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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'"
Why an ad if they make a good article for free ?
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!
www.spreadfirefox.com
s /SpreadFirefox.jpg ;)
Or some community submission for that matter:
http://vcl.ctrl-c.liu.se/vcl/Artists/Wooly-Mitten
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Word of mouth advertising is the best. With the NYT article, and "geeks" like us spreading the word about Firefox, more and more people are starting to use it.
Just the other day, I had a friend who couldn't go to any site on the net without IE crashing and the Send Report box coming up (does anyone actually send the reports??). Anyway, she was getting frustrated, so I pointed her to Firefox's download site. She downloaded it and now uses it exclusively. She loves the look and feel and says it seems much faster in rendering sites. I told her there may be a couple sites she will have to use IE for, but for the most part, Firefox will work.
She said she is going to tell her friends about it. As I said earlier, word of mouth advertising is the best way to get the word out....especially for people that aren't very knowledgeable technology wise.
By RANDALL STROSS
Published: December 19, 2004
IREFOX is a classic overnight success, many years in the making.
Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.
Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9. Just over a month later, the foundation celebrated a remarkable milestone: 10 million downloads. Donations from Firefox's appreciative fans paid for a two-page advertisement in The New York Times on Thursday.
Until now, the Linux operating system was the best-known success among the hundreds of open-source projects that challenge Microsoft with technically strong, free software that improves as the population of bug-reporting and bug-fixing users grows. But unless you oversee purchases for a corporate data center, it's unlikely that you've felt the need to try Linux yourself.
With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.
Microsoft has always viewed Internet Explorer's tight integration with Windows to be an attractive feature. That, however, was before security became the unmet need of the day. Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a "natural defense."
For the first time, Internet Explorer has been losing market share. According to a worldwide survey conducted in late November by OneStat.com, a company in Amsterdam that analyzes the Web, Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. Firefox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.
Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago. He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account "all the factors that led them to choose I.E. in the first place." Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't I.E. come bundled with Windows?
Mr. Schare has said that Mozilla's Firefox must prove it can smoothly move from version 1.0 to 2.0, and has thus far enjoyed "a bit of a free ride." If I were the spokesman for the software company that included the company's browser free on every Windows PC, I'd be more careful about using the phrase "free ride."
Trying to strike a conciliatory note, Mr. Schare has also declared that he and his company were happy to have Firefox as "part of the large ecosystem" of software that runs on Windows. In fact, Firefox is ecumenically neutral, being available also for both the Mac and for Linux.
Mr. Schare may be the official spokesman, but he does not use Internet Explorer himself. Instead he uses Maxthon, published by a little company of the same name. It uses the Internet Explorer engine but provides loads of features that Internet Explorer does not. "Tabs are what hooked me," he told me, referring to the ability to open within a single window many different Web sites and move easily among them, rather than open separate windows for each one and tax the computer's memory. Firefox has tabs. Other browsers do, too. But fundamental design decisions for Internet Explorer prevent the addition of this and other desiderata without a thorough update of Windows, which will not be complete until 2006 at the earliest.
How fitting that Microsoft finds itself in this predicament. In late 1995, at a time when Netscape Na
...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.
So, it only took two pages in their own newspaper to make them realize that something is out there called "Firefox" - from there, it was a snap googling out how it seems to be a web-thingie of some kind that is locked in a clinch of sorts with Microsoft's web thingie. By God, write it up! It's a story come to us!
I exaggarate, I know.
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
does anyone actually send the reports??
Yes. I have to maintain a lot of Windows PCs the send feature is supposed to get you any suggested fixes. I have rarely seen it work for IE or for the OS but in Office XP and above you click send, wait a minute and a website comes up that sometimes even details your problem and how to fix it. Better yet, 1 out of maybe 8 times it just fixes it. While I would never use it on the servers (due to MS "fixing" things) I think it is great for PCs.
found here: http://www.spreadfirefox.com/?q=blog/1742
IAAL
Yeah, Firefox, great and all. But we're missing the big picture here. This is an article on NYT and the "horrid blood sucking registration required" phrase was absent from the description.
My world has just turned upside down. Is the NYT now on the slashdot buddy list?
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
Why was that moderated as trolling? That kind of attitude is typical of what we're seeing in a lot of software development anymore, whether from Microsoft or from other companies. They are starting to take on an attitude where the next version (which is only going to be available for purchase) is going to be the set of patches for the previous version, so to speak. Microsoft has been doing this for years.
It always irritates me when the solution is for the *consumer* to spend *more* money to fix a problem that should not have existed in the first place. "Well, we can't fix Windows 95 completely, so let's repackage it with some extra goodies and call it Windows 98! The robots will buy it in droves!" (which they did).
Did you notice that companies (I'll continue to use Microsoft for this example) never suggest backing up your system and performing a clean re-install to get rid of problems? The solution is always to get the newest version of whatever the software is. Why do you think that is? Could it possibly be that these companies get more money when their newest software is sold whereas they get nothing if you just wipe your system and re-install?
This is no better than software companies that release buggy code and then immediately tell consumers "We know about them and we're expecting to have a patch released soon." They're both disingenuous attitudes towards the consumers who are keeping them in business.
As far as I'm concerned, that an even more plausible reason to go to open source software, with Firefox being at the head of what should be on every PC. Even if the next version *is* the "patch" for the previous version, at least it's not costing the end consumer anything!
The Overrated mod is for reversing inappropriate, positive mods, not for voicing disagreement with a post.
This is like getting a letter from Ford saying they forgot to put in the airbag and if you want one, buy a new Mustang.
Bleh, it contains nudity
To be fair, the fox in the original FireFox logo was also naked.
Actually, most foxes are naked for that matter...
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
I personally just like it because I have no use for the rest of the mozilla suite. My email accounts cannot be checked through Thunderbird, I use Time & Chaos, so Sunbird is out, and frankly, I'm just not interested in whatever's left. As to customization, I have over 40 plugins running in FF right now. Seems ridiculously customized to me.
Howdy.
Scrappleface is running a story as well.
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)
My love for Firefox is accentuated daily by comparison to my continued use of IE at work. Due to security issues (which one could argue are based on MS software in the firstplace) I, as an end user, cannot install Firefox. Now the obvious solution would be to have IT migrate the institution as a whole to a new browser, but that is unlikely to happen in this particular institution for a variety of reason (monolithic administration, that ironically enough is run by committee, overworked IT, etc, etc)....
So, there are two issues here: 1. Has anyone solved this problem at their workplace? 2. IE 'market share' will always be artificially inflated by the captive user at work, which will also decrease an 'average' users chance to be exposed to Firefox.
-F
...Mr. Schare then went on to claim that the susceptibility to attack is a feature Microsoft's customers demand. "Every day we get millions of emails from Internet Explorer users thanking us for our design and also offering us great deals on herbal viagra and free porn."
It will if you buy it from Apple. :-)
/me ducks
Stick Men
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.
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.
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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
I don't need the whole Mozilla suite and I'm not the only one. Firefox is customisable. It has twice as many extensions as Mozilla 1.7.x. on update.mozilla.org .com.
It's just simple things like having a search box instead of using the address box that make the little differences that matter. And I can still use the address bar for a Google "I feel lucky" search.
Mozilla does not understand ctrl+enter to add www. and
If you use Firefox and want an email client that goes with it, get Thunderbird. If you need a chat client, it exists as an extension. If you need more configuration options, there are extensions too that allow to go further without having to do it manually in about:config.
Firefox provides a simpler interface, and should you need more, extensions are there.
A firefox isn't a fox, though, it's a small panda.
They're also usually naked.
For example take this, they support Netscape7, but lock out Mozilla and Firefox.
The webmaster did not want to believe me when I told him those browsers are essentially the same (I had a rather lenghty email conversation with him), but he will when he gets enough complaints from enough different people.
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.
IE = integrated into the OS....
in other words 95% of IE is already loaded...
Firefox != integrated into the OS...
in other words must be loaded before using. as in longer load time.
Once a single instance is loaded, try opening another instance? Quicker isn't it? Hmmm, I wonder why that is? IT'S ALL READY LOADED (like IE is when you first get into windows)
-Xystren
Ohh, and BTW I'm testing on a p-ii 233
Why do people always point out that there are some IE only sites left? I can't remember seeing one lately.
Right HERE ;)
-j
This bears repeating:
Joe User can't fix a Windows problem any more than he can fix a Linux problem.
To drive home the point, how about this very reference from this morning? It took a sysadmin with VERY MUCH clue 5 hours to nuke all the stuff off a Wintel machine, and all it takes for it to come undone is one little click on the IE icon.
I cleaned up a friend's machine last month. The father was sure the kids were surfing pr0n sites and nasty bits that he didn't want them to go into. To prove it wasn't their fault I logged on and I opened IE. We waited about 5 minutes with my hands off of the keyboard while we chatted about this 'n that. I logged off and re-ran the spyware and malware scanners. 50 hits in 5 minutes. He was stunned.
I couldn't get him to go to Linux, but at least he's running Firefox now.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
You ruined your credibility as a computer geek when you started running WinXP.
Rather than introduce ActiveX to default Firefox builds, you could just leave IE installed on max security (block all ActiveX, among other things) and only certain trusted sites enforced by IEAK, while deploying Mozilla 1.7 for mainline use. That's what we do.
And it's not just ActX now, we had to check all of our PCs for JRE when the recent vulnerability was announced, and installing JRE5 does not uninstall the defective JREs, annoyingly.
Corporate installs of FF 1.1 and/or Moz 2 would be nice with MSIs and options to retain trusted plugins like Flash, Acrobat and dictionaries. It's very annoying having to reinstall dictionaries when upgrading Mozilla.
I was mentioning this ad in the New York Times the other day to someone at work, and their comment was, "Oh, too bad we can't get the NYT unless we drive across the city to the big bookstore."
Maybe instead of shooting for such an expensive ad that people would only see once, perhaps donations could be made by people and groups to advertise Firefox in their local newspapers, where it is sure to be seen by more people, and cheap enough it could run more then once.
Hey, I'd donate $50 to have it appear in my local newspaper (that would be a small ad in the corner of a page), and if I asked some of my friends I am sure enough could be raised to see it appear more prominently towards the front and in a much more larger size.
I wonder if the foundation who put together the big ad would be interested in such an idea, or even fellow slashdotters?
Firefox is better than Mozilla because it does one thing and does it well. Mozilla tries to be apprentice of many professions, master in none. This makes Firefox faster and more secure (the biggest your pile of code, the easier it is to introduce bugs).
Obviously you have no idea about User Interface Design. When you are dealing with a set of users (web surfers) that are not familiar with a given field of expertise (IT, Computers) the last thing you want to do is to burden them with too many choices and seetings. A reminder of this is the mythical clock on VCRs (always blinking in 00:00). You want to offer only the important settings and keep as much as possible under the hood with sensible defaults. Firefox improves on Mozilla on this regard but I think it could do even better.
It is a well documented fact in User Interface Design that the more complex and rich an interface is the more confussed a newbie will be.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I had the same XPerience. I had installed XP SP1 on a system and deliberately turned OFF Windows Updates because I DID NOT WANT SP2 on that box. I noticed a couple of hours later that Internet access was kind of slow on my network, and when I went downstairs I saw that the cable modem light was on solid. At first I thought I'd been cracked and was running someone's DDOS attack, but then I looked at that XP machine ... sure enough, it was downloading Service Pack 2 even though I'd explicitly told it not to. They really want SP2 out there regardless of whether users want it. No need to slam the parent poster for Microsoft's arrogant (or ignorant, who knows) behavior. All I know is it pissed me off pretty thoroughly too.
The higher the technology, the sharper that two-edged sword.
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!
As sacreligious as it is, I think Firefox should have a plugin that allows Active X to run, but set-up so that only certain URLs as provided by the user allow this.
o ad :)
It has.
http://www.iol.ie/~locka/mozilla/plugin.htm#downl
In fact, I'm using it in my firefox right now, listening to embedded midi's
And yes, it ONLY enables windows media player. All other activex plugins have to be inserted by hand.