Slashdot Mirror
NYTimes Reports on Firefox
Soldrinero writes "Just three days after running a community-sponsored two-page ad, the New York Times is now running a news story on Mozilla Firefox. Our favorite browser is presented in a very favorable light, and there's a good discussion on both Firefox's useability-enhancing features and its security merits. Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'"
[T]hey also present Microsoft's solution to security problems
What? Blame the user when SP2 fails them? User error! Woo!
And yes, I am trolling. But you know it's true.
"An infinite number of monkeys typing into GNU emacs would never make a good program."
Why would buying a new PC solve security problems?
I got a cheaper solution. Download and install Linux.
First, it gets rid of that POS called Windows! Secondly.. its free!
Online backup with Mozy, sounds like Ozzie, but more!
...microsoft wasn't fair with themselves.
Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'"
They're shooting themselves in the foot here. Open source does not require you to 'buy a new personal computer'. Oh, the market does tho, and Microsoft is there for the market, not for the consumer. That's sad.
Why an ad if they make a good article for free ?
You obviously don't understand the newspaper business. To get the article you have to buy an ad.
That said, the article itself is a brilliant advert for FireFox and gives an excellent overview of the circumstances in which Internet Explorer overtook Netscape and how that compares to what is happening in the browser market right now.
And assuming NYTimes is not a technical journal (which I don't think it is) it doesn't have the problem of "preaching to the choir" as so many articles have had in the past.
Long live Firefox.
Backup not found: (A)bort (R)etry (P)anic
Firefox is getting alot of well deserved hype these days. Everything revolves around Firefox being new which gives it a great marketing advantage (the small non-profit organization against the goliath, microsoft). But for how long will the hype last? Although I personally belive a large milestone was reached with the release of Firefox 1.0 we must be careful not to enter the "comfort zone" and expect that this is how things will continue to be.
This was the first step, now it's time to plan for the next.
Thanks for browsing at -1
Please vistit my blog: www.framtiden.nu
It's called "appropriate context". A feminist magazine (I forget which one) stopped taking ads because the advertisers wanted to influence the editorial content. In this case, the NYT is rewarding the free software community as both a signal "we reward our advertisers" and an inducement for the community to advertise further.
We may still have a good article, but it wouldn't be excellent, and it wouldn't be now. Oddball minorities need a lot of "balance" to make an article appear neutral. Mainstream entities (and this ad. makes Firefox mainstream) can have more positive reviews without so much appearance of bias, and NYT readers having seen the ad. will see Firefox as mainstream.
The need for reward, and entering the mainstream both make this kind of coverage possible.
Wikileaks, no DNS
I have a theory on this.
/.ers.
Everybody has a list of friends/buddy(s) that they meet every few months. The pre-condition is that alcohol is involved. These are not your drinking buds but the people who you meet very occassionally, and never ever meet in a setting where alcohol is not involved. It is impossible that you can tolerate these buds in real life without the booze shield. They say the same about you but in a happy setting in a happy hour at a happy bar, its all about being happy. They have fun and you have fun and you share fart jokes and high five each other and then never see each other in good light until the next drink meet.
NYT falls in that category and FF/OSS are the booze shield for us
HTH
Free XBox, PS2
But don't ask me to do it I still have not figured
out how to program a hello world using it.
Seriously lets see some cool it only works in firefox xul applications.
Got Code?
Well I thank the author for addressing that quote which we've seen in other articles regarding Microsoft's comments towards Firefox. The reply was exactly what I (and many more) thought of the original quote.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Well, you're not wrong, BUT, an article following a 2-page add that comes about by a community pulling resources together is also a comment regarding a grassroots movement going mainstream.
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
It is nice to see FireFox getting some well deserved press. It needs as much as it can get because it has a huge hurdle to overcome. It isn't pre-installed on computers. This means that it requires people to do something. /. readers enjoy improving their computers with great software, where as your average computer user wants to point and click with as little extra effort as possible. Some how the average pperson needs to be convinced that there is a greater benefit in installing FireFox than in taking no action at all.
Along with this hurdle, sit down with an IE user and install FireFox.....then watch them use it. They have no idea how to use tabbed browsing and will open browser window after browser window, because they don't know any better. And the extensions are great, but well beyond 90% of users ability to understand.
So....Remember....Don't just tell your family and friends about FireFox. Istall it for them(along with Flash, Shockwave and Java} and show them how to open multiple tabs. Install a couple extensions for them. This will take maybe 30 minutes, but it will create a FireFox user. Don't just spread the word...Show people first hand!
"We will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. " Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
`` Being fair, they also present Microsoft's solution to security problems: 'Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer'" ''
.. err .. Micro$oft if you prefer, in bad light. It'll run.
That was being unfair. Being fair, according to TFA, Microsoft's solution to the security problems is to upgrade to the latest windows OS, i.e. XP. Not buy a new comp. Still not a solution per se. But, it's different from buying a new machine.
Now if you say that Microsoft's solution is to upgrade to a newer OS which is better suited to the problems of current time - it doesn't sound that bad - does it? hence it must be said that "microsoft wants you to buy a new comp". It doesn't even make sense. Buying a new comp will not solve the problems - it's a software problem not a hardware problem. Doesn't matter. it'll still run, because it shows microsoft
All these are the reason I don't read newspaper anymore. You don't know what is the fact after reading them - why take time off from fragging a few more fat tailed animals in UT.
> They didn't get that artcle for free. They had to buy an ad to get it!
Yea, true, because Microsoft has not spent nearly as much on advertising in the NYT as Firefox has. That posting was modded modded 4, insightful?
Ok, point by point.
Ive heard from others it has fewer features and options,
resulting in smaller memory footprint, less overhead and generally faster and "lighter" code - shorter load times, shorter page rendering times etc.
and a more dumbed down UI. Dumbed down UI != ease of use.
That's what you got wrong. The UI is task-oriented, not feature-oriented. In this way it's "dumbed down" - the user doesn't have to care X is a component of Y and Y belongs to Z. "Advanced"? "Security&Privacy"? "Tools"? Where is it? User cares only that X does task of type A and so it can be found in the "A". Associating downloaded file type - "downloads". Easy and simple. The navigation routes don't correspond to the program internal structure but to user requirements. The options are all there, only the less used ones are dug in deeper to expose the frequently used ones.
I think the less customisability software has the harder it becomes to use, for newbies and experienced users alike.
Another thing you get wrong. While Mozilla is a combine with kitchen sink and hardly anything to add, Firefox is meant to be "bare bones to be extended". Plugins for Firefox may change its face totally and they aren't meant as "some extra fancy" but as an essential component. You build your browser to be what you want it to be by adding what you need, not by switching off what you don't want. In this respect Firefox is way more customizable than Mozilla - just not "out of the box".
It becomes more difficult for the user to customise the software for their preferences and usage pattern, and more difficult to accomplish certian tasks.
Straight opposite. First - "reasonable defaults" so there's no thing like in MSIE prefs where I run a line of checkboxes and toggle all, on to off, off to on, because -all- of them are against my preference. And then flexiblity to add any extras you desire.
The trick with useability is not to remove customisbility, but rather make software as customisable as possible but simply design a good configuration user interface that places more commonly used options more prominantly than advanced one, such as through placing the more advanced options on advanced options screens or other such techniques, thus keeping the more advanced options from confusing newbies but allowing people to gradually begin using them and discover them (and making it easy to discover them by making them all avialable through a good UI) as they become familiar with software. People often start out using software by using a subset of its features and then gradually add to their knowledge of the software and use a more complete set of its features, and different users have different needs and will use different features sets. This is why software should be as customisable as possible and not try to restrict features and functionality, but rather allow the user to customise the software to their tastes. One feature that seems useless to one person is likely essential to someone else.
You just summed up an essential part of Firefox philosophy.
45 5F E1 04 22 CA 29 C4 93 3F 95 05 2B 79 2A B2
Best line from the article:
Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't I.E. come bundled with Windows?
Ah, so refreshing to see a mainstream journalist hit the nail on the head in a single line.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
As much as I hate IE and the security nightmare it creates, the sad fact is that for banks, other financial institutions and coporate intranets, ActiveX and other IE gorp can't be avoided.
It sucks to introduce people to Firefox, have them all impressed and then get a call that they can't get through to their Wells Fargo account (if any IT people from Well Fargo are reading this, get a clue. Your bank is one of the biggest in Silicon Valley and the fact that you persist in being IE centric is pissing a lot of your customers off).
Company intranets are a hopeless case. Considering the bureaucratic, pin headed phb mentality behind most corporate IT departments, it will years (if ever) before company intranets are adapted for non-IE browsers. The only even partial solution to gain Firefox type features in this case is to use Maxthon, and that still leaves the door wide open security wise.
Double standards here are horrible. It seems normal and accepted to use a photoshopped photograph of a respected businessman and technological innovator turned into a killer cyborg for a Slashdot section (the Gates borg logo), but drawing a nice funny image based on somewhat wordplay when it concerns an open-source browser is taboo.
OK, all you fucking prudes (ToKsUri, detlev409, StarbuckZero, typedef and a few ACs), you can go back to fucking your mom, or jerking off in the basement, or reading bible or masturbating to photos of Linus, or whatever mindless crap you usually fill your lives with.
It's entirely possible to provide respectful criticism, as bersl2, chipster and phoxix did. It's also possible to just laugh, appreciate the (amateurish, but nice) artwork and go on. Even when you are not into furries.
And I don't think that Firefox is going to suffer much from low-res furry wallpapers about it. Just look at the amount of jokes about Windows. Didn't harm Microsoft much, did it?
SharpFang, thanks for the link.
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
That's true, but I think that the reason why people will be more inclined to do PR job for OSS is because they don't feel (as?) exploited and that it's easier to love the products when you agree with the philosophy behind them.
People are not just excited about the products, they are also excited by the whole movement.. and they feel part of it. Something that rarely happens with proprietary solutions.
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
I think the picture is hot. I don't care if that makes me "not normal." Normality doesn't guarantee a pleasurable life.
There is also a major difference between animal sex, and this yiffy artwork.