I was beyond surprised when I checked out the statistics on one of the websites I publish: More users who visit the site now use Firefox than use Internet Explorer. I'd always thought Firefox was around 20 or 25 percent of the market, but to brush 50 percent? Crazy!

Interestingly, Mozilla (the organization behind Firefox) still struggles to get users to give it a shot: Only half the users who download it actually install and try it, and only half of those users stick with it. That's a huge opportunity for the Firefox to improve growth rates by simply convincing people not to jump ship back to IE (or Safari, or whatever).

The Mozilla group has created a 12-point plan to attempt to improve things, mainly designed to give web novices more help in getting started: Renaming the application to better reflect that it's a web browser, improve add-on management, and create a more sophisticated help system. (Though I have to admit the user-based help system is awfully useful and responsive.)

Tragically, the one thing I don't see on the plan is a goal to make Firefox more stable and bug-resistant. I push browsers pretty hard, admittedly, but over three machines I continue to have frequent crashes whenever I open too many windows, or, particularly, on one website (IMDB.com), which sends a once-daily double-pop-up ad that immediately crashes the whole thing. Arggggh!

Still, I appreciate that the Firefox folks are trying to make things smoother for newcomers to the browser. Despite its bugs, I have made the move completely to Firefox, with no regrets. It's faster, easier to navigate, better organized, and nicer to look at than IE. The spell-checker alone is worth the price of admission. And unlike IE, it keeps getting better, not worse.