamp Bangkok 4 later this month, I wanted to get a quick update as to the status of Firefox in Thailand.

As of September 2010, Truehits.net, a Thai-based statistics firm has this data for browser market share in Thailand.

I don’t know enough about Truehits.net’s methodologies, their sample size, etc. but if we take them at face value, the breakdown is as such:

• 75.16% on Internet Explorer (either 6, 7 or 8 )
• 15.25% on Firefox (from Mozilla’s internal data, 83% on Firefox 3.6, 13% on Firefox 3.5, yes I know that does not add up to 100%)
• 6% on Chrome
• 1.6% on Safari.

Looking at the trends from Truehits.net, Firefox hit 15% share in December of 2009 and then dropped 4% points in 1 month and has slowly gained all of that back in 2010. It’s not clear what could have caused such a drastic drop in share in 1 month other than a change in how the data was taken.

Google Chrome has been growing steadily since launch.  In August of 2010, Google did a Chrome marketing event promoting the Thai version of Chrome, (Google Chrome set to make mark in Thailand, Google Chrome for Thai users) and that may also contribute to Chrome’s growth.

William, Dietrich and I will all be at BarCamp Bangkok 4 and are looking forward to hearing from Firefox users in Thailand as well as those who used to use Firefox and may not use it anymore. Whatever browser you use, we hope to see you there too!

This is a re-post from the Mozilla Blog:

It has come to our attention that there are reports on the popular Thai forum Blognone, มีบริษัทไหน โดนคนจาก Mozilla โทรข้ามประเทศมาเช็คยอดคนใช้ Firefox บ้างไหมครับ, and from Mr. Paiboon’s blog เมื่อมีฝรั่งแปลกหน้าโทรเข้า ออฟฟิศของผม !!, of someone called ‘Edison’ calling Internet businesses in Thailand and using the Mozilla Foundation name. These callers are asking about how many computers in the company are using Mozilla Firefox and are connected to the Internet. Mozilla has no representatives named Edison and no representatives in Thailand doing any telephone-based market surveys. If you receive a phone call from a ‘representative of the Mozilla Foundation’ they are not a representative of Mozilla Corporation or the Mozilla Foundation.

Mozilla has done web-based surveys from the Mozilla website and other websites and does market research via email, but not via phone in Thailand. If you receive a phone call in Thailand from someone saying that they are from Mozilla, please do not provide any information and take their name and number and send it to press at mozilla dot com for confirmation.

Thank you very much for your support of Mozilla and Firefox in Thailand.

Poramate at Kapook has organized a Firefox 5th anniversary party in Bangkok, Thailand on Nov. 26th at GreenSpace by Greyhound, Central World. If you’re in Bangkok, this is the place to be on the 26th!

Firefox 5th Anniversary @ #CODEFAIL Party Bangkok Thailand

Cheng, who runs the excellent Thai blog Mhafai.com, and is one of Mozilla’s most active community members in Thailand, writes in with an update from Truehits.net, a Thai web statistics service that tracks among other things browser share.

In April 2009, we saw that Firefox was climbing steadily at about 9% market share.

The new update from Truehits.net tells us that we are now above 13% market share, having grown from 7.4% a year ago.

The bad news is that IE 6.0 still has over 40% share in Thailand and IE 7.0 has over 30% share.  Both older versions of IE have been declining as Firefox and IE 8 have been growing, but not nearly as fast as we would hope.

The growth we are seeing in Thailand is largely due to the heroic efforts of our localization leader, Patipat ‘Keng’ Susumpow, and the community of testers and Mozilla developers, some who have been filing bugs for Thai-related issues since 2002.

We’ll be doing more in Thailand in 2009 and 2010 and would love to hear from Thai users as to what the important bugs are to fix and what Mozilla should consider doing to help Firefox grow in Thailand.  Thanks to Keng, Cheng, Art, and all of the Thai Mozilla community members without which we would not have this growing user base.

Via Sugree (and many others on Twitter) it has come to our attention that the Prime Minister of Thailand, Abhisit Vejjajiva, uses Firefox.  It’s also pretty cool that the Thai government is using Flickr too.

How is Firefox doing in Thailand?

Considering that Firefox was not localized into the Thai language until Firefox 3.0.2 in September of 2008, about half a year ago, the trends are looking good.

Firefox is solidly at 9% market share and poised to cross 10% soon if the trends hold.

IE 6 and IE7 combined still hold 86% market share in Thailand, but considering that there has been a Thai-language Firefox for less than 6 months, we should see more growth in Firefox users in Thailand throughout 2009.

This is data from truehits.net, which is a Thai net statistics company that is aggregating data from Thai websites. I don’t know the details of truehits.net’s methodologies (they claim 1.1 million unique IPs, 3 million visitors and 92% of their traffic from in Thailand) or which sites they are aggregating data from, but I’m more inclined to trust a business that is in Thailand, focused on Thai users, than NetRatings or other non-Thai services that probably do not understand the market in Thailand at all.

Thai Firefox localizer and community organizer Keng is leading an effort to get a Mozilla Thailand community site up in April.  If you would like to contribute or help, please contact Keng.

I’m really looking forward to attending and presenting at BarCamp Bangkok 2, the second BarCamp held in Thailand in 2008, and scheduled to have over 500 people attending!  I’ll be speaking about Firefox 3.1, TraceMonkey, Fennec, and our Mozilla Labs projects.  Hope to see you at BarCamp Bangkok 2!

Intel® C++ Software Development Tool Suite 1.0 for Linux* OS Supporting Mobile Internet Devices
Free IDE for mobile linux development.

OECD Broadband Portal – Press release
Data on broadband growth.

Firebug 1.2 beta for Firefox 3 RC 1
Works with Firefox 3 RC 1! Might have a few bugs but please check it out.

Q&A with Isaac Mao on tech blogging in China: Censorship, and opportunity
Isaac was very helpful when we visited Shanghai in 2007 before we opened the Mozilla Beijing office.

Cisco Systems Denies Online Censorship Role in China
Cisco internal documents show otherwise.

Cisco Leak: ‘Great Firewall’ of China Was a Chance to Sell More Routers
Not surprised; very disappointed.

Cisco saw opportunity in “Golden Shield” to help fight criminals…and dissidents
Must-read from Rebecca MacKinnon on Cisco-firewall-gate.

cisco_presentation.pdf
Read and be depressed with me.

China’s All-Seeing Eye
Naomi Klein for Rolling Stone Magazine.

Open-Source File Format Is to Be a Part of Microsoft Office
Embrace & extend.

Report: JUI (Javascript User Interface) 2008 conference in Tokyo
Akky and Serkan have made Asiajin a must-read in 2008.

Firefox 3 Usability Survey
Isriya Paireepairit of the Mozilla community in Thailand would like your help with a survey he is working on for his university studies.

Metagold: A Research Blog about Nico Nico Douga
Fascinating English-language look into the hot video web service of Japan.

Economist.com Correspondent’s Diary – Tokyo food
Excellent Tokyo food blog.

Linux Foundation Opens Korean Office
The LiMoKr must be targeting enterprises or just the server market because the Linux desktop is dead in the water in Korea without support for SEED and Korea’s unique Windows/ActiveX-based encryption method.

ADDED:

.jp Registry report 2007
Lower fees, more coordination within Asian registrars, expansion of JP DNS servers, DNSSEC.  Personally, I am still on the fence with regards to i18nized domains.