Download Stats move to mozilla.com

Mike Morgan

6 responses

During the Firefox 3.5 launch, Daniel Einspanjer and Dave Dash put together a neat little stats counter at downloadstats.mozilla.com. We decided to do a sprint to try integrating this with mozilla.com to give it a proper home.

Historically, we’ve had different ways to track new releases and their downloads:

  • 2004-2007 (Firefox 1.0, 1.5, 2.0) – Bouncer database statistics tracked redirects on the download redirector in a MySQL database.
  • 2008 (Firefox 3.0) – Jeremy Orem’s download stats page pulled stats from Daniel Einspanjer’s metrics feed.
  • 2009 (Firefox 3.5) – Daniel and Dave created the 3.5 download stats page, which closely resembles what we have now.

Blast from the past – Jeremy Orem’s Firefox 3.0 stats page:

oremj's old download stats

As a part of our renewed efforts to innovate more rapidly on mozilla.com, our first sprint brings download information to mozilla.com. From release to release we hope this page changes in exciting new ways. In the meantime, it’ll have a nicer place to live.

The idea was pretty simple:

  • Creating real-time JSON feeds was Daniel’s work with SQLStream to manage and constantly query incoming download activity. It was no small task, but the feed seems to work fairly well.
  • Using JavaScript to integrate feeds into existing pages was Dave Dash’s work. He had to do it in both YUI and jQuery since mozilla.com uses YUI but the stats code uses jQuery. Yes, fun, we know.
  • Creating widgets and a landing page was possible because of Silver Orange. Steven Garrity and Stephen DesRoches styled the stats landing page and worked with John Slater from Mozilla to figure out points of entry on other mozilla.com pages.

The end result is a nicely sized update to mozilla.com that we were able to finish in two weeks. Publishing our totals gives new users a feel of activity and freshness, and funnels them to a statistics page that we can always expand later.

We’re also excited that this page uses some neat tools we’ve grown to love:

Here’s a widget on Firefox product pages:

screenshot of stats total on a Firefox page

Here’s a widget on the personalize Firefox page:

screenshot of stats total on the personalize Firefox page

Here’s the main sections from the main stats page:

screenshot of stats total on the personalize Firefox page
screenshot of stats total on the personalize Firefox page

We hope you like the small changes we made, and if you have ideas on how to make this better, please let us know! If you’d like to play with these feeds, you can find them here:

6 responses

  1. ENDANG SUPRIATNA wrote on :

    Dear Ms Firefox Mozilla ,

    I used to make your browser everyday . Unfortunately every time I sign up the facebook they always told me that I am forgot my password .

    Then Facebook told me to download the Firefox Mozilla to make a better using.

  2. ENDANG SUPRIATNA wrote on :

    I still do not understand why Facebook told me that I put the wrong password every time I sign up to face book.

    Please find the reason for me Sir.

    Regards ,

    Endang Supriatna

  3. rdoherty wrote on :

    @Edang:

    You need to talk to Facebook about your password problems. There is a password recovery feature you can use.

  4. JTjaden wrote on :

    Is this why firefox is so slow?

    This is precisely the reason I switched from ie to firefox (slowness). I go to read an extremely important report, write a report, or court opinion for instance, and have to lose all train of thought and click on the update and shutdown the pc, or stare at the infinitely spinning circle

    I’ve just got to say that these unending updates are getting extremely cumbersome

  5. Terry Blackwood wrote on :

    love mozilla

  6. JerryW5507 wrote on :

    I need some answers. I downloaded Firefox whenn it first came out, or shortly thereafter. I used the Firefox browser up through the latest version 3.5. I was extremely pleased with it and the various addons I downloaded. The only problem I had with it was getting to execute when I clocked on the Firefox icon. I found I could get around this by clicking on the Yahoo icon, or the Google icon which brought Firefox up on to the screen.

    Then the trouble started. Even those backdoor methods would no longer work. I could not get Firefox to excute no matter what I tried. In deseration I was forced to try the Internet Explorer which I had never considered using before. The IE took over and now it is the default browser and appears as if it intends to stay there in perpetuity. I even tried uninstalling Firefox from my computer, and with it regretfully, all my favorite addons and reinstalling Firefox 3.5 from scratch. Again no luck. So it appears I am stuck with the Internet Explore as my default browser.

    Do you have any answers or sugestions for my frustrating predicament. Please e-mail me and let me know what you think may be the problem.

    Appreciatively,

    Jerry W.