The Fox Is in Microsoft's Henhouse (and Salivating)

NYT ^ | December 19, 2004 | RANDALL STROSS

[mathprof]

FIREFOX is a classic overnight success, many years in the making.

Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.

Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9. Just over a month later, the foundation celebrated a remarkable milestone: 10 million downloads. Donations from Firefox's appreciative fans paid for a two-page advertisement in The New York Times on Thursday.

Until now, the Linux operating system was the best-known success among the hundreds of open-source projects that challenge Microsoft with technically strong, free software that improves as the population of bug-reporting and bug-fixing users grows. But unless you oversee purchases for a corporate data center, it's unlikely that you've felt the need to try Linux yourself.

With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.

[mathprof]

I mostly love Microsoft software, but Firefox is a lot better than IE.

[KoRn]

Firefox is the App of the year! In my opinion.

[philo]

I also use Firefox. No more IE.

An interesting note Firefox is basically Netscape with a few more bells and whistles. They both use the same source code.

[shellshocked]

Neither have I, but I use Windows XP SP2. It has a pop-up blocker built in.

[Baraonda]

bookmark

[mathprof]

In my post, I should have included this (from the end of the article):

Mr. Schare of Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer. By the same reasoning, the security problems created by a car's broken door lock could be solved by buying an entirely new automobile. The analogy comes straight from Mr. Schare. "It's like buying a car," he said. "If you want to get the latest safety features, you have to buy the latest model."

[Malesherbes]

I'm a new and very happy Firefox user. The inexpensive "Guidebook" is worth buying from their website.

[beckaz]

Been using it 2 weeks only, but pop-ups and ads down dramatically (was using a pop-up blocker with IE).
Also, no incidences of dreaded blue-screen yet (which happened every couple of days with IE).

[Shady]

Using Firefox right now!

[lemura]

FireFox is the app of the decade - it truly is the new 'killer app' for the 00s. While the tabbed features are great, they're not necessarily difficult to imitate - look for IE to provide the same feature soon.

FireFox's 'IE killer' qualties are its security and control features. I'm now paranoid to even open up IE to test one of my Web sites. It's a beautiful thing to run virus scan, Spybot, AdWare, et al and not get a single hit. Use IE for 10 minutes and look out!

IE is ultimately doomed by its original design and incorporation of MS active elements. If MS were to completely re-design IE to respond to FF, then it wouldn't even be IE any more - MS would have to eleminate every internal/back-end link.

[martin_fierro]

Spyware on my PCs is way, waaaay down since the switch to Firefox.

[Born to Conserve]

If you want airbags and crumple zones, sell the VW bug and buy a car.

[mlbford2]

I love XP, but you couldn't pay me enough to use IE. Firefox is what I have been using for the past year or so. I hear that some on this board really like a few of the others out there too.

[Drango]

Using foxfire for almost a month...(frankly I don't see that much difference)

[1234]

i've got CompuServe 2000 version of IE, now at 5.5 level-all on Win 95 OS-should i risk the dwnld?

[WKB]

When using Firefox, is there a way to set the font size so it will stay at the size you want?

[rintense]

Yep. Tool > Options > General > Fonts & Colors

[KoRn]

Microsoft will probably buy Firefox, and rename it. I believe that's how they got IE. MS has never been an innovator in anything with the exception of Word Processing software maybe.

I think Windows itself was ripped off from somewhere. Internet Explorer was purchased, and they renamed it. They also discourage growth in new innovations. When a company announces they are going to develop a type of software, Microsoft soon after, announces they are going to work on the same thing. Immediately the smaller company stops development because they can't compete with MS, then MS simply sits on the project.