I am neutral in this fight, but I suspect if Firefox gets even remotely close to the usage of IE, you will get the hackers interest and viruses and worms will be written to take advantages of its weaknesses. Just because people aren't writing code to attack Firefox, doesn't mean it is invulnerable.
An oft repeated myth, but it doesn't get any more true the more it's repeated.
Just because people aren't writing code to attack Firefox, doesn't mean it is invulnerable.
Of course not. Firefox has it's share of bugs. But they will less nasty because it's not imbedded into the OS, it's built by a group of developers that believe that standards are more important than marketshare and that reliability and usability are more important that market domination.
Fierfox maintains more seperation from the operating system than Ie does and because of this its far easier to write an Ie exploit which will affect the underlying Operating system.
Firefox does have weaknesses, but there's one main structural difference that will always separate them. Firefox is it's own application and own renderer, running with the priviliges of the user. IE's "engine" (mshtml.dll) is a system-level library, fully capable of hosing the system should it be compromized. Add to that the fact that many applications, such as Outlook, use that same engine to give multiple angles of attack for the same security hole.