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Firefox vs. SP2's IE?
Anonymous Coward asks: "I was at my grandpa's house today, and I came across a somewhat unsettling issue. He is a user of Internet Explorer. I was talking about Firefox with him, and it turns out that he has had no trouble with popups since SP2 came out, he doesn't multitask enough to benefit from tabbed browsing, and he doesn't care about safety/privacy concerns. On top of that, I ran a test and found no difference in load/download speeds between the two browsers on his computer. This brought me to an interesting point. For someone like him, is there any benefit to be gained from using Firefox? On top of that, are there any people who are actually better off sticking with IE?"
The way I see it, if you don't care about security or privacy issues, then I don't think that there is a real reason for you to switch if you aren't going to benefit from any of the other enhancements that Firefox brings
However, once you get nailed with some bug/virus that exploits an IE security hole, then you will probably care enough to switch
I would say it makes no difference which browser you use if you do not keep up with all the security updates for the browser and/or OS.
If he becomes infected with a virus or a trojan that transforms his PC in a spam zombie, he then becomes a threat/nuisance/liability to others.
He might not care if he's infected with a bunch of crapware, but if his PC gets zombified and participates in criminal activities, he might object to that.
At least make sure he doesn't run MSIE as an Administrator on his PC.
Does anyone do these anymore?
I remember back in the days of IE vs Netscape, magazines would often publish page loading/rendering times. I'm not talking loading Yahoo, and hitting REFRESH while watching a stopwatch, but a real benchmark suite like you'd use for Microsft Office or a graphics card.
I'd also like to say that the newest IE is a lot better than the old ones as far as pop ups go. Tabbed browsing keeps me on Firefox even though there are ways to do it in IE. I've noticed Firefox hangs up on pages that IE handles fine, and I'm not really sure Firefox is 'faster', although it seems like it on slower machines.
Most people think Firefox is faster because they've got so much spyware etc infested in Internet Explorer. IE has always been 'fast'. A fresh install, at least.
Right.
So you're telling me he's using a computer with no sensitive personal information on it, has a complete trusted offline backup, and he could easily wipe his machine, install from original media and restore his backup?
If he's not concerned about the safety/privacy problems of IE, then he hasn't given it much thought.
-Esme
Extensions and themes are nice as well...But if he dosn't have any interest in tabs, he probably not find any of those useful either.
I'd still use Firefox anyway, as you never know when a new IE vunerability will be found.
Four main benefits, in order, for Firefox over IE6
For someone like him, is there any benefit to be gained from using Firefox?
Well, IE seems to have some semi-major security issue every few months, whereas Firefox has them once or twice a year. Given that record, it sounds to me like you'd have less upgrade/update issues with the Fox.
... because whenever something bad happens, he'll expect you to fix it!
Who cares about load times? I mean, while it's definately good to use a fast browser, I didn't know the difference between the current browsers was great enough to be teh main issue. No matter how fast IE is on desktop Windows, I wouldn't use it. What's at stake isn't the second you wait; rather, it's the life of your computer. There are exploits left and right, malware and spyware. They pretty much all come in through IE. That is the reason for not using IE.
Before I switched to FireFox, I was using CrazyBrowser (a very nice tabbeed browser, using embedded IE with other features). This was back before the spyware craze of recent times, though. I don't remember what version of FF I switched- 0.6 perhaps? This was a time when I didn't have any spyware removal tools. Hell, I didn't have any spyware. About the only thing I needed was a pop-up blocker, something Crazy Browser did well. A minor annoyance. Now a days, IE means not minor annoyances but medium to major security issues. Though I didn't use IE at home, where I had a Mac. Maybe the reason I didn't have problems at work running IE on a Win2k PC was the kinds of sites I went to, usually not the kinds of sites that have spyware even today.
One exception: I use and used IE on Windows CE 3.0 and 4.x. It's a nice browser, and with ftxBrowser you get tabs and lots of other nice features. Unlike the desktop version of 'doze, you don't run into the cornacopia of nasty spywares.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
You're unsettled that your favorite solution isn't the best fit for everyone?
"I hear this a lot from newbie web developers that think that because Internet Explorer does something with broken code, that's the way it's supposed to work" I'm not talking about my own crappy pages. I'm talking about others' sites. Yes, MSIE is indeed better in this respect if it can take broken HTML and display a good page out of it. "Every time I have heard this complaint, upon investigation, I have found that Internet Explorer is getting it wrong and the other browser (in this case Firefox) is getting it right" However, if MSIE is showing a good readable page and Firefox is showing some broken junk on the screen, it is pretty clear which one is getting it right. Obviously, it is the one showing a good page. "Do you have any concrete examples of Firefox getting things wrong and Internet Explorer getting things right?" The difference, as I hope I said, is small. Probably less than 1 out of 100 pages that Firefox can't handle. The last one I found was one that Firefox put about 30 blank lines at the beginning (before the content). MSIE started with the content. Oh, there is also the problem of displaying image files from my own hard disk in IMG tags. MSIE takes the actual image paths with no problem. Firefox displays ugly "bad image" icons. I suspect that this will be fixed soon on the Mozilla side. They've clearly done a lot of work to make Firefox able to display all web pages, but it does not look like it is quite as much as MS did (and, again, I am referring to real basic HTML, not Java, ActiveX, or other esoteric content).
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
The latest IE did in fact add a number of things like pop-up blocking that it had lacked in the past. SP2 also added a software firewall.
I think your grandpa is probably right - IE does everything that he needs and is built right into Windows. If his PC is more of an entertainment than a mission critical business tool there probably is no reason for him to change.
He has every right to to argue that IE works fine for him, is secure enough to suit him, and to not have a new browser foisted on him.
Despite all of the holier than thou talk on slashdot, it's his computer, and his choice of a user experience. Although I may find IE irritating and cumbersome, he is entitled to his own choice.
Three Squirrels
There, now IE is approximately as secure as Firefox.
And approximately as useful as Firefox, with respect to ActiveX-requiring sites. Anything else can probably be rendered equally well by the two of them.
Incidentally, how do you plan on running Windows Update without ActiveX? And apparently Flash and so forth require ActiveX in IE...I had to manually lower security settings on a computer to get to a Flash game the other day. I think this comp had SP2 installed, and the installer got a bit overexcited.
MS can't necessarily fix a lot of these things because it will break millions of existing websites.
I hear this a lot. It's utter bullshit. Please show me which websites would break if they started supporting the PNG alpha channel. Or fixed the guillotine bug. Or the peekaboo bug. Or the 3px jog. Or justified text in caption elements. Or display: table. Or generated content. Or any of the other things people have been complaining about for over three years.
It's funny how Microsoft didn't have a problem with breaking websites when they released all the previous versions of Internet Explorer. Practically all of them have broken things.
At my work there's an intranet site that I need to use constantly that relies on non-standard IE DOM features. Naturally it's completely broken in Firefox. That means that, yes, Firefox supports standards better, is easier to develop for etc. but also means that nobody where I work can use it.
If you are writing Internet Explorer-only applications, I don't see what that has to do with Firefox. They are proprietary applications, not websites. Firefox can't run Access databases, Excel macros, or any number of different proprietary application scripts. Developing "web applications" for Internet Explorer only is the 11th biggest IT mistake.
Standards compliance isn't the be all and end all. Why not put a compatibility layer in there (that you can switch off) to emulate the non-standard and broken behavior of IE so all these real life scenarios, as unfortunate as they are, don't stop people from migrating to firefox?
You can emulate proprietary behaviour and still remain compliant with the specifications in many cases. And other browsers have put a tremenduous amount of energy into emulating all that crap. And most of it is done. But if browsers start ignoring the specifications and following Internet Explorer's behaviour, not only does that mean people writing to spec get punished for it - breaking interoperability in the process - but it effectively hands control of the web over to Microsoft.
For another analogy, consider seatbelts. If you wait until there's a really good and obvious reason to use them, it's far too late.
BTW: I don't tell people that IE is bad. I just tell them that it has some severe security problems that make it very possible for nasty greeblies to take over their computer and cause them problems. That usually gets their ears perked. If they don't do an install then, most will do it after their next run-in with virus/spy/add ware.
I then tell them that there are only a very few sites that absolutely require IE, and that they should seriously think about whether it's worth starting up IE to go to those sites (those kinds of sitea are also most likely to get taken over by MS-script kiddies).
Like others have said... Once people start using firefox, very few look back.
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