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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.
"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
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'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.