Firefox is flying. At the US edition of PC World, for example, 23.98% of its website visitors are surfing the Fox. NZ PC World visitors are embracing the rebel browser in even greater numbers. Check out these pcworld.co.nz stats (as independently measured by Nielsen NetRatings) for the first week of July:

pcworld.co.nz
BROWSER - % OF UNIQUE VISITORS
1 Microsoft Internet Explorer - 65.94
2 Mozilla Firefox - 29.05
3 Opera - 2.27
4 Netscape - 0.74

In the totals above, I've added versions together (eg Firefox 1 and Firefox 1.5) but generally speaking, most pcworld.co.nz users of any given browser tend to be on the latest version. And if you're wondering why it doesn't total 100%, there are several browsers in the sub-1% chaff, including Safari, Camino, AOL, Konquerer and, yes, Crazy Browser.

It would suit this snippet nicely if I could make some kind of snazzy year-on-year comparison showing a surge in Firefox's pcworld.co.nz popularity. But in fact you guys were pretty hip to Mozilla this time 12 months ago too.

Our inhouse stats guru Edward Porter saves my editorial bacon, however, by pointing out there has been some movement at our (cough) perhaps more conservative sister publication Computerworld. Of computerworld.co.nz visitors, Ed reports Firefox has increased from 21.17% to 35.61% over the past year, while IIE has crashed from 74.61% to 58.32%.

And even at our stablemate Unlimited (a straight business title aside from its rather excellent 'Technology' column), there's a sniff of insurgency. Ed reports Firefox increased from 9.92% to 12.79% of unlimited.net.nz traffic over the past 12 months, while IE dropped a smidge from 87.23% to 84.60%.

For more on lead Firefox lead developer Ben Goodger, and his recent trip home for Webstock, click here.
To roadtest the Firefox 2 beta, click here.