World Slovenia Day

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At the Paris Developer Day last month, I mentioned to Tristan that Slovenia would soon be the first country in the world where Firefox has the majority market share. The latest XitiMonitor results put Firefox at 47.9%, and I assert that this has already happened – there’s surely must be more than 4.2% using something other than Firefox or IE (Mozilla, Netscape, Opera, SeaMonkey, Safari, Camino, mobile browsers…)

My suggestion at the time was that we declare this day “World Slovenia Day”. We could encourage people to read about Slovenia, learn how to say “Hello” and “We love Firefox” in Slovene, and hail them as the leaders of the Firefox revolution. People would display the Slovenian flag on their blogs and in their windows. We could have “Hug a Slovenian”, where people would either travel to Slovenia or scour the streets of their local big city looking for Slovenians and giving them a hug.

Of course, it’s probably a bit late to organise now :-)

26 thoughts on “World Slovenia Day”

  1. Worldwide Slovenia Day is coming

    Looks like some Mozilla developers, like Gervase Markham, have noticed that Slovenia may soon become the first country in the world where Firefox will pass the 50% point when it comes to internet browser market share. When this happens Firefox will def…

  3. “Hug a Slovenian” might go a little too far, but for the other thoughts…
    “World Slovenia Day” could be the day that Xiti for the first time tells the world that over 50 percent of the people in Slovenia uses Firefox. We would celebrate “World Slovenia Day” as long as Firefox has at least half of the number of users in that country.

    But now over to the why:
    why do so many people out there use Firefox. Of course, because it is the best browser, but the same goes for every other country in the world. Is it that Slovenian people only want the best they can get ? Is it the improved security of the browser ? Is it that the country only uses Linux (or another open source OS) for which no IE exists ? Or do they like the way they can customize the browser to their needs ?

  4. Finally some fame for my country :-)

    In reality, most people don’t know what or where is Slovenia and frequently mistake it for Slovakia. It’s getting better though, some people actually know us because we joined EU and joined the monetary union…

    I use firefox, in my school the IT teacher encourages students to use firefox, some large companies have switched to Firefox and OpenOffice2… I started using it because I was annoyed with IE’s million of pop-ups. I also use it because it more safe than IE…

    People rarely use linux, mainly for webservers.

    I personally think its the combination of Firefox’s advantages that attract people here.

  7. Unfortunately my Slovenian phrase book doesn’t seem to contain “what web browser do you use?” but it has such useful phrases as “Zakaj se smejite? Je moja sloven�čina tako slaba?” which I clearly should have tried out…

  8. Well, I remotely know only two Slovenians (colleagues of my wife) and they are both consultants whose main client is… Microsoft.

    Not sure the hug would be highly appreciated :)

  9. @Alan

    The sentence “what web browser do you use?” translates to Slovene as

    Kateri spletni brskalnik uporabljate?

  10. Hi!
    I am Slovenian :)

    what web browser do you use => Kateri spletni brskalnik uporabljate?

  12. I use Firefox since the big pomp in that newspaper in USA i think.
    I started to use it full when I found out tabs :D:D:D:D. Since that day I’m browsing faster and more secure. Oh and pop-up are gone :D that’s so ql.

    When i set new internet connection to friends neigbours they also get the ” new IE” to us know as Firefox :) And they all like it. After couple of weeks i ussualy get a phone call. That’s not “New IE!” but I’ll use it coz it’s better :)

    :)

    I like and i don’t change it for anything else. :)

  13. The only threat is about Finland making a rush and getting there first: we should ask all Slovenians living in Finland to make a sacrifice for the homeland and switch back to Explorer, in order to increase the gap ;-)

  14. In Slovenian there is FireFox installed on all computers in companies, since it’s well known that it’s more secured then IE. But still FF2 “eats” up to more than 1GB of system memory, which is bad and now Opera and Safari on win is installed on many computers.
    FireFox will have to work on these memory issues if it wants too keep good user share.

  15. Hello translated as �ivijo
    “We love Firefox” as Mi ljubimo Firefox, or better Navdu�eni smo nad Firefox-om
    “Hug a Slovenian” as Objemi Slovenca.

    Some years ago all around me jokes: Firefox, aaa hehehe
    But now it changes. If you don’t know what is Firefox you don’t know what is Internet. Only nOObs using IE (about 30 %). On most computer comunity pages you can see Firefox banners, buttons etc.

  17. All of my friends are using Firefox … It’s needed to obtain friendship :) lol … No, realy … any time we talk about the PC’s or browsers, we come to the same conclusion – use FireFox and get rid of the problem – so you can live happly ever after.

  18. The sad thing is that most of internet use statistics made in our country still uses data from IE only. You can imagine how skewed it gets.

  19. When everything that works in IE will work in FireFox, when you won’t need to download millions of plug-ins so that things will start working, then people will start using FireFox more than IE. You have to look at it from the perspective of a n00b…

  20. Firefox is popular here yes..
    why? well it’s a lot of reasons out there most of them are customization themes,plugins,security…
    and for me as developer guy the main reason is Webdeveloper and Firebug and HTML validator plugins
    i agree with a guy who sad that there are memory issues to improve …so i’ll wait
    and hope to see that in a near future

  23. I’m slovene and i absolutely love firefox. Fuck IE, Opera and Safari. We use this browser everywhere: work, school, home. And the new version (minefield) is great. Keep on the good work…

  24. Well it was evolution here. I remember days on college years ago. My roommate and I shared same computer. I was using Linux few years in that time Firefox was in very early stages of development. There ware quite a lot of IE only web pages etc. The thing was my roommate wasn’t very pleased with browser change. He was a Microsoft fan ..He said something like: “things that are free can’t be so good as those for which you pay for”. Cause computer was mine he didn’t have any other option but to use Fox….So then after a few years on Linux and Firefox he stopped complaining. When I gave him one of my old computers I remember requesting Firefox. Funny right ? I remember installing Firefox on many Windows computers then and most people ware very pleased with it. If you install fox on your gf computer you say “look it has themes” if you install FF on your friends computer you tell him story about safety. The only problem was banking. NLB bank here was IE only if you wanted to pay your bills. Ok now years pass I still use Firefox..the only problem lately is that it’s becoming very memory greedy. I’ll still use it. If you want to do “hug a Slovenian day” you can hug me… I think selling T-shirts in our capital would be more appropriate. Did I forgot to tell you that I’m a Slovenian ??? But you will definitely not hug my girlfriend :))

  25. FFx rules

    I’m from Slovenia. I started using firefox after a friend sugested it. At the time the usaage was still in the teens.

    Today whenever I come across a PC which doesn’t have FFx (as rare as it is) I feel as if I had just switched from a plazma tv to an old black and white. I just can’t do things quickly anymore without the popup blocking and the tabbed browsing. At school there are very few people who still use IE. There aren’t all that many real NooBs anymore. Even Tody’s noobs know how to download the better browser.

    lp