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Redmondmag on Dumping IE
nSignIfikaNt writes "Here is yet another article discussing options to using IE. This one is from redmondmag.com who claims to be the independent voice of the microsoft IT community."
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Time to Dump IE? Internet Explorer is a hacker's dream. Can you (and should you) drop it right now? October 2004 by Don Jones Internet Explorer is the Swiss Cheese of software--it's full of holes. Holes in software are never good, but when the browser is so integrated with the OS as to be as one--you've got problems. Add to that the sheer ubiquity of the Microsoft browser, and it's no wonder IE has become the hackers' No. 1 playground. Now we're beset by increasingly common--and dangerous--security vulnerabilities. We knew IE was integrated with Windows, but we didn't have any idea how integrated it was. Even Microsoft doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on IE's internals, judging from the weeks it took to deliver an actual fix for the recent Download.Ject Trojan. -- advertisement -- Not to say an integrated browser is all bad. To a developer, an integrated browser is cool because it gives you a built-in HTML rendering engine. You can then write apps that use HTML, knowing that the OS can render that HTML for you. IE can begin to take over the regular Windows Explorer shell and, in fact, has become so tightly integrated with Windows Explorer that it's a bit difficult to see where the shell ends and the browser begins. The downside is a real downer. With a regular Web browser, a security vulnerability might let someone crash the browser. With an integrated Web browser they can crash the whole operating system. The tight ties to Windows means that the slightest IE security issue becomes an OS-wide panic. It's not just IE, either: Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, and even DirectX, are all, in my opinion, overly integrated and give hackers too much access to core PC functions. But corporate users don't spend a lot of time playing with DirectX-based games, listening to Windows Media Player, or checking e-mail with Outlook Express. They do spend a lot of time in IE, and the more they surf the more they're vulnerable to its eccentricities. That's why more than a few corporations, not to mention individual users, are looking at alternatives--any alternative--to the built-in browser. Browsing the Alternatives Despite dire predictions from Netscape (now a unit of America Online, which, weirdly, continues to bundle IE with its software), the market for non-Microsoft browsers didn't go away. It sure as heck got small, though, with Microsoft now commanding around 95 percent of the market, according to some sources. But the times, they are a-changin'. San Diego Web metrics company WebSideStory recently reported IE losing 1 percent of that market, the first time IE has stumbled. IE is now down to 94 percent. Who's gaining? Mozilla. The open-source code base of the Netscape browser, Mozilla offers a couple of browsers. Mozilla 1.7 is its base product (1.8 is in beta as of this writing); Firefox (currently at 0.9) is the next-generation browser. Both are available from www.mozilla.org. Netscape also offers 7.1 of its venerable browser based on Mozilla code. It's available from www.netscape.com, but you'd better hurry: It'll be the last Netscape-branded browser AOL produces. Figure 1. Firefox's tabbed browser beats the heck out of Alt+Tabbing between a clutter of browser windows. (Click image to view larger version.) There's also the well-known Opera Web browser, currently at version 7.53, available from www.opera.com. All of the Mozilla products, including Netscape's browser, are completely free. Opera offers a free, advertising-supported browser as well as a $40 version sans ads. And those are just the Windows browsers (see online extras for more on browsers for other OSes). While these are the major contenders, others exist: Search Download.com for "Web browser" and you'll get 356 results, many of which are small-footprint, self-contained Web browsers. Be aware that some of these simply throw a new cosmetic face on Windows' built-in IE objects, meaning you're still using IE. Others are completely self-contained and count as true alternatives. Pros and Cons of Straying From the Pack Forgetting security for a moment,
This is no flamebait. "redmondmag" used to be a Microsoft lapdog under another name for the longest time...
"...You're obviously going to miss out on some functionality if you switch browsers. Anything ActiveX-based won't work, nor will sites that use client-side VBScript for dynamic HTML...."
And these are *positive* changes! The WWW is an open public arena. And ActiveX and VB are closed and *should* not be part of the WWW anyway. So, good, miss out on these lock-in features. You'll be safer for it in the long run. MS imbedding COM objects in a HTTP client has brought all these security issues upon themselves. They can just eat their own dog food.
It doesn't really bring anything new to the table we didn't already know.
The major hurdles for widespread adoption of a browser other than IE have always been the fact that IE is tied to the OS, and that there are many IE-specific pages out there.
"You spoony bard!" -Tellah
OK this may be minor but the versions of Opera and Firefox mentioned imply this article was written months ago, yet it's dated October. What's going on? Why have we been given an old article (and not just a week old either)? Opera 7.54 (going by the file modified dates i have), is a version up from what the article claims is the latest and was released on 29th August this year. When you're discussing security time can matter.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
I've been hearing the same complaints from my wife about her computer being slow for months. She's using a Dual Pentium III 750 with 512 Megs of Ram and Windows XP. The problem was her computer is slow, it was IE and Outlook XP being slow.
This weekend I converted her over to Firefox and Thunderbird. Not only was she happy, she was REALLY happy about it and she's thanked me twice more today.
I write a blog on IT Toolbox and today I wrote about this topic. Go check it out!
http://blogs.ittoolbox.com/visualbasic/dotnet/arch ives/001750.asp
There are people who still use IE? Thats f*ckn crazy, shut up.