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MSN's Slate Recommends Firefox over IE
brightertimes writes "That's right folks, Slate (Microsoft's on-line magazine) recently printed an article enitled "Are the Browser Wars Back?
How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer.""
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Microsoft released a security advisory that recommends temporarilly installing and using Linux as the simplest way to prevent the latest nasty internet worm. The windowsupdate.com website now redirects to debian.org, a sure sign that the two-year-long "Security Initiative" at Microsoft is finally being taken seriously. Company insiders say a patch will likely be out "in a few weeks tops" so that customers will be able to return to using Microsofts' superior product. According to a Microsoft spokesperson, the fact that you will be able to seamlessly continue your work using OpenOffice, Firefox and WINE is proof of the company's committment to standards conformance and interopability.
Someone didn't get the memo from old Billy boy to not diss company products.
another one joins the bandwagon...
Cheers!
Erick
http://www.busyweather.com/
..who's surprised? Soon we will obsolete their OS too. =)
Girls are strange. They don't come with a man page.
-- Michael Mattsson
I switched the other day (yeah, I'm going to get my geek card revoked), and firefox kicks some serious ass. I didn't switch in the past because I need some of the features of IE for our app at work, but now I only use IE for that. Anyone using IE should just switch, no questions asked.
Yes, I am an agent of Satan, but my duties are largely ceremonial.
Where did all this snow come from??
I highly doubt that the author of this article will keep his job, when a while ago, a Microsoft employee >a href='http://www.macnn.com/news/21786'>got fired for taking pictures of shipments of Macs
got sig?
Here and I thought those sounds were from the 4th of July fireworks......
I boycott signatures
All in all, this is not really surprising, although it is certainly not good news for Microsoft.
The right to offend is far more important than the right not to be offended. (Rowan Atkinson)
Talk about saving users from themselves.
Microsoft is just looking for a way to convince courts they're not a monopoply.
Ignore this thread. It was probably started up by an MS buff to use reverse psychology to ttrick ppl to read it. If you read the article it concludes by slating Firefox because it does not have suffient users and is therefore not applicable as a target by virus writers. This assumption is in fact false. There are many underlying attibuted shared by all browsers, many of them which are vulnerable in IE, and guess what - they are not vulnerable in Firefox. In other words, the same problems are likely to occur in both browsers if thety are equals. They do not. They only occur in IE becase though IE has always been a fast browser in my oppionion, it ultimatlely sucks as it is so insecure.
Thankyou
I've always thought Microsoft made the best keyboards and mice, but second-rate everything else. Turns out that they also deserve credit for making content sites.
I'm generally "Interesting," "Insightful," and even "Funny" here. What the hell happens to me at parties?
When your own people give in and recommend a rival browser, it seems they are admitting the security issues in IE are basically unfixable. This does raise an interesting query - does this mean MS will be less likely to attempt repairing the flaws, ceding some interim revenue to a free competitor that right now is no threat at all, and devote more resources to Longhorn's IE version/replacement?
However - I think they are making a mistake in that philosophy (if it IS there philosophy), in so far as much if they try and forceably tie people down to their platform then corporates and government departments will rebel against microsoft. Some already are - there will be more. Also if FireFox/Mozilla becomes the standard browser it could lead the way to a migration away from the Windows OS.
Microsoft have made mistakes concerning the global village paradigm before - I think they are doing it again now.
Web Sig: Eddy Currents
...he says that on Firefox the fancy popup menus don't appear, and after loading up explorer I see what's missing...the exact same functionality that countless free cross browser AND cross platform javascript/dhtml popup scripts provide (for example, young pups ypSlideoutMenu which is used on the Blender foundations' homepage).
I think it's another case of Microsoft making stuff look crap in other browsers for no good reason.
Haven't tried it on a mac yet, but I'm betting it looks like ass in safari too.
I am NaN
MSIE is incredibly far behind, in standards compliance, features, usability, and security. Basically, MSIE hasn't improved much since 4.0, which I think is more than 7 years old. Continuing to use MSIE means a serious degradation of the user experience. Apparently, it's so bad that even Microsoft's subsidiaries are jumping ship. I wonder why Microsoft has let it come this far.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
If it had come out last week and directly from Microsoft I would have agreed.
From the article: Whether or not you do, US-CERT advises increasing your Internet Explorer security settings, per Microsoft's instructions. (Alas, the higher setting disables parts of Slate's interface.)
Sorry, you seem to have misspelled "Alas, the higher setting highlights Slate's use of insecure and nonstandard features." You might want to have that keyboard checked.
Moderate drunk! It's more fun that way!
"But for now, there's safety in numbers--the lack of them, that is. Internet Explorer is used by 95 percent of the world. Firefox's fan base adds up to 2 or 3 percent at most. Which browser do you think the Russian hackers are busily trying to break into again?"
That is an interesting way to see it. Blame IE's popularity!
You know what the hardest part of this is? Getting those computer-illiterate people who you support to use Firefox.
I've been trying to get my dad to use it (with threats like, "when the russian mafia gets your credit card because you were using IE, don't complain to me"...) but it doesn't work. And he's not terribly illiterate. I can't imagine trying to explain to my girlfriend's grandparents, "Ok, Don't click on the blue E anymore... click on the icon that looks like an orange fox"... they would never do it.
As nice as Firefox is, it's going to be an uphill battle to get those illiterate folks to switch.
I half expected that MS would dump IE, but I think this article somewhat validates my thoughts.
The very fact that this was published on MSN must hit at deep rumbling in the MS camp. IE users are, quite frankly, sick of IE. The recent warning from the US government must have been the last nail in IE's PR coffin. People now know other browsers are out there, and have begun to download them. MS issued a hasty patch after Homelland security recommendations for another browser, but it seems they won't upgrade IE functionality until Longhorn, 3 years away! That will mean IE will have spent 6 years in development limbo.
Or then again this could be a lone cowboy at MSN, eager to leave for the fresh pastures of The Register.
I reckon MS will soon dump IE in favour of a new browsers, or maybe a new 'kind' of browser(.NEt based, XAML interface anyone?). Maybe MSN client?
Tellingly IE still runs off version numbers IE5, IE6, whereas most MS apps run off the 98,2000,XP versioning scheme. These are my crackpot prediction for a rumour hungry world.
May the Maths Be with you!
I want to iterate the above..
If you read the article (wolf in sheeps clothing) it knocks Firefox because it has fewer users and therefore hacks for IE are far more lucrative than for Firefox - True.
Does this mean there are as many potential hacks for Firefoxs - No, False, in my opinion. Why?
Because the types of hacks found in Ie are fundamental mistakes in design that would be universal to ANY browser if they were on the same par. They are not. These fundamental mistakes have not been made by the othere -especially the OSS browsers. This is because, as I have always said - OSS software is open to the world and gets more scrutiny. Major problems a re found earlier.
However, the makers of Firefox should not rest on their laurels...
Mozilla crew can not be bothered making comments on why people should use there product over other browsers.
A friend of the team replied "they are too busy getting it right".
Next on : "MS programmer fired and replaced by spin doctor".
-- forget
``Firefox is built and distributed free by the Mozilla Organization, a small nonprofit corporation spun off last year from the fast-fading remnants of Netscape''
I was under the impression that the Mozilla Organization was quite a bit older than that. Didn't the mozilla.org effort start in 1998 sometime?
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
I switched both my parents over to firefox and it took them over a month to notice. They wanted to know why IE had a funny embryoish logo in the top left heh. I had switched the firefox icon over to the IE one and set up an IE theme on it. Really I havn't seen a single example of somthing IE does better than fire fox. The only limitations I've noticed are on web sites designed ONLY to work with IE like the mcafee web site.
I'm doing just fine with Netscape Navigator Gold 1.0
I found this really nifty application called Comparator made by Vansath Dharmaraj -- it's basically a test browser with a split view: the top one is the page rendered in IE, the bottom one is the page rendered using Mozilla (which comes back to say Mozilla-powered browsers such as Firefox).
That, along with Firefox extensions IE View and Web Developer makes coding websites compatible in both IE and Mozilla browsers a hell of a lot easier.
A computer makes it possible to do, in half an hour, tasks which were completely unnecessary to do before.
To quote the artical. "Firefox development and testing are mostly done by about a dozen Mozilla employees, plus a few dozen others at companies like IBM, Sun, and Red Hat. I've been using it for a week now, and I've all but forgotten about Explorer."
Looks like I'm in that 1 in 12, who are the other 11 people? they must have lots of aliases.
thank God the internet isn't a human right.
You're laughing, but someone at Slate is going to lose their job over this article. It's reminiscent of nothing in my short term memory, related to Microsoft.
The dangers of knowledge trigger emotional distress in human beings.
Maybe this is a way for Microsoft fans to get their favorite browser, IE, to be updated?
Guess there is no chance that MS would ditch IE and use FireFox instead huh?
So IE has vulnerabilities that are exploited all the time by crackers and script kiddies, but isn't that mainly due to software having its inherient holes and bugs? Every piece of software out there has its bugs, whether we know about them or not. Given that IE has a commanding lead on the browser platform, doesn't that just give people a reason to target IE? No one likes #1, and when you're at the top, you're constantly fighting people's criticism and attacks.
So my question is, when Firefox gets to be #1, won't that just shift the attacks to Firefox?
Live forever, or die trying.
I read an interview a few years ago with some senior MS exec. in the server OS division. I'm don't remember all the details or have a link.
He was asked about how the subject in question might affect the home OS line (e.g. Win 98/ME) . He responded "I don't deal with toy operating systems" or something similar (he definetly used the "toy" word). I thought that was hilarious, but it did not generate a fuss at the time.
${YEAR+1} is going to be the year of Linux on the desktop!
I have been using FireFox for a long while. It's great.
But then, i don't think it has been designed with security in mind as much as convenience, exactly the same predicament that made IE such a huge security hole. There is auto-install of plug-ins, there is auto-install of skins - i kind of have a hard time believing that all of these were written by people wrecking their brains about possible exploits. [if you know different, let me know]
With IE, we know it's broken beyond fixing. With FireFox, we don't know. It has not been tested, as it has not been the target of serious malware writers.
Imagine - unlikely as it may be - FireFox wins the new browser war. Will it still be safe? IMHO, only a real security model like the one built into Java can really protect users.
And from working with that, i know that it places lots of seemingly unnecessary and annoying constraints on development and web apps.
In related news, the editor for slate magazine was fired: Wednesday, June 30, 2004, at 11:04 AM
Takes bazooka ... Aims at foot ... Wham!
:-)
Maybe Microsoft has actually taken seriously that memo about increasing security.
Or they didn't and the site was hax0red and fixed up
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Hmmm, I solve this problem by deleting the blue E. I explain to them they can still get IE from windows explorer, which they do at first, but eventually laziness wins the day.
Play Command HQ online
What would be really great is if the Firefox team could build ActiveX wrappers mapping the integration of IE into third-party apps (like QuickBooks and FranklinCovey). This would allow companies to obliterate IE from their organizations.
Even here, a note is made about ActiveX:
:).
;): they don't have the possibility to use ActiveX.
ActiveX was meant to make it easy to add the latest interactive multimedia and other features to sites, but instead it's become a tool for sneaking spyware onto unsuspecting PCs.
Now, we all know that ActiveX, a technology that has been around for years and years, is perfectly insecure. Moreover, now there are other ways to do most things that ActiveX achieves: Java apps, server side scripting (with, let's say, PHP) and many more. Secure ones.
So what? We have better alternatives. Microsoft obviously won't drop ActiveX support from IE until someone still asks for it. Then, the problem is with companies and sites that make use of them.
It's strange that someone would still be using something that's not portable, and an increasing audience won't be able to benefit from (if they follow CERT raccomandations, at least
At last, I think that sooner or later ActiveX will disappear (given Microsoft doesn't try some horrible marketing move), because no-one wise will use it. Many users have been educated to click "NO" to those popups requiring you to install a BHO... so new site will have an hard battle against users' suspicion. The problem here is: will Microsoft let this happen, or has it some interest in keeping a buggy technology alive?
I remember it were just for one reason I switched to Mozilla Suite (no, Firefox just doesn't suits me
PS: also the pop-up blocking thingie has been useful, but I am a Mozilla user since before it was introduced.
42.
At this point Microsoft needs FireFox. Without a browser alternative the ONLY safe recomendation would be to remove Windows. At least with FireFox as an alternative to IE (and ThunderBird for Outlook) Microsoft can remain as the desktop operating system.
Without FireFox the safe solution is to get rid of Windows and that is Microsofts worst nightmare. So for now Microsoft will be happy that FireFox exists and that Windows remains as the desktop platform.
Seems interesting that they bash IE and talk about all the cool features Firefox has, when XP SP2 with a revamped IE (with many features that firefox has, some look extremely similar *rip-off*) is going to be out very soon....
They will get everyone on board with Firefox, then release the exploit to the script kiddie masses. They will make sure the same exploit isn't available to IE. They will wait until peoples' machines start getting infected with [whatever] and say "Those using Microsoft IE are not affected by the vulnerability."
There's no other marketable reason.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I was returning to Canada from US last February and I need to print some PDF forms (since I don't have PR card) from the Canadian Immigration site so I can board my plane. This was a last minute thing and I have to run to the consulate to have it processed and stamped before heading for the airport. The problem was I couldn't download the damn PDF file and the page is giving me some server-side error message. After minutes of panicking, I opened an alpha of Firefox sitting in some old directories, downloaded the PDF successfully, finished my paperwork, and flew home. There were several times that something like that has happened and I always use Firefox to solve it. And I'll be using it more often if not my work requires IE6.
They've got some work to do, yet. I just installed firefox again, and the setup crashed... not a great start :)
My web site gets about 1200 visitors/day and I track the stats on browsers used... although it's only 4 days of data, my stats are showing that 25.5% of my visitors use Mozilla. This is a huge increase over the norm, which is around 16% Mozilla.
Could this be a diversion tactic from MS ?
To get the OSS people's attention focused on this small victory ?
European Linux user, living in Antwerp
Their reputation is so bad right now that without a clear admission of how bad it is nobody will believe them when they announce SP2 "fixes everything".
I notice the timing is really close to SP2 coming out ...
Or, maybe I've been reading /. too long ...
It's not like IE is a profit-center for Microsoft anyway;
they make all their money from Office and the O/S itself.
What's to stop them from scrapping IE6, and replacing it
with a Firefox derivative labelled "IE7" ?
(no doubt accompanied with lots of unconvincing spin
about how they're cool now with open-sizzource, 'yo)
>;k
Notice at the end of the article he basically says that regardless of anything good about Firefox its really a better choice since it has such a small market share - which is what makes it secure. Basically he seems to be saying that Firefox is security through obscurity rather than good design practices which MS didnt completely adhere to. Nice political dodge for the author.
I was crazy back when being crazy really meant something. (Charles Manson)
Some interactive features designed exclusively for Internet Explorer won't appear, such as the pop-up menus on Slate's table of contents.
I get this statement as an attempt to slightly discredit Firefox. The article conveniently fails to emphasize that this lack of interoperability is the site designer's fault, and instead presents the Internet Explorer exclusive feature in an innocent manner. Bleh, what can you expect from Microsoft?
Audioscrobbler
MS gives IE away for free, but there are free alternatives like Firefox. If you want the "Real Thing", you must pay for it *and* its development. So many competing internal projects, one way to get attention/funding/support is to raise more outsider awareness and support, influencing the influencers to begin chanting "We want a new IE, better, faster and we are willing to pay for it".
Dunno.
I don't like IE any more than anyone else around here - and I use Mozilla exclusively, but come on...
A server-side error is a server-side error and no matter what browser you use, that won't change. What more likely happened was that during you're panic-time, the admins fixed whatever was causing the server-side error.
Seems there's a little astroturfing campaign going on. See here for instance. Again with the plugins bashing.
</tinfoil hat, and all that>
Belief is the currency of delusion.
Well it's interesting to see that an MSN run website has slammed Internet Explorer, and spent some time extolling the virtues of Firefox, which is indeed surprising at first glance. But in many ways, there is one other important factor to consider.
Even Microsoft *knows* that Internet Explorer is antiquated. They pulled developers off it years ago, and afaik have only recently started some work on it. It displays none of the features that all the modern competitive browsers have, and has FAR more security issues than possibly any other browser.
But at the end of the day, they don't care. It doesn't provide them any revenue, so they don't really give a damn about what features you want. It comes free with every OS they distribute, and it doesn't have advertising panels or anything like that, so it doesn't really matter to them what browser you decide to use with their OS, you're still using their OS.
And that's another thing to consider. Until they bother undertaking a vast overhaul of Internet Explorer (which they may not even do), they know that users will be vulnerable to all sorts of these problems that keep reoccuring. So in some ways it can be construed as a good idea for them to move you to other browsers, especially free ones like Mozilla where they do not provide another company with revenue. This will keep their users much safer, and at the end of the day, I think that's what this is about. Their users. You can use any browser you want on their OS, but again, you're still using Windows.
Consider the two scenarios. You get extremely frustrated with all the viruses and bugs that Internet Explorer throws up, and you decide that you've had enough. What are your options?
With those choices in mind, which would you expect Microsoft to prefer? ;)
My dad was contracting for microsoft a couple years back, writing software for their speaker installation or something along those lines. It turns out that, without fail, almost ever microsoft peripheral actually generates a loss. The entire hardware department was, more or less, held up on the basis of the microsoft mouse alone. Of course, it's generally in Microsofts best interest to produce everything, even if they don't stand to make money with it
Incidently, the speakers tanked. Not bad at all (managed to scam a free set) but cost double what anything else on the market at the time did more or less based on the fact they where USB (this was just about the time USB was getting off the ground).
The Neo-Bohemian Techno-Socialist
I was looking at my website's logs today. Here's what I found for June:
MSIE: 52.0%
Mozilla: 27.4%
Now for this month, July: MSIE: 48.1%
Mozilla: 32.9%
Yes, it's only the first five days of July. But still, it looks like a pattern to me. (btw: OS stats are 68% Windows, 18.5% Linux)
My Systems
I'm not as impressed as you are. Paul Boutin is still dismissive, insulting and pulling the party line. He gives the wrong reasons for using Firebird and stops short of placing blame where it belongs. It's not just the browser, it's the OS that's got problems.
Here's a flamebait quote:
You've probably been told to dump Internet Explorer for a Mozilla browser before, by the same propeller-head geek who wants you to delete Windows from your hard drive and install Linux. You've ignored him, and good for you.
Paul does not go on to tell us why anyone who did not dump Windows after Melissa should be happy. Instead he gives us the now usual FUD equating M$ and Linux security and the M$'s lame excuse for poor security:
Even Mozilla's spokespeople stress that no software can be guaranteed to be safe, and that Firefox's XPInstall system could conceivably be tricked into installing a keystroke logger instead of Sun's Java engine. But for now, there's safety in numbersâ"the lack of them, that is. Internet Explorer is used by 95 percent of the world. Firefox's fan base adds up to 2 or 3 percent at most. Which browser do you think the Russian hackers are busily trying to break into again?
Sorry Paul, this normal user is very happy to have dumped Windoze 98 in favor of Red Hat and Debian years ago. I've had perfectly usable browsers, email clients, digital music, and everything else I've ever wanted with far less hastle and trouble than my Windoze suffering peers and relatives. The browser is just the tip of the iceburg. I've enjoyed stable systems that stay up longer than my utility company's electricity, and a plethora of superior programs and features without having to drive to a store and periodically "rebuild" my computers. Learning Linux has been easy, fun and never required me to wear a propeller on my head.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
...image blocking and adblock. Then you can get around all them nifty ads on Slate and MSN!
chill
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"What You Should Know About Download.Ject"y /incident/downlo ad_ject.mspx)
;)
(http://www.microsoft.com/securit
Nice. Security on a need to know basis...
Privacy is terrorism.
When someone complains to me about spyware, I first tell them about Ad-aware and then I tell them to install Firefox. I also explain to them, that since I installed Firefox, I haven't had a problem with adware. This gets all the time.
Microsoft didn't care about browsers until Netscape and Java. Then they saw that the future might be a commodity OS running a browser as the interface to the apps (running on a server).
If Microsoft doesn't control the browser, it doesn't control that interface. Windows becomes very easy to replace.
And there goes Microsoft's monopoly.
Too much trust in Paladium? Microsoft has placed far too much stock in it's monopoly position. With auto-updating able to break Mozilla and every other competitor on their platform, they have not taken competition seriously. Any program can be made to perform worse than the M$ equivalent. As all of this "signed" code is equated with "security", M$'s ability to keep competition off their platform will increase. When they put it into the BIOS they think they will be able to keep everyone else away forever. A year ago, they thought they had things so wrapped up they could shove down licensing plans that made the old mainframes look cheap.
It's not happening the way they wanted it. Corporate users balked at the new licensing. Hardware makers don't like the idea of hardware being "free" as in cost and fail to share M$'s vision. Microsoft's users are going to keep jumping ship because Microsoft did not put their resources where they should have. All of their anti-competitive activities have been a huge waste of resources and their products are showing it off. Their competitors have continued to improve and now have obviously superior products that people want. It's all over for them.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
I mean look at it this way - IE gains them nothing but trouble these days. It did its work but really bought them nothing - no server monopolies, no MSN domination, no 'Windows for Toasters' and all the other things we knew Bill was plotting when he evetually realised the Internet wasn't some fad. From one perspective its now just money down the drain, but with anti-trust and security problems thrown on top.
http://update.mozilla.org/extensions/?application= firefox
Look for "IE View" (yep, still in beta).
"Adds "View page in Internet Explorer" links to the content and link context menu. Handy for previewing pages in IE, loading up IE-only pages when you run across them in Mozilla, etc."
So you can still run everything in FireFox and then open IE from FireFox for those sites that require it.
Sorry bud, I set things up for other people too. My wife is very happy with Debian and has been for years. Last week I set up my next door neighbor with Mepis. She's an Interior design professor at LSU, and is also happy to leave the world of Windoze behind.
The flood of user conversions is on.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
It's not like his eZine was dissing Windows XP or MS Office. The article still derides Free Software advocates by calling them "propeller headed geeks" and so on, and does suggest Firefox is somewhat less capable than IE because the fancy menus on Slate do not work (even though there are definitely platform-agnostic methods to achieve the exact same effect). Despite that, the article is very favourable to Mozilla's stable of products which is nice.
Anyways I don't think anyone will lose their jobs over this:
* IE doesn't make MS any money--it has been bundled into Windows XP so there is no lost revenue (at least for the short and medium term) if users switch en masse to another browser.
* MS has integrated IE into Windows so tightly that you cannot avoid it. You need IE to run Windows update, and a lot of software uses IE DLLs to function (even a lot of third party Windows-based software). Using Firefox to browse web pages doesn't completely obsolete IE
* Microsoft is doing enough on its own to obsolete IE--in fact they seem to encourage anything that will obsolete it. IE development has basically been abandoned since Windows XP was released (and even before 2002 there was little improvement). The Slate article just helps things along a bit.
* Anything that makes a Microsoft property look like it isn't part of a big machine bent on world domination is welcome--especially if it doesn't have a meaningful impact on the bottome line.
So that leaves one thought: Why does MS seem to be abandoning IE?
I think it has already been touched on by some here. Web browsing and other internet-related tasks are being integrated even further into future versions of Windows. Longhorn is supposed to be re-worked top to bottom to incorporate XML-based protocols, better support distributed computing technology (web services and so on). What is your machine and what is the internet is supposed to become almost seamless.
In achieving that goal IE has to disappear in BillG's eyes. Not only that, (X)HTML has to recede into the background as well--it is a document markup language at its roots and is poorly suited to development of highly interactive applications. Never mind that there are vendor-neutral/open standards emerging (XForms, XUL, SVG, etc)--they are not yet as established as HTML. MS sees this as a new opportunity to use Longhorn to establish an MS-controlled platform again using XAML and Avalon.
I think that BillG himself actually despises IE. The design is antiquated and insecure at its heart. The code probably gets more and more unmanageable with time judging by how often one patch sometimes creates other bugs. First and formost, however, by throwing resources as IE microsoft would prolong what it sees as "yesterday's Internet". Ideally, Longhorn would be released without any visible indication of a separate browser and enough HTML support to make existing sites function. As Longhorn grows in market share, MS hopes that sites start incorporating MS-specific protocols like XAML to transform websites into really interactive, whiz-bang internet applications that break completely in IE or Mozilla or any other mere browser on a competing or obsolete platform.
No, there will be no firings at Slate over this editorial stance. Far from it--it is probably quite compatible with the Chief Architect's long-term vision.
When Microsoft wanted to make a browser, they made a partnership with Opera. They then proceeded to take the source, change the interface, and rename it to Microsoft Internet Explorer.
Internet Explorer is just Opera
The problem is, Internet Explorer is a freely-available application, and Windows is not. Microsoft isn't stupid - they really have nothing to lose by letting this little upstart get some breathing room - it'll make their massive changes in Longhorn seem more "revolutionary" for those who have been away for awhile, such as "basic features which IE should have had 7 years ago" and "latest extension which prevents a horrible security risk". You know, fun stuff.
There's also a full page spread about CERT's advice on page 3 of today's Independent, which can also be read online.
Allergy advice: Contains eggs.
MS can't drop ActiveX without redoing Windows Update - IIRC the article even points this out. It would be a pretty chunky service pack to totally replace the current update system, and they'd probably have to wait until the service pack after that one to remove ActiveX support in case the update-changing SP is broken.
I just installed Firefox and love it- am wondering if there is an equivalently well-designed freeware for designing web-pages so I don't have to keep using MS Frontpage. Any help? --j
A bunch of other slashdot folk have pointed out bits and pieces of this puzzle, but let's see what happens when we put it all together:
1. The new standards, XML, etc, are going to be controlled as much outside the browser, by the productivity suite, as they will be within it. The standards for basic browsers have more or less solidified at this point. There's no more control to be taken here.
2. The browser market has been driven into the ground. There's no money to be made here anymore, as decent free alternatives are available, and the market has gotten used to not paying for their browser. There won't be another Netscape threat.
3. The whole "browser as your desktop" idea has faded away. MS is no longer in danger of losing its OS or productivity-suite sales to a browser company.
Put all of this together and you've got the reason why MS doesn't really give a crap if people use IE or not anymore. But why go the extra step of taking it down?
1. Even in its recommendation, the article is a backhanded compliment at best. Very much in the league of "If you have to switch, this one will work." Which leads to a setup for the future version of IE.. "All the features of Firefox, plus..." which of course will only be able to run properly on the new Longhorn system.
2. IE's security problems have really started to hit the mainstream. The article isn't telling folks anything that wasn't known already, but lets MSN Slate look like a wonderfully independant publication while doing so.
Most importantly:
3. IE doesn't make them money anyway. At this point, the various holes are costing them more than IE provides them both in actual dollars in support and programmer hours that have to be devoted to containing the mess, and in PR.
So it's really to Microsoft's interest at this point to get people *off* of IE, especially to something simple that they'll be able to easily port settings from for the new version. The only thing that might keep them there is stubborn pride. If cooler heads have prevailed in the boardroom, expect to see more on these lines from Microsoft sources.
That Jesus Christ guy is getting some terrible lag... it took him 3 days to respawn! -NJ CoolBreeze
Why the big deal? Just because a publication is owned by a company does not mean that it has to be a propaganda peddler. The New York Times and Slashdot are/were owned by media companies. Did they become solely dedicated to shoving that company down people's throats? No. Does Microsoft's ownership of MSN change anything?
I think a better example would be Opera, Konqueror, or Safari.
I have to give Microsoft credit on this move... They know that no smart person listens to what they say so they advertise Firefox in order to push people away from it and move back to what they "don't" recommend... IE
It's like when your mom decides she likes rap too and you have to burn every 50 Cent CD in your collection because of it...
Business \Busi"ness\, n.;
A scam in which all people involved perceive as beneficial...
...now he has to find a new job!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
The average consumer won't go looking for that article, and they know it.
Correct. Skip the direct article link and go straight to slate (ouch!) by typing www.slate.com into your web browser.
Even looking for it, it took me a while to find the headline. Finally I did. It says: "Webhead: Mozilla vs. the Explorer Monster," and it's accompanied by a picture of a plastic godzilla toy. Who the heck is gonna click on that?
...because NO ONE on /. ever resorts to inside jokes or comments, especially not from pop culture that appeals specifically to a geek cult base...
"People should get beat up for stating their beliefs."
Uhm, the phrase "pointy haired bosses" doesn't have any meaning whatsoever outside the context of Dilbert.
Obviously, you've never worked for a big company.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
from-the-no-sh!7-sherlock dept but the dept this is currently assigned to will do the trick.
Even if you are MS, you have got to admit to using other browsers until MS fixes IE. It is pure logic.
ChozSun
ChozSun.com
.... realize this is a tactic of competition by MS.
Realizing they are gaining an ever increasing degree of mistrust by the consumerk, they simply figure that if they attach themselves and there perception of mistrust to Firefox.... then they can create enough confusion in the minds of the consumer, as to what the consumer mind trusts...... then it becomes a crap shoot (playing the odds of chance) to maintain at least a part of the market.
And of course maybe everyone was already leaving IE anyway and MS just decided to make it look like it was their idea and of course creating/maintaining the illusion that people follow what MS says...
Or maybe MS just had some "Black-Scholes Formula" in marketing that has turned bad all around (like the trillion dollar bet -- search google)....and they have yet to realize their marketing mouth has gingivitis...
So, the scenario is like this?
/. guys: Psha, just because half of all people don't use IE doesn't mean that it's still not a monopoly! Those trickerous fiends! They've pulled the wool over the public's eyes yet again!
MS board room: "I have a great idea: let's let our market share slip down to 50% by letting our products stagnate! Then people won't be able to say we're a monopoly any more (since we won't be)! What great business geniuses we are!"
I think it's far more plausible that MS is just utterly lazy.
All these Windows viruses are actually a good thing in the long run. They force users to get educated on computer security (well, most of them) and make them start looking for alternatives.
A few weeks ago I asked my brother how his new Dell was, and he told me that he had downloaded Mozilla (on his own! he's a computer n00b) because IE6 kept "fucking up" (lol his own words) and he got "sick of that shit". He had downloaded the big Mozilla browser, however, not Firefox.
Honestly, computer users are too stupid (or just don't care) about "standards" and "compatibility". They want something that works, and when something breaks, they're going to move onto something else.
Firefox today, Linux tomorrow. Eventually people will learn that IE6 isn't the whole problem, it's Windows. You'll soon see articles within a year and a half pushing the use of Linux into the mainstream, and Windows will start losing its stronghold on the market.
This will be shortly before Longhorn is released, and by the time it is, it won't matter. Longhorn's requirements will be so massive that people will not want to buy a new computer just to use Microsoft's "latest and greatest" when they can run Linux at no cost, and not have to buy a new machine, not to mention top-notch security to boot.
It's already starting to happen - look at KDE and GNOME. Both are very user friendly and very point-click-drool interfaces. Not to mention alot prettier than XP...
You'll see... Linux's time is coming...
What about all those links that used to be preinstalled on IE ?
Am i wrong ?
Reminds me of the media player model. Lots of links to websites. Maybe some kickbacks for hits on websites?
The reason IE is so insecure is the fact that Microsoft was levraging it's monopoly. IE, is so inscure because of the way Microsoft leveraged their monopoly to try an take over the internet. The PC industry was growing fast enough, that if only some users of Netscape switched, AND all new PC's were sold with IE on them, they would be able to win the browser war. That was a given for Microsoft. They would win. So the question was, what to do with the win? Perpetuate the monopoly and hijack the internet. ActiveX will only run on windows. Let's make a world where all websites that matter, use ActiveX. Let's break standards so that websites that work in IE, won't work well in other browsers. We have enough programmers, that we cna hijack the standards and everone else will play catchup. So by adding ActiveX, making the user experience easy and good looking, with security as a side note, Mircosoft created IE, which by the way had to be intergrated into the OS as a pretence so that the Department of Justice could not ask them to remove it for a default windows install. The browser is really a few dll's that anyone can use to manipulate html. So it's strenghts are your strenghts, and it's weaknesses are your weaknesses. The file explorer, Internet Explorer, Outlook Epxress, are all built on an intregrated together via these DLL's. You can use a secuirty weakness in any one component aganist the others. Time has proven that ActiveX and breaking web standards was a bad idea that is only now starting not to pay off for Microsoft.
vi +
The fact of the matter is: IE is free. Just as free as mozilla. MS won't come straight out and say, "Use Mozilla" because that would be retarded. But they don't care if everyone goes to Mozilla. MS was interested in winning the original browser wars because they were afraid it would destroy their desktop market. Now that losing is no longer a fear, they can safely move away from free application development and focus on their core competancy: OS development. They can let Mozilla develop all they want, and integrate Mozilla at a later date.
hrrm.
I wouldn't pick Opera either. Opera 7 had its share of security problems.
Konquerer, Firefox - thats the way to go!
They're not developing IE because they're developing Windows.
XAML will be built into Windows, not part of something separate called IE.
N4st0r, trixx0r h0bb1tz0rz! Th3y st0l3 0ur pr3c10uzz!
No one seems to realise that a very fast and nice concoction of Gecko (Mozilla/Firefox's rendering engine) with a simplistic Win32 UI called K-Meleon is available and provides a very fast and snappy browser in Windows. Since it uses quicklaunch, you don't need to wait for ages to start it, as oppossed to FireFox. I like it anyway :)
Java applets are just as bad unfortunately. Once they are trusted they no longer run in the sandbox.
Well for one thing, ActiveX controls need to be trusted completely to run at all. You can either give some website root access to your box (basically), or see nothing at all.
With java, an applet can do most everything you'd want an applet to do, without any extra security rights at all. and contrary to what you've said, Java has a very granular security model. You can grant very specific rights, such as the right to read and write to one specific file, or read the files in one specific directory, make a network connection to a specific machine, etc.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
The whole article is damage control, and FUD.
.exe" like he never though of that trick, and it isnt really important
It shimmers over "not installing
Well one thing he deserves applause for: "Microsoft wiped out Netscape in the Browser Wars of the late 1990s not only because the company's management pushed the bounds of business ethics"
It mentiones "without a user knowladge" but fails to adress it as an issue, instead blaiming sneaky spyware writers.
It then mentions Firefox, isnt a "one-click" (Didnt amazon patent that? they should watch using those words) install, because it needs "plugins" ans for java you need to go to "Sun" (who?)
And the obvious "youll still need IE for the trusty MS update teehee" and and the final worrd is ofcourse-we-didnt-do-it.: "Just watch firefox become popular adn the spyware will eat yur breeen too muahaha."
Escuse me while this "propellor-head" goes back to programming his (free) PVR, on his (free) OS of choice, after this session in a (free) browser to await the coming arrival of the firefox-virus writing overlords who will cometh to taketh over my desktoppe.
"/Dread"
There's a huge difference between a journalist writing a critical piece on Microsoft in some subsidiary getting fired, and getting fired for violating a clear company policy, and giving away information that could have been considered sensitive (that so and so group was doing work with new Macs).
Microsoft may not even have the legal right to fire this journalist (OSDN can't, for example, fire Rob or Hemos as slashdot editors due the contract they originally signed with Andover). If they did put pressure on slate, or if slate acted unilaterally, it would hugely damage slate as an independent news source.
autopr0n is like, down and stuff.
Microsoft said from the start that ActiveX was secure. It took 8 years for the first big hole to come and bite them in the butt. Microsoft has an ActiveX control that turns out to have a security exploit in it. They have released an updated control that has been patched. The problem is, if you have "Always Trust Microsoft" checked, a webiste can force you to download the old, insecure ActiveX control, and then take advantage of the exploit. Microsoft's solution, never check "Always Trust MicroSoft". So my gut instinct was correct 8 years ago......
vi +
Most users will think only "the Internet is broken on my computer"
People who notice the effects of sites switching to new standards not supported by IE probably won't think that the computer is broken but that "the Internet" is broken. And for everybody but MSN customers, who provides "the Internet"? Not Microsoft. Unless MSN is the only high-speed Internet access provider in the area, they may switch to an ISP that offers Mozilla Firefox or another browser based on the Gecko engine.
many IE users refuse to switch to Firefox because many sites use proprietary extensions in IE, such as document.all
Can't people just not patronize "many sites"? Or do the companies that run "many sites" have a local geographic monopoly on an essential service?
You simply cannot rip khtml out of KDE without breaking a bunch of (critical) applications.
But can't one make a wrapper that exposes a KHTML compatible interface to the outside but uses Gecko internally? Somebody managed to make Gecko for the MSHTML API so that almost any program that uses IE can be patched to use Gecko instead. (Granted, document.all and other IEisms won't work, but the basics do work.)
I forget the exact details, but it has *something* to with partial HTTP retrievals.. block support or something.. I haven't looked at it in a coon's age. IIRC, the "Fix" is to force apache into HTTP/1.0 mode when serving PDF files to MSIE. And it is indeed a problem with the Acrobat plugin.
I can see why they'd want to do it, though. The idea is that you can read a thirty trillion gigabyte PDF without waiting for the whole damned thing to download. But - if it's busted, waiting is better than not being to read it at all...
Do daemons dream of electric sleep()?
Plugins and skins can only be installed by whitelisted servers, and must prompt the user before installation.
ActiveX plug-ins also prompt the user before installation. But a whitelist poses different problems: for instance, how can its administration scale with the number of plug-in publishers?
I tried it, and sisn't like it. It has trouble with DNS, even though there is nothing wrong with my DNS servers. You're better off to stick with an IE mod like Avant brower; it has more features than Firefox.
Damnit, I had to read this post twice, because my /.-conditioned brain didn't know what to make of the correct use of "you're" (instead of "your") and "lose" (instead of "loose", growl)...
Poster didn't even say "Micro$oft".. We should build a memorial to this post.
that JavaScript and cacheing are broken (and who knows what else) in the latest versions of FireFox and Mozilla. JavaScript worked fine in older versions. I don't know if the developers have ever managed to use the URL to generate a unique cache file name which is the only thing preventing caching from working the way it's supposed to.
I've tried the latest versions of Mozilla, FireFox, Opera and Netscape and I'm right back using IE.
Maybe a few releases down the line I'll give it another shot. But basically this was just a really bad time for FireFox to have this kind of publicity. I never go to a web-site wondering if IE will be able to display it properly.
But when I'm seeing screens from Wolf5K showing up in my JavaScript tutorials (and not even showing the whole screen at that) in FireFox and Mozilla, something is definitly broken with the browser.
Ben
Work Safe Porn
Why no mention of Opera? To my knowledge, it's just as safe as Mozilla and its relatives and in my experience it's easier for a newbie to configure and learn. The only thing I can think of is that MS would rather promote the free project than the commercial competitor, especially seeing how Opera could kick their asses in areas other than the desktop. Or am I missing a point, as usual?
It still doesn't change the fact that web developers need to check their work on every freaking browser in existence to make sure it displays correctly.
Liquid Window - Live Dance Music
PHBs(Pointy haired bosses for those who aren't dilbert fans)
Finally I read what that means. Read it everywhere, never bothering to find out the exact meaning, though reckoning it would be some kind of clueless boss. Thanks for enlightening me with YAA (Yet Another Ackronym) ;-).
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
A good article covering this that you can point friends and contacts to is at netcraft.
Along with a good brief overview of the security concerns and warnings, it helpfully suggests that one way of getting firefox is off the OpenCD which it then goes on to explain has several other very professional F/OSS packages.
The article then closes with a teaser about moving fully over to GNU/Linux.
If you really think this would end in firing, search back for Slate.com anti-trust articles. There are plenty that could hurt MS publicity much worse, and those authors remain.
I fail to see why being knowledgeable about MS's plans would be viewed with suspicion. Perhaps I should clarify my background.
.NET really is faster and better (as our developers have found out). Whether or not there are bugs to work out and regardless of how MS has executed the solutions, they have developed and/or embraced some very good concepts. Longhorn shows real promise, and for a 1.0 product MS Reporting Services is astonishingly well executed.
I've used Linux since 1995 or so but actually became an "open source affecionado" around mid-1997 on a student work term. My employer was well into migrating from old AT&T UNIX boxes to COMPAQs running Slakware Linux tuned to meet their needs (data collection/logging and web-based reporting). Actually seeing Linux used in a production environment run as rock solid as the old AT&T boxes (and much better than the Windows NT server) without any licensing costs sold me easily. In the years since then things have only gotten dramatically better for Linux.
However, in my field of work Linux is still very much the exception (unfortunately). Things run on either Windows NT or 2000 or in special cases QNX or a proprietary RTOS or UNIX. My present employer works in very close conjunction with Microsoft to develop drivers and application software. It is an important part of my job to stay current on Microsoft's direction as well as that of our own developers. As I am an applications specialist and not a developer/programmer at this point I cannot issue a decree that we shall adopt Linux as a platform of choice for our products--indeed no one can without reprocussions.
Because of my background with both sides I can see the strengths and weaknesses of both Linux and Windows (or Free vs proprietary systems in general). For example, Linux and BSD are unmatched for stability and security. Regardless of any studies that say otherwise, Linux is most often much cheaper to maintain than Windows. Free Software applications are also thr real kings of the enterprise. The Internet wouldn't survive without Apache, Sendmail, Postfix, BIND, mySQL, PostgreSQL and so on.
On the other hand, vendors reluctance to develop open drivers (or disclose enough information to the community to do so) ie frustrating. There is still too much crap to contend with for the everyday user to get their Centrino chipset to work, or to make their flashy new NVidia or ATI video cards work properly.
Microsoft/proprietary software has its own list of goods and bads. Microsoft developmer tools totally kick butt on the competition. Developing with
However, with Microsoft I have very real and grave concerns as well. While Windows has come a long way in stability and usability, Microsoft neglected security for too long. I think that poor security has been the most serious issue MS has ever had to face. Licensing schemes have been a royal pain to deal with for a long time too. I'm next to fed up with complicated licensing schemes, license key codes, dongles, product activation and other administrative nightmares, all of which add no function to the end solution at all and only serve as mechanisms to grant the user the priviledge of running an application. And as promising as Longhorn looks, MS is re-inventing the wheel in a blatant attempt to lock the industry into it's own solutions. Really, what is the point of creating XAML when open standards were already there? Longhorn also looks set to break a lot of compatibility and be even more resource hungry than ever.
I think _every_ professional should know as much about MS's plans as possible. Likewise they should all know as much as possible about development in Linux and Free Software in general (you know damn well many in MS are studying up on the "enemy"). How else can anybody be competitive? It is only wise to bet on both horses here in particular. With Longhorn so far from release and the potential for a disconnect in terms of hardware and software compatibility with previous versions of Windows, Linux is poised to make a breakthrough. Hopefully Those in the Linux camp can "steal" the best ideas from Longhorn and execute them with characteristically more elegant, interoperable design.
Next stop: downtown Seattle with a cardboard sign, "will write online editorials for food."
What's to stop them from scrapping IE6, and replacing it
with a Firefox derivative labelled "IE7" ?
Hmmm... I think the problem is XUL, XPCOM, and the Python bindings for XPCOM. It seems to me that this makes a very powerful alternative to VB, but is cross-platform and would reduce the barrier of migration.
The browser is still important, and is perhaps becoming moreso.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
ZDNet regurgitates Microsoft's propoganda more closely than just about any other news service I know of, and you can also read the Halloween Documents to learn about how the Gartner Group have done the same thing.
MS might be on their way out generally, but they still have plenty of Grima Wormtounge equivalents busily trying to convince people otherwise.
Doesn't anyone notice that slashdot and MANY MANY other sites do no render properly in Firefox where Mozilla works fine?
Back to Moz for now.
Karma means nothing to me, so suck it...
I'm not an open source zealot, though I do recognize where it's valuable. I think it's safe to say that "consumer" closed source software is typically better than the open source alternatives. Opera is a great example of this. It's closed source, and miles ahead of any other browser - Yes, even Mozilla Firefox.
Now, I think the best mail client out there is Mozilla Thunderbird...so far, I haven't found a commercial product I like better - Opera's M2 mail client really sucks. Other than Thunderbird, I can't think of any "consumer" open source software that's better than the commercial versions.
Maybe we should do an "Ask Slashdot" for the best-of-class consumer open source software. I'm sure there's more out there that I don't know about, especially in games.
I think the GPL really stifles commercial contributions to software. It gives rights to a "thing" (the software), when really, it should probably be more concerned with encouraging the production of better software. In a perfect world, it would be profitable for companies to produce open source products. In some cases it is, but despite what the fanatics say, it's not that way for everything.
I'm digressing a bit, but let me plug the Zesiger License as an alternative to any other open source license. It allows people to earn a return on their software, before being required (GPL-style) to release the source code to their products. Note that this license could easily be applied to any other intellectual property, not just software.
The last company I worked for was not run by PHB's, because PHB's don't realize they are stupid. These people were deliberately stupid. When my supervisor complained that my use of Hungarian notation was confusing and meaningless to her, I pointed out that the first Windows book you open up will... at which point the project engineer raised his hand to interrupt and said, simply "We don't read books here."
Needless to say, it was a government contractor for the U.S. military.
Now I work for a very small company too. My boss is the owner of the business, and he's a really sharp guy who appreciates me and my talents, and I him. Assuming the business doesn't fail (always a risk with startups), I believe it will be a very fruitful relationship. It made the contrast even more stark with my last job and drove home to me how miserable I was there. Sad to say, I've only ever been happy when I've worked primarily by myself.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
What I want to know is: After ditching Mozilla in favor of Internet Explorer in a settlement with Microsoft, is AOL now going to ditch Internet Explorer in favor of Mozilla or Firebird due to the recently discovered security flaw?
As long as Mozilla/Firefox doesn't pose a real threat to IE (and it doesn't, of course) I'm sure MS appreciates its minions dropping the occaisional complement on Moz. That way they have something to point to when the EU people start making anti-trust noises.
You can bet that if Moz had a chance of getting 20% marketshare, the MS folks would be trash talking it constantly.
It would be surprising if Slate ran an article about how great Linux was as a desktop OS - but the browser wars are over (at least until Linux becomes a major force on the desktop at which point who knows....)
"MSN's Slate Recommends Firefox over IE"
No. It doesn't.
"Independent Writer Recommends Firefox over IE on Internet Site Owned by Microsoft" is what happened.
C-x C-s C-x k
Hungarian notation *is* confusing and meaningless. Here's why:
The purpose of Hungarian notation to to prefix the type of a variable to the name of the variable. That way, you don't have to look up the type of the variable any time you see code that references it.
However, the type information used in the Hungarian notation prefix is usually incomplete; Much of the following information about the variable is not included:
In other words, Hungarian notation encourages programmers to think they know the type of a variable (including all the above attributes), without actually knowing the type of the variable.
And then there's the maintenance cost associated with changing the type of a variable.
In fact, the only good reason to use Hungarian notation that I can think of is that it's a widely-used convention among Windows developers.
Does it fix all the features of XML, XHTML and CSS which don't work right in the base IE?
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
So you're saying some information is worse than none? How ridiculous. I seen many examples of bugs and problems that could have been avoided by simply prefixing "p" in front of a variable name that's a pointer. Much of the information you describe is described by the name of the variable. Beyond that you have to read the code a little bit. Consistent use of variable names and a decently-designed class library (or at least something less cryptic than STL, which sacrifices everything that makes C++ good for performance) will solve the other problems. If your class library is appropriately designed, you will be forced to treat your data in the way it needs to be treated. Quoting and encoding will be properly handled. Data source should be irrelevant because all data would be treated the same, and automatically translated as appropriate. Allocation, locking and other issues will be handled simply and consistently by a well-designed class (often the constuctor and destructor can be used to handle these things transparently). You can't blame Hungarian notation for a lack of proper encapsulation and data abstraction. If you are going to code like that, go back to Fortran.
And the "maintenance cost" you speak of? If the change is a fundamental type change (say a pointer to a reference, rather than an int to a long), then you'd better check all those instances of a variable because you're liable to have problems (even if it compiles).
Hungarian notation won't make a stupid coder smart, but it will certainly help a smart coder avoid mistakes. I'm a smart coder; I can't speak for the rest of the world.
Hungarian notation or at least some subset of it, is a lingua franca that exists primarily in Windows programming due to an attempt to move away from IOCCC candidate coding with one character variable names or inscrutable naming conventions and abbreviations. The other step is consistency in the API's and libraries, something Windows fails at miserably, and MFC is only somewhat better. The code is would have written for these clowns would have required a minute fraction of the development and maintenance that their archaic "design" required, and yet they were proud of their ignorance. Oh well, it's no spin off the government's teeth, because they can just piss more millions as needed. I'll stick to private concerns where getting work done efficiently actually matters.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
I do like Firefox a lot. It is a wonderful browser, and it is improving at a rapid pace. But I will not use it until the devs get their heads out of their arses. It is not as secure as IE for one simple reaon: no javascript whitelisting. IE has it in the form of security zones.
If firefox ever adds jscript whitelisting to the main app or someone develops an extension for it (that is kept up to date with current releases) I will switch in an instant. Unfortunately I am getting the impression that the devs are very pro-jscript and have no interest in making it easy for users to browse with it off completely. Instead they want to only allow disabling it's most annoying and obvious features. This is a woefully inadequate solution.
With IE I can browse with javascript completely off while still being able to shop at sites like newegg or amazon with jscript (and activex if necessary) automatically enabled. There are many sites nowadays (created by incompetent web designers)that won't even load without javascript. I will either ignore such sites or take the chance on giving them temporary trusted or partially restricted status.
People talk about how insecure and dangerous ActiveX is and they're right, but javascript is almost as bad. IMO, anyone who surfs the internet with javascript on is asking for trouble and shouldn't be surprised when they find it. And, no,I am not talking about popups. Javascript is a hell of a lot more than just the window popup or resize functions. The recent slammer worm, while an example of an exploit of bad IE security in the form of BHOs is also an example of the dangers of javascript. This worm could not function without it and it did not rely on popups or resizing. It used javascript that would never be blocked by the kind of partial blocking that firefox uses.
Mozilla has also had security zone capability through user pref javascript settings for a long time, but a UI for it has never been included in the official browser. At this point it looks like it never will.
There was some effort expended at actually producing a UI for the zones but nothing seems to have come of it. The devs who were working on it gave up when they saw this which unfortunately is not capable of javascript whitelisting at least in current versions of mozilla or firefox.
There have been some attempts at extensions to add in jscript whitelisting to mozilla, but there is nothing that works with current versions of either mozilla or firefox.
All of this work is at least 1-2 years old. Some of it is as 3-4 years old. Nothing is currently being done with any of it. Obviously the devs don't consider it an important feature. In fact they consider it so unimportant that even when it's already in the code, they can't be bothered to make a UI for it it.
So thank you very much, but I will stick with a much safer browsing experience on IE with pwrtwks to give me two click security zone control and trust setter and IE Zone Editor to give me even more control over IE's wonderful security zone features.
For the one remaining gigantic IE annoyance, those popup "warning" windows you get when browsing with activeX turned off on sites with activeX, there is a way to turn them off. It works.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
Your comment deserves a much higher score.
I always thought Mozilla was a piece of junk. Never mind all the hard work that went into it; that's what you get if you write bloatware. Firefox is good, but you virtually cannot lose bloat once it's there. Now that Firefox is actually adding more features, I fear the bloat will only increase.
Where is this all going? I think we need to start over. Part of the bloat comes from the fact that legacy HTML needs to be supported. CSS has a completely different syntax from XML. Javascript - yet another syntax, and various ways to access elements. And yet, with all these technologies, wrapped up in a package of over 30 MB, we can't build proper applications, even though it builds on an OS which has everything an application needs.
If I had enough time and patience, I would write a new, modular web client, that supported various technologies using plugins. XML plugin, CSS plugin, HTML plugin, JPEG plugin, and, most importantly, AppML (name made up) plugin, that allowed for rich, responsive, native look-n-feel applications to be accessed over the web.
HTTP really isn't hard to implement at all. Parsing XML, while certainly not trivial, isn't that hard either. Rendering HTML mostly amounts to mapping it to native widgets and adding some graphics here and there. I strongly feel that this should not have to take as much code and data as Mozilla [Firefox] uses for it.
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
Just write that in all caps and it begins to look like the letters I have been getting from that nice Nigerian widow...
ND
This statement is forty-five characters long.
With IE I can browse with javascript completely off while still being able to shop at sites like newegg or amazon with jscript (and activex if necessary) automatically enabled. There are many sites nowadays (created by incompetent web designers)that won't even load without javascript. I will either ignore such sites or take the chance on giving them temporary trusted or partially restricted status.
There is UI for disabling JavaScript completely in both Mozilla (Edit > Preferences > Advanced > Scripts & Plugins > Enable JavaScript for : Navigator) and Firefox (Tools > Options > Web Features > Enable JavaScript). There's also 'about:config', but perhaps I'm missing something?
BTW, isn't JScript Microsoft's alternative to JavaScript (as in Netscapes JavaScript)? Now that you mention it, I seem to remember that there was options to disable both JavaScript and JScript in the old Netscape releases, but if I'm not mistaken Mozilla's JavaScript is ECMAScript compliant which is the standard that includes (most if not all of) both MS JScript and Netscape JavaScript.
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
I'm afraid that that is quite simply rubbish. There is a (seemingly irrisistable) temptation for software developers to believe this, but it isn't to be true. Resisting would mean getting the job done quicker. Software is overcomplicated already.
HAL,
Reformed Software Developer.
Got them moderator blues I blieve I walk out the do', With these mod-points I been gettin', I 'most never post no mo'
Then I guess we must agree to disagree.
By the way, I just noticed half of a paragraph in my last post I meant to take out entirely. I was talking about a place I used to work out developing C++ in a style that would have looked archaic 15 years ago. It was a nightmare.
You are in a maze of twisty little passages, all alike.
My esteemed colleague Paul doesn't really understand the issues involved in Web standards, as I wrote elsewhere. Nonetheless, I certainly support the Anything's Better than IE/Win Campaign ("Abby-Wink").
Joe Clark | http://joeclark.org/weblogs/
They were just porely thought out, as MS's desire for even greater profit outweighed any disadvantage to the end user (or even considered at the time).
Pop ups are a great example and you wonder why MS took so long to do anything about blatant abuse of pop ups - disadvantage the user no change in profit (monopoly), disadvantage the advertiser drop in profit (no licence fee).
Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
I seem to remember you've often lamented the fact that your wife needs to run "Windoze" for something or other. ... Soooo... which is it, twit?
My wife's computer is now dual boot Windoze 98 and Debian Testing. We still have to boot it over to use a crappy old parallel scanner, but everything else works just fine under testing, even our USB cameras. The operating system history, without loss of information, was Red Hat 6.2, 7.0, 7.2, Debian Woody, Debian Sarge. Red Hat was Dual Booted through BIOS. Debian's Woody installed a dual boot LILO configuration. The 450MHz AMD K6/2 works very well under both OS, thank you, but Debian is much more useful.
98 was impossible to secure, so I did not instal network drivers and things have been OK. The system only has the problems introduced by DLL hell and the few programs required to run devices hooked to it. The most serious problem is non-standard bmp and tiff image formats introduced by the Kodak Imaging program installed by one or another of the cameras. These nonstandard file formats blow up most image programs including Paint Shop Pro. Electric Eyes under Woody manages to open them, so I can write them out into reasonable formats. As a retail tech, I've seen what has continued to happen to people who try to use M$ on the internet. It's not pretty, so that dual boot machine is protected by a linux firewall too.
In any case, Windoze does not get much use here anymore and both of us are happy about that. We both spend more time doing what we want on our computers and elswhere than people who suffer Windoze.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
Not at all. Windoze has never worked as it should nor half as well as free software. I'll stand by all of the things I've described, from email rooting my machine at a fortune 500 company to whole labs of machines dying at LSU to my own and my brother's own computers simply dying of bit rot. I can easily do that and acknowledge that I and others may need to hang onto one last legacy install to access crappy old hardware.
No one really needs "proof" that Windoze sucks when 90% of the world has suffered under it themselves. It only takes on round of the upgrade train for people to figure out M$ for what it is. My stories have been my own and other people's experience.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.