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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.
Microsoft used Firefox in a press image they sent out promoting their MSN Search.
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.
Firefox is good.
Microsoft is bad.
Linux is really cool.
As long as it doesn't come from Red Hat.
We don't like George W.
We do like the space elevator.
And we, for one, welcome our new *fill in the blank* overlords.
OK, now can we go back to things that are 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."
Over 1 million downloads in one day. I think the luring may have already begun.
The fox is on FIRE! Haven't you seen the icon? That poor flaming canine is running around the world, setting it ablaze.
As to the first issue of the above comment taken from the article, the reason FireFox can't open some sites is because the sites themselves are not coded correctly or require ActiveX *cough*SAP*cough*
Run a page through the W3C HTML Validator and you'll see how poorly those sites are coded or are hacked about to render correctly only in IE.
As far as the second issue is concerned, since when are plug-ins part of a browser? The very definition of a plug-in means they are something to added after the fact to do something.
Maybe the author meant Extensions for FireFox.
As far as I'm concerned FireFox does exactly what I want it to do right after the install. Other than making a few tweaks to turn things off and on, just like you would have to do in IE, FireFox runs as right as rain.
We will bankrupt ourselves in the vain search for absolute security. -- Dwight D. Eisenhower
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.
"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.
At 19 I could barely figure out how to roll out of bed before 11:00AM, much less reinvent the concept of a web browser and start my own consulting company. I guess now that I'm 25, I'm doomed to watch teenagers innovate my career out from under me and die sad and alone.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
If it's just Gmail you're worried about, then you can just change your bookmark from http://gmailblahblah to https://gmailblahblah. Then it's not just the login that's encrypted, but all traffic to the end of session.
It is the default Firefox start page for Firefox 1.0 . I didn't have a home page set (well, set to a blank page) and after installing Firefox 1.0 on two machines it set to http://www.google.com/firefox. Maybe the 1.0 installer only changes the start page to http://www.google.com/firefox if you don't have a start page set.
Linux Wireless Hardware in the UK
"I think Microsoft is getting a little nervous," Ross said. "They aren't sleeping anymore. They're talking about us on their Weblog and have started to contact the press about us."
Before you doubt you should at least read the article. There's been a lot more work done on IE in time of FF than before. Read M$ 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
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.
I've read better articles on firefox and Interviews with their creators. I found it sad that they didnt include probably the most powerful feature of the browswer that is leaps and bounds ahead of explorer. That feature that wasn't mentioned was KeyWord bookmarks, basicly the association of a keyword to your bookmarks! Imagine using the address bar on your browser as if it were a customizable search engine unto itself. An example is that you can bookmark FedEx.com then right click on it and attach multiple keywords to the bookmark, now if you need to track packeges via fedex.com there is now no need to actually visit the site; all you have to do is type in your address bar: track: (enter tracking number here) and firefox will plug that tracking number into FedEx and immdiately return the status of your package and all pertinent details. The possibilites of this feature are endless and saves so a lot of time that you would be normally be spending on load times from navigating said site. Like I said this feature is so awesome and unique I fail to see why anyone would leave it out when talking about FireFox.
r ch/
to read more about this feature: http://mozilla-europe.org/en/products/firefox/sea