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FireFox Sets the World Ablaze
An anonymous reader submitted a story about Blake Ross and his involvement in the Firefox project. Just the latest in a steady stream of Firefox PR pieces, although with a more human take than just the 'Firefox is a good browser' stories.
"Having a good open-source browser that appears to be evolving very quickly exposes Microsoft to the risk that Mozilla will get good enough to start luring folks to it."
Over 1 million downloads in one day. I think the luring may have already begun.
How long will it be before Firefox replaces IE?
I can't wait till banks and companies to develop IE specific applications are forced to ensure Firefox compatibility, I am still suck using IE in a few cases, would love to just uninstall the thing and be done with it!
"Microsoft has tried to convince users that they need or want to have the browser coupled into every Microsoft application and vice versa ... [which] has led to software that is too 'integrated' to be secure against viruses -- kind of like having a heart attack every time you have a headache,"
I [may] disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.
If it's just Gmail you're worried about, then you can just change your bookmark from http://gmailblahblah to https://gmailblahblah. Then it's not just the login that's encrypted, but all traffic to the end of session.
"Microsoft is probably getting nervous"
Nervous about what? The web browser was the battle from 1997. Today it's web services, connecting new front-ends with really old databases, and the like. The web browser is simply a window on money-making backends, and the money is what Microsoft worries about.
"I think Microsoft is getting a little nervous," Ross said. "They aren't sleeping anymore. They're talking about us on their Weblog and have started to contact the press about us."
Before you doubt you should at least read the article. There's been a lot more work done on IE in time of FF than before. Read M$ blogs and interviews, you'll notice FF mentioned a lot. If that's not nervous then I don't know what it is.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Anyone reading this article would be given the impression that those were desired name changes, not ones that were practically forced.
I wouldn't call it inaccurate to keep from going too in-depth with why the name changed so many times. No where in the article does it imply Mozilla decided they didn't like the current name, so they changed it; that would be innacurate. The people who already know the story, know the story; the people who don't probably don't care, so why bother? This isn't a story about the history of Firefox, its main focus is one developer.
Seriously, this article has some flaws and inaccuracies that you could drive a bus through.
Examples? I hardly think nitpicking the word 'novel' (which was poor choice) is something you could "drive a bus through."
Yeah, but without controling window you can't control interior that people see inside (which services on which servers).
Backend is north nothing if no one uses it.
Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
Yes and no. If the majority of people are using Windows and IE, there's a better argument for building browser extensions and other client-side Microsoft technologies (like Windows itself). Move people to other browsers and you take that away.
EricHow to detect Internet Explorer (pretty relevant)
I've read a thousand articles on 'linux, the new OS for the Desktop' articles in various local papers. However, I don't know any 'normal' person who has adopted it.
Are you seriously comparing the adoption of Firefox to the adoption of Linux? Come on...Firefox is a ~5 MB download that takes about a minute to install on any of the major OSes; to try Firefox the user doesn't have to delete or migrate a single bit of data from their computer. If they don't like Firefox they can either just ignore it and use IE or they can completely delete it from their computer without having to restore anything.
How is this in any way similar to linux?
One must consider that if people are willing to leave the comfort (and I mean from the typical user perspective) of Microsoft software for the browser, they may become more willing to consider other non-MS products too. If users become comfortable, in small steps, with open source software, that could be the beginning of a migration.
I do. I just convinced some friends to buy a Mac. Because their bank's website was defective, they had to use recent versions of IE [0]. Now that it fixed and working in Firefox, their single last reason for sticking with Windows is gone. That's clearly not the case for everyone, but for someone who just wants to browse the web and read email, IE-only websites may be the only thing keeping them on Windows.
[0] There is no version of IE for Mac. There used to be one, but it's old, nasty, and no longer supported by MS.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?
I can agree with that as long as you're talking about the most computer-illiterate section of the market-- i.e. my grandparents. They'll use whatever browser you put in front of them, and they'll call it 'the internets'. It's not so much out of laziness or indifference, they just don't know how to download things or install programs. They barely know how to check their own e-mail. Yes, those people, you'll have to just install it for them. Put a shortcut to Firefox on their desktop, give it the Internet Explorer icon, and change it's name from "Shortcut to Firefox.exe" to "Internets". They'll barely know the difference.
On the other hand I help out with a friend's small business computer problems sometimes, and he had a spyware problem, so I installed Firefox on his Windows Machine. Next time I came back, he had tried to install Firefox on all of his computers, including his Macintoshes.
I say 'tried' because he doesn't even know how to install Firefox on a Macintosh. For those who don't use OSX, the procedure consists of dragging a single icon from a disk image to anywhere on your hard drive (preferbly your 'Applications' folder). So that's how non-computer-geek the guy was, but he really liked Firefox, and wanted to have it on all his computers.
Ok, so my point isn't to evangelise Firefox here, but what I'm saying is, don't underestimate the users too much. If you're offering another piece of software, the sales-pitch being that it's almost as easy to use, and it has good politics (OSS/GPL), then they'll probably be indifferent. If you're offering 2 [roughly] equivalent pieces of software, one of which is already installed and ready-to-use, they'll just keep what they have. However, if it's really offering a better user experience, even the semi-clueless are able to make up their own minds to switch. If you're really offering them better software (better in ways that they'll notice) with no downside-- well, then they'll go through some effort to switch.
The totally-clueless, well, even when they're easy to convince, you'll still have to install it for them anyway, so it's almost just as well to go ahead and install it and see if they notice.
I've known several people who've used Netscape 4 until at least very recently, and at least one person who still does. The main reason they don't use Firefox, short of not having heard of it, is that it's not a complete replacement for Netscape 4. All it does is browse the web.
In every case that I've known, the barrier to change hasn't had anything to do with web browsing. It's all been about mail storage, since they've used Netscape for managing their email.
These people are used to an integrated browser/mail-reader, so switching to Firefox and using a separate email program is unnatural, especially considering that its email-equivalent (Thunderbird) hasn't yet reached version 1.0.
When I've been able to switch these people to anything, it's been either the branded Netscape 6/7 or the less-branded complete Mozilla suite. Compared with Netscape 4, the complete Mozilla is a resource hog. With decent hardware it's okay, but conisdering that some of these people's systems are relatively limited, Mozilla becomes much less of an option.
I hope that Thunderbird is completed soon. It'll still be difficult to convert people from a browsing/email application to two separate applications, but at least there will be a viable replacement to the complete Netscape 4 that won't be quite as resource intensive as the current options.