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Get Rid of Internet Explorer - Browse Happy!
Matt writes "BrowseHappy not only tells us why IE is unsafe, but also provides "switcher" stories of people that stopped using IE and switched to a safer browser. This campaign is not so much against IE, but for the use of safer and more user-friendly browsers."
remove the horrible color scheme
please put all Firefox/Opera/Mozilla/etc stories below this line
____ _ _ _ ____________
but seriously you are preaching to the choir here, you think we (and our families/friends) dont know about Mozilla.org yet ?
Safari! Need I say more?
I think hunting down IE users for sport is a bit of overkill, don't you?
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:eAw_5YZf-icJ: browsehappy.com/
This campaign is not so much against IE, but for the use of safer and more user-friendly browsers.
So it's against IE.
Banu
... need a porn friendly browser!
This campaign is not so much against IE, but for the use of safer and more user-friendly browsers.
Yeah, right. This is rhetoric nonsense. Of course it's "against IE", if it's for the use of a better browser. If you're making a case for something, it - at the very least - implies that the item it's comparing it to is inferior in some way. Yes, this is a case against IE.
Don't say foolish things like this just to seem like you're not partial. You are. There's nothing wrong with being partial, when your partiality is based off of sound logical reasoning.
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
Why is Internet Explorer unsafe?
See what people are saying about Internet Explorer, in the wake of its most recent security issues:
New York Times, In Search of a Browser That Banishes Clutter:
USA Today, Security risks swell for Microsofts Explorer:
The Inquirer, US Government warns against Internet Explorer:
Slate, Are the Browser Wars Back?:
The problem is that hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer
www.6502asm.com - Code 6502 assembly or.. DIE!!
I work for a decently sized bank data processing center. I know that our vendor we use for the core part of our applications and servers will only support Microsoft IE, mainly because they use a lot of .asp for their online compononents. A few banks have received word about the FCC declaring IE full of bugs, problems, and unsafe for most uses; these banks started asking about support for "other" browsers, and received word that there is no support planned anytime soon for any other browser other than IE.
YOU'RE WINNER !
Another lame blog
I use Windows because there's software that I can't run under Linux.
And I use Explorer because there are websites that don't render properly under anything else. Sure, it's bad design to create your website such that it only works under IE, but that's really not my concern; I just want the content and the pretty pictures.
My machine is secure. I'd sooner have an insecure browser than does what I need it to do than a secure browser than doesn't.
www.kitchengeek.com -- Nosh for
I only use IE when I am *required* to do so, but there's the rub: there are too many things that do not work unless you use IE. The user agent switcher is nice, but it doesn't always work.
For irony's sake, I'll list the biggest offender (in so many ways) in my life: *IBM*'s Lotus Notes.
The headline gives the impression that this is about how to actually rid windows of IE (Possible in 9x/me, but doesn't seem to be in 2k/xp).
Which is why MS needs to take a few extra hours to write a stand alone app for windowsupdate instead of relying on IE and ActiveX. Then most people could leave IE installed and blocked by their firewall.
Do people wonder why we can't attract more women to Computer Science... ?
I'm certainly not going to share this with any women as long as the switching stories only feature guys. This hopefully a) wasn't done on purpose and b) is going to be changed really soon.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
Not really, no.
I feel like a Dutch boy plugging his finger in the proverbial leaking dikes.
IE vulnerabilities are dime a dozen, that I could well be a thousandaire (just doesn't ring right, uh?) Latest one is the drag-n-drop exploit. In fact, it becomes a down outright security risk just to have the blue E icon available on your desktop and startup menu.
So, I deleted the blue E icon thereby forcing the end-user to get exposed to Mozilla and Firefox.
They too went home and switched as well.
Looks like the groundswell support is brewing here. I wonder if this is also true elsewhere.
If you don't like it, drop the "it." infront of slashdot.org instead of complaining in public.
I knwo for a fact we put my stepmom on Firefox and all of a sudden she quit getting spyware.
I wish we had a study showing how many microsoft programmers use Firefox.
Not only is it designed to be a great browser, it has extensive plug-in support so you can make browsing what you want it to be, not what some Redmond-based empire tells you it should be... ;)
------
"There *IS* no patch for stupidity" -www.sqlsecurity.com
http://www.theregister.com/2004/08/20/sp2_scriptin g_vuln/
I use IE all the time
This one time, I got an email from Citibank I need to veerify my account information!
All I have to do is to click the link with bunch of characters in it, then it loads the seemingly legitimate Citibank website. Then I enterd my account name and password, plus all the other informations. There I veerify my Citibank account using IE.
Meanwhile, Mozilla browser and Mozilla Firefox can't even load the page.
Now, which browser is broken?
Definitely not IE.
By the way, for some strange reason, my Citibank password is no longer working shortly after that.
(sarcasm mode turned off)
Look, folks, I've played the messenger part. I've done my part in telling others to try Mozilla. Done my evangelism with the pop-up blocking and the tabbed browsing. I've preached the security of not using IE and all its ugly security issues. I've even pointed to articles from official-ish proclamations asking people to use alternate browsers.
I've managed to switch a few people to Firefox, and that's good. However, there's the frustration of knowing there will be people out there who will not switch, not even know what a "Browser" is, and will definitely not be going to a web site, downloading an executable, and running it to install Firefox. Too intimidating, they'd say. Now what?
We've given them sufficient reason, and enough encouragement. There will be a LOT of people out there who will not bother installing a browser that didn't come with their machine. Though they'll happily install a Bonzi Buddy or Comet Cursor. How do we handle that great majority?
I love the Firefox, don't get me wrong. I'd love to see more people using it instead of IE. However, like any good soldier that's been out in the battlefield long enough, a morale boost would be nice on occasion...or at least more words of wisdom.
I am not a windows bigot, nor am I a fanboy. I use Windows XP and related windows software because it just works, and I'd rather actually use the PC than constantly fight it. I've used Unix in the past (Irix actually) and LOVED it, however I've basically given up or more accurately abandoned the desire to use Linux because XP does pretty everything I need, and the software availability and stability meet or exceed what I need (graphic design, web development, 3D modeling and animation, games). Yes, I know there are "issues", but because I "know what I'm doing" and I'm protected by a firewalled router, as well as ZoneAlarm, SpyBot & TeaTimer, etc. I once again , just don't see the reason to learn a new OS. If I had a free week or two I might try Mandrake or something again. The above spout was just to give background that I'm not an OS freak, nor a complete luser. That said, I've always disliked IE as an application in it's own right (performance, memory utilization, UI, etc.), however after a few iterations of NS being complete crap (rendering , performance, etc.) I resigned to use IE. tried Opera, not really impressed, switched back to IE. Recently installed FireFox and I will NEVER use IE again unless the page requires the active X crap. I love everything about Firefox, and as more extensions become available, I love that I can make it work EXACTLY how I want it to work. My only complaint is that I wish it was lighter weight in terms of system requirements, as I'd love to be able to run it on some REALLY old PC's that are essentially worthless for anything but dumb terminal applications (one example is y Fujitsu Point510 tablet). Anyway, that's my story. I would love to see an extension that spellchecked text boxes in online forms though...
What I don't know I just fake...
IE just works
Yeah, well, its relatively easy to get a thing just working when every website is designed to cater to it.
Free XBox, PS2
So does your X10 camera, DVD backup software, Debt Consolidation Program...
I write a lot of .asp, and I use both Mozilla and IE to check the code I write. Unless the person coding the ASP pages is an idiot, it doesn't make a diffrence, as everything is processed server side.
You run into problems because either a) the ASP coder uses vbscript for client side validation, and nothing but IE supports vbscript, or b) they don't bother to write cross-platform client side javascript code. I can't come down too hard when people don't do this, as the DOM differs from browser to browser.
The people responsable for this forking of the DOM need to be dragged nekkid across a cactus patch.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
My biggest reason for switching is that IE seldom will increase the text size when commanded to. Mozzila always will increase the text size of a web page. I can't read the fine print on a lot of web sites.
Many a long talk since then I have had with the man in the moon; he had my confidence on the voyage. Joshua Slocum
This is comforting but not a perfect solution. I primarily used IE because most of my customers use IE and I want their same user experience. I tell developers to use IE for the same reason. Fortunately most online consumers not use lynx.
Just works? I recently had to use a new computer, and I decided to try IE. First site I went to, I was hit with three popup ads and a spyware download. Second site I went to was www.opera.com.
"They redundantly repeated themselves over and over again incessantly without end ad infinitum" -- ibid.
There was a /. article a few weeks ago about spoofing Firefox, which pointed to a demo. Sure enough, the script could turn off your title bar, status bar, etc. and looked quite real. Then the follow-ups pointed out where in the config to change things so that the spoof wouldn't work properly. Examples, proof, showing us instead of just claiming it's so.
Also, a hardware firewall will almost never protect you from a web-based trojan; you *requested* the data from the server to your PC, and any hardware firewall (not an IDS) that blocks that is failing to do its job.
Nothing is 100% fool-proof. You know the line: "if you make it fool-proof, the world will build a better fool."
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
"The security issues are a problem" is minor for you because no one's swiped your identity. I heard there's a hurricane in Florida. Oh well, that's 3,000 miles away. Not my problem.
They won't release the names of the major sites that have been hacked so when you visit them with IE, you're screwed. Man, that's annoying. Just how they won't tell you who is selling contaminated beef when Mad Cow was found. If there's a problem, out with the info.
Most slashdotters are anti-M$ as long as M$ are being jerks. IE, and most of M$, is an easy target, but how many people here have an Xbox? MS$ is a double-edged sword. Run with the sword idea.
riding round the world on an old motorcycle
that may be the result of spyware opening browser windows......
Every day I'll get at least one popup (which doesn't get blocked) that has to be shut down via task manager and not clicked on for fear of it having a booby trapped 'close button' that really installs something.
Firefox can't show browser windows without a caption. (unless you're running with Java enabled), and in that case it will show a Java frame. (which can't do much harm, and is possible in any java-supporting browser)
Firefox can't install anything other than XPI (which you need to give explicit permissions for).
Spyware/Adware already on your PC won't be magically removed by switching to another browser.
Your post sounds honest, but implausible.
The path I walk alone is endlessly long.
30 minutes by bike, 15 by bus.
I know I'm going to be called a lamer and flamed out the ass, but screw it - it has to be said. I was going to move most of our lab computers to Moz this year but ran into issues with profiles. {sigh}
What is it with OSS software? They want to get noticed on the Windows platform, but the very people they need to have accept it (mainly corporations) can't/won't use it because of the hassles involved with profiles and/or user permissions.
Sometimes it's just minor problems - like Moz' inability to have things set up for multiple users on a box, but then there's OpenOffice.org. Not only is it a NIGHTMARE to install in a lab environment (although through reghacks, I got it to work well enough), but it also has problems with Terminal Server.
Now that said, there is progress being made. OOo 2.0 beta lets you install for multiple users and there have been discussions on Mozdev about my very issue with Mozilla.
I understand that 99% of the people who develop for these projects don't know/care about how a Windows shop operates, but if they want their programs to be used on this platform in larger environments, they'll have to start learning how to make them more friendly.
"...Well, there's egg and bacon; egg sausage and bacon; egg and spam; egg bacon and spam; egg bacon sausage and spam..."
Ms. Sandlin is just asking for trouble.
Everyone knows that leaving a large warning stating that on no accounts is anyone to touch the big blue button, is practically an order to press the damn thing.
You clearly have never used another browser.
I was like you about a year ago, I never wanted to try another browser, Opera was just for yuppies as far as I was concerned, oooh tabbed browsing, I couldn't see the point. Mouse gestures... well I still don't see the point. I didn't realy mind ads because I used a massive host file to block adservers, but this was still limited. I was constantly getting popups and requests to install plugins I knew I didn't want, in short the web was turning into crap.
Then I decided to try out phoenix, why not, everyone else here was using it. So I downloaded it and I have never looked back. Seriously with an adblock extension and a clean looking theme it was leaps and bounds ahead of Internet Explorer right there. People just don't have an understanding of how convenient it is to google something, go down the first page middle clicking and then have all the pages of interest loaded by the time your done. Browsing slashdot is exactly the same, where before I was opening around 20 windows to view the stories I was interested in, I now just go down the front page, middle click all the stories and read mores... and by the time I'm done the first one is loaded.
But there is just so much more, NO popups, google search. I know you can get google bar but that is a third party addon and sometimes it just doesnt gel. And then there is the type and find function, if for example your looking at a large page of links you can just start to type the text of the link and firefox will find it. Go to suprnova.org and click in the movies frame and start to type the name of the movie you want.
I don't think less of those who haven't used anything else but IE, but seriously you need to try it, you just can't begin to fathom how much the internet doesn't suck without all the crap that targets IE until you stop using it and try something better.
The only woe I have with firefox is that a recient Windows XP update has screwed up launching webpages from the run dialogue, firefox still works but windows pops up with an error annoying but not that bad. I believe Windows XP would be infinitly better if I could actualy get rid of IE for good, but until such a time I'll just ignore it and hope it goes away.
I dont mean to sound like a jerk, but being someone that creates Server Browser Apps for a living, I am compelled to clarify a point.
.asp, .aspx, .cfm, .pl, .jsp or .php, the only thing that is ever sent to the browser is plain old HTML. The server pages are pages that may contain one or more programing languages, recieve and process data, and ussually interact with a database. All of this is done on the server side. Therefore, the server must be compatible with the technology used. But the output of the pages, that is the info that is passed to the browser, is always html.
.asp
It doesn't matter if the page is
The reason why many apps require Internet Explorer might be an Active X control. Active X controls run on the browser, on the client, and only in IE. Such controls are sometimes used to provide word procesing like text input capabilities in the browser, instead of plain boxes like the ones that slashdot uses to write comments.
No, you don't need IE to view
Yes, your programers were dumb enough to use non standard / non compliant client side coding or scripting.
Cheers
Adolfo
Heh.. get yourself an account (if needed), login and switch to 'light' mode in your user preferences... you wont get bothered by colorschemes at all ;)
Why would this be a good thing? Imagine the nightmares web page designers would have to go through if they had to support two completely different non-standards-compliant browsers. We'd need to use several different browsers on a day-to-day basis just to view all the pages correctly.
Now, if firefox could gain a 30% market share while remaining standards compliant, that would be something good because it would destroy Microsoft's attempts to corrupt web languages. If 30% of people used firefox (or any non-IE browser, for that matter), designers would no longer be able to get away with IE-only webpages. And isn't that preferable to having firefox-only pages in addition to the IE ones?
Don't you hate meta-sigs?
I am not sure if you are genuine, or an inciteful troll....
The general public simply don't know any better. In my experience, anytime I do a spyware removal ($30-$60) I offer to install Mozilla for free. I explain that if they mostly use Mozilla, they will need my services less frequently. When put in terms of frustration and money, most people do listen and are willing to try it.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
True story.
I volunteered to look after a student computer lab at university. We did a fresh install of Windows 2000 on all the workstations, set up NTFS, applied all security patches and turned on the auto updater. The lab is firewalled and NATed through a Linux server that's running Samba as a primary domain control for an NT domain. All users have low priv accounts, authorized through the PDC on the local network.
In other words, this is a pretty secure setup, except for the local machines (everyone has physical access). But regular users don't have admin privileges.
There was something I found quite odd. After running for a year or so, I discovered that when I launched IE from my own account, it came up with the Yahoo bar installed. That's weird, I thought, since I'm the only admin and regular users don't have that kind of privileges.
I double checked the patches and hotfixes, yup, we're still up to date...
Fast forward... things started to fall apart after 1.5 years. Some how, spyware entering via IE from one account was able to 'infect' other accounts. Launching IE would immediately pop up ads - even in accounts that were never used before. Whole system-wide applications and spyware seemed to be installed by low privilege users. It's a bloody mess, I don't want to touch it any more.
I'm not sure whether Windows or IE is to blame (my guess is: both) but if they want me to volunteer my efforts to admin the lab next year, a bunch of 1st year students are going to walk in and find a bunch of dumb consoles running stripped down X interfaces to a FreeBSD server.
Have you ever tried holding ctrl then scrolling the mouse-wheel up or down? That's the quickest way I know to increase/decrease font size, and it works in IE and FF for me.
you can choose the max amount of ram for mozilla firefox to use with browser.cache.memory.capacity
just goto about:config
I'm not so sure about that... I've had many problems with Firefox. They block port 1080 for some obscure reason based on a really old trojan that has absolutely nothing to do with Firefox, yet to get around this block, you have to make an obscure config file edit. I had to use IE to access a friend's server. There is also the bug where if you used .8 and upgraded to .9, clicking the "Add engines..." for the search toolbar does nothing. I had to manually go to the http://mycroft.mozdev.org/download.html site. It's not that bad for people who know what they are doing, but, when that feature is lacking, users can go straight back to IE and download their favourite toolbar and use it's dictionary, search, or whatever. (IE Does block popups now, along with things like, onmouseover and and a few other scripts)
Actually, Mozilla and Firefox will tell you when new versions come along.
However, your post is wrong in a much more profound way--arguing from perfection. Arguing from perfection is a form of a false dichotomy. This scheme presents two alternatives: perfection, and what the speaker wishes to railroad you into. Since perfection is never really available in anything, the only remaining option is the one the speaker wants to railroad you into.
No network program of the complexity you'll commonly use (like a web browser, chat client, or e-mail client) is "totally safe". That frame is a useless one with which to understand the problem. Far better to analyze it from the frame of providing everyone the freedom to share and modify the program so people can find problems, fix them (or make enhancements), and then help the rest of us by sharing their improved version of the program. This frame gives a realistic means to weigh which programs can be genuinely useful and which can be shown to be consistently bad.
Microsoft (being a corporation) has a profit motive behind working on MSIE. Thus once they have achieved market dominance there is little interest in improving the program further. Only competition will pressure them to improve the program, and then it will only be improved along lines that not determined by the users of the program. Users get no opportunity to determine what is valuable for the next release because corporations are not democratically run organizations and the software is not free for sharing and modification. This doesn't just apply to Microsoft, it applies to any other proprietary software. But we happen to be talking about this situation in the context of how Microsoft fails to address reasonable safety when web browsing.
Digital Citizen
How do I run it without Internet Explorer?
_________ Help me get a PSP!
According to Marketing Warfare (ISBN: 0070527261, Al Ries and Jack Trout), maketing is a war fought on the mental battleground.
Not, lets consider your computer locks up. You will simply reboot it, and think this is something normal. Right ? Even if you don't, most people do.
And there is where Microsoft really shows its maketing domination. It is not that users don't get burned by its products. They simply think those are normal things in computing. When I tell someone that one of my computers (running a firewall, and so I never turns it off) has a 2 years uptime, they think I'm lying. That my workstation was running for 7 months without a single reboot. After that, I had to turn it off cause I was replacing the video card.
That is the real problem, isn't it ? It is not that the Internet Explorer uses are getting burned (or not). It is that they don't see that as burning. Their mindset if so frozen into the Microsoft partern that they think those are normal things, and they even think about the possibility that it can be different. They don't see that a browser crashing should not take the OS down with it. That just by accessing a homepage it should not be possibly to automaticaly install a program on his computer.
Having a better browser will never make Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror/Safari/Net
Anyone developing opensource software, most expecially softwares that are alternative versions well entrenched on the market, should read the book I mentioned. Expecially the part about attacking an entrenched enemy.
So, I don't agree that "a lot of windows users out there haven't been burned". The whole point is that they don't see that they are getting burned, no matter what happened. Most of them don't care even when they do get burned, a situation even worst than you described.
morcego
The warning against IE went out in our office a few weeks ago and I've been trying my damndest to get my immediate co-workers to switch to Mozilla or Firefox. The majority of the technical people at the company have been using Moz for months or years now but my department, Client Services[1], are all addicted to IE.
Once our IT dept sent out the warning and urged everyone to use Mozilla for regular browsing I installed it on two of my three co-workers PC's (the third is dating our SysAdmin so it's his job to get her to switch) and offered to help them with anything having to do with Moz. The only thing they've asked me to do is uninstall it (which I won't do.) Whenever they use it they gripe about how it looks (well mostly about how they don't like the "godzilla" head) say it loads slowly and they don't have time to learn how to use it. Yet they still whine about pop-up ads, spyware etc... Whenever they start griping I chime in with "Ya know that's not a problem in Mozilla!" Their replies are always the same "We don't like that godzilla thing, it's got an ugly head, har har."
I even made them an offer: For one week use Mozilla exclusivly and I'll always stop whatever I'm doing to help with you any question you have, be it how to install a plugin, how to use tabs, how to block ads etc... and if you still don't like it better than IE I'll remove from your system. But you have to use it and take the time to learn it before I'll take your complaints about how it 'sucks' seriously.
The response I've gotten when the topic comes is that they stop bitching about IE and go back to closing pop-ups. My boss actually said to me "I don't like learning new things"
These are the type of people that will never, ever switch. They know enough to know that Mozilla and IE are different programs and they just refuse to give an alternative to what they already know any serious consideration. I fear these represent the vast majority of IE users.
Oh and the company I work for? We provide online, webbased training and learning management services to corporations, mostly for OSHA type regs and similar subjects that are well suited to the CBT format. About 80% of the company (those with technical or content creation roles) uses Mozilla or Firefox for most of their general browsing but the non-geek staff stubbornly use IE. If we can't convince our holdouts to switch, without forcing the issue by management fiat, I don't know that they ever will. *sigh*
[1] Not to be confused with customer service, we dont' deal with end users, we work at the corporate level.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
It's like a neverending icecream headache!
--
make install -not war
I found that most bank websites work properly only in IE (of IE, FireFox, Mozilla, Opera). These fools are creating the dependency on MS that they tried to avoid in the 1990s. That was when Gates foolishly declared he wanted to toll every Internet transaction he could, as a new bizmodel. That's the banks' bizmodel, so they got spooked. Since MS has now crept between the banks and their customers, at the browser interface, how long before MS opens a bank to "compete with PayPal", and takes over the banking industry?
--
make install -not war
....to take over the corporate Windows browser.
If Firefox was available (from mozilla.org) in a Windows installer (.MSI) format and settings could be made using policies, you'd see a rapid increase in corporate desktops moving to Firefox.
Windows admins want to be able to install Firefox on ALL their desktops, with extensions pre-installed and the settings (optionally) controlled via system policies.
This should be goal #1 for 1.1 of Firefox and Thunderchicken. The brower is great. Now lets banish IE from the corporate Windows desktop. (Then the migrate to Linux will be that much easier)
What's my Karma Mr. Burns? "Excellent"
Imagine the nightmares web page designers would have to go through if they had to support two completely different non-standards-compliant browsers.
.
Calm down there sonny and remember to salute your superior officers. Some of us have already been through BW I and II, as well as few "Browser Actions" like the launch of NN 6.0.
Boy howdy, I remember those days. You had to make sure your Palette had the Web-Safety on or BLAM!, colors bleeding all over a Mac browser IT WAS HORRIBLE!
Sniff a browser incorrectly and the Flash movie you had on point was as dead as an MIDI file without an <embed> tag in Netscape.
You just make sure and stick to JavaScript object detection insted of browser detection and it won't make a hill of beans difference WHAT kind of new fangled whojeewhatsis they come up with to view web pages, you'll do just fine
Now put down that ActiveX Control sonny, we don't want you hopped up and going through any kind of delusions of granduer when you're out in the jungle.
DIS-missed *salutes*
While yes hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer, let's not forget that holes would likely be found in Firefox et all as well, if the hackers decide to start concentrate on these other browsers once they have a large enough market share.
There is one gaping security hole, ahem, feature, that only IE has: ActiveX. Firefox will never have a vulnerability involving ActiveX or other proprietary Microsoft technologies because those technologies are proprietary and exclusive to IE. That is not to say that Firefox and other browsers are immune to security vulnerabilities, just that they have an inherent advantage.
24 beers in a case, 24 hours in a day. Coincidence? I think not!
Considering the number of complaints every time there's an article in this section, you'd think they'd change the color scheme. We shouldn't have to modify the url or go through other hacks to get a page it doesn't hurt to look at.
Good, inexpensive web hosting
It has a lot to do with the way Firefox is constructed. Mozilla, Firefox, and IE have one thing in common aside from the fact that they're all web browsers. They are all deeply tied in to their application frameworks. With IE, it's tied to COM and ActiveX, some of the newer features I hear will be tied into .NET natively. Mozilla and Firefox are tied into XPCOM and Gecko Run Time.
That said, lets think about this practically for a minute. There are very few applications other than Mozilla Firefox, and a few niche applications for Linux I can think of that depend on the same gecko run time that Mozilla does in the same installation. So assuming a hacker could get in and screw up the Gecko run time or XPCom, how much damage could they really do? They could screw up the application framework, for a single user... possibly the whole system if the user is logged in as root or administrator, but it's not going to take down say... the Window manager your OS uses.
In contrast Internet Explorer uses components that are integrated so tightly with Windows and the application tools it uses, that if you screw those up bad enough, you can hobble, disable, or even kill the computer system the exploit is deployed in.
I think our friends at Microsoft could learn a thing or two from the way Mozilla is constructed, and it seems like they are from the new registry configuration scheme they've proposed for Longhorn. I don't know if it will make IE or Windows more secure, but it will keep guys like me working for many years to come.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
You can still get that independence!
Use Firefox to build and align your bookmarks in the way you desire, and then export it to an HTML file.
Then, set the homepage of ALL of your browsers to that file!
Problem solved.
SCREW THE ADS! http://adblock.mozdev.org/ Proud user of teh Fox of Fire - Registered Linux User #289618