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Microsoft Says Firefox Not a Threat to IE
KillaKen187 writes "A CNET article claims that 'just days after the launch of open-source browser Firefox 1.0, Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn't lack any important features.' It's also interesting to note that these statements made by Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, come with no knowledge of what Firefox has to offer as he admits not even installing or using Firefox."
The next version of Windows will only allow Internet Explorer to access port 80 remotely... as a security measure.
There are plenty of products out there with features we don't have. We have plenty of features that our customers don't use.
Indeed they do!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From the CNET article:
English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users.
You can mark my word that IE will have tabbed browsing within 12 months from now.
And when *I* dream, I have a pony.
This will probably be offtopic, but during recent presentation on shares source initiative in Ukraine, the Microsoft representative started getting corruption messages from Powerpoint, and had to run the entire PPT file in OpenOffice, which he conveniently had on the laptop. photo1, photo2, the caption says "Microsoft Shared Source Initiative".
Ooh, so ignorance is a valid defense after all! All right everyone, stop studying and you to can run a monopoly.
is bliss...
- live from Costa Rica !
This is really just more MS-FUD. Almost everyone know now uses Firefox. A year ago, that definitely wouldn't have been true. If IE earns enough of a reputation as being a complete piece of junk, and starts being "uncool" to use, even the dumbest of users will start using the "cool" thing to have at the moment, Firefox.
Take off every sig. For great justice.
In a previous Slashdot article (a few months ago, I can't seem to find it at the moment), a Microsoftie was quoted as saying he had installed Firefox (among other browsers). Of course, we Slashdotters razzed him for it.
Today, we have someone from Microsoft who says they haven't installed Firefox. This is decried as shameful -- how dare he criticize the application if he hasn't tried it?
Poor Microsoft. They're damned if they do, and damned if they don't. Damned if I care, though; I use Opera, myself.
Stressed? Me? Of course not. Stress is what a rubber band feels before it breaks, silly.
He says if consumers wanted more features, they'd tell Microsoft, using the example of tabbed browsing. I would argue that if consumers knew what features they wanted, that would be true - but innovative features have to be created somewhere. Sounds like someone's got a bad case of the NIH syndrome to me ...
We'll just tell you what features you need and want. Anthing else is just bloat
It's also interesting to note that these statements made by Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, come with no knowledge of what Firefox has to offer as he admit not even installing or using Firefox.
Did the former Iraqi Information Minister find a new job?
Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn't lack any important features.
I only hope that the mangement at Microsoft continues to believe this statement for the forseeable future. Nothing could help Firefox more.
Say what you may, I use Firefox on all my ( windows, Linux, OSX, AIX, Solaris ) systems. I have taught other people such as relatives and firends the joy of Firefox, and they too have switched over too the new browser. Firefox is a revolution of people getting what they want from the web back. With a search bar, adblocking and pop up blocking, and support for all the major plugins ( like flash and java etc ...) Firefox is now the most nicest browser out their. And many websites are fixing themselves to work with FireFox.
Still using IE... never had any problem with these so-called "threats" that are constantly and tiresomely reported ad naseum here on slashdot. Never had a problem, never had a security issue, never had a cra
They claim that tabbed browsing is not a feature that their clients want, yet if you go to the windows page at microsoft http://www.microsoft.com/windows/default.mspx they have an option there that says "Want Tabbed Browsing, Search Toolbars, and More?". All those options suspiciously being features incorporated into firefox. Maybe they do see it as a threat after all.
No more of this quote. Please. Ever.
Both sides ignore and laugh at each other anyway. Who wins?
if Microsoft's customers wanted new features, they would have told the company about it.
Because the customers are user interface engineers who know exactly what will make their experience better, right?
They can just keep repeating that they aren't afraid just to reassure themselves and their business partners. The statement that IE is not less, secure, well, is known false. The security is compromised the same moment they integrated the browser into the OS so tightly. Btw, the mere fact that they react on firefox shows its effect on the market. I think in the future firefox will steadily get a nice share of the browser market, when more and more users learn about its features. IE is just an ancient application, deprecated, and insecure (CERT says so, not me, before someone starts accusing me).
It takes a man to suffer ignorance and smile
Be yourself no matter what they say
Sorry, that should be "Almost everyone I know now uses Firefox." Yay for not using Preview...
Take off every sig. For great justice.
The recent press, I believe CNN.com and a few others, have mentioned the competition between Firefox and Internet Explorer. One thing I noticed is statements from Microsoft, and otherwise, about how Firefox may have a bit of a challenge on its hands when the next version of Windows is released with an improved Internet Explorer.... The problem is that all of these articles cite "Improved Security" as a feature.
Now, I don't know about you, but the notion of Microsoft allowing their current IE offering to stagnate while developing on their next offering with the big feature being security improvements.... That just strikes me as wrong. They need to take care of their current customers who have already thrown their load in with MS, rather than set them up for future sells based on improvments that should never be labeled as a "Feature"...
Selling security improvments on a browser is like improving selling new gas tanks designs on a Ford so they would be less likely to explode.
IE 6.0 has a really nice auto hide feature for the filebar when in full screen mode. Full screen is indeed full screen. Under Firefox 1.0 you have to uncheck the navigation and bookmark toolbar while in window mode and then go into full screen mode.
Microsoft says that its OS is "more then reliable enough". The study was backed up be a pretty looking graph detailing how much solitaire is played while making pretty looking graphs.
"You don't have to download or install IE we embed it in every aspect of your system. There for everything has to use it." he said in his best Fake M$ Spokes Person voice.
http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ Spread it.
---
Thank you, Microsoft, for helping me determine what is, and what is not, my priorities for an enjoyable web browsing experience.
Thank you, Open Source, for opening the eyes of these huddled masses of consumerism, and showing them a better alternative.
Bravo.
I like big butts and I cannot lie.
Of course they're going to play it down. It should be expected.
Ignorance kills, complacency kills, hatred kills, but usually not the ones guilty of them.
Then Microsoft appears to be wrong. While it's likely true that Internet Explorer is no less secure than Firefox (come on, professional coders at Microsoft probably know what they're doing), the fact is that the Mozilla Project is better at getting fixes. When there was a security vulnerability in Firefox 0.9.3 (I believe) a few months ago, the patch was released within a few short hours. Flaws in Internet Explorer often run rampant for days, sometimes weeks. So while Internet Explorer's code may be no less secure, it is effectively the weaker browser. Saying that Firefox poses no threat to Microsoft is either naive, egotistical, or idiotic.
- dshaw
Rendering graphics at all is optional in an HTML user agent. If Microsoft wants its web browser to render graphics, why do the developers go single-buttock about it?
Browsers come and go, but firefox is making a serious impact here.
I was flipping channels, and saw some news show (damn if I can remember which one) was talking about it briefly. Something like a open source browser being TV worthy is something.
Heck, even a lot of the non-geeks at my work have heard through the grape vine that Firefox is the way to go. They are installing it, and loving it, and spreading the word.
Of course, you were only trolling.
Pretty Pictures!
This guy is a treasure trove of wit, here's another good one I noticed after re-reading a second time:
We take user feedback very seriously. If you have that feedback, then you should feed it back to us because we will feed it to the product team.
It inspires a poem:
Feed us the feedback double-quick!
When we've digested the feed then lickey split
Your browser we'll enance to make it more slick
But keep you safe from all harm? Well that's quite a trick...
Instead look at XAML - it makes buttons you click!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
You don't have to install Firefox or use it to know what features it has. It's called reading or talking to someone who Has used it. I don't see how he can be criticized for this. Everything else is fair game, of course.
free online diet tracking.
Unlikely as it is, I hope this is really the view MS takes (and sticks to) about firefox / mozilla. It would be wonderful if ms never 'innovated' anything again for that matter.
Firefox &
Repton.
They say that only an experienced wizard can do the tengu shuffle.
If by that it won't infect M$'s IE with a virus or trojan then yes.
Almost everything else will though =\
"If any question why we died, Tell them because our fathers lied."
First MS will lose the small 'at home' and business customers. Once these people are comfortable with the competition, the competition will seep into the big MS customers, for whom the 'small customers' are employees.
No, I'm not going to post this directly to you Steve, as I reckon you will ignore it.
If companies realise they want to have their computers a little more safe from the almost weekly virus attacks, then they will switch to Firefox. Same with the average person - as soon as they hear about it and dare to try it.
whenever microsoft makes an announcement that something is not a threat to their business, you know that it is, otherwise why bother making such an announcement?
reminds me of what they were saying about the web in 1995. and linux for the last 6 years.
in fact, a friend of mine just took a job at MS to work in their "why MS OS'es are better than linux" group.
in this age of communication i'm just not getting through
How much more blantant could Microsoft be in saying they are not really an innovator?
"If you don't ask for it - we can't think of it!"
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
XUL is potentially a huge advantage that Firefox (and other Mozilla-based browsers) have over IE.
...)
Using XUL, you can develop full-blown user interfaces that aren't limited to HTML-style text boxes, radio boxes, drop-down boxes and so on. Instead, you get access to trees, grids, menus, groupboxes, SOAP and XML-RPC client access and so on; a sizeable subset of what e.g. VB has to offer. It also understands CSS, so you can make XUL interfaces visually attractive if you're unlike me and actually have the patience to do so...
It's quite easy to develop XUL code as well, if somewhat time-consuming because there isn't yet a good, stable IDE available.
MS knows there's a market for this stuff, because it was developing XAML which meets broadly the same requirements. However a solid XAML implementation is currently a few years away at least, so XUL has a window of opportunity.
In case it's not obvious, here's why you'd use XUL instead of e.g. VB to develop application front-ends:
- easy to deploy to clients (i.e. install e.g. Firefox, and that's it; no mucking around with DLL versions)
- easy to maintain (i.e. tweak the code on a server rather than tweak and redeploy to every client)
- already cross-platform (Windows, Linux, Solaris, Mac, BSD,
- no dependence on ActiveX or Java to give the "rich client experience"
- supports CSS and works with HTML, so competent Web designers should be able to pick up XUL without great difficulty. Someone please please please create an IDE to make this easy!
- works with existing Web servers (e.g. Apache, IIS) without difficulty; after all, XUL is just XML text and Web servers have been serving text since day 1
Slashdot should run a poll on most overused quote on Slashdot. Other candidates could include Ben Franklin's "Those who give up liberty for the sake of security deserve neither liberty nor security.", Bill Gates' "640K ought to be enough for anybody." and Linus Torvalds' "Only wimps use tape backup: real men just upload their important stuff on ftp, and let the rest of the world mirror it."
In a related story, Slug said that Salt was not a threat to it at all.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I've not been a victim of a single IE security hole
Run spybot search and destroy, you will whistle a different tune.
[ I can not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presents danger, the solution is ignorance ] -- Isaac Asimov
It's good to see Microsoft completely indifferent to their user base. It helps me keep faith that real innovation will beat their marketing hype.
Of course, Microsoft never fights battles in technological and innovative terms, but through marketing and business tactics.
Let the Browser War 2 (BW2) begin.
Si tacuisses philosophus mansisses. If you had kept quiet, you would have remained a philosopher.
They say IE is a target because it's everywhere, not because it has holes. Well then, Apache is everywhere. Why don't we hear about a new buffer overflow or mishandled JPG in Apache every two weeks?
Fascism trolls keeping me up every night. When I starts a preachin', he HITS ME WITH HIS REICH!
If Ghandi had been going up against Microsoft, he'd be one of those happy friendly cartoon search agents now, like that puppy or that paperclip.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
Microsoft used this strategy several times. Remember their position towards Linux: They more or less ignored it , until they considered it a serious threat for their market share. They then switched to the usual FUD campaigns (TCO stuff etc.). The next phase will feature M$ using Linux for their own purpose. The same is happening now to Firefox. Once it reaches a signifacant momentum, Microsoft will react and present studies claiming IE to be superior.
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Too many sites still require IE/ActiveX to function properly. Vistaprint.com comes to mind. I always make it a point to write and/or call when I encounter a site that doesn't work and let them know it's "broken", and that they're about to lose a customer since I refuse to use IE.
On the other hand, when I encounter a site that supports Firefox and encourages its use (Wells Fargo, for instance) I always send an email to whoemver contacts I can find praising their decision to support a more secure browser.
The more people that do this, the faster IE can be banished forever.
I've not been a victim of a single IE security hole (I keep up to date and I'm not a stupid user)
You can get adware installed on your Windows machine even if you're not a stupid user. It takes only one under-13 in the household to accidentally click Yes to an ActiveX pop-up to get the shit put on your machine.
Or do you use IE for Mac OS, which some claim is the best web browser available for those older machines that still run Mac OS 9?
I'm not listening to you!
LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA LA
</fingers in ears>
Honestly, I think they're still in the denial phase. When do they start laughing at us?
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
"we don't need to see it to know it's factually innacurate" (Referring to a comment made by the White House in regards to Fahrenheit 9/11)
Maybe people should do even just a little bit of research before making statements like that...
There is another kind of evil which we must fear most, and that is the indifference of good men. -- Boondock Saints
IE no less secure? Firefox has nothing to offer?
Tell that to the dozen or so users that I've had to rescue in the past six months because their machines had been rendered nearly inoperable by spyware and malware, just because they made the mistake of surfing the web with IE.
Tell that to the whole *industry* of spyware removal tools - AdAware, SpyBot, etc, etc... - that have sprung up precisely because so many users have problems with IE.
And tell that to all the happy users who have switched to Firefox and love it. I personally know dozens of people who have switched to Mozilla or Firefox, and not *one* of them has switched back to IE.
Wasn't that supposed to be part of HTML 2.0? When's that coming out again?
Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, says "There are plenty of products out there with features we don't have. We have plenty of features that our customers don't use."
Good job Steve, you just convinced me not to use MS products.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
Really? Then how come my wife's virus scanner was popping up and alerting her to malicious code almost daily while using IE. Now that I've forced her to switch to Firefox, she's only had one after months of use. Go figure.
Oh, I see.. something that only runs on Windows
IE is available for Mac OS as well. Or if you're on *BSD or GNU/Linux for x86, can't you run IE in Wine?
you cant really expect a browser to take over a the browser share when every windows computer has an IE icon one click away..
people seem to think its some sort of fair fight and that since firefox is a better browser that its going to win over the masses, but it'll never happen because its not a level playing field
its cool when you're at work and you're "not allowed to install software". In these sorts of scenario its cool because:
IE = no software installed
Mozilla/firefox = software installation
why would you want your employees installing new browsers when theres already one?
im not saying firefox should give up.. its badass and I used it.. but its no real threat to IE
According to the new Microsoft PR spokesman, former Iraqi Defense Minister, Gen. Sultan Hashim Ahmad.
FF is not made by M$
:D
Privacy is terrorism.
...you just slashdotted the entire OSDN. ;)
Firefox has also served me well when cablemodems meet old win98 machines with low ram. IE would just die, but firefox ran ok considering such restrictions as 200mb hard drives, etc.
Firefox &
"If there are features in our products that are subpar or need to be added, then I have great confidence that we are an organization that responds pretty quickly and effectively to that."
Excerpt from the next Ballmer memo:
"Security is not a feature! Security, security, security!!!"
- sm
Honestly, my girlfriend (yes, I need to hand in my nerd badge) downloaded a friggin dialler by searching drawing templates (she's a kindergarden teacher). I forced her to use Firefox, and one luck that I did: after 3 times clicking on the link and having no new templates on screen she asked me for help. What did firefox do? Simple: it displayed the makeshift download screen, and downloaed the .exe file. Apart from that it didn't do squat. Would it have been Internet Explorer, a dialler would have been installed.
Before she lived with me such a thing would have mattered, because she was on dial-up.
Don't believe me: try downloading anything from this . (Probably not the site she found but very similar)
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
In echo chambers atop ivory towers across the world, monopolists fear nothing their yesmen haven't told them.
--
make install -not war
First a famous quote is used, then it's overused, then you get modded up.
Forget the whales - save the babies.
I actually use IE instead of FireFox. (though I do have FireFox installed) Why would I do such a thing? Simple: Google Toolbar. I simply can't browse the internet without the glory that is the google toolbar anymore. Another added benefit of IE is that poorly written web pages (ie IE specific) often look/function better. Now I know that IE is about a secure as a "no trespassing" sign in theory, but in practice I haven't had a single problem with it. Just don't click yes on every popup and run adaware now and again. Anyhow, just my $0.02
Hikery.net - The best hiking site ever. Made by yours truly.
This is yet another front in the war against closed source. FireFox MUST keep it's level of innovation above Microsoft, and the only way to do that is for the open source community to band together and support Firefox. We all must reach out to others about the evils of IE and the great wonderful salvation of the 'Fox. Tell your co-workers, tell your teachers, tell your friends! And especially tell the youngsters because they are the future, and the future is now. There are no innocents in war.
---Stepping off box made of soap---
I just can't wait til they start to sell stuffed toys of the 'Fox. Or at least have a StarFox theme for FireFox. That would just be wicked awesome!
You have to look at this from the MS viewpoint. Firefox is NOT a threat, if you are looking at it from a revenue standpoint.
True business threats (as in the SWOT model) usually have some kind of financial impact. Swapping a browser that comes with your OS for one that is "free" is not exactly going to cripple Microsoft's sales numbers.
What about those of us that do want other features?
Up until SP2 we had to install pop up blockers for IE.
In firefox I LOVE my tabs and I also love the free gestures plugin. Gestures were the one of the big things that made me like opera. Now firefox has them. IE doesn't as far as I'm aware.
As a developer IE is simply broken when it comes to supporting intricate details of some of the standards that have been around. Search google for IE box model bug.
The man who trades freedom for security does not deserve nor will he ever receive either. - Benjamin Franklin
thought that maybe he has people that work under him that research stuff like this and give him their opinion? Just because he personally has not used it does not mean that he doesn't know anything about it.
© 2004 The SCO Group, Inc. All Rights Reserved.
Average users don't want the ease of tabbed browsing, support for new standards, cross platformness, open source, and security through obscurity, reduced OS integration, and safer defaults. They just want whatever came preinstalled on their systems, and OEM's will install what we tell them to, within the limits of the law. But it's not an anti-trust violation to work your monopoly power against a competitor's product when that product is free, because our lawyers will argue that they can't claim any lost sales as a result. As a hunter might say, the job's not done 'til the fox can't run.
Should be a spoof of Apple's switcher ads. Now those were dumb advertisiments, but they have a good point. When was the last time you heard of a Apple user switching back to Windows? Or a Firefox user going back to IE? I use Linux, Windows XP and Mac OS X on a daily basis, and it's incredible how much the other two OS's have going for them. If only Linux was more polished, or OS X wasn't trapped on proprietary hardware....
and a monkey just flew out of my ass
This guy has a future in politics...
I don't have anybody else in my house that's going to install spyware accidentally or otherwise.
I don't see much use in tabbed browsing on an OS that already has a taskbar. They're the only tabs I need.
Search bar, I have the Google toolbar. Popup blocking, equally, I have the Google toolbar, plus IE on XP SP2 has a popup blocker too. I don't use many bookmarks, have a seperate RSS reader I like and can never get the font sizes in Firefox to look like I want. Extensions, skins, and all that jazz, couldn't care less.
I use Camino/Firefox on my Mac's because Mac IE is terrible and I find Safari a bit flaky sometimes. Although it is improved on Tiger.
Could it be Firefox is more secure than IE because millions of people haven't tried to pwned it yet?
So I guess, yeah, it's not really a threat to IE in terms of risk vs. market share.
Microsoft already has teh XUL killer under development - XAML, a very simialr technology.
What needs to happen?
Make a XUL plugin for everything that browses!! But espceially makea n XUL plugin for IE that lets you run XUL stuff inside IE, basically a sort of embedded Mozilla engine. Then work up a few killer apps to make people download and use the plugin.
If a few good uses of XUL can become widespread over the next six months or so, it has a good chance to take a hold before XAML can squash it. And with enough visible support big companies like IBM might jump on the bandwagon.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'd like to nominate Ben English and Steve Vamos for this years Iraqi Information Minister Award!
Microsoft will tell you there is no such award but I can assure you there is. In fact they've already won the award many times and Bill Gates has many on display on his desk.
As a web developer there are plenty of features I would like to see along the lines of CSS/XHTML/ECMAScript standards compliance. I would say that my payment of sweat and tears with workarounds to these problems more than qualifies me as a customer.
I'm pretty sure it was also available for Solaris at some point.
I have a 'e' icon and internet explorer on my Debian desktop. \ducks and runs for cover\ .. and before u start abt Openoffffice.. I dont like Powerpoint, i have to use it for some presentations and I need some equations so I use TexPoint which lets me use Latex in powerpoint). Anyway so Office Xp auto installs IE and an IE icon on my KDE desktop looked so funny that I decided to keep the icon.
Well I couldnt help it, I had to install Office XP so I bought crossover office ( rebooting every time I need to use powerpoint is irritating
Lucky for me I have the IE icon, now that it has been proved (by the MS spokesperson) that IE is more secure
Everyone I've ever shown Firefox to, even the most novice of computer users, falls in love with it after using it a few times. My favorite feature is controlling the zoom with Cntrl + or -.
I'm sure the next version of IE will have most of the features that Steve Vamos thinks are not important. Last I read, Firefox has 6 percent of the market, and rising. Every month Microsoft delays the next IE release, they can kiss more market share goodbye.
I missed the bit in the middle where you spoke briefly of XAML - but I think you are being way to generous by saying it has a few years. I would actually not be surprised to see it in a service pack even before Longhorn ships!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...it evolves into a browser that can be centrally managed and deployed via Active Directory. I think at that time you will see Firefox make some major headway into the Windows corporate environment.
But is this really news? Like, did you actually expect anyone from Microsoft to say that Firefox is a threat, or that Firefox is dangerous to their economic model? It's not in their best interest to do so.
Nobody will ever outright say that something else is better than what they are selling... I call that the sleazy used car salesman principle.
~ kjrose
This guy is trying to pull a fast one, guys! When his browser 'crashed', there was no 'CARRIER LOST' message...
It's a FAKED CRASH! DON'T BELIEVE IT!
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Indeed, there was a big article about it in the local newspaper in Minneapolis. No small deal.
How come the tabs don't respond to the Tab key?
Why do I want downloaded files to automatically saved to my desktop - what's wrong with "My Documents/Fire Fox/Downloads" so I don't get clutter all over my desktop?
I have pop ups blocking (xp sp2)
I do not load "harmful ActiveX controls" but I want to load "useful" ones. In fact as a smart user I wonder how to make them work in FF? If a client of mine tries to use my web form (activex) doesn't see it he will get the shits with me - not his browser.
At least in IE (after SP2) I get a message allowing me to CHOOSE to run control.
Google is part of my toolbar.
I have the "Features you are used to" because I got used to them in IE.
I feel for you. I use *no* MS software whatsoever. And I dont like OO either - its too 'similar' to the MS apps its supposed to replace. I suppose thats a good thing for people weaned on those, in order to allow them the opportunity to get off Windows, but I just cant stand that *type* of app.
I have no use for Powerpoint, or anything like it. I stick with ASCII text, so not much need for a Word or its equivalent. On the very rare occasion I need to do something spreadsheet-like, I use gnumeric.
I would argue that if consumers knew what features they wanted, that would be true - but innovative features have to be created somewhere.
The Minivan almost didn't get made because all the market surveys said noone wanted a minivan and "noone had ever asked for one".
Iococca ignored the marketing department and the rest is history.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I didn't find any features in FF that I really consider it worth switching.
The reasons why Microsoft is not worried?
1) Firefox will never be integrated to the OS (or Office). There will always be functions that Windows or Office will call IE for.
2) The vast majority of people will not use anything other than the software bundled with their system. I have had no end of trouble convincing people to try either Mozilla or Firefox. When I tell them that the programs are made by the same people that made Netscape in the past, some will be willing to give it a try.
3) They'll figure out a way to kill Firefox, legal or otherwise, and will stall and wheedle in the courts long enough to make sure that the dagger is good and twisted. Until our legal folks realize that Microsoft is a monopoly and it has no incentive to play fair with competing products, it will continue to destroy the competition.
Why on earth would I *want* to?
Other than that your employer requires that the web site you're developing work on at least 94 percent of HTTP/HTML user agents?
Or standards-compliant CSS rendering. You know, stuff like getting the fucking box model right and implementing at least FUCKING CSS 1 DAMMIT.
Sorry, forgot to take my pills. I'm off to the nurse.
Who is General Failure and why is he reading my hard disk?
WHat if buisnesses start deciding that deploying Firefox En Masse is a good way to cut down on viruses?
Or if a number of prominent programs started bundling Mozilla as an HTML display engine instead of hoping the right IE was in place?
There are a lot of ways Mozilla/Firefox can make pretty dramatic inroads quickly, once they reach ciritcal mass - even just 10% (I believe the current goal) would make most web designers have to think strongly about testing a site with Mozilla and make most banks support it by purpose instead of by accident.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It appears Microsoft sees IE as a way for people to access websites, whereas the Moz team sees the browser as a way for the user to get to information, with built in rss readers and integrated search engines. That's also why moz tries to render so many specs defined by w3c, they want to display whatever information you can throw at it. I'm just waiting for people to start building P2P and bittorrent interfaces for firefox.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Click here to submit a poll, sucka!
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
That was another good one to be sure!
I don't think Microsoft should let this guy speak in the future wihtout some supervision, or at least an editor.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Reminds me of Sergent Shults on Hogan's Heroes "I KNOW NOTHING!" "I SEE NOTHING!"
I heard several other people have done the same.
Not a threat.. my eye!
Microsoft only has sales and a bit of support in Australia. So you're hearing the word of a sales guy. Of course he'll tell you that his shit is no worse than this other shit.
Microsoft tells us what we want based on what informed users wanted (and got) 10 years ago, filtered through focus groups and studies by "think tanks" 4 years ago, before kicking their development team in the ass to produce something in 18 months time.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
It's not that hard really...Once you start, you'll get used to it eventually.
"Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn't lack any important features"
And yes, I realise most everyone who has replied to this post has commented on this phrase alone. But hey, who am I not to jump on the bandwagon?
I got two words for "doesn't lack any important features" and those are Tabbed Browsing, and just one word for "is no less secure" and that is SPYWARE
I work for a university fixing computers for students. These days, "fixing computers" generally means "get computer, run virus scan, run spyware scans, clean up the mess, return to student". After a month or so of seeing the same students time and time again for the same problems I got fed up and started installing Firefox on their computers. When they show up to pick up their computer and I tell them about Firefox, explain to them that Firefox does not allow spyware to get onto their machines (at least the ones that would normally go through IE), and show them tabbed browsing, they are SOLD. Now I get students coming in with their computers regularly asking me to install Firefox for them. Not one of the students whose computer I installed Firefox on has returned to me for virus or spyware related problems. Not one.
On an only slightly related note, some have asked me if there is a way to get tabbed chatting for their AIM conversations, at which point I simply uninstall AIM and install the windows port of GAIM. Again, once I show them tabbed chatting, and the ability to see their "buddies" away messages by just hovering the mouse cursor over the buddy name, they will never turn back. It doesn't take much to convince a user to switch, just show them the little things that kill and they will go for it.
One day I went to visit a old teacher from my highschool while there I saw a kid take Put IE back in the dock (I took it out). When I asked the kid what he was doing.. He told me that he made web pages and he knew what he was doing. Further investigation showed was one of those people that would take any microsoft product over something else. (Sheeple I like to call them)
So I come back a awhile later to help the teacher with some new computers.. Still seeing kids using IE.. So what did I do.. I installed firefox. Put it in the dock. I changed the Icon to the internet explorer one. Then promptly deleted IE. No one ever noticed. (I only did this on one mechine. The rest have safari. This was just a test mechine)
Oh the new computers.. Overkill.. Lets see iMac G5, Powermac G5, and a Dell pc. For each Workstation.. For a highschool. Wish I had that at home.
I've been a long time IE user. Personally I've never had the problems with IE that others have had because I sat down and learned how to setup and use IE from the start. I memorized the operation of every last setting under the Tools->Internet Options dialog and adjusted them accordingly. I learned how to browse as securely as possible while watching what IE does very closely. Of course I'm not your average browser. Almost every setting I could find is set to prompt me, as I enjoy absolute control over things. This also alerts me to how complex some websites are in their attempt to invade your privacy. Just watching all the dialogs pop up for scripting and ActiveX is amazing. Also the hitbox'es, doubleclicks, and adtechs are really annoying.
Yesterday I downloaded and installed FireFox 1.0. I wanted to look at it and find out if it would suit me better since I still consider IE to be a little too proprietary in that it hides what it really does. So I am looking for something a bit more open.
After looking at all the features of FireFox I was amazed at how few things it allowed me to adjust. It doesn't have any of the options I am used to using under IE. Here are a few...
* Changing the temporary cache path?
* No option to clear cache when done?
* Inability to prompt me if I want scripts to run?
* Prompted cookie setting control?
* Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.)
* No Zones feature so that I can configure certain security options for certain sites.
* Installed security is to save passwords, allow web sites to install software, save form information, and Java is enabled?
(Of course IE is probably even more open, but the point is that FireFox is supposed to be secure right?)
* Many other configuration options are missing that would allow me to be prompted if I want to execute or do something.
I notice that tabbed browsing ends up using even more desktop real estate. I've never needed tabbed browsing before, all my windows appear on my Explorer task bar...just like tabs. I suppose tabs would be useful for people whos operating systems don't have a taskbar enabled shell.
Other that than the above observations I found Firefox to work fine. It didn't crash at all, but was a bit slower to render than IE. Only once did it redirect me to a website I did not type in the URL for. I just shut it down and restarted to fix that problem.
I find that I don't think I'll be switching just yet because of the inability to actively control scripting and the in-line image problem. If those issues are taken care of in the future, I don't know why I would stay with IE. Until then.
+1
Yes. And that statement from Steve Vamos where he says that IE doesn't lack important features is not the only one that suggests that Firefox's market share could continue to increase. But here's another quote from him that I liked.
"I'm not sure that that is the reality. I have seen comments around that, but there is nothing I can refer to that really supports that"
This quote in the article was referring to the threat to IE's market share posed by Firefox. And yet in this article which the article linked to, it suggests that Microsoft should be concerned if they do not want IE to lose market share. It says that for the last five months, IE has lost market share that has evidently been gained by Mozilla/Firefox.
And so I just cannot help but wonder how much market share must IE lose before its executives cease to make statements such as the ones that we are laughing at here?
I just wanted to put in my two cents. I switched to firefox today and implemented a couple of extensions. Goodbye, IE. I hope to never use you again...except for previewing my webpage for those who have not made the switch. Of course, I hear there's an extension for that.
Just so you know, I like to start signatures with the phrase, "Just so you know."
This is absolutely correct because whatever Microsoft says is absolutely true.
Firefox isnt a threat, its a clear winner.
Soon, Soon.
I'll never make that mistake again, reading the experts' opinions. - Feynman
Stop posting that goddamned quote! Holy crap! I've read it like 60,000 times already and I'm sick of seeing it in EVERY SINGLE STORY!
And Moderators, do your job and start moderating these things as "redundant" or something.
Comment of the year
It's also interesting to note that these statements made by Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, come with no knowledge of what Firefox has to offer as he admits not even installing or using Firefox.
Not.. really..
He probably doesn't have time to. He probably relies on analysts and employees to give him a summary of whether or not there are differing features. This is, dare I say, common?
I mean, sure, it's not the MOST informed he could be, but in the end this is just another ridiculous inflammatory anti-MS quote that's probably just going to slip under people's "common sense" radar - and it will do so for precisely the same thing most people hate MS for: blind arrogance towards its competition.
Moo
You have a good point about not supporting Win2K (one of my boxes at work is Win2K and they are debating rolling a few other XP boxes back to 2K boxes at user requests).
But XAML with good tools behind it, could make for the uber-sexy demo that makes heads of IT swoon and loose all sense and snap up XP and/or longhorn over Win2K (especially near the end of next year). I've already seen it happen in other contexts. Thus is could be adopted much faster than people think. Already the developer network has these cool looking videos of average developers (using Emacs no less!!!) whipping together cool looking apps with embedded video backgrounds all with a tiny bit of XML. Just the kind of thing that's simple enough to get people to buy in, even if it's not fully featured and you know in real life requires major tweaking to build something of value.
For shops that already have a lot of VB apps, XAML could be the quick form-slayer that C# could not be. I think that's perhaps where Microsoft is really coming from rather than an XUL killer, but you have to think they have XUL in mind as well.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
One-by-one as I clean machines with spyware and crap-ware of all sorts, I also install Firefox 1.0 onto their machines and if they want I spend about 3-5 minutes showing them the features that would be important to them. I show them pop-up blocking, tabbed browsing and how to install extensions such as Adblock.
I'd say 1 out of 10 or fewer people so far have wanted to go back to MSIE... and the reason is usually because they are just used to doing things a certain way but it doesn't take long to get used to the new one anyway.
These steps are important because my company's goal is to dump Microsoft and any product that depends on a Microsoft operating system. Moving people to Firefox, and getting people to use OpenOffice has, so far, been a welcome improvement for most of my users. (We need to write PDF files from time to time and only OpenOffice does that... sure we could buy and install adobe acrobat... expensive... no point in that when they get what they want for free with OpenOffice.) And once they are all used to seeing OOo and Firefox in their faces, changing the OS from beneath them becomes a LOT more trivial than it would be to go about it the other way around.
Truly, the migration path from Windows to Linux is in the applications... get the apps we need to run under Linux and we're golden. So far, OOo and Firefox is paving the way nicely and presenting a very favorable impression for using OSS in the workplace.
Wrong or not, thats just another thing they will leverage to get you to upgrade to Longhorn. Want security? Get Longhorn.
A radio maverick jumps to internet only. The Future of Rock n Roll
I don't understand why everyone seems so surprised at Microsoft's comments. Did you expect them to come out and say "Yeah, we know our product is bug-ridden filth, use Firefox!!"?
At the end of the day, when it comes down to the bottom line, these people are marketing droids. And they are doing what marketing droids do best...pushing their product. And marketing droids are not known for objective honesty.
I want a new quote. One that won't spill. One that don't cost too much. Or come in a pill.
The people who find features such as tabbed browsing are no longer IE users. Overlooking the obvious, really.
Yes, I do post ambiguous statements that are true in more than one of the ways they can be taken.
Saddle and Horseshoe industry says the automobile is not a threat to their business.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
*covers ears* La la la la......
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
...John Ashcroft implies terrorism and crime not a threat to US.
From the article:
"I don't believe it is a true statement that our version of freedom doesn't have the features that our subjects want."
Ashcroft reiterated that features such as civil liberties are not important to US citizens.
The great thing about the embedded XUL strategy though is that it follows thier own paradigm (I know we all hate that word by now, but it's so easy to use!) of embrace and extend. The XUL plugin embraces all those that choose to stick with IE, and even goes with those moving into Longhorn and a newer version of IE. That gives you a solid base to have people think of cool XUL apps. If it works in IE it lets corperations consider XUL for internal form based apps, as a lot of corps are not going to be off the IE habit for a long, long time.
Microsoft has been successful because they build a huge base quickly, and grow from it. XUL can have the same path - it can be the heathly moss growing atop IE's rotting trunk, so to speak.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
...it's just that geeks are just wired differently in the brain--we have different thought processes than normal "dumb people". Artsy types are also wired differently in the brain than normal people. While geeks and artsy types are usually polar opposites (left brained vs right brained, etc) they share common characteristics (much like how communist and facist dictatorships do in the political space). One such trait is the continual search for new and different ways of doing things--there is both left-brained and right-brained creativity.
Most people are in the "mushy middle"--they aren't dumb it's just that their intelligence is just spread out a bit more and are thus not quite as "creative" or curious. The average "mushy middle" person has the benefit of being more socially adjusted but is also a creature of habit and is not easily driven to deviate from his comfort zone unless circumstances make things annoying enough to disturb that comfort. This is the only theory I've been able to come up with explaining why IE and Outlook have been allowed to rot and fester and continue to enjoy market dominance even in the face of free competition.
It isn't a name thing as much as it is good marketing or else Excel would've flopped because it didn't have "Calc" or "Spreadsheet" in the name. Excel was part of the Office juggernaut and is now market leader so out of habit now "Excel==Spreadsheet". Hell, when I started in university the school had just implemented WWW directories on student's accounts so they could have home pages and I know for the first little while people would say "look at the Mosaic page I made"!
Things are changing though because "mushy middle" is becoming uncomfortable. They are afraid of the WWW and their inbox because the news and the experts are telling them it is swimming with nasties that will corrupt their machines, spy on them and steal their account numbers. Even mainstream media is now starting to emphasise "windows" and "internet explorer". That is enough to get them thinking. They are very easy sells when they become vicims one too many times.
Anyway, to help the creature of habit with the conversion, I install Firefox and Thunderbird, and use "Set Program Access and Defaults" to remove the icons for IE and Outlook in addition to setting the Mozilla counterparts to the default clients. Furthermore, I rename the Mozilla icons to the generic "Web Browser" and "Email". This has resulted in a pretty much universally positive reception. I believe it would be second nature for people to click on "the fox" and "the bird" if that's what they learned to do from the start, or have done it long enough.
And why not? This has been the open source way for a while now. It's about choice. If users want to browse with IE or Safari or KDE, let them, but provide a plugin compatible with that browser.
Other examples are Cygwin, you can compile and run Linux applications on Windows. Jabber, integrates into many IM clients.
Setting the standards now and getting everyone to accept a cross-platform next generation web interface is much more important than getting everyone to use Firefox and adhere to W3C standards. This should be the goal right now.
.sig: Open Source, Open Mind
I know my browser and I know I love it and use it. I also install it on every computer I work on and delete every instance of IE I Can.
I do not think that I have ever supported an open source community based project ever, except for firefox. I can give a fuck what any "IT" manager has to say about IE, it's all advertising to the general dumbass mass population.
Come on! If if if if if... I'm so tired of hearing this over-optimistic statements that actually do not say anything at all. Believe me, no one would be happier than me if (again) XUL would give Mozilla/Firefox a bigger market, but seriously, who are we kidding?
Sure it doens't have many ideas by itself, but I'm trying to spread the notion that it's possible so perhaps more people will come up with ideas on top of it... to fire up some people so they might try building such a thing.
To provide something more of substance as the other poster was asking for, some ideas might be auction-related XUL programs (like trackers or easier to use auction creation forms with defaults you can preset). Or perhaps something more along the lines of a tool that can take a screen shot of a typical form based app and construct an XUL equivilent shell just by parsing what widgets look like (you could for example tell a dropdown or listbox from a textarea).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
would be "Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, come with no knowledge of what the competition has to offer as he admits not even installing or using"
Seriously... How can you be a succesful product manager if you're not aware of what the competition is doing?
I can't believe this guy is in the position he's in with statements like that, much less keeping that position after such an admission.
In Soviet Russia, PROFIT!!! runs poll(?) on you!
One theory that I have heard is that when an individual (or a carbon-based life-form) has a greater intelligence, as in, for example, the difference between a pig (the animal) and a human being, the superior-intelligence life form (the human being) will be able to nitpick and see contradictions and things that don't look right - annoyances, things like that. Perhaps a pig might not see these things, seeing as how it is a "lower" life-form with regards to intellect and reasoning. I know, "pigs are smart", but they can't read Shakespeare, or surf the internet.
You get your car back and there's oil on the steering wheel - builders track cement all over your yard - or a teacher that is obviously not fully grasping the subject he or she teaches, as is prone to happen from time to time - your son or daughter gets an essay question marked wrong that you think shouldn't have been marked wrong.
Furthermore, as an intelligent, caring, curious human being, you are fascinated with computers and the internet, and it bugs you that people expect you to just shut up and consume whatever they feel like shoving down your throat, and it also bugs you when others suggest that you should just "make like a pig" and "be happy" in your stupidity. Arrrgghhhh! Why am I so annoyed???? See... it's 'cause you're smart and you see the BS where it lies.
No, we are not stupid. We are smart. We pick the lint off your shirt. We're never satisfied. And you know what? We're proud of it. It's what makes us human beings.
It's not about knowing less about computers or automobiles or building or anything... it's "Hey, you got oil all over my steering wheel and my car is still making that noise" - or something along those lines.
Pigs might be able to just be happy, or maybe clams, better yet, you know... "happy as a clam" - when it comes to using IE, but being nitpicky is, to a greater or lesser extent, human nature - it's what human beings do. It might be right or wrong, but I think it's in some way, shape, or form, "better" than being a pig.
This can only be attributable to human error.
An UNINSTALLER!!!
And Al Gore will henceforth be known as the inventor of firef... the internet.
(Yes yes... I know... that quote was taken out of context... blah blah... just chuckle, smirk, or snear, and move on.)
Humorless sig goes here.
(unless there is some other feature that IE lacks and other browsers have).
Security?
I don't understand why managers goes out of their way to say silly stuff. I wonder if it comes with the job.
The Microsoft IE Dev team is pretty up to date - see their wiki here.
http://channel9.msdn.com/wiki/default.aspx/Chan
There's a lot less marketing junk - and the wiki format makes it easy to make comments and discussion constructively.
Apparently this MS director has a fan club aquired thanks to his popularity from his previous job.
See here
[alk]
You can use GhostWriter (based on ghostscript) to print to PDF from any windows application (inluding MS Office). I run it on my work XP laptop and it is very easy to use.
I tried to find a link for GhostWriter but couldnt see anything obvious. It is related to GhostView\GSView so it's a good start.
None of these are absolutely critical for a browser "for the masses". Like the guy said, IE has features that Firefox doesn't have... but it also renders slower and is much bigger (when you take into account ALL the DLLs that it uses). Also, you can turn off animations... use about:config, search for animation, and select the appropriate value....but again, there are probably some extensions that fit the bill to address those concerns.
Face it, the thing is Firefox is not > IE. It's got a different mission statement. The thing that is clear, however, is that Microsoft has ceased to put much, if any development into IE. That's from their own mouth. So I place my bet on Firefox getting things that you're complaining about before IE gets any of the benefits that Firefox has.
Make sure everyone's vote counts: Verified Voting
It's best to learn to adapt quickly to changes, bugs and exploits when dealing with Microsoft, otherwise find and use something different. One can only hope that sooner or later most people will realize that stuff like FireFox (which works, is safe and is free) is sometimes better than the alternative.
no idea running on windows, but on linux with the mozilla suite browser they have those sort of options. You can pick your cache folder, manage images, manage cookies, etc. If you hit a link that starts to download something (an e-vile .exe for example), it pops up a dialog and asks you want to do with it. There are a ton of other options available that aren't apparent on the menu either. An easy one is up in the address bar, type
about:config --then hit enter
lotsa stuff there
's'more for ya
command line arguments
mozilla tips web site
--like I said, I'm neither a windows nor a FF guy, I use linux and the moz suite, but perhaps there's something there you can use
Mozilla has all that(or at least most of that) and more. Firefox is more about the most compact browser possible, and generally is not meant to be as configurable I think.
That said, I believe you might be able to do much of what you were talking about by modifying the configuration XML for the app. I'm not sure how much Firefox shares in common with Mozilla in that regard.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Steps to success:
1) install FireFox,
2) import EVERYTHING from IE,
3) install Flash plugin, java, QT plugin, etc
4) then make FF the default browser.
Since a lot of people use hotmail, and FF doesn't work well with hotmail, I just label the IE links "Hotmail" (or "POPUPS") and set the default page to hotmail.com
Then I label Firefox "Internet" or "No POPUPS" and let the user decide what to do with it. Of course I explain that the only difference is that hotmail and popups are mutually exclusive. Can't have 'em both in one program, so they get to choose.
Done.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
I've banned IE use on my network. It spares me the trouble of flushing out all the spyware. Supporting Firefox has meant less work for me, not more.
How can you be a succesful product manager if you're not aware of what the competition is doing? I can't believe this guy is in the position he's in with statements like that, much less keeping that position after such an admission.
Obviously you haven't met a representative sample of product managers. In my experience blanket ignorance is far more distressingly common in these types than broad-spectrum knowledge.
Da Blog
and I have convinced the IT manager to install Firefox on all of our ghost images so that every person who takes a class at our organization will see the icon and maybe click on it. When I teach classes, I make it the default we browser and delete the links to IE.
We will make sure that everyone hears about it!
Does firefox have a kiosk mode like IE does?
Also, Firefox 1.0 doesn't run properly on Windows 95. It's not even supported on that OS.... But the installer still lets you install it. Why? Certainly it's possible to detect the version of the OS and notify the user that the product WONT WORK on it.
Am I just not going to those websites with IE exclusive material? What features are you talking about? Perhaps you could provide some links to sites which will crash my FF browser so I can see what you're describing. .
-FL
And immediately thought
There's nothing to see here - Move along"
_ _ _ Go for the eyes Boo! GO FOR THE EYES!
IE performs completely different functions from FireFox. FF doesn't deliver the adware features that users want, nor will it blindly open popups at random for any given site.
Clearly these two programs are not even comparable. This article is saying nothing new.
just like the humble blood clot... turboporsche@telus.net
MS tells lies like every other evil corporation/government? This is a sad truth, but a non-story.
-FL
step 3 of 3.
3) Profit?
Yeah, MS is good at step three.
Wow, I should not post when knackered.
Icebergs were no threat to the Titanic, either.
No, really. It was unsinkable. Just ask the shipping company...
i personally much prefer the management in FF, but perhaps someone could write an extension to simulate filesystem-style bookmarks management. i wouldn't like to see it changed wholesale - i think that it's very much a matter of preference - but this would be a good idea for an extension.
-Leigh
You may have banned it, but it's still there. And in the Army, there are things called IAVA's (Information Assurance Vulnerability Alerts). They are simply the same Microsoft secutiy bulletin released by the Army with a date for compliance. So even if I don't have a single machine that has IE as it's default browser, I still have to have that machine compliant with security patches. And you can be sure there are scans conducted to insure compliance. You can also be sure of who's butt gets nailed to the wall if there is even one vulnerable machine found.
I know it looks odd but I swear I really am not after the points. Some articles just hit my buttons... adn I guess I know how to press back.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Yeah, you are dumb. In most of your examples you have no basis for not being completely screwed by a smooth-talking salesman or service person.
In my day, and I'm only at the lunchtime of life, I have worked on cars, done my own electrical work (to code or better), remodeled a home (to code or better), and I currently tutor my nephew in English because his private school fails him in this one area.
So yeah, you do seem kinda dumb to me. Back in the day, you would have seemed fairly dumb to most hackers too.
You are reading a site where people mod boxes, build computers from spare parts or even from scratch, and even do some electrical and fairly extensive carpentry for their MAME machines.
So by the standard of the average hacker - yes, and I apologize to you in advance, but you come across almost like a blithering moron.
Now I agree, a superior attitude won't get you very far with someone. But it wouldn't hurt for the people on the other side of the equation to occasionally acknowledge that we hackers are literally the architects of the future. Instead, we are being driven down the economic and status chain just as was once done to our country's educators. That's not a wise thing to do.
We might just jump ship. Once the U.S. becomes the cheap labor camp the Red states wanted, what will be our reason to stay on? National pride?
Oh, I laugh...
Most people that know me consider me one of the smartest people they know. How do I know this? I have been told this repeatedly over the years, and without solicitation.
Perhaps surprisingly, I treat most people with a deference that they almost certainly do not deserve from me. Most people are complete lamers, and I am not, AND I know it. But I am almost always perfectly sweet to people in real life because you catch more flies with honey than with vinegar. I am nice to people because I find it useful to be nice to them.
So I ask you: What kind of hacker doesn't know how to do the things you claim not to know how to do?
First you ignore the quote. Then you laugh at the quote. Then you fight the quote...Then the quote wins.
:-)
One major weakness I've found for Firefox (and one that ticks me off to no end) is that there is no way for Firefox to load a local image.
I've actually offered a US $1000 bounty for anybody who can fix this and incorporate it into the main code base. See Link Here.
One thing that kills me about this is I spent 6-9 months developing software to work on MSIE and Mozilla. Mozilla would be a very small portion of my client base but I wanted to help promote open source. But since they made this change that disallows you from loading local images, all this work is gone to waste.
Anyways, I guess there are two things:
1. The fact that I developed on a 1.2 browser and the newer versions were NOT backward compatible. This sucks big ass. Imagine investing the time, money and effort on this and have it wasted. I know you could tell me I should have upgraded the browser but the point was that you always need to support the older browsers. I never even suspected that the newer browsers would purposely break something that worked in the older ones.
2. It's not a security issue. What damage can be done by loading an image that is on your computer. The most I could steal (info wise) is the width/height of that image and the fact that that image exists.
3. I wonder how my commercial incentive (the reward) plays out in an open source world. People are either going to be happy or hate it I presume. Either way, if you solve it and get it introduced into the release version, you get $1000.
Sunny
Be my Friend
your sig, on the other hand, is truncated :-)
-Leigh
For sunny free software scenario. Their main base at this point is the fact that setting *.htm to default to Anyotherbrowser breaks Frontpage.
If you need text styles to communicate then you don't have a message.
hmm last I heard Spyglass emlpoyees had a different view on this..
You do remember spyglass, right?
The company that MS bought IE code from?
Don't Tread on OpenSource
I agree, and I have to wonder "what makes him think AC's want to be moderated up anyway?" ...well, besides the trolls looking to demonstrate how stupid moderators are...
There is much cruelty in the universe, John.
Yeah, we seem to have the tour map.
Steve, you might want to know what the competitor offers before you say it isn't a threat. You may be talking about market share today, but tomorrow you will be playing catch up (eg: search engine).
1) Numbness
2) Denial
3) Anger
4) Depression
5) Acceptance
Looks like Microsoft is in Phase Two in regards to Firefox.
You're right, it's still there and I still have to patch it. But since people aren't using it, I'm not cleaning up after IE's messes. And people aren't using IE, because they like Firefox.
I am looking into this also, having sat by too long without knowing many details of XUL. Here seems like a good place to start.
They have a section called "xul example" If you copy code fragments into a file.xul file, you can then just load them into Mozilla (or firefox) to play with. I believe hosting the apps would be as simpel as putting the XUL files up on the web.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I'm going to bring a lot of fire for this but I'm going to say that Microsoft is right, Firefox is not a threat to IE. They just have the reasons wrong.
If the internet is a browser mono-culture, in otherwords if IE is nearly ubiquitious, any security issue no matter how small it is or how difficult it is to impliment, threatens the entire structure of the network. That is bad for everyone, especially bad for Microsoft.
If a percentage of the "society" that is the internet is immune to a security threat then the network is more capable of surviving any sort of attack. These survivors get to play two very special roles; they get to be the "defenders" in that they get to survive the attack and become a backbone of the culture that returns after the attack. Second, they offer a hint as to what needs to be done to repel the attack. Microsoft doesn't have to "copy" Firefox to fix their browser, they just have to see how it was done and why it works and then develop the fix knowing that information.
For that reason, Microsoft needs Firefox, Opera, and other non-IE browsers.
I don't doubt that Microsoft will also use the ideas in Firefox if enough people state that they appreciete things like tabbed browsing, Microsoft will impliment something similar (they always have before).
Also, a coffee shop owner I know was never happier than when another coffee shop opened several blocks away. It actually brought more people into his shop! His theory is that additional business in the neighborhood added vitality to the entire neighborhood and brought more people in who would have just driven past before. I think that this may be applicable with browsers too. I personally use both Netscape and IE, almost but not quite interchangably. I think a lot of people do this to one degree or another.
I do take issue with the statement that IE has a lot of features that most users don't know about. There are a lot of them that I don't use. I do know about them, they just don't appeal to me. Favorites are cool to some people but I find that if I use them, they actually hinder me - all too fast, my filing system breaks down and I just get a confusing bunch of similar hyperlinks.
Don't forget the poll option, "Where is the Cowboy Neal option, you insensitive clod!"
Karma: It's all a bunch of tree-huggin' hippy crap!
Interesting numbers - I also could not help but notice that Safari was much higher as well in the first group.
I think that first group shows a healthy trend for Mozilla though, if more and more people pick it up then it can start to spread faster via word of mouth. Almost more valuable than the NY Times ad itself is the recognition it has brought - an article on the front page of CNN's web site today for example. That kind of thing is going to really help grow the browser.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is OT, but you may want to look at FreePDF XP .
Don't let the german download page scare you, the program is in English.. Adds a printer just like Acrobat, and works very well (sometimes better then Acrobat itself).
DJ kRYPT's Free MP3s!
Seriously, with 1.0 that I can't even post a reply using Firefox, and the comment pages are all out of whack.
I think Firefox is great overall, but it's got a serious problem if it can't render one of the most popular sites that evangelizes it. It's really embarassing.
I'm not sure who's fault this is, slashdot's for bad design or Firefox for not handling the code properly, but either way, if it's not fixed soon, I'm going to have to switch back to IE with some sort of third party UI improvement thrown on top (like AvantBrowser).
I think Microsoft badly needs some competition, but so far, the 1.0 release of Firefox produces a markedly inferior browsing experience for me than what a 3rd party IE mod could provide.
It sucks, because I just today converted someone else to Firefox, but I'm beginning to wonder if that's really a great idea. Can I really continue to recommend Firefox when IE is more likely to render pages in the manner the designers intend, knowing that the the spyware/security advantage of Firefox is probably not that great if you browse smart and keep IE updated, while 3rd party tools that run on top of IE can be used to garner most of the UI advantages of Firefox?
Haven't people seen Opera http://www.opera.com/ incorporates a lot of the features talked about is pretty much free and has mouse gestures which IMHO are great....
Picture this: You log onto your bank's website. You see the following programs:
Rain Cloud
Butterfly Catcher
Instant ATM
Haunted House
Kid Sister
You'd say to yourself, "WTF? 'Instant ATM' makes the most sense. I'll click on that." What do those other things do? Who the hell knows? If I have to think, you've failed.
Now picture a user that logs onto a computer. There are a TON of icons (have you ever seen the avergae user's desktop? Everyone I've seen has about twenty "Free 30 Day Trial For Slowass(tm) Internet Service!" icons on it). They just want to use the internet. What are they going to use? Firefox? Or Internet Explorer?
The name "Firefox" isn't that great. Geeks love it because, hey, fire and foxes are cool. A much better name would have been something relating to the browser domain. Something that conveys travel and exploration. Why do you think they called it "Netscape NAVIGATOR", or "Internet EXPLORER", or "SAFARI", or "KONQUERER."
Firefox should have been called something like "Web Racer", or "Web Cruiser" or something. They could have done so much with a good analogy.
Much of the mainstream media coverage of the Firefox 1.0 release has been surprisingly good so far. For example, here's a pretty good article from the front page of The Guardian website introducing the politics of wider Firefox adoption to a mainstream audience. It's going to be harder and harder for Microsoft to counter this positive reporting.
Firts let me say I'm a huge advocate of mozilla based browsers. In my opinion, they're the only group to get it RIGHT.
I've made it a requirement of friends and relatives that if they want me to look at their machine and fix them that they need to install and use firefox as their primary browser.
There is a problem with the whole thing though - many of them go back to IE because one site of another will not work due to IE dependancies. Of all the people I've converted, only a small percentage kept with it.
We've seen a big spike in FF/Moz usage over the last few months, however, if you'll excuse my pessamism, I think this will eventually drop off as people find one or two sites that don't function properly because they were designed only with IE in mind. A good example of this is my sister, who went back because her son couldn't play a couple of yahoo games which explicitly ask for IE.
I think this is the real reason they say Firefox is not a threat to IE - because despite the superiority of Firefox, most people don't care about the benefits of security. They just want page X to work properly, and when it only works properly in IE, they'll run back.
BeauHD. Worst editor since kdawson.
"...Steve Vamos, Microsoft Australia's managing director, come with no knowledge of what Firefox has to offer as he admits not even installing or using Firefox." You can always spot the "real" IT professional from light miles away. Lol
This guy says that he has never installed or used FF, and that fact is obvious. If he had, he would see that they have trouble brewing... I wonder if all of MS employees are FORCED to use MS products exclusively, sort of like advertising (or maybe it is like the Chevy dealer that drives a Ford...?).
"English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users."
This is ridiculous! This is one reason I moved to FF a couple of years ago (I think it was that long ago). What this tells me is that most IE users are just like AOL users... They don't know what the heck they are doing... Older people and kids. They settle for what they can get because it suits their needs. They don't use the computer enough to really care about the small stuff. This is similar to what someone else already said... All they see is that you click this button to print, this button to turn off, etc. So, for a majority of the people that barely scratch the surface of their computer's potential, you know, the ones that don't know what processor they are running, IE might be fine for their needs, so they don't want to explore. HOWEVER, EVERY system I have administered (or formatted) gets FF installed, IE is removed with nLite, and the people are converted. And you know what? They LOVE it. Granted, they never would have switched on their own, but I got tired of making house calls for systems that are full of garbage, and I couldn't convince them to switch to linux, so I settled for the next best thing, and forced them to use a browser that doesn't let silly little scripts take control of things. I have YET to receive EVEN ONE minor complaint about it.
"Some talk the talk, but can they talk the walk?"
Now - is it ME who has it wrong when I think the expression is "talk the talk, walk the walk"?
It wasn't lost on me that "talk the walk" was likely more acurate for MS, but I doubt that's what he was trying to convey!
Only big ligs use sigs.
"Data, you are not less perfect than Lor"
The SP2 blocker doesn't seem to have an exception list. It's either all the way on or all the way off. It is of no help whatsoever if you use legitimate sites or web apps that employ pop-ups.
You know, as a webmaster (thegamingmatrix.com), I really no reason to use IE at all. It's CSS/XML compliancy, well, sucks. I've had to redesign my site, because a layout, which worked perfectly in Firefox, didn't display properly in IE. Now what about CSS2? What happens if I choose to use that? Do I even WANT to see how IE will use that? M$ should at least go by W3C standards if they want to have a good browser. I've recomended Firefox to many, and have even gotton a few people who are completally computer-illirterate to switch. Long live Firefox!
why dont we just name FF internat or intarweb names that ppl willrecognize and arent (to my knowledge) copyrighted.
Advertisements sometimes compare commercial software packages based on the features in each package. Increasing the number of features can make the software look better in such a comparison. Software that is not commercial, i.e. FOSS, shareware, freeware, etc. rarely relies on published ads and has less incentive to include unneeded features.
One FAQ entry says that adding new HTML capabilities to Web browsers can be a problem if the capabilities are added in a rush or if they are not implemented properly. In addition, features such as ad-blocking (which help the user) are different from features such as tying a promoted service into a web browser from the same company.
I work for a very large Fortune 10 company that has an enourmous web presense. Of the 300-500+ million page views we see on our site monthly, we've seen traffic from Mozilla-based browsers nearly double since June / July of this year. That impact is largely due to users trying out Firefox.
Even though Firefox is the classic disruptor in the browser space, Microsoft has such market command that they can (unfortunately) keep any competitor out of market indefinately. So Microsoft is probably not lying: why should they be afraid if they can copy successful program features and wrap them into their next OS release? Has anyone looked at the next version of IE with tabbed browsing and popup blocking?
Considering that you a reading a site that most serious computer types address as a tabloid for geeks, I wouldn't say you're much farther away from dull than he is.
Your attitude blows. It's as if because you do something special, you are more special than anyone else.
You are a classic conceited know-it-all. I'm glad your house and electrical work are great - want to disprove a few critical portions of Quantum Physics because you are so damn smart?
Or you can just write a matrix multiplication program in APL. You can do that too, right?
"Back in the day" you were someone we would ask questions but never invite to social functions.
I've been a firefox user since the times it was called phoenix. I've never had a problem with rendering slashdot... what gives?
Meh.
Well, you see, the house is realy plexi-glass, so MS can thow all the stones they want back at us. Now just to get the ladies room moved to the attic...
That which is done from love exists beyond good and evil
You are sure living up to your nick, dipshit. What's your point? That you have to know how to fix cars and do home renovations to be considered a "hacker"? You may have a few simple, manual skills, but I've forgotten more about math, physics and EE than you'll ever know, and I have the degrees to prove it, as well as being a top-notch programmer. Does that make me a "real" hacker? Apparently not, because I value my time enough to get builders and mechanics to do the work instead. In economics, it's called comparative advantage.
In conclusion, fuck you and fuck your elitist, pretentious, macho bullshit.
Do they have to be so damn sloppy about it?
I mean, really now- the man's never installed the software and says they've got nothing to fear and it's better than the other program.
C'mon, that's just plain flat stupid- and he reflects poorly on Microsoft when he does things this way.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
"English reiterated that features such as tabbed browsing are not important to IE users."
Reminds me when Bill Gates said back in 1983, "Nobody will ever need more than 640 kB RAM." Hey if M$ says one window is enough for your browsing needs, it's enough! Or maybe just wait about 10 years later and you *may* get yer tabs.
Firefox isn't the threat. MS-Windows's broken security model is the threat.
ActiveX, Java, and other plugins need to be treated like Java and sandboxed to the hilt, or better yet, sandbox the entire browser, letting it save files only to a restricted part of the disk, a part that code cannot be executed from. This will limit the utility of the browser, and greatly limit it's ability to modify itself, but hey, I'd rather make those mods myself if you don't mind.
Firefox isn't perfect, but thanks in large part to NOT having "Browser Helper Objects" and "ActiveX" it's a LOT more secure overall than IE.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
If you give a caveman a chainsaw, you'll hear similar complaints...
"Where's the wood handle?"
"There's no leather thong to hold the rock in place"
There's no ROCK!!"
"Whats this handle with the string running through it?"
"The flat thing sticking out is TOO uncomfortable...and I can't make a cut with the big yellow blocky thing at the end"
"And these points on the thin handle...way too sharp and hard on my hands"
I swear, there are no Firefox users on the Internet! By our infinite dominance, their stomachs will roast in hell! It is fast, safe, and stabi...
Second you could install IEview on Firefox for them. Problem solved
Help fight continental drift.
I went solely Firefox before XP SP2 because I was concerned about my security and hated the popups. However after SP2, just for jumping on the computer and doing some casual surfing, I have no problem with either IE or Firefox; whichever is the most handy will suffice. (Note however that I still miss tabbed browsing in IE so I'd have to say I'm still leaning closer to Firefox instead of standing in the exact middle of the road.)
However as developer or power user or whatever you want to call it, I prefer the flexibility of Firefox. Firefox is more likely to have a cult following than IE, but not among average home users.
If Microsoft keeps adding just the needed features to keep the average user happy and secure, I'm sure they will fend off Firefox with ease. It's unfortunate, but I believe it's true.
I've seen enough pithy quotes for several lifetimes, so do what I do, turn sigs off.
Yeah, that's a great quote.
And in the grand scheme of things, I don't know shit. Very true.
In the practical matters of the real world, I am extremely knowledgeable and generally quite self-sufficient.
What hat shall I wear today?
I for one, recognize the King Crimson reference.
Acquiescence leads to obliteration
As per subject. A default installation of Firefox only have basic tabbed browsing and pop-up blocker (and a crappy theme). It wasn't that better than IE6 SP2 which has a pop-up blocker and no tabbed browsing. I always wondered why on earth so many people are impressed with Firefox when both are alomst just the same.
Firefox should has these features built-in (and no 'download these extensions' crap) so that it can distinguish itself apart from IE:-
1. Save tab session.
2. Mouse gestures.
3. Extender menu for the tab toolbar.
4. Ability to change themes (skins) WITHOUT RESTARTING.
Here's a quotation that I just can't get enough of... "developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!, DEVELOPERS!"
The "cue the foo posts in 3, 2, 1..." posts will commence with no subsequent foo posts in 3, 2, 1...
Wow, that's great.
What I find interesting though, is why someone some so attractive, competent, sexually creative and generally all round awesome feels so insecure that he has to compose several hundred word posts defending himself to randoms on the internet.
In the article, Mr. Vamos said:
If features that people don't want are unimportant, what are the features that IE has but people don't use? If we apply Mr. Vamos's logic, these features of IE that people don't use must be features they don't want and therefore they are unimportant (and not worth talking about?).
So much for logic....
(ma second post on ./, be gentle)
/by/ microsoft ADs. /they don't know/. /learn/ the HowTo's of computer/internet/etc...
in my opinion, this trend is a direct consequence to the Microsoft office 4.x ad campaign:
it's message was that if you have microsoft office installed, you could do anything with just a few clicks.
non IT people (ie the majority of windows users) have been brought up to the computing age
These do not want to admit that
They do not want to admit thay have to
++
my counter argument to these people is that although anyone can go on the "information motorways", very few actually take driving lessons, hence the problem.
"Knowledge, as wisdom, has value
Thanks for the responses! The about:config really helped. Who would have guessed, a build-in XML type registry.
:)
As for the answers to certain queries. I'll try to be more accurate in my statements:
* Changing the temporary cache path?
I like storing anything temporary on another drive, not my system drive. That way I can erase the whole thing at the end of my windows session if necessary.
* No option to clear cache when done?
The IE option is to "Emtpy Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed".
* Inability to prompt me if I want scripts to run?
I am refering to any scripts, all scripts, whatever scripts. A TV or newspaper isn't capable of running scripts, neither should a browser...in my humble opinion. Yes I love the FireFox Javascript fine-tuning control. I really wish IE had that. Of course I unchecked all the options for Javascript on FireFox.
* Prompted cookie setting control?
Yea, I missed the "Ask me every time" option. Thanks. It wasn't obvious that it was under that dropdown because it is labled "Keep cookies". The word "Keep" gives me the impression that the cookie had already been set.
* Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.)
Yes apparently FireFox doesn't have this option, even under about:config. The specific IE option is "Play animations in web pages". I have this turned off.
* No Zones feature so that I can configure certain security options for certain sites.
Zones are nice for intranet stuff where you know you are completely in a secured development environment. The restricted and trusted sites are also nice. I think the thing I like about zones is that it completely adjusts every browser setting for each zone. In fact, I would argue that there should be more zones, more user creatable/definable zones. Zones that users can setup and name. Zones are the limited equivalent of sandbox type controls.
* Installed security is to save passwords, allow web sites to install software, save form information, and Java is enabled?
(Of course IE is probably even more open, but the point is that FireFox is supposed to be secure right?)
I don't know about you, but when I end my browser session, I erase everything. I erase history, cookies, temporary internet files, passwords, form data...everything. I even erase the sites in my blocked lists. In fact, whenever I start my browser, I want it to startup as if I had never used it before. In many ways Firefox should have the option to browse similarly, like in Apples Safari browser where the browser does a complete privacy reset when done. I would love that!
* Many other configuration options are missing that would allow me to be prompted if I want to execute or do something.
Obviously I don't want to name them all. Just open up any IE and choose the security tab, then choose a zone. All the promptable settings are there. And yes I can be prompted to prevent active x controls to run. I just wish META refresh was promptable. Arguably it needs to be.
Firefox is a good start. I really don't want to download Mozilla to get more advanced options. I mean what is the point of FireFox then? I want to use FireFox, I just need more browsing control. I do not like a broswer that does things for me. One other annoying thing about FireFox, even though it isn't a biggie...the fonts don't look right on some sites. I hope they fix that.
Thanks for your input. I'm just that much more informed now!
+2
I'm killing some time, I don't post here every day or anything.
> We need to write PDF files from time to time
p it is a dummy printer driver for Windows, it uses GNU Ghostsript, so you can choose "Print" from *any* application and then choose "Cute PDF" (in fact it is installed as additional printer in system) and get a nice PDF file instead of printout... Oh and it is free like a beer for anybody.
> and only OpenOffice does that... sure we could
> buy and install adobe acrobat... expensive...
Well not true... Check out: http://www.cutepdf.com/Products/CutePDF/writer.as
As for Adobe server products you can use CUPS and integrate it with web or file server to generate PDFs - for user it is all the matter of just selecting a different printer...
I wonder then why if you use firefox, then go to the new microsoft beta search, click on Help, then click on "Advertise with us", why does microsoft suggest you to download IE?
Please allow me to shamelessly self-promote then.
http://www.standardnetworks.com/moveitdmz/
It's a secure file transfer server. For years we've been using an ActiveX component (IE on Windows only) to offer professional file features like automatic SHA integrity checks, file transfers >4GB via browsers, on-the-fly zipping, etc.
But...our latest version also has a Java component and full integration with the Mozilla/Firefox/Netscape tree on both Windows and Linux.
Welp back in 1993 I left my 2400 baud modem on all night to download Mosaic. And then I doggedly stuck to Netscape until IE just seemed like the easier choice, somewhere around 1996. And for 8 years I've been using IE.
Last night I installed Firefox for the hell of it, and it seemed a lot less annoying than IE. So I plan to stick with it.
I'm not an IT person, and I value retarded convenience over geek functionality. But Firefox it is from now on. So there is some appeal to more dim-witted types here, don't sell it short.
Interfox. Hmm..I like it. Kind of snazzy. /Mozilla, if you change the name again, I'm going to set fire to your building.
Well, my Firefox crashed just the other day, on Debian GNU/Linux. I can't say one thing or another about the stability of IE, since I've never used it (switched to Linux when win95 came out).
But my point here is that your post is fanboyism. It seems to me that unlike a lot of MS-users, the OP actually gave Firefox a try, compared it to IE, and had a number of very specific things he didn't like about it. The guy who responded to him was able to correct some misconceptions he had, but a few remained. It seems he makes good points.
If IE crashes all the time (which is entirely possible, I don't use it, I wouldn't know, although when using it in computer labs and on other people's computers, it's seemed stable enough) then that sucks, but apparently this isn't something that bothers the OP enough to make him want to switch. His focus is obviously on privacy matters, and he feels that IE is a better fit for him than FF. Now, as I'm not as privacy concerned as he is (Linux keeps all my files in my home directory and doesn't scatter them throughout the system, as I'm told MS Windows does) I don't know how to address his points. I hope that someone out there does, because the fewer IE users out there, the more standard compliant the web will become.
But your post didn't address any of his concerns. You just suggested they weren't valid because IE crashes all the time. I think addressing his concerns directly would be more productive.
But that's just my view. Feel free to ignore it.
Changing the temporary cache path?
:)
I like storing anything temporary on another drive, not my system drive. That way I can erase the whole thing at the end of my windows session if necessary.
Yes, I can see, this does not exist exactly as this in firefox. You can set browser.cache.disk.enable to false and browser.cache.memory.enable to true. Firefox will not ever make a disk cache, and insted will cache in memory (which it already does during the session) In this way, you lose your cache when you close firefox.
Inline images are either on or off. Eg, no ability to prevent animations (gif or otherwise) from running.
(This is frustrating. I want to see the original images, but I absolutely hate animations of any sort.)
Its the option image.animation_mode, set it to "none" (minus quotes of course) Animated images will appear but not animate, you can also set it to "once" to cause a single animation. "normal" is default animated mode.
Alternate cache storage location I may be able to get for you, it appears it may be an option thats not listed, so I'll need to try testing it abit, but if you leave on only memory cache, there won't be an offline cache to worry about!
I don't know if this was posted already, but I've heard something like this before. Microsoft has said this before about how Linux was no threat to them, but finally decided to admit that it was not too long ago. Also, firefox isn't the only browser. There's also opera (which I find many times faster than IE, even on slow computers), and other browsers. So Firefox, directly, might not have a huge impact on IE, but I'm sure every browser added up, create a slightly larger impact! That's just my opinion.
Ahh yes, I have it now,
To modify the cache location, it is browser.cache.disk.parent_directory
The value must use two backslashes (\\), insted of just one. Example: C:\\my\\cache\\folder\\is\\this
Yeah the double is wierd for some people, but thats a coding convention to use double backslashes since a backslash followed by some things means special characters like tab and new line.
Enjoy!
Sorry there's no zones, but there can be LOTS of problems with cross-site scripting. IE suffers from its hidden 'my computer' zone getting used to execute whatever people want. Not that firefox may neccessarily have those, but its a vunerability point, just like ActiveX, which is why its not readily available in Mozilla-based browsers. (If you're really crazy about ActiveX, there's a special plugin to use ActiveX, but be careful with it)
Too much of a reminder of Internet 2. (I once got in a fist fight with Internet 2... it wasn't not pretty.)
I gotta agree here 100%. I would go into offices with lawyers and very few of them knew how to do a simple search for a particular file in their computer but they all knew what a certiorari was. Do any genius software engineers without law experience here on slashdot know what it is without looking at a dictionary online or offline?? So who's stupid?? People go for what's "safe" in experience to them because Microsoft has a near MONOPOLY on default web browsers in all the businesses and home computers. The way to break it is to educate everyone you know and the people THEY know about Firefox.
I have to say, Firefox is MUCH MORE than hype with the simple java/javascript disabling, fast surfing, tabbed browsing, nice management of bookmarks, plugins like Foxytunes, etc. I've already deleted the IE icon off our house's desktops and replaced them with Firefox 1.0. I get along with this browser like A HOUSE ON FIRE(fox)!! hehehe
* weedshare.com 50% to artists, webjay.org iuma.com CDBaby.com Epitonic.com ampcast.com
OK, I think Firefox is set to take some serious market share. Here's why: I consider myself a techie type as far as programming goes, but with basic browsing needs. Give me my Google toolbar, Google Deskbar, and that is enough for a browser. Oh, and I want something FAST! I've had IE for years, but been open to other browsers. I've used Netscape 4 and 7, Opera 6 and 7, Firebird and Firefox 0.7 and 1.0 as well as IE 4.x, 5.x, and 6.x. I've tried them all and returned to IE repeatedly. Until now... I installed Firefox 0.7 - decent skin, but slow browser and I couldn't get my bookmarks to load by name (typing slash in address bar ought to take me to /. if I set up a bookmark called slash). Bla. Opera had ads - totally ridiculous. Netscape is slow and unreliable (crashes too often).
Then, two things happened. I installed Windows XP SP2 (for XP Home) - a reasonable idea because it was recommended. But, a blazing fast P4 laptop hit a speed bump, especially in my browsing! I was ticked! I nixed a ton of Services (Themes were already nixed), and unfortunately went overboard and lost VPN access. Can't get it back unfortunately...
That's when I had just been trying out Firefox PR1.0 and got seriously excited about the new browser. I discovered bookmark keywords are shortcuts to the link accessible from the address bar, fixing problem #1. And biggest of all, I discovered a built-in RSS reader under the name of "Live Bookmarks"! Immediately, I brought over my 13 favorite RSS feeds (./ included), and was thrilled.
Then, a ./ user in the know mentioned Firefox 1.0 MOOX, Firefox optimized for fast processors. (I call it Firefox on steroids!) I now use MOOX M1 for an older machine, MOOX M2 for my P3 laptop, and MOOX M3 for my P4 laptop. All work fabulously and imported my bookmarks automatically from Firefox 1.0! Finally, a site that loaded a Sharepoint portal and even www.microsoft.com faster than IE! WOW! By the way, you can get it here:
http://www.moox.ws/tech/mozilla/
With my Firefox 1.0 MOOX M3 browser, I'm not going back to IE! I'm a Student Ambassador to Microsoft at my college, so that's saying a lot.
Out of curiosity, how would this really hurt Microsoft though? I don't see their Office (especially MS Word and Powerpoint) products leaving anytime soon, and I'm not so sure a different browser would hurt them.
Dan
P.S. First time post...Slashdot is cool, even more cool when its an RSS feed inside Firefox.
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
Sorry about the lack of HTML tags Will do better next time...
This sig donated to Pater. Long live
Isn't this the same kind of arrogance that Netscape exhibited back in the day when they were fighting the browser wars against Microsoft?
And soon it will be too late for your Internet Exploder. And your little dog too!!! Oops, mixing things again.
I know nothing about motor mechanics; if my car develops a fault, I take it to a garage. Am I dumb now?
If you walk into the garage saying, "I have no idea what's going on. It won't go! I think maybe my lights need more fluid!"
Then yes. You paid $10,000 - $20,000 for a product and have no earthly idea how it works. That makes you dumb.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
I'm sorry, the graphs don't lie.
sorry. As the Open Source Movement adjusts, it does not have the funding or the backing of commercial development. There can never be a replacement for funding. Any curve will tell you that. Argue with me if you will, but look at the graphs. All other models are hopeful but false.
Just make a distribution of the FirefoxIE customisation of Firefox and most people wont know the differance.
.
http://www.firefoxie.net/
My Wife only worked out it was Firefox after using it for a day or two becuse of the Tabbed Browsing and Bookmark Toolbar
..from the Bush administration? "I don't believe it is a true statement that IE doesn't have the features that our customers want," Steve Vamos "I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons... I don't know anybody in any government or any intelligence agency who suggested that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons. That's fact number one. Rumsfeld http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Donal d_Rumsfeld
>> Go check out the Secunia reports.
>> In the last six months, Firefox has had
>> as many vulnerabilities as IE
Cool.. so your saying that Firefox when being developed (pre-1.0) had the same number of vulnerabilities as Internet Explorer, a browser developed for 9+ years by the largest software company in the world and the company is working under a "security as priority" policy for the past 2.5 years.
Not only that, but the latest version of Internet Explorer (6.0) has been getting the holes patched for the past umm.. 3+ years? AND its intergrated with Windows so people are PAYING MONEY for this browser, it has less features, less standards compliance, etc.. and the BEST you can come up with is a pre-release version of a FREE, community developed browser with more features has the same number of security issues over the past 6 months?
Fantastic.
For all the talk of the cathedral and the bazaar, there are a lot of folks here who seem to believe in the success of conversions driven by submission to secular authority, personal influence or techno-magic.
Don't tell me how Grandad, your kid sister, your lab rats -- one, a young woman, divorced, with two kids and a job to protect -- have all come to love Firefox.
Don't tell me how clever you've been, the tricks you played that make it all seem so easy.
Instead, prove to me that you can make it out there alone in the cold, cruel world of Windows. 300 million users world-wide. Nine million OEM systems shipping each month with IE6 as the default.
What are they, the Microsoft Information Ministers?
I've tried Firefox 2 or 3 times now. And STILL at 1.0, it is missing a lot of the functionality of Mozilla plus new annoying quirks all its own. I'm glad Mozilla is a separate and still active code base, because Firefox has a lot of work to do before it's truly usable or a threat to Mozilla, much less IE.
The Mozilla and IE icons together in slashdot.
The browser wars are BACK.
Beautiful.
There's a guy who works down the hall from me for a credit union who couldn't even use his fucking computer because it was so cluttered with popups and spyware. Every fucking day he had problems getting on the net. I had him install Firefox about 3 months ago and he's never had a single problem.
---Technology will liberate us if it doesn't enslave us first.
First they downplay you, then they issue FUD about you, then then strongarm vendors who want to bundle your software, then they buy your company and incorporate your technology into their OS.
You're right. That's why we need teamwork to defeat Microsoft.
Until Linux and Windows programmers get to agree, Microsoft will always win.
It's Gandhi not Ghandi.....
Poor server....
Mirror:
Photo
Repeat after me: We are all individuals
This reminds me of famous movies where the guy is scared of the monster/bully/big guy/goon/etc.
*closes fists* "I-i-ii...'m... no-not sc-cared of you... you... yuuu!"
Aww poor Microsoft... got scared of a kid stronger than you? B-)
...I was kidding.
There is no need to prove the superiority of Firefox. The only thing you need to do is to link terrorism with IE, paint IE as creation by godless entity, while Firefox is used by US government and US army in the fight against terrorists, protect US against evil, if necessary put a cross on the head of the fox, Now 51 million people will use firefox.
You can laungh IE from Word??? God, no wonder it takes forever to launch the damned thing.
Next they'll be putting flight sims into Excel or something.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
I think while Firefox is an excellent browser, there is a free add-on program called Maxthon that allows you to turn IE into a pretty powerful web browser with most of the features of Firefox, especially the ability to do tabbed browsing. Maxthon is even more or less officially approved by Microsoft, given that one MS web page has a pointer to the Maxthon web page.
I wouldn't be surprised that if Microsoft does decide to produce a standalone replacement for IE 6.01 SP1 it may incorporate the functionality of Maxthon into the browser.
More to the point, people who are not logged in won't see his sig to be warned about posting anonymously.
The enemies of Democracy are
Try it with forward slashes. C:/my/cache/folder/is/this
There are very few places that I have found where the forward slash does not work in Windows. Command Prompt programs seem to be the main exception since they already uses forward slash for options.
For a moment I'd almost forgotten why Steve Vamos's name was so familiar, but finally recalled it was from his earlier terms as head of Apple Oz and of Apple Asia-Pacific.
If he had been a career M$ie would have almost needed to have moved in when Linda Graham handed over the reins to have gotten onto my radar. The otherwise wonderful Linda originally introduced M$ to Oz through an agency deal with her at first all-girl company, the oxymoronically named Wiser-M$.
That was long before even the hard to forget morning when Bill became a billionaire and Linda managed to convince him to come to breakfast with a few locals who shared his then early interest in the possibilities of CD-ROM. He admitted not having expected anybody in Oz to be interested in that subject and was basically visiting to deliver his standard pitch to a trade show after they had listed overnight on the other side of the rock.
-- Our systemic servants do not good masters make.
First, they ignore you.
Then, they laugh at you.
Then, they discredit you.
Then, they compete with you.
Then, you win.
I think MS IE is at step three.
Osho
check out the 'x' extension for FireFox. It adds a "Paranoia" toolbar item where "you can quickly clear privacy sensitive data, specifically: history, form info, saved passwords, download history, cookies, and the cache (both disk and in memory cache).
Clicking the button gives you a dialogue window from which you can select which data you want clearing."
It even keeps all of the options selected, so if you're paranoid, it just takes two clicks, and your history, form information, stored passwords, download history, cookies, and cache are vaporized. Two clicks cuts the time town, but ideally, I agree there should be an option to clear it all upon exit.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
That's a classic one, and something I see all the time at work. People are hostile to / frightened of change, so they make up excuses to avoid it. Each excuse is replaced by another equally far-fetched one as the previous is solved, because they real problem is they just don't want to change.
*sigh*
I recently started working at a gaming LAN center, and one of the first things I suggested was running Firefox. However, their GUI disallowed users from doing basically anything harmful in IE and made things pretty locked down. After some snooping around at the mozillazine forums, I was able to start building a kiosk enviroment. I'm really amazed at the flexibility of Firefox. When I'm done with it, it'll look extremely minimal, and it'll be very secure. Let's just say my boss was more than impressed at how Firefox performed and my ability to edit it. It'll be nice not having to reimage the computers every other week because of spyware.
"We have plenty of features that our customers don't use." Isn't the point of FireFox to have as little features as possible. I don't see how this guys argument makes any sense. The only "feature" that FireFox has that is above a bared bones browser is tabbed browsing and that's not really bloatware.
[about inline images and animation]
Actually, there is a control for this. I just wish they had left it visible like it was in Mozilla. In about:config,
is the setting you want to change. I have it as and it allows me to see for instance those Userfriendlies that have a 30s nag screen. I will withstand a minor rotating image - once. If it's an ad, I'll just add it to AdBlock's list of sites/paths to kill off. You may wish to google for the setting's other possible values, as I can not recall what it accepts.There is no such thing as good luck. There is only misfortune and its occasional absence.
Hey! His company is switching from MS Office to OpenOffice. Why the heck would you want to stop him?
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
I've recently started to toy around with C#. One of the first tutorials let you embed an HTML control and connect it to forward and back buttons and a simple list of bookmarks. I made the mistake of pointing that thing to slashdot.org.
As a result, I got a hijacked homepage, two popunders and a prompt offering to install Gator like software.
Apparently the web control is fully featured, but without any safeguards. I never realized that slashdot had so crappy advertisers.
My bet, though, is that Microsoft are going to take back the lead. They are used to being laughed at, and when they have a product that lags sufficiently behind in public opinion, they usually make it a priority to take back the lead.
What people *should* be thinking of is what Microsoft will do to lock in customers and how this threat can be met.
in a wider perspective; is Miguel the piper leading all the children of the open source into the river? will Microsoft unleash IP-litigation on a scale never seen before? will it be at all possible to tell the users that Microsoft's wet dreat is to forever in the darkness bind them...to their products.
http://www.deluxearchive.com/ben-english-clips.htm l
http://hifimovies.com/pornstars/ben-english/
(dont klick those links if you're under 18!)
Just because we are a long way away doesn't mean that we are dumb. As Steve Irwin (I trust you were thinking of him) would say "Aw crikey".
We weren't the ones who re-elected George Dubbya.
(Flame on with the anti John Howard sentiment at will...)
Given all the MSIE security problems publicized every week, it's more than time to sharpen up.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
"They're not even [within] 100 miles [of Baghdad]. They are not in any place. They hold no place in Iraq. This is an illusion ... they are trying to sell to the others an illusion."
"Yes, the American troops have advanced further. This will only make it easier for us to defeat them."
"They are not in Baghdad. They are not in control of any airport. I tell you this. It is all a lie. They lie. It is a Hollywood movie. You do not believe them."
Hey, you try to find an open nick these days!
Then I though about what is really happening, which is that all the defaults are restored to MS' wishes. Competing software is wiped, too, and if it gets reinstalled at all, must be installed last which leaves plenty of time for the clock to run out or other interruptions to occur. Since many (most?) MS shops IT departments run in crisis managment mode, most interruptions tend to be permanent.
Contrast that with OS X or any of the main Linux distros, where not only is a wipe of the hard disk exceedingly rare, but also it is simple to include third party apps in the install process.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Instead of the "Take Back the Web" slogan, Mozilla should start making banners that say "Your Internet Needs an Upgrade".
I know not to expect journalistic integrity or research from News.Com, but this article takes the cake.
First we have a completely unchallenged set of fatuous statements by Microsoft Australia, and then a naked plug by Cisco for their application!
Why not just put a byline like so: "This 'journalist' is too lazy to do any research or challenge statements made by vendors.".
image.animation_mode = normal | once | none
Not to mention that he had KDE running?! http://gallery.osdn.org.ua/20041009-malx/IMG_0395 Was he running Powerpoint through WINE or rebooted in to Linux?
-- Andy Jeffries Scramdisk for Linux (Change the orgy to org to reply)
Am i the only person that thinks the maxthon browser, otherwise known as myie2 is a far better and complete browser than firefox. I realise that it is basically IE but there you go.
I have used Firefox for a few months and there is always a time while browsing that you have to go and dig out IE for some reason and that just annoyed me.
I haven't done this once while using Maxthon. amazing browser.
First, I want to say that 'users are dumb' is a very big myth and I guess it was rised from geek's incapability to give proper instructions "in human language" what common user should do. My way of doing it is such: * First, I install Firefox and inform them that it will be the new way to get to the INTERNET (Yes, we see there is some terminology mismach, similar as GNU/Linux vs. simply Linux. We all know that INTERNET is a lot more than simple web browsing). I inform them that it will be in the place of that big, blue shiny E letter and they go something like 'aahhh, I see'. And no problem, no support calls, nada, nothing. I erease all icons of IE, install all plugins they would like to need and that's all. Resume: just tell clearly "in human language" what users should do and where they can get to the internet. For them, in future, Internet will be Firefox. Just use your mouth what it is though for.
user@ubuntubox:~$ stfu This server is going down for shutdown NOW!
"Vamos said, consumers need to be educated about all the features already offered by Microsoft's browser."
If people were educated about all the "features" of IE, they'ed leave in droves. Seriously, the first thing I thought when I read that line was: "*LOL* I'm already educated about all of the features... like free pop-ups for all(advertisers) and an open development platform for malware... *LOL*"
Vamos is the proverbial blind man trying to describe the elephant while feeling around the elephant's output port. Seriously, if he doesn't use other browsers to know what features they do and do not have, he's just speaking out of his lower output port.
Seriously, if MS isn't even bothering to look over the fence and see what others are doing, then they are just mentally stroking themselves and their egos. I'm honestly surprised that they haven't gotten it into their heads that maybe... just maybe, adopting a less aggressive and offensive stance and being honestly open to change would be to their advantage in both the short term and long term.
And for *'s sake, put tabbed browsing in that dated browser! Jeez.
Some side notes:
Winged Power Photography
Microsoft executives defended Internet Explorer, saying it is no less secure than any other browser and doesn't lack any important features.'
In psychiatry, that's called "being in denial".
Nice to know we're competing with people in dire need of professional help.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
Maybe it should be changed:
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then everbody incessantly repeats the same quote.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
Zones are nice for intranet stuff where you know you are completely in a secured development environment.
The problem with Zones is you only need to have a trusted one that lets stuff run for security issues. Many IE vulnerabilities work by fooling the browser into putting a website into it, than running malicous code. Even if you only put safe sites into it, the simple existance to the trusted zones is a great big security hole.
IE undergoes rigorous code reviews, exclusive photo:
http://www.weinwurm-textiles.com/images/codemonke
Nope, that's an even grander parent (you've been fooled by the thread mode hiding some posts and still showing their children). The post I replied to is #10795591.
It's quite amusing how the same people that mock the Iraqi Information Minister actually believe Microsoft.
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
I have Opera thanks. Firefox, IE, Mozilla, and netscape can kiss my butt. Seems most of them are just catching up to Opera, but opera keeps moving on.
I can open pages in the background so I can continue to read my article, and when I open Opera it goes right back to where I left off opening all the pages open when the program is closed. Email, Chat, and news. What the heck else do I need.
FYI: I first compared IE to netscape a long time ago and went with IE (netscape was frustrating). Then I tried IE and Opera and I fell in love with Opera. Ive installed and tried firefox, mozilla and a few others. None seemed up to snuff. Actually firefox was the closest to keeping up with Opera, but Opera seems so perfect. I hope they don't mess it up in Opera 8.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
The only way to retrieve the information was to open it in OpenOffice and save it back to .xls.
Worked like a charm.
Wow, I thought people like you only existed in soap operas.
I was using crazybrowser for my tabbed IE experience. Now Firefox 1.0 is out, and with the TabExtensions extension, it behaves identically, but better. being able to 'undo' closing a tab is a godsend. The only problem with Firefox that I have found is that you have to install the suite of extensions each time. Having 'Extension packs' would be a result.
IE is not JUST iexplorer.exe. That is only a small stub file that loads certain COM components associated with Web browsing.
;)
Same with EXPLORER.EXE, it is only a stub that loads the COM controls that deal with file browsing.
There are other COM modules available, such as Network browsers, Picture viewers, and in Win95, there was the easter egg COM module.
the stubs can load any of these COM modules dependent on the content being displayed. Indeed it IS possible to make a HTML COM component based on Mozilla, and the COM/ActiveX component IS available. however, it is stil not possible for the Mozilla COM module to replace IE and its trident engine in this context either.
The point I am making, is that IE is NOT tied to the OS itself, its only tied to the SHELL of the OS.
If you REALLY want to stop IE from starting, even on a Windows XP box, use Program Manager as the shell! It does work.... its progman.exe located in c:\windows\system32
I use progman.exe and Mozilla as the shell on my "guest" account of my XP box, and it works VERY nicely!
Have a nice day!
I don't agree with him, and I don't think his answers tell the whole story (besides, the anti-IE ones don't exactly tell the whole story either), but they don't stop his points being valid.
Up to a point I think he's right. OK, I admit I'd debate the "any less secure" statement, but I do agree that a major part of it is that IE is still so common so it's an easier target.
Though I certainly get the feeling that MS might well be counting the definitive version of Internet Explorer as being IE6 under XP SP2. And that is more secure - just not necessarily the major version of IE being used quite yet.
He also (undurprisingly) doesn't touch on the issue that IE bugs reach further than simply IE. "This bug affects you even if Internet Explorer is not your default browser" always irritates me no end. If I'm not using it then why should the flaw still matter? But the "integration" with Windows is the problem in this case. And if there's a flaw and no current patch you can't even uninstall the software until an update version comes out.
So regadless of the quantity of issues, the nature of the IE flaws is totally different.
This is another point. There aren't a great deal of features that customers "want" that would attract them to switch. Firefox's real strength (in my opinion) is that it has features you that you never thought about, but that keep you from switching back
Up until recently not many non-geeks had probably heard of it, except maybe mentioned by a geek-type. But it's starting to be mentioned more and more in the media, so MS are understandably wanting to stop people making the initial switch.
Besides, many Windows users simply equate "The Internet" with "Internet Explorer" - or, more likely, with "The Blue e Icon". They're not looking for anything different because they don't even know that there are alternatives.
The real danger for those of us interested in the non-IE alternatives is to dismiss anything that comes from MS. Just because they don't say things the way we see them doesn't mean that their poitns don't have merit. Plus we do have to see things from their perspective to be able to validly counter their claims. Because the "M$ are fulla BS" approach isn't really going to get people interested in alternatives. But a reasoned argument about why a Microsoft statement doesn't tell the whole truth might at least get someone to listen.
Tiggs
"120 chars should be enough for everyone..."
Whereas I, when playing with my toy windows 2000 machine, can't live without tabbed browsing. I have very limited patience with a cluttered taskbar. A typical session, display resolution at 1280x1024, will look something like this:
In this situation, where I will already have a lot in the taskbar, the last thing I want is to have more than one item for my web browser - the items in the taskbar are already short enough as to be only minimally useful, particularly when the start menu, quick launch bar and system tray (all of which I use) have taken their chunks out of the screen width.
So in response to the grandparent poster, I find that tabbed browsing actually uses considerably less desktop real-estate.
Slackware user since 1997.
Microsoft Australia's managing director, come with no knowledge of what Firefox has to offer as he admits not even installing or using Firefox.
:)
Hey, this is actually good ! Just think about what MS will do when they will start seeing Firefox as real competitors. Gee, I shiver already
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
I think the icon color scheme should make the choice pretty obvious: which one would you rather pick, the blue icon or the red icon? ;-)
What's with all the stupid people out today?
He wasn't changing this guys WALLPAPER, He was installing a new web browser which is objectively better.
Objectively, I say? How the hell can I say that?
-native popup blocking
-native selective javascript blocking
-fewer vectors for viruses and spyware
-possibly not targetted as much as ie
-faster rendering
-pipelining
-tabs(may be important or not)
-actual current generation PNG support
-relevant signature system for plugins
People are so stupid they'd forget to breathe if it was possible. Sometimes they need to be nudged by those who know better than them. As I mentioned, this isn't changing the guys wallpaper on him, it's protecting his machine against the same stupidity which undoubtedly brought the machine to his shop in the first place.
It's been a long time.
... just so you know :P
And soon you'll be able to use the Mozilla Gecko engine in Konqueror too.
> I can open pages in the background so I can continue to read my article
The same works in Mozilla & Firefox.
I rightclick the link and select "Open in new tab", or hold ctrl and click the link.
The page starts loading in a new tab, and meanwhile I continue reading the original page (no window/tab switching).
When the animating "loading" icon disappears from the new tab, I can switch to it (and of course, earlier or later if I wish to).
I don't really have a word of complaint of Firefox or Mozilla (I use both), but I admit not having tested Opera for a couple of years.
But I do have complaints of IE. As a web developer, I am very often negatively surprised when I hear that IE doesn't support this-and-that standard CSS feature which Firefox/Mozilla have no problem with.
In the today world, I don't intend to support MSIE anymore. I don't like how it delays the development of the WWW.
W3C shows the direction of web development, and I intend to support it. And I am happy that Mozilla follows it.
Anybody know if the resource leaks were fixed? Until they are I wont even consider the switch.
-]Phreak Out[-
about time we changed that mozilla logo to firefox, isn't it?
You are receiving this message because your browser supports Slashdot Sigs and you have Slashdot Sigs enabled.
I've done literally thousands of presentations in PPT (some massive) without a single glitch ever (of course there have been numerious errors on slides, but that was my fault).
I would say you're trolling. I've never met a real person who had that good of an experience with ms office. I could be proven wrong anecdotally, but until I see someone who isn't posting anonymously who has had that good of an ms office experience I'm going to assume everyone loses files to office corruption every once in a while. I know I have.
I have no idea where that's from, but the kde buttons in the first photo are pretty much a guarantee it wasn't an MS presentation.
Unless they borrowed the laptop from someone else, in which case the entire point is moot.
If you have ever noticed, when Micro$oft is afraid, their spin doctors come out from under many rocks.
Get Firefox!
"I'm not ashamed I can't function in society like I'm supposed to." - Paul Westerberg
When will websites start writing code that works with standards based browsers and stop writing code to work only with MSIE? If it breaks MSIE, so much the better.
Bill Gates and Paul Allen did a good turn with BASIC back on the Altair, but they were copying the innovation of John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz in doing so. DOS was a rip of CP/M. Windows was an attempt to block VisiCorp's VISION and Digital Research's GEM ... [etc.]
Well said!
-kgj
-kgj
But then, you know. . , more than half of the Aussies I've met were physically fearless to the point of lunacy. There's just not that many good reasons to jump off rooftops, but the Aussies I've know would argue otherwise via demonstration.
-FL
Buh, MS is the only one not having a "save as PDF" probably because they do not like Adobe. AFAIK OO.org, Corel (WordPerfect, Draw) and Lotus, and maybe some others do include this option.
I just happen to use Corel programs a lot, and they all do this just fine.
RogerWilco the Adventurous Janitor
IE didn't compete with Netscape.
IE arrived on every computer, was installed with every Windows OS and had it's icon shoved onto the desktop whether you wanted it or not. (In fact, it was difficult to get it OFF the desktop early.)
Corporate IT groups standardized on IE because "it comes with the OS" and they didn't want to pay for and install a different browser.
Heck, MS had to threaten to revoke Compaq's OEM license (at the time they were the #1 PC seller) to get them to stop installing Netscape.
The fact is that MS "competed" by outspending Netscape, giving their product away for "free", paying bounties to ISP's and IAP's, threatening OEM's, and "leveraging the Window's asset" all in an effort to "cut off Netscape's air supply".
So no, it's not interesting at all.
--- I wish I could hear the soundtrack to my life. That way I'd know when to duck.
Hi, folks. I'm posting this in the spreadfirefox forums too.
People associate the blue "e" IE logo with "the internet". Well, it just happens that "internet" starts with "i".
Somehow, i think a nice bright red or orange (for firefox) "i" SVG logo or something would help spread an alternative browser far more than better technology or geeky friends.
Apple as an "i" line of products and is very good at nice designs. It would be great if they did something in that lines to stop the evil blue "e" from monopolizing people's hearts.
But of course, it would be best if it was an openly, non-patented or copyrighted logo, so that ANY alternative browsers could use it.
I know the FireFox logo is a good thing and looks damn good and helps getting FireFox due recognition, but the "i" logo could be used for very tiny icons like the Windows taskbar one, where a fox around the globe is barely recognizable.
I'm not a talented graphics guy, but someone should do it. And linux distributions at least should use it for either lynx, Konqueror, Mozilla or FireFox given the user's preference for default browser.
I don't feel like it...
NFM......
So Long and Thanks for all the Fish.
As a relative geezer, I see some irony in Microsoft having a spokesman who derides a competitor's product without trying it.
This reminds me of the time when IBM lost its dominance to Microsoft. One of the things that led to their slump was their entirely inward-directed view. For example, developers were forced to use IBM source code editors, even if there were better tools; developers were not allowed to have electronic mail access to the outside world, except in special cases; and developers were trained in idiosyncratic IBM products, methods, etc.
I recall a friend of mine, who had left an outside firm, showing his IBM colleagues alternative tools that left them speechless (PC development tools were pretty primitive in those days!).
I don't think that Microsoft is succumbing to this at the lower levels of the firm. But it won't be good for them if they allow this to happen even for the suits.
but it's actually a security feature (yeah I know - two sides of the coin).
I'm running an internal web server where I'm hosting a bunch of file:// links which point to source code that are on servers within our company. IE follows these links just fine. Mozilla refuses to acknowledge them. Researching it finds that it's because of a shell security issue.
Now, does anyone know of a why to alleviate this problem or at least to do it for intranet ip's?
( I would send a question to AskSlashdot but lately they only seem to get the ones where the people don't do the google research first so it's no use ).
There's a gorilla from Manilla whose a fella that stinks of vanilla and has salmonella.
That sort of ideal doesn't really work in the real world. Our clients use IE, as does about 94% of their customers. While I personally still write web standard code, I have to write CSS and HTML that is a lot more complex to make sure it works on IE. It would take a lot less time if everything worked like Firefox or Safari, but the client is paying the bills. They don't care about our nobel goal of making obsolete browsers shrink into the background. Heck, they don't care about version numbers either. I'd be happy just to get rid of IE 5.5 users.
:P
The point is, the client pays the bills, which pays my pay check, which gives me food, shelter, and video games. If you call that coddling, you must be independently wealthy. Of course we code for IE. Just don't do it on your personal site.
InstantCool
Wow. Now THAT is an oxymoron.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Try implementing a cross-browser JavaScript and/or Java solution. You'll find enough quirks soon enough.
I see dumb people. They click the "Internet Explorer" icon on their screen like everyone else, and they don't even know they're dumb.
Having a smoking section in a public restaurant is like having a peeing section in a public swimming pool.
Every web company I've worked for has insisted that navigation is built so that the user can always follow a link to get back to where they were, because "Nobody uses the back button!"
Well, quite frankly, fuck 'em. If you can't use as simple a UI as a back button in a web browser, you shouldn't be on a computer in the first place. That's not geek rage, either, that's simple practicality.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Yes, I have installed Firefox on all of their desktops, but (to best of my knowledge) they do need MS IE for updating of Windows, Office, and office related downloads (like templates).
What is needed is a gentle, yet firm caution that IE should be used only for those web sites that are hostile to Firefox.
Instead of completely hiding IE, I change their IE home page to:
http://www.roomberg.com/warning.htm
Which displays a "skull & crossbones" and says:
___________________________
STOP
IF THIS PAGE IS THE FIRST DISPLAYED AFTER LOADING THE BROWSER, YOU ARE USING INTERNET EXPLORER, NOT THE SAFER FIREFOX.
CLOSE NOW AND LOAD FIREFOX. (Look for the FireFox icon: firefox) ONLY IF YOU NEED TO UPDATE MICROSOFT PRODUCTS USING THE MICROSOFT WEB SITE SHOULD YOU CONTINUE TO THIS LINK:
(above in large font)
www.microsoft.com (line above in 8 point font)
___________________________
I know some /. readers will conlcude I have wussed out by not forcing my users to use only Firefox, but this approach has reduced my support calls while gently introducing a better solution.
Any one have a better approach?
Live Long and Prosper - Thanks Leonard. You are missed.
here are mirrors of the pictures, to lighten the load on osdn.org.ua:
photo1 and photo2
But I agrre sith sd4l (448263), it is suspicious that the guy is running KDE. Anybody who speaks Ukranian want to clear this for us?
My other UID is 1337
--
bachiatari na torisetsu o yome!
You should look into modifying your UserChrome.css, UserContent.css and User.js files to accomplish even more customization. A good reference is at Flii's page: http://flii.us/myworks/phoenix/
Particularly if trying to use a file from an older version of office, or worse, when trying to work with multiple versions of Office. Then corrupt files become much more likely. All corrupted files I have ever had with Office have had at least two version of Office involved.
Our founding fathers removed the guys in charge. Be American. Vote incumbents out.
then they ridicule you, then they fight you, then you win.
I guess Microsoft is still in first stage.
Quote of local Microsoft marketing droid. "EU does not like Microsoft. Who cares?".
Interesting people. :)
Surely Microsoft products don't have the ability to write to PDF files *because* Adobe pay Microsoft (in kind, in patent cross-licensing, whatever) *not* to include features which would compete with their for-money offerings.
Most of these things are direct options in the Mozilla suite or are buried int he about:config.
Many are also address by the myriad extensions that Firefox has.
Just a Tuna in the Sea of Life
You might really get a kick out of looking through the various extension archives. They have all manner of add-ins which address some of the issues you're concerned about -- especially the privacy/cookie/cache ones.
The best, and most thorough is The Extension Mirror:
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/
Day 1: Our web browser doesn't have tabbed browsing, our users don't want tabbed browsing, and we won't add tabbed browsing.
Day 1+n: Our web browser always had tabbed browsing, our users always wanted tabbed browsing, and we will always have tabbed browsing.
This is known as propaganda, folks. Those who recognize it take it for what it is, and the sheep accept it as gospel.
(Ironically, submitted from an IE browser.)
Sure I'm paranoid, but am I paranoid enough?
By rolling out the competitor as part of the desktop last time, MS was able to obliterate Netscape, which went from a dominant market position to a niche position in a few years.
That was accomplished through a combination of aggressive improvement of their product and unfair tactics against the competition, for which the punishment is bearable.
If they were able to this once, then they could rationally expect there's no reason they couldn't do it again.
The biggest hurdle MS faces is the touchy rollout of TCPA, which on one hand could start eliminating open source competitors like Mozilla, Open Office and Evolution that "won't have the keys". At the same time, if TCPA is too good, then it might stifle MS market penetration in the developing world which has historically relied heavily upon pirated copies of Windows.
"Provided by the management for your protection."
I would say opera is easier than that. Right click link and open in background is three down. It takes me like half a second and I keep chugging along without interuption. This is great for say articles that link 10 other interesting pages.
Secondly and just to make the point, when I say it opens all my previous webpages when I closed I am not joking. Currently when I open the page about 50 webpages open that I reference. I have had as many as 150. This is great in that instead of cluttering my bookmarks or desktop with shortcuts I can just keep stuff there on my TODO list. Basically Ill read it later.
Also, I have IE on my computer, but at this point really only for the windows update feature. My next big computer will be all linux and that will go by the wayside. (currently I have some slower computers with linux that I have tried out)
Lastly, I think firefox is much better than mozilla despite them being related (at least thats what ive been told). Mozilla to me is just an offshoot that try to copies netscape. At least with firefox they went outside the box. Like opera they have good download managers tho.
Party at O'zorgnax's Pub! Buy me a Slurmtini aye?
Should he admit that FireFox is better? Hah! He is just doing his job. Companies have to claim their product is better or cheaper than the competition (and cheaper is not an option here).
;-)
And honestly, the main reason I use FireFox is that it has tabbed browsing. Most lusers would just get confused by that.
As a matter of fact (if we can trust the comments on that page), the MS Windows notebook that the Microsoftie had didn't work correctly with the multimedia projector, so they had to use another laptop, which ran Linux and Open Office.
So the conclusions are that:
1) Some notebooks doesn't always work correctly with projectors
2) Open Office is good enough to be used by MS People for presentations when they have no other choice
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
(Hopefully AA/Al-Anon won't sue me.)
After many years of denial, recovery can begin when with one simple admission of being powerless over open-source -- for closed-sourcers and their friends and family.
Step 1
We admitted we were powerless over open source -- that our computer systems had become unmanageable.
When closed source begins to take control of a system, usually one of the first things to go is honesty. The closed-sourcer lies about how many bugs are in his or her software and those around them begin to cover for him as the problem progresses and they too become less than honest.
This cycle of lies and keeping secrets can go on for years and that in itself can create an atmosphere that actually causes the situation to deteriorate faster. Even the children get caught up in the lies. It's a family disease.
The family can become totally controlled by diseased thinking. Although the illusion of control may continue, their lives become unmanageable, because closed-source is really in control. It is cunning, baffling, and powerful.
But recovery for the entire family can begin when someone finally breaks the cycle of denial. That first step begins with admitting powerlessness. Finally being honest about the situation. How does that work?
Mr. Gates. Please. Please. Be honest and stop denying the situation.
...Lynx and be done with it. :)
He fucked around with someone else's computer, installing programs and changing settings without the owners knowledge (and, thus, without his permission) and managed to break it in the process (for that someone else, that is). Then he complains here that said other person was too stupid to unfuck his computer. Finally, after causing that other person to think he had lost his bank account (and all the money in it), and wasting an hour of that persons time in the phone, he gets away with just fixing the damage he had caused (as opposed to, say, a savage beating / criminal charges).
You can't. "Better" is a completely subjective term. If you have a text-only screen adapter, Lynx or Links are better than Firefox or IE, because the last two won't run. If you have Linux, Firefox is better than IE, since IE won't launch. If you have a website that only works in IE, IE is better than Firefox, since Firefox won't show the website.
While you do list a number of features, they don't make one browser objectively better than another one, since that would mean that you consider one feature better than another, which conflicts with the definition of objectivity (freedom from prejudice).
"Nudging" someone means giving them some incentive to go to the direction of the nudger. This is quite different to doing things behind their back.
An example: if I tell you that there's a real nice house, bigger than your current one, for sale at half the price you can expect from selling your current house, and in a better location too, I am nudging you to move. If I forge your signature to the selling and bying papers, I am going behind your back. Do I have a right to do so, just because I think you're not going to move and consider you a dimwit for it ?
What shop ? He never mentioned any shop. He simply said that he did this to his relative.
And no, this isn't changing the guys wallpaper on him. This is fucking around with someone else's property, without asking for their permission, and messing up.
The OP is an overconfident whiner with a superiority complex. He gets no sympathy from me.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
"We've analyzed their attack plan, sir, and there is a danger. Shall I have your ship standing by?"
"Evacuate? In our moment of triumph? I think you overestimate their chances."
- White Knight of the Order of Mihoshi Enthusiasts
Assuming you're not just trolling and really have been living under a rock for the last 3 years, it's IE that has annoying and buggy support for CSS, DOM & friends. Standards exist and IE is eeeevil for not rendering them properly.
Maybe because he's concerned that there's an idiotic idea which might gain credence if someone doesn't speak out against it, and that idea that some people on here have is that it's ok to just learn one little thing you need for your job, and that's it.
Then, when something bad happens (like that person's job gets outsourced), that person is now on the street, living on welfare, etc., and our society is that much worse off.
Ever heard of a "one-trick pony"? Overspecialization is a very bad thing. In the biology realm, species that are too specialized become extinct when the slightest change to their environment happens. Highly adaptable species are the ones that survive.
So which do you want to be? A dinosaur, or a mammal which survives a meteor strike? I'll take the latter.
Moreover, people who only know about one subject (their current job) are very dull to be around. Now that it's Friday, you might want to think about this while you're wondering why you don't have a girlfriend.
I knew nothing of motor mechanics, yet I have repaired my own cars including a full transmission rebuild and much repair in the drive train, all with the help of a Chilton guide. Am I dumb now?
Yes. You should have used the factory service manual instead. J/K
Seriously though, I don't know about your brand, but for Hondas, the factory manual (available from Helm at www.helminc.com) is so much better and more detailed than the Chilton/Haynes books it's not even funny. Need to know where all the retaining clips for an interior panel are, and what kind of clips they are? The factory manual has a diagram showing you all of this. I highly recommend it.
All with the help of various Internet sites and the Home improvement Network books.
This is one thing I love about the internet these days: if I don't know how to do something, I can just google for information on it and find out how.
The core difference I see in the arguments in this discussion leads me to believe there are two types of people: specialists and generalists. Generalists like you and me want to learn as much as possible, especially in areas that benefit us. Specialists just want to learn enough to do their jobs, so they can spend as much time as possible either getting drunk or watching TV. Unfortunately, while it seems like Americans used to tend more towards generalization in decades past, the current trend is towards specialization. This means when something happens, people won't be able to cope and our economy and society will go down the tubes.
as stated, is that many IE vulnerabilities are the result of the very *existance* of a "trusted sites" zone.
Well, where is the link to these numbers?
Ever used Google? How about Amazon.com?
and don't go telling me to read the source code from the examples. Source != documentation.
1)When you become the person who gets called when something goes wrong(and this guy was here), you are granted the ethical right to take whatever measures you deem nessessary to ensure the machine stays functional. Using firefox will protect against a variety of viruses and spyware. The problem was just that he failed to calm the user down.
2)A ferrari is objectively better than a yugo. Even if the yugo has it's strengths, the ferrari is overwhelmingly superior.
3) For many ignorant folks, you have to let them browse with firefox for a week before they make a reasonable decision either way.
4)He (appears) to have been messing around with a machine he provided phone support for, free. The rules change in circumstances like these.
Whenever I have to rebuild a windows installation because of web-borne spyware or viruses, I always replace the icon to point to firefox, and crank the security settings in IE to max to make it nearly unusable.
I'm a busy man, and I won't fix a problem which I could have prevented a second time. If people who ask me for my help have a problem with that, they should've sent it to the repair shop and paid the 100 dollars for someone who would pussyfoot around so they could collect another 100 next week when they get infected yet again.
I'll grant you that if this person just walked up to a machine he had no permission to touch and did that, he did wrong. Otherwise, it's his own time he was saving, even if the end turned out poorly.
It's been a long time.
It had simply gotten to the point where I would have taken something with a lot fewer features than Firefox just to get rid of the crap that IE lets these nits put on my machine. I was simply fed up with having to run Ad-Aware and Spybot twice a week just to stay ahead of the buffoons. That Firefox is such a GREAT browser is just icing on the cake. If my own experience is any indication of how most alive and conscious surfers feel, it will rapidly reach its stated goal of 10% of the market in the US and then far exceed it.
As for not being able to automatically "update" Windows, how many of those fixes are for products that need updating simply because you are using Microsoft crapware in the first place?
"Gee, I can't automatically update IE when I use Firefox. What will I do?"
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Is this a warning message to modders that the `owners of IP` have the ability to present viral attacks on their 'IP?'
Design flaws in MSIE are costing billions. Given the current state of the economy, those billions are not coming out of fat, nor even meat, but bone. Currently, MSIE is the only web browser that will execute abritrary code on your machine as the result of simply looking at a web page. Similar flaws have been found every few weeks for years. Sadly, MS has been slow about fixing many and cant take weeks or months to even acknowledge a problem, just like it does for its other products. Some cannot be stopped by firewalls or AV software. You'd be a fool to broadcast your bank codes to the world by using MSIE.
Nice to know MS has made security a high priority. Hopefully its next priority will be doing something about it. Get over your blind adoration of Chairman Bill, right now there are products on the market that work they all happen to be non-MS.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
I made a customised Firefox installer called as FirefoxIE (Based on firefoxie.net). One click and you get a Firefox that looks and feels EXACTLY like IE! It's more than just the theme- Right from the Title "Microsoft Internet Explorer" to the floating Image Bar, everythings there :)
Heres a screenshot of FirefoxIE.
You can download it from here.