Microsoft announced plans to release Version 7 of its security hole (er, I mean browser) last month, but from the looks of the Turdhead.com log files, they've got a lot of ground to make up if they want to stay competitive with the more-popular-than-ever alternative browsers out there.

February's logs revealed a huge leap in "normal" viewers using the new Firefox browser (which just updated to 1.01) over Microsoft Internet Explorer.

I say "normal," because back in August 2004, we reached a record high of 40.3 percent "Mozilla," but this was the same month we were mentioned on Slashdot, a known haven for Microsoft haters, so I wouldn't call this a valid sample population. By the next month, we were back down to 16.9 percent (which was still about 10 points higher than in pre-Slashdot months).

Things had stayed at or below this level pretty much ever since, but February brought a significant change: MS IE users made up only 62.1 percent of our readers last month, while Firefox accounted for 23.6 percent.

Perhaps people are finally waking up to the idea that popup ads, single-tabbed browsers and spyware don't have to be part of the Web experience (although to be fair, I have noticed a few pop-ups slipping through on Firefox lately; I trust the open-source community can get those holes fixed quickly??).

Can't wait to see what happens next.