Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Link

Interesting article. To sum it up:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Not sure where that guy is coming from ...

Firstly, the issue of facing threats. The standard defence against Microsoft is that its products are only compromised as often as they are because they are the popular products and there to be shot at by the majority. Everybody else's stuff would fare as badly, so the story goes, if only it got the same level of attention. This may or may not be true, but considering it is complete supposition, totally undemonstrated as a theory, I'm not comfortable with the frequency it gets trotted out. It is a lazy excuse for a defence of Microsoft that, tellingly, doesn't even attempt to defend MS, but instead, without proof, attepts to pull everyone else down to their level. If you stick to the cold hard facts, Microsoft has a lamentable security record, and a poor corporate reputation for security that is derived from more than just the number of patches it has to issue.

Second, over the issue of non-standard code (and I will need some technical back-up or rebuttal here, because now I'm supposing a little): How can MS develop a browser to take account of the use of non-standard code? With Netscape in the pre-eminent position, non-standard code simply couldn't work. You write non-standard code, no-one can read your pages, so you don't write non-standard code in the first place. In fact, given that Hypertext was invented, more or less, by one man, the concept of non-standard code is, in the early days of the web at least, totally absurd. There can only be non-standard code if someone *creates* it, and then allows it to function in certain browsers but not others. To put it simply, M$ doubly shafted Netscape firstly by *creating* the non-standard code, which would only work on IE, then bundling IE with Windows, then by marketing it aggressively at the IT community.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

This bit made me laugh though:

Where's Basa? :D

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

IE is losing market share in an article i saw yesterday, however if firefox or another browser was as prominent as IE is it would see itself being exploited for vulnerabilities, indeed a few flaws on firefox have been found, due to its rising popularity, MS code is rife amongst computers around the world, its only natural that the most exploits are found on it in comparison to other browsers, i believe firefox's rise to eat in to MS's market share will ultimately make it a prime target for hackers.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I like Opera as well as Firefox and have both installed in their most up to date form. In fact, I'm a bit geeky in that I love playing with them and testing them, which at the end of the day is what pre-release and beta versions are all about. I don't think it's as complete or as user friendly as Firefox is, though the latest preview release is well on the way.

Mind you, Firefox still has some issues. I am currently posting from IE, since the 11-tab Firefox window I had running simply stopped displaying pages, giving timeout errors. Firefox will now not work on this PC again until I reboot...yet IE and Opera do, so it isn't a connection problem. I've had this before, and indeed others report it on the Mozilla site, so although very close, they are not quite 'there' yet.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

1st point:
The difference between M$ and Mozilla.org is that Mozilla pay top security people to look for bugs and other exploits.
Microsoft's usual policy is to wait a month before acknowledging the problem then issue a patch a few months after.
Mozilla bugs are usually fixed the same day and by it's nature it is more secure - it doesn't use ActiveX and is not highly tied to the host OS.

2nd point:
"What I don't like is the insistence that Web sites adapt to the upstart browser, not vice-versa."
Umm excuse me but what exactly has been going on for the last 4 years?
IE only sites saying "your browser is not supported", invalid HTML/CSS, sloppy code (because IE will render almost anything you throw at it), proprietary plug ins, multiple security problems etc etc.
Microsoft should support the standards the web was built for, now what would happen if M$ modified TCP/IP to their own liking? Chaos, that's what - and all Unix/Linux/Mac/Solaris users would be left out - it would separate the internet into M$/non M$ and that would be ridiculous.
Well, it's already happened - IE browser only code has separated the web users into two groups but now, we're fighting back with a vengeance - why do you think the Firefox slogan is "take back the web"?
We will take back our computers, for years ravaged by Spyware and Malware.
We will take back our web pages as they were supposed to be - the same on every view port.
We will take back our privacy rights by choosing what software is installed on our computers.

The MSHTML (IE) engine hasn't been updated since 2001 and runs in IE, Outlook, Outlook Express, Office and many other apps and they probably have root access to any file, folder or drive they choose.
What's more, you probably don't even know about where the MSHTML engine is being used, it's even used to display the Windows Help files - anyone remember the SQL worm "Slammer"? Loads of people were affected, even banks and it brought large parts of the net down because they didn't realise that an SQL server was running as part of their M$ app.
Firefox is updated every day and now even supports partial CSS3, IE even manages to screw up CSS1.

OK, rant over for now. :afire:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I'm here ;)

I see little mileage in arguing with this misguided soul, (that is John Carroll not you Chris)......(I assume he is referring to himself as "this man" :erm: ).

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Umm ..... if (as I suppose) you use Windows XP you are already bowing and scraping to M$ with activation of XP and Office !!!! Plus you have to buy a new copy for each PC you use. :mad:

I (through being so poor) have to continue with 98SE which at least I can install on any PC I care to and don't need M$'s permission to do so !! :rolleyes:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Bifta doesnt like it!

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Correct, and Bifta isn't foolish enough to believe that a fair indication of browser share is available to view at W3. Let's think about it rationally for a minute, what sort of people visit that site? Technical people, a small cross section of the population, a small cross section that would have no problem trying out a new browser (no matter how rubbish it is). I've looked at some slightly fairer stats, on an Estate Agents site that pulls all sorts of different people and my stats differ hugely.

Apparently this is based on 3,898,985 page views, 80,788,375 hits.

Firefox has apparently got 0.4% browser share, based on fairer statistics.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

** Caution, dodgy metaphor coming up **

Firefox is like Ikea furniture... you have to be a bit more patient when setting it up, but you pay a lot less for it and you feel like you've accomplished something when you get it all put together.

IE is like the over indulgent, over soft, comfy sofa... nice to use but very bad for your back and gives off toxic fumes when it catches fire ;)

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Well I know I'l be sticking with Firefox.
IE should be renamed to Crash IE as it used to crash my system constantly.
IE looks like it was built for a three year old, and just feels relitevely crappy.
Yeah so I cant go into detail about its bad points right now but its Friday morning and so bleh.
But yeah, tabbed browsing in Firefox is only one of its many advantages and easier to navigate interface. Mozilla all the way.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Can't argue with statistics like that ... although let's not forget we're still talking about Beta software here. Firefox doesn't launch officially until next week, and the community is planning to support that launch with a big PR push. You can't expect Firefox to truly break out of the IT geek community until it gets this wider exposure. It will be interesting to see whether the stats from that same website are any different by, say, next May.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I'll be sure to let you know. Of course, no-one (apart from Microsoft) has any idea what their plans for IE will be over the next 6 months, so we'll have to wait and see.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

firefox sucks :) and thats that...

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Seconded

People use it just so they can say they are different ;)

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I use Lynx for that :)

IE isn't a choice for me but back in the days of IE vs Netscape, I went with IE because it was a good quick and easy to use browser. Now that I'm officially a geek/techie I can see many problems with IE, the biggest in my opinion being a disregard for hard won standards (Richard made the very good point about TCP/IP and what would happen if one company altered it so it was incompatible). Therefore I use Firefox and recommend it to others if asked.

On the point of security, it's not really about the number of flaws found because any piece of software will always have some exploit...it's unavoidable. What it is about is about how easy it is to exploit a flaw and the seriousness of it. Due to the nature of IE, with ActiveX controls and the fact that it is so closely tied with the OS, it is always going to be easier to attack the system than with a sandboxed browser. It's a sad fact that the mechanisms that make it easy for authors to write their pages and easier for the end user are always going to make it easier for people to create exploits.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Websidestory are a company who compile stats from the most popular websites, according to them Mozilla is at 6% (Suite and FF both at 3%).
IE is down to 92% now.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I thought you'd have fun with this thread :D

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Agreed. FireFox uses far too much resources up, and most websites don't seem to work. IE on 2000 SP4 is secure any way, so why both wasting more space, bandwidth and CPU cycles on FireFox?

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Resources? You'll have to forgive me, I have a blindingly efficient OS myself so I never noticed. Firefox fairly flies on Mac. Perhaps you could quote some figures that some more PC savvy person than myself could query though? As for 'most websites' ... that certainly isn't my experience. I can think of only one occasion when we have had to use a browser other than Firefox to view a webpage, since switching to FF 0.9 a couple of months back - and on that occasion, we satisfactorily viewed the page through Safari, not IE :D

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Well compared to memory usage, IE uses 10-20MB of memory, FireFox used 40-60MB. As for CPU cycles, FireFox kept making my system "lag" and my music kept "skipping" because it used 100% CPU just to load a page up. Even scrolling down a page did the same thing, which IE doesn't do at all :erm:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

and on GNU/LInux :D The difference I think with Windows is that some IE components are already partially loaded in support of Windows so it only seems to use less resources. Scotts memory usage of about 40-60mb is similar to what I see on my own system (which is currently in a box ready to be moved tommorrow :cry: ), one thing to bear in mind is that this has dropped considerably since FF 0.7 (90-100mb) so we can only hope that this will continue.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

90-100MB? Holy, that is a lot more than what the Climate Prediction software uses, and that is more demanding :Yikes:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Note the version number - 0.7 was a far-from-complete Beta release. Making your software more efficient is part of the Beta process. I tried out FF at version 0.7 and deleted it as it was still some way off being a viable replacement for Safari. I tried it again at 0.9 and found it vastly improved. I started using it from that point, and when we got to 'preview release' I made that the default browser on my system.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Actually, on the Mac, I tend to use Safari.. Much quicker (and better) than the rather elderly version of IE used in OSX..

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Actually, IE will be using a helluva lot more memory than that, it's just that it's inextricably tied to the OS, so you've gotta take, for example, the memory usage of explorer.exe into consideration too.

Of course, you'd still be using that memory consumed by the kernel even if you used Firefox, so mebbe a fairer statement would be to say that 'IE uses 10-20MB more memory than the OS'.

As for CPU usage, I gotta say that I've not noticed any worse performance than IE... but who knows, maybe my machine is more streamlined and leanly configured than yours...?

On another note, FireFox is the first step in my evil master plan of getting the missus to switch completely to open source. She's just about accepted FireFox (after having one too many problems with IE), and is even thinking about using OpenOffice to write all her college lessons. If she carries on going at this rate, I reckon she'll be using Linux 100% of the time some time early next year ;)

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I bribed mine with a nice pink and purple KDE theme :D

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

People will have different experiences with software. Personally, I've been using Firebird/Firefox since August 2003 (whichever version it was then) and never had a problem with it.

I don't know if it was just me, but the few sites that I had problems with not accepting FF, like my online bank, now accept it.

If it doesn't work for you, doesn't mean it won't work for other people.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I have FF installed but don't use it often - in the forum it fails to insert smilies in the middle of text, and fails with hyperlink insertion in the same way (tagging it onto the end).

It also fails to draw the pages properly on many occasions (the page has dark lines across it in places, distorting it).

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I've never had any of those problems in years of using Netscape/Mozilla Suite/Firefox.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Heh, even if you had, I don't think you could admit it now ;)

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I've had a few problems with the "This document contains no data", but thats about it. Only when I tried to send an email through gmail, though..

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I have that problem too, also it tends to lock all of my systems up needing a reboot, which isn't good for several reasons :rolleyes:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Uh-oh:
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1759,1714680,00.asp

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Don't click the above link if you have Spybot S&D installed. The link tries to install doubleclick and S&D will keep you clicking on the 'blocked doubleclick' box till you press ctrl/alt/del and shut your browser down :mad:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

"install doubleclick"?
Doubleclick.net is an advertising company who will give your browser a cookie.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I just clicked it and have Spybot S&D installed. Went to the page no problem. As Richard said, it will just have created a cookie for doubleclick which will show up when I next run Spybot or Adaware.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Ah, the beauty of SpySweeper, it simply flicks it away automatically like an annoying fly.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I'm running that as well but S&D seems to jump on that cookie first...................

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

There is an option in Spybot to either block or allow the cookie automatically without telling you.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Any idea how....I've had a nose around in advanced settings but can't find anything about it :confused: :dunce:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

This is based on the version 1.3 (as I have just had to download it anyway).


Click on "Immunize", then at the bottom of the window, find a section headed "Permanently running bad download blocker for Internet Explorer". There is a list box below. Change this to "Block all bad pages silently". The other two options are to display a dialog when blocked, or prompt the user for what to do.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Really LOL, well I switched over to Firefox a long while back and always get the latest version on date of release.

Not a issue with it nice little bit of kit,

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Erm...so why the "Dump Firefox" in your sig ?? :erm:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Cheers m8.....I was looking under 'settings' :rolleyes:

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Well today decided to go back to moderating on a chat i have been away from try and try and try again firefox refused to work with this chat. Resulting it in crashing my laptop and having to reboot to get everything stable again. Not impressed...So given up I mean reading into reports online Firefox is only safer because less people are using it.

If the same number of people on ie6 suddenly went to firefox in 2years time IE6 would be safer, and Firefox would be bad. So techincally speaking there is no issue in going with a browser which is not 100% working with all sites and is still in infancy in terms of programming and completion to work with all websites and systems.

As such I have dumped firefox and gone back to ie6 until I find something better.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Again with the (completely untested, never mind unproven) claim that Firefox is only 'safer' because fewer people use it. This is a totally lazy way to defend M$, and sums up quite neatly as 'Everything else is as crap as IE', which is a ludicrous claim to make, without any proof. Firefox may or may not be a more secure browser. Personally I think it is, because the corporate culture of Mozilla is entirely different to that of M$, which is locked in a spiral of mediocrity and indifference, just the same as most monopolistic or quasi-monopolistic organisations. But even if FF's security is an illusion, it's one I'll happily make use of while the script kiddies and other assorted 'net morons are getting their kicks out of screwing up the PCs of the world's lazy M$-lovers.

As for your chat not working: the ethos of Open Source is that the community works together to develop better software. If you posted your problem on the Firefox forums, you might get a solution, and you might just help to improve the software for a future release. And don't forget, unless you happened to have this problem with the version of FF available today, you were using Beta software. Hardly a fair and direct comparison with something that is now on version 6 and *should be* a completely superb product. The fact that we're even contemplating an alternative is, to me at least, further indication of what a shoddy job M$ is doing with its web browser.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Despite what I may have said in the past, I think there is some truth in the "more people use it, so more people hack it" train of thought. I think this is because Hackers often just want to get noticed, so they go for what will get them noticed.

However, I do think both Opera (my preferred browser on the PC & P800), Safari (my preferred browser on the Mac) and Firefox are inherantly more secure than IE.

I also think IE under XP Service Pack 2 and also IE under Windows Server 2003 is inherantly more secure than IE under other Os's or service packs.

It would be nice if MS ditched the non-standard parts of their HTML implementation though.

It would also be nice if MS changed the security setup a bit. For instance, by default Active X plug ins have full access to the system. I think they should only have full access to the system if the site accessing them is in the Intranet zone, and even that's doubtful (although may be needed for access to older web-based admin systems). For sites in all other zones, they should have limited access.

I think we should always have alternate browsers. Competition encourages improvement. In theory anyway, it doesn't seem to have done this with IE..

RE: Your about sending feedback via the Firefox forums. I think this should be encouraged also. It's a different thing, but where I work, I manage two labs full of computers (mostly PCs with a few Macs). One problem we have is users will not tell us if a PC goes wrong (doesn't seem to be a problem with Macs). It can be irritating to get a complaint that a PC died several days ago, and hasn't been fixed when the reason it hasn't been fixed is no one reported it.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

You will get no argument from me there - I completely agree. What I find indefensible is not the claim that FF would get attacked more if it were more popular, but the claim that it has as many security problems as IE and only the fact that it doesn't get hacked as much has prevented these issues from being exposed.

This amounts to a defence of 'well, we might be crap, but at least everyone else is crap too!' Not only is it a claim based on no factual evidence, it assumes that it is ok to be poor quality so long as everyone else is. I find such lack of any drive or hunger to pursue excellence quite depressing.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

It is depressing... The browser programmers should be scrambling over each other to improve their browsers. To a certain extent, Opera and Mozilla are doing this. Microsoft has, to all intents and purposes, stopped.

Actually, I didn't mean my previous post to turn in to such an Anti IE rant. I do hold the opinions expressed there, but I think I went on a bit..

Sadly, I have to use IE for one site at work. Our main admin intranet site. The irritating thing is that the only thing that doesn't work properly on that site in Opera is the menu (which is written in Javascript and quite difficult to use even in IE).

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I have reported alot of bugs with Firefox and with my current pace of life I do not have time to install this to work this kinda life. I shall keep my pc in good check free of spyware and the normal internet garbage.

As for Firefox it may in time become a good rival product but end of day Internet Explorer i know will load any site online up.

However for most users I agree it is a good browser but if your after one you can just load up and forget about and just use then it aint for you. With constant issues with some sites as well as a overall weird feel to it online I eventually have gone back to IE.

Although SP2 being more secure I am not convinced it will work on my laptop with its current setup.

Shall read into it more.

:D

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

AFAIK Microsoft have halted development on IE, and there hasn't been a new version since Windows XP was introduced. Just service pack and patch after patch, and it is still full of holes..........

Also the user who claims he has never had any spyware, download Ad-Aware and try making that claim after running it.

I connected my partners laptop to the internet for the first time last night and after 1/2 hour of general browsing (after installing XP SP2) I downloaded ad-aware... Over 20 items of spyware!!! My next download for here was FireFox.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Same here I mean I have speant time on other forums reading information, and the quality and updated build of Firefox over IE6 is amazing, I mean IE6 is still in the era of Windows 98 SE and how it aint more hacked I do not know its sheer luck on Microsofts Part.

Well I am Firefox 1.0 from now on.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

It's important to realise that FF may not be targetted because its user base is less than IE, but even if/when that should occur, the fact that FF is open source means that any issues would be spotted through code reviews and subsequently fixed quicker.

I think it's just a shame that MS don't offer the financial rewards for finding bugs that Mozilla do. Although that could possibly be enough to bankrupt them. :D

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

AFAIK, Micro$oft is going to update IE, but if you do not have win xp then you will have to pay up to £100 for IE, it is to make people move on to XP.

ik

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Development has ceased on the Mac OSX version of IE.

AFAIK, Microsoft will not be making any new version of IE available for any Operating System (as a seperate product). It is still developing IE as a component for Xp, Longhorn and Server 2003 though.

Also AFAIK, they will still be patching earlier versions.

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

I own WhichBrowser.Com and .co.uk

Anyone want to setup a website, as the editor/developer (maybe two people...), and run it to compare browsers with stats and histories etc...? :)

Re: Everyone seems to love Firefox. Everyone, that is, except for this man...
 

Me me! :D