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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.

19 of 436 comments (clear)

  1. No links?!? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting


    Nice article. Too bad there isn't one link to the Mozilla website.

  2. My favorite Firefox related story by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Microsoft used Firefox in a press image they sent out promoting their MSN Search.

    1. Re:My favorite Firefox related story by justsomebody · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Nothing special about that. Read article and you'll see that M$ wanted to show that their search now fully operates with other browsers. They used Oprea too, but as it was said, Opera wasn't showing some terrible success

      --
      Signature Pro version 1.13.2-3 release 83.5 beta3try7 after-breakfast edition
  3. I've read a thousand articles by Neil+Blender · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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. People use what they use. I know people who still use NS4. Firefox is great and all, but you stiil have to force people to change. Otherwise, they will just use whatever browser is installed on their computer.

    1. Re:I've read a thousand articles by nwbvt · · Score: 4, Interesting
      I know my family uses Firefox. I had installed it on the main computer a few months ago when I was home, and since it has become their default browser (without me pushing it on them or anything, all I did was have a little icon on the desktop), and my dad has it installed on his laptop.

      People don't need to be forced to do anything, given a choice they will choose what they think is best. And if they choose an obsolete browser like IE 6, who cares? They are the ones who end up suffering. In fact, having them using IE keeps hackers trying to exploit IE security flaws instead of Firefox flaws (and yes, those do exist).

      --
      Mathematics is made of 50 percent formulas, 50 percent proofs, and 50 percent imagination.
  4. Firefox + putty + dynamic port fowarding by AcquaCow · · Score: 4, Interesting

    and not only does the spyware stay away, but the net admins won't read your gmail ;)

    (The details: Putty now has more than just remote/local port fowarding. You can now select "dynamic" and allocate a local port. This port will then act as a local socks 4/5 proxy allowing you to encrypt/tunnel your web traffic out to another server that is preferably owned by yourself.)

    I honestly cannot live w/o Firefox at this point.

    Thank you Firefox team!

    -- Dave

    --

    up 12 days, 22:30, 2 users, load averages: 993.20, 994.21, 994.56
    *makes note to limit user processes...
  5. http://www.google.com/firefox by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Interesting
  6. First ON TOPIC post? by dkh2 · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It's a sad state of affairs when the first 4 to 6 posts on a story are lame attempts to be first, or lame attempts to flame those who tried to be first.

    Anyway, I have to give the article points for being readable and informative. It's a nice piece of PR for a browser that really does out shine much if not all of the competition. If you've read the article, good for you. If yoy haven't, you owe it to yourself to do so.

    Likewise, if you haven't already tried Firefox you owe it to yourself - even if you're using Safari on OS X. I work in a Microsoft laden department and the official recommendation is for either Firefox, or Safari.

    --
    My office has been taken over by iPod people.
  7. From TFA: by hackstraw · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Hackers typically attack the market giant -- Internet Explorer, in the world of Web browsing -- leaving Firefox relatively safe and sound.

    Its good to know that journalists are getting it right.

    Once Firefox takes the lead in the web client arena, I guess we will all switch to IE because Firefox would be the new target of exploits, not IE.

    Now I know that Mozilla and Firefox have not been immune to vulnerabilities, but I would bet that it is in the way they are coded and not just marketshare.

    I've heard that there is an open source web server that has more marketsare than say IIS, but does not have the same number of security issues like IIS has.

  8. Security vunerabilities by kyhwana · · Score: 4, Interesting

    So why hasn't http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html
    been updated now that 1.0 is out?

    --
    My email addy? should be easy enough.
  9. Where is the NY Times Ad? by augustz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    There was a big push to get contributors for the NY Times ad. I contributed myself. The idea was to have something out connected to 1.0 release +/- 3 weeks.

    I can't seem to even find a draft layout of the ad. Am I missing something? Worried that in their excitment at receiving lots of money, they've added a million features to the site, but have slowed up on the ad which attracted folks in the first place.

    Probably I just need a clarifying pointer to the place where the mockups are.

  10. Re:He got one right by Leroy_Brown242 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    In any race, the advantage is to the persuer.

    They see some competition, so they are getting a move on.

    So, I wouldn't say nervous, I'd say 'called to action'.

  11. Re:Plug-ins part of the browser? by Walterk · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Funny, seeing what you get when running /. through the validator.

    Is this a cover up? *grabs tinfoil hat*

  12. Re:Interesting quote from article by legirons · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "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."

    Presumably the insightful bit is that although Firefox is the better software by far, it should be lucky if even a few people are convinced to try it because it's competing against Microsoft.

    It might "lure" a few people away from the one true browser, but they're crazy to even bother, some of these journalists seem to be thinking, and then proceed by examining why someone would want to write a browser when Microsoft already has one.

    Oh, and I like the way they write the name of that company. It's "Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) [Links to more microsoft stories] [links to Microsoft stock quotes]" don't you know? Nevermind this is a Mozilla article.

  13. Re:He got one right by SilentChris · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Correct me if I'm wrong, but have you seen ASP.NET stuff? It's moved entirely away from client-side ActiveX-pushing. You can pretty much load it up in Firefox, Safari and Lynx, etc. and expect results.

    It'd be different if MS was still pushing client-side controls, but they're not. What they're pushing is a proprietary backend with a standards-based frontend. Again, they could care less about the browser wars.

  14. My experience with Firefox by Sara+Chan · · Score: 2, Interesting
    After the release of 1.0, I downloaded Firefox for the first time, and then did an install. The installation claimed to import my passwords and cookies from my previous browser (IE6), but didn't. Then I tried using File > Import; this also claimed to import my passwords and cookies, and also didn't. I have a lot of passwords and don't know them all; so I then naturally became reluctant to switch from IE6 to Firefox.

    I'm running Windows 98SE, and I thought that might be the problem. This now seems unlikely, however, because the reviewer at the Washington Post had the same problem--and I doubt he's running Win98Se.

    I played with Firefox anyway, to see what it was like. For me, Ctrl++ doesn't work (although View > Text Size > Increase works fine). Also, there are problems when switching between working offline and online. And on one occasion, Firefox crashed. After the crash, a small application started up and asked me what had gone wrong; I entered a brief description and pressed the Send button, to send the information to Mozilla.org; then the small application crashed.

    I've reported problems like this before, both on Slashdot and on Mozillazine, but people seem reluctant to accept it. One slashdotter even claimed I was a troll. I was glad that at least one problem was reproduced by the Washington Post.

    Here's my conclusion: switching is too problematic for me to switch without strong motivation, and Firefox is actually less reliable than IE6 on my system. So, I'm sticking with IE6. Yes, I know IE6 is supposed to be insecure, but I run without ActiveX controls, and have not encountered problems.

    And to those who want to criticise me for posting this, consider that there are doubtless many others who had similar problems, and didn't report them as I have, and just walked away. And I loathe Microsoft and want free software to win.

  15. Re:Tried Firefox but went back to IE6 by neurojab · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Remind me why I should be using Firefox?

    Tabbed browsing, built in pop-up blocking, Google search, RSS headlines, a download manager, cross-platform compatability.

    With my IE security settings set to High, and regular Windows Update patches, I have never caught a virus/trojan. Not one.

    You're very lucky. Perhaps you have a ton of spyware installed on your system and don't even know it. Try running ad-aware and see what it comes up with.

    Should I "punish" them by using something other than IE? That's just silly.
    Agreed. However, if you've come to the conclusion that MS has achieved dominance despite the quality of their products, it is reasonable to want to try something else. I don't mind i.e. particularly, but don't trust it either given my experience with their office suite and operating system.

  16. Re:FireFox NOT ready for prime-time by RazzleDazzle · · Score: 2, Interesting

    First off, even if it is true, I am sure FireFox is not the only browser with a memory leak. Second, I use FireFox all the time and use tabs constantly. In any given day I might go thru 50-100 tabs, some days stretching into the the hundreds. Through out the course of the week i will hit a thousand tabs easily, no reboots or new browser windows opened mind you. All of this with no noticeable problems or slow downs. I do not have a stellar amount of RAM either. So if there this so called bug (I am not doubting there is) it does not affect me noticeably so I am fine with it, assuming it will get fixed eventually, thus it is not not ready for prime-time. With the boat load of bugs and terrible exploits in IE, I would rather think a memory leak is nothing in comparison.

    Have a good day.

    --
    ZERO ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ZERO ONE ONE! Just brushing up for my next big invention: Ethernet over Voice (EoV)
  17. Re:How Google Could Help... by Rits · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Imagine if one of the things that Google determined when it crawled a site was if the HTML of the site was standards compliant (or even just Gecko compliant.) This could be included as metadata on search results, with some kind of small, nasty looking icon indicating that a site was "irregular" or something like that.

    Imagine Google itself using valid, clean code. I guess they don't care about their bandwidth costs, they could save a lot.

    --
    If you don't like having choices made for you, you should start making your own. - Neal Stephenson