Posted on 02/16/2005 10:38:24 AM PST by decimon
The party's over.
In the past year, the little browser that could, Firefox, became the people's hero, an underdog warrior that took a huge swipe at its enemy, Internet Explorer. IE dipped below 90 percent market share for the first time in years, while Firefox lured users like the Pied Piper, blowing past its own fundraising goals and reigniting the browser wars.
Meanwhile, the bad news continued to mount for Microsoft. An IE exploit put even Windows XP SP2 users at risk from phishing schemes, even as Microsoft touted SP2 as the most secure version of Windows yet. Worse, major security companies and the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team began to recommend that computer users dump IE for something more secure (read: Firefox).
By early this year, Netscape was emboldened to reenter the fray, announcing in January that it would release a new version of the Netscape browser, designed specifically to resist phishing schemes--something even Firefox lacks. Then, Opera said it would offer free licenses to universities, in order to make sure it would still be relevant in the new world browser order. And through it all, what was the response from Microsoft? Silence.
TalkBack Are you afraid of a standalone Internet Explorer, or will you keep betting on the Firefox pony?
For a moment there, it looked like the tyrant IE could actually be overthrown. Those were heady days, weren't they? Well, they're over now. Papa Bill just dropped the hammer. Bill Gates announced this week, at the RSA Security Conference in San Francisco (of all places), that Microsoft will ship Internet Explorer 7, without waiting for the next version of Windows. Gates says the standalone browser is designed to address the perception that IE itself is a massive security risk. What he didn't say, but you know he was thinking it, is that IE 7 will easily put a stop to this upstart browser rebellion.
Don't believe me? You should. Firefox is great, I use it. But it's a chore sometimes, what with most sites using that pesky nonstandard IE code. Not everything renders properly, and some sites just plain don't work--I have to load up IE to use them. Plus, let's be honest--Firefox has its flaws. Why is there no way to check for updates from within the browser, for one thing? Why does it take so doggone long to launch? Why, why must it crash every single time I open a PDF? I mean, every single time. Opera, fine, whatever, I'm not paying for a browser, and for some reason, although I've tried it several times, it's just never captured me. It's too clunky, and I was raised on IE. I don't want to learn something completely new. IE, on the other hand, is like the sweeping tide--it's just easier not to fight it.
If a standalone IE 7 is even 50 percent more secure than current versions, the Firefox rebellion is finished. If IE 7 has tabs, Firefox will be destroyed as surely as the Hungarian uprising of 1956 was crushed by Russia. I use the analogy deliberately, too--no one expected Microsoft to issue a standalone version of IE, but those months of silence (and, no doubt, frantic development) look awfully ominous now. This is a company that's absorbed Justice Department lawsuits, threats of daily fines from the European Union, and lawsuits from nearly every state in the union, and that has steadfastly refused to break up its republic of Windows-IE-Windows Media. But this Firefox thing must have it fearing the domino effect, big time.
It was bad when Microsoft seemed to ignore Firefox, treating it like a harmless upstart not worthy of comment or attack. But now that the sleeping giant has awakened, I think the buzzing gnat of the browser wars is about to be squashed flat. What do you think?
See post #78
Sorry, I'm happy with Firefox and the Pinstripe theme.
The great thing about standards is there are so many to choose from.
I consider that to be a side-effect, actually. THe primary benefit of Firefox is that it's simply better.
Opera is pretty good as well, and so is Safari, Camino, and whatever other alternative browsers are out there. The best way to fix what IE has wrought is not to just replace it with another megalithic browser, but to get a lot of separate browsers, each one rendering webpages according to W3C standards. That way the browsers can compete on features and speed, instead of monopolizing the way the web is rendered.
This allows you to group pages in a single window. You can even create a bookmark for a series of pages, and have them all open up at once in a single window, each in their own tab. For more details click Here
I generally run with about 12-20 tabs open due to the nature of the way I work. It makes my life so much easier that there is no way I'd consider using anything that didn't have similar functionality.
LOL
They could start with that "obscure" http://www.w3.org/ group. (They belong to it, FWIW.)
I.E. 7 Gates last gasp, he's buying time while his engineers try and steal Firefox, MS only steals they don't develope.
Firefox will dominate
Every single claim that Wood makes hasn't been true for at least a year and a half now. As for interoperability, I have yet to find a site which doesn't work, and I'm a very heavy web user. The last holdout for me was a bank website, which simily wouldn't accept any browser except IE -- so I told Firefox to fib and claim it was IE, and the site worked just fine.
IE7? Sure, just like Windows 98 "improved" Windows 95 -- man, one of the happiest days in my life was when Win98 exited my home....
I really doubt that. I haven't found it superior in any way to Avant Browser, which is basically an upgrade of the IE "kernel," if you will. I don't (as they say) have a dog in this hunt, it's just based on hundreds and hundreds of hours of usage.
The author of this essay makes a central point: it works, we know how to use it. Plus, in earlier threads, I said that Ff would prove to have its own bugs and holes once its profiles were raised. I was treated to some pretty arrogant scorning for my thoughts -- and then along came several articles making just that very case.
I had a website that Ff wouldn't (and still won't) read. I reported it as a bug. I got back the response that it wasn't a bug, it was improperly coded, so Ff would not be changed.
Proper, improper -- what do I care? I just want to read the page.
Avant does it, Ff doesn't. Avant has about all the features I want, Ff doesn't.
It's really about as simple as that.
Dan
Thanks for the tip - I didn't know Acrobat Reader 7 was available yet, and after my miserable experiences with 6.x I wasn't too eager to upgrade anyway. I'll download it and give it a try.
When I use FF I have had a problem navigating to a few of the sites I have bookmarked. The page only loads partially or else the links on the page are not operable.
FF has a problem with Active X, which is MS programming (IIRC).
On those kinds of pages, I open IE.
If I ran Cnet I'd be very suspicious of having someone so damned lazy, a child with the "are we there yet?" mentality, on my payroll.
There's a couple of IE looking skins available to help ease the Hellish torment of transition.
(The flag background I learned how to add much later, and here I am to tell the tale, ain't that sumpin'?) 
Much of the security , as I see it , is that Firefox has NOT implemented Active X, where a lot of the malware gets in. I think to implement Active X, Firefox would have to be imbedded in XP, like IE is, and then it would have the same security problems.!
IE7 will be full of holes like every Windows product. Microsoft released 12 new security patches last week alone for Windows XP.
www.getfirefox.com
You will never go back.
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