Posted on 01/04/2005 4:26:26 PM PST by Coleus
|
|
 |
|
|
Is this internet prodigy about to knock Microsoft off its pedestal? A Miami teenager has created a free web browser that has been called Bill Gates's worst nightmare |
A MIAMI teenager is basking in the glory of helping to create a new internet browser at 17 that is now challenging the grip of Microsoft, which once held a virtual monopoly on web surfing.
Computer analysts say that Blake Ross’s browser, Firefox, is a faster, more versatile program that also offers better protection from viruses and unwanted advertising.
Industry experts have dubbed the new software “Microsoft’s worst nightmare”, according to the technology magazine Business 2.0. It hailed Mr Ross, now 19, as a software prodigy. He is also a talented pianist and “an unbelievable creative writer”, according to his mother, Ross. “Anything he does, he does well,” she said.
As a seven-year-old Mr Ross became hooked on the popular computer game SimCity, designing and budgeting his own virtual city. By 10, he had created his own website. He later created his own computer applications and online text games.Soon he was reporting computer software flaws to manufacturers online.
At 14 he was offered an internship at Netscape in Silicon Valley. His mother drove him out to California for three summers in succession.
At Netscape, Mr Ross was introduced to the Mozilla Foundation, a not-for-profit organisation that promotes “choice and innovation on the web”.
Mozilla was already trying to develop an open-source alternative browser to Microsoft’s Explorer, which many analysts felt had grown clumsy and outdated. Mr Ross and his friend David Hyatt began working on a small, user-focused browser. What began as an experimental side-project turned into Firefox.
Mr Ross is quick to point out that he was one of a large team at Mozilla who worked on the project for five years. “It’s a big volunteer effort,” he said. In fact, the pair left before the work was completed, but Mozilla credits them with making the breakthrough. After he left to go to university, Mr Ross continued to be a “significant contributor”, according to Mozilla.
The task involved throwing out all the old codes and rewriting the entire system so it would support all websites on the internet. While Firefox still has a long way to go to rival Microsoft, it seems to be catching on. Firefox has received dazzling reviews from industry analysts. Recently some 10,000 Firefox fans raised $250,000 (£131,000) to take out a two-page advertisement in The New York Times. It is not just in dividual users who are taking interest. In December, the information technology department at Pennsylvania State University sent a note to college deans recommending that the entire 100,000-strong staff, faculty and student body switch to Firefox.
Mr Ross, now a student at Stanford University studying computer science, is taking it all in his stride. As a volunteer on an open-source product, there was no financial reward.
Microsoft professes to be unfazed. Windows executive Gary Schare said: “We’re seeing the natural ebb and flow of a competitive marketplace with new products being introduced. It’s not surprising to see curious early adopters checking them out.”
Not content with making a huge dent in Microsoft’s browser share, Mozilla, the foundation behind Firefox, is also going after Microsoft’s Outlook and other e-mail packages.
Called Thunderbird 1.0, the package works on Windows, Macintosh and Linux and has been praised by the industry and press for finally offering a challenge to Microsoft’s dominance in the e-mail arena.
The software provides a number of features which other packages are struggling to offer. Key features include e-mail junk filters that analyse and sort incoming mail and greater security elements.
Nope, I code to standards. But for a site that has to work for all modern browsers I only use a subset of those standards. I use even a smaller subset if I have to support Netscape 4. Sad, really, because I can do better.
That's not quite good enough. The IE engine is not only used by IE, but by other parts of Windows and many other programs to the point where where you often don't even know you're running IE. You'd have to not use IE, plus research all Windows features and applications that use the engine, and make sure not to use those either.
However, the fact that IE is so bad has caused some vendors to move away from it. For example, Adobe replaced IE as it's rendering engine in GoLive with the Opera engine.
That's what I suspected. Another reason to use anything but IE.
All that content stuff doesn't push one browser over the other. Because all of the content is the same, except for the handful of sites that just don't work on non-IE.
Actually I know quite a bit internet use for business. I'm a software tester, part of my job is pointing out that my ocmpany's website sucks, and looking at other websites to make improvement suggestions. But, for the most part, the rendering differences between IE and its competition are too subtle for non-pros to notice. Unless something goes completely haywire in the render you need to know what the site is supposed to look like to know it's not supposed to look like it does in Firefox. Since most people aren't going to be doing side by side comparisons it's largely immaterial and unnoticed.
It does make me a geek, that's what I get paid to be.
The current version of Netscape is nearly identical in all the features I care about to FireFox. I almost ditched Netscape back in the 6.x days when it took a serious dive, but I never really liked Opera (can't put my finger on it, just don't like) and my rebelious streak kept me from ever going to IE, but with 7.x Netscape has improved dramatically.
Right all the WEB is is content, all the BROWSER is is features used to DELIVER somebody ELSE'S content. The features are what push the browser, the content only makes people want A browser ANY browser. Sorry I have it exactly right, there is no content reason what so ever for one browser over another, FEATURES are what dictate which browser a person will want. Browsers are like word processors, the word processor you use isn't going to improve what you write or read in it, it's only going to make it easier to write it or read it; features not content.
When people pay for content they are paying the content provider, like their favorite newspaper, when people select a browser with which to view the content they paid for they are doing so based on features.
Tabbed browsing is a big yes, people love it and it's one of the things mentioned in every single review of FireFox and Netscape. It's the big new FEATURE of browsers that's caused IE's share to shrink rather dramatically. IE dominates the market because 90% of the people on the internet have gotten at least one version of IE free (two if they're an AOLer) and aren't geeky enough to even know there are other browsers out there. There's a reason the MS marketing model has revolved around pre-installation for the entire history of the company, they understood that as the PC moved away from the pure geek market to toward the appliance market a majority of the market share would be people that lack the knowledge or curiousity necessary to replace what the computer came with. Pre-installation made DOS king, pre-installation made Windows king, and pre-installation made IE king, and pre-installation is right now protecting Windows and IE.
Fine weekly alerts for IE. Regardless of the timing security alerts happen for IE on such a regular basis they've become the background noise of the tech industry, they happen almost as often as Democrats call Republicans racists. And every one of those security alerts is a commercial for anything but IE. I don't think MS is evil, or at least if they are that's not the problem with IE. While I'm sure that if some other browser had the market penetration of IE they'd be attacked just as much as IE I doubt there would be as many holes and they'd be as severe.
IE, and every other MS product, has two major problems that cause 90% of its security problems: extensibility, and closeness to the operating system. At my first company we were working on an Exchange Client add-on (yet before Outlook, before even the original Outlook which was just a shell extension to Exchange Client), one of the big puzzles we were working on was how to propogate our add-on through out a company without making IT go from machine to machine. Our uber programmer eventually found this brilliant MAPI call we embedded in our custom object, what happened was if I e-mailed you something with our extension part of the e-mail would be the calls necessary to install our extension on your machine. Once he explained to everybody how it was going to work he then turned to us and said "you realize of course this is the perfect way to distribute a virus, and with as tight as Exchange is to the OS you can distribute a nasty virus". Outlook still has those calls, ActiveX has a version of those calls, VBA in MS Office has a version of those calls, those calls are why MS products are insecure and unless MS gets rid of them they can never be secure. Their products are deliberately designed to be able to distribute add-ons seemlessly and without the user knowing anything happened, which is a great idea in a world without bad guys, but is a horrid in the real world.
How many email accounts are you working with? I tried TBird and found that multiple accounts were not as easy to work with. Unless I missed something, TBird forces you to assign ONE account to send messages. I need to send from any one of several accounts from time to time.
You may be using a beta version. In 1.0 there's a drop-down above the addresses in the Compose dialog to switch between accounts for sending the mail.
One problem: Acrobat and Flash as proprietary formats - that which IE renders in not propriety anything. There are no IE secrets or proprietary formats. The only thing close to this is different browsers render the standards in different ways (usually slightly different ways). There is nothing proprietary about IE - it works with open standards, the same as every other browser.
Well that's certainly good news. I'm glad they changed THAT.
I agree but cross-zone scripting exploits are not easy to do in IE (just conceptually possible) and MS plugs the holes fairly quickly. MS is just trying to tightly integrate the browser with the desktop - this is something FireFox is not even attempting. At this point one would think MS would decide it is not worth it to tightly integrate the browser with the desktop or maybe MS could create two browsers - one that does and one that does not. I have written systems that tightly integrate the browser with the desktop (and they are pretty cool) but my target has always been Intranets. Most people do not want that level of integration.
Then it's settled. By your definition, IE is not a standard.
I guess English is your second language. The word is especially not exclusively.
Are you really that thick?
Guess you also have memory problems. This is what you said: "Bill dismissed it [the Internet] as a sideshow for geeks and academic institutions."
I have seen nothing that supports your claim "Bill dimissed it [the internet] as a sideshow for geek" - so it looks like you made that up.
All I said is "haters are big on making stuff up"
You really are that thick. There's more to reading than looking at words. Comprehension is very important, too.
You might want to review what you have actually said before you make a fool out of yourself.
This is what you said: "When I develop personally, I use the full features of CSS, screw anyone stupid enough to use such an outdated, incompatible browser.
I guess you are unable to comprehend what you said. HINT: if you are using features of CSS not supported by IE, most people (about 70%) will not be able to see your site in the way you want them to. But as you said "screw them"
Plus, it forces me to send all email using the default email account SMTP location. Yes, it does allow me to "send" the mail through the account I want to, but the mail is actually using the SMTP for a different account.
Unfortunately, I'll have to stay with Outlook until the Mozilla dudes and dudettes sort all this out.
Like I said, don't just look at the pretty words -- comprehend.
Keep looking, look at the context. It might seep through. I've even given you a hint to make it easier. But don't try too hard, I don't want you to hurt yourself.
But as you said "screw them"
Yep, screw'em. I don't need'em.
Yeah. Right. Customers have nothing to do with business. (or like you said "screw them")
I'm not sure I'd want to work at a company so out of touch with reality.
That's ok because I am pretty sure you don't work for any company.
I evangelize standards -- something Microsoft has a problem with when they don't own them.
About 70% of users use IE. Most corporations us only IE. Most Internet business software only supports IE. But as you said earlier "screw them". HINT: if you ever do get a job in the industry - customers don't pay for W3C standards, they pay for content.
Therefore your stuff does not work right on the browser used by most people. Interesting business stratagy.
What are you rambling about. I already said you cannot remove IE - but you sure as heck don't have to use it as your Internet browser.
However, the fact that IE is so bad has caused some vendors to move away from it. For example, Adobe replaced IE as it's rendering engine in GoLive with the Opera engine.
Not exactly. The Mac version of Live Rendering is based on Opera. Live Rendering on Windows machines is still based on IE.
Just not using it as your browser will not protect you from its security flaws. It's used by many other applications and Windows itself which give you exposure to varying degrees (heavy exposure if you use Outlook).
Not exactly. The Mac version of Live Rendering is based on Opera. Live Rendering on Windows machines is still based on IE.
True, but there was a switch. Macromedia also picked Opera.
They pay for content that can be rendered on their browsers. If that means it takes me more time because of IE's poor CSS support, or if I just don't make the site as good as I could have because I've dumbed-down the CSS for IE, then fine -- they're paying for it.
BTW, I started getting paid for doing web sites about the same time that BillG realized the WWW exists. I was still doing it five years ago when anyone willingly hosting on IIS was considered an idiot, and I'm still doing it now when Microsoft finally has decent server software, but a horrible client.
I agree 100%
The differences between browsers are small - yet sometimes the small differences make nasty problems (small spacing problems that hose an entire screen).
My point all along was it is ludicrous to think a new free browser is going to knock MS off their pedestal. I am also not arguing the superiority of IE - just that most content is targeted toward IE and for a browser to make an impact it will have to be just like IE (and most likely better) therefore how the heck can a free browser that renders like IE knock MS off of anything.
My company (and most others) only support IE. Not because it the best ever written but because the vast majority of uses use it and we can not afford to support multiple browsers (at least we can not justify the cost - this can easily change if the market demands it. This does not mean it will not work in other browsers.
Your first statement is right on - MS wants to integrate all their products in some way - they got very rich off this strategy - the problem is there is a dark side to the strategy.
Will another browser become the dominant browser - maybe and I think it might actually be good for MS. My point is another browser will not hurt MS and it might actually help them. I believe it might be time for MS to abandon the extensibility model for IE or maybe create two browsers (one that does not integrate). I have written applications that incorporate the browser and they are pretty cool but it opens up lots of possibilities for hacking.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
