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Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox
didde writes "It seems like our friends in Redmond are quite happy about IE. According to this article, they won't be updating it until Longhorn. My favorite quote would be [We have a very, very innovative set of capabilities that we're putting in the next version. And in the meantime it's an extensible platform, and there will be a set of extensions that Microsoft does as well as others.] Oh boy, are they actually working side by side with the virusmakers and phishers?" That just gives the MozBoys a year head start.
Microsoft said the same thing about Linux a while back. It took a while, but they finally admitted that it was infact, a big theat.
they are probably worried.
Having an IE monopoly is a lynchpin in their designs for server-side control. Unless I'm completely off-base.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
Just a year's head start? You sure are optimistic about the Longhorn release schedule, aren't you? :)
As could be read on Joel on Software, Webapps are becoming major competition to MS. That's why a better browser is the last thing MS wants. Worse browser = better browser.
At your own risk, of course. Firefox 1.0PR passed with flying colors.
What does MS really stand to lose if Firefox gains something like 50% of the browser share? MS isn't making any money off IE, are they? I realize that back in the mid 90's there was a big concern that the Netscape browser could somehow be used to usurp the Windows monopoly, but honestly, is anybody still thinking that an entire OS can be replaced by a web browser?
Probably for the same reason people put those "Free iPod" links in their sigs - gullibility and no sense of humor.
one better than mcleodeight
The second F is supposed to be small!! Argh!
That is all.
-- Night Goat, a proud Firefox/Safari user
T. Rex, 30-some odd million years ago: "Mammals? Ha! I'm the biggest predator in town! Why the hell should I worry, I rule this place!"
Roman generals, c. 200 a.d.: "Barbarians, you say? We've got nothing to worry about. We're the biggest army on the planet. What could possibly go wrong?"
A Confederate general, 1861: "Those Yankees ain't nothin' to worry 'bout! We'll run 'em back across th' Potomac in a month, then we'll go back to plantin' cotton."
Adolf Hitler, 1942: "We can fight a war on two fronts! The Russians can't stop us! We're invincible!"
The Iraqi information minister, 2003: "The Americans will never set foot in Baghdad."
"Is IE really an extendable platform?"
Sure, but instead of "extensions" we call them "exploits".
Until they have ANY kind of ActiveX enabled by default for all sites FireFox is safe.
:)
What MS can do quickly is to release quick patch via windowsupdate which will disable all ActiveX by default and allow it only from trusted (whitelisted) sites with a BIG HUGE WARNING like this:
"I'm a stupid fucking idiot and allow this binary to run without any restriction on my computer.", type: "YES I AM",
next window: "I do understand what this ActiveX can delete all information, be a virus or spyware and I'm brave enough to Allow This"
Just like in Windows2003 default IE enhanced security configuration but more user friendly
And the Firefox developers aren't even trying to fix the bugs people want fixed. Like the bug about needing a "FAST BACK BUTTON" like in opera (has over 100 votes at bugzilla and they wont fix it) or even a rewind.
The Netcraft toolbar type addon which tells you which country a website is from is a good idea. Another idea would be to allow you to report malicious websites and report on history of commercial websites that steal your money.
Microsoft is Install-driven - they know that however bad the product is, if they can get it installed they will always win, later. Look at how easily they got rid of Netscape !
A product like Linux is much more dangerous to them, because it fights back at install time, eg. Linspire or Linux server platforms.
Edmund
This is not a signature.
They'll need that head start.. Has anyone here actually tried developing for the Mozilla platform? It isn't a walk in the park. The documentation available on XULplanet, mozilla.org, etc, although improving, is rather sparse and frequently out of date. Even some books on mozilla development are out of date already - RAD in Mozilla (published this year I believe) has some wrong details about XUL tree selections, for example. One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces. This is a tremendous amount of work, but I for one would be more than willing to contribute bits and pieces as I come across them. This basic documentation step needs to be done to encourage people to develop sites and applications for the Mozilla platform -- and to a greater extent, more modern w3c standards (DOM2/3,CSS2/3,etc).
I think that what the Firefox devs have done is an absolutely amazing feat of marketing and UI-cleanup, however, there is a huge amount of legacy code in web applications and scripts and pages in general dedicated to MSIE's own proprietary DOM, ActiveX, and rendering quirks. We need to bring those people to the standards-compliant world and, to a lesser extent, to the Mozilla platform.
I just don't see that critical mass in the application side of things yet, and that will be part of winning the battle. If XAML and so-forth start to make inroads, we are in trouble.
-- Maciek
A common line of thought seems to be that Mozilla/Firefox is more secure than IE, virus/exploit-wise.
This is probbably true, at this point in time.
A common misconception (which happens to be one of my pet peeves) is that this is because microsoft write bad code, microsoft devs are not security minded or are incompetent, open source code is better code just because it is open source, or Microsoft are in league with virusmakers, and various other manner of of BS.
Here's the news people: Microsoft can afford as good a development team as anyone else. They can afford to hire extra devs for their QA teams as well as their dev teams, QA devs that read code, something many software houses just hire techs that know mercury products for. They can afford to have two (probbably more) devs per line of code - one to stick back and fix bugs, another to run ahead with the next generation of code. Not many software houses can do that (thus affording a larger dev attention span to bugs) either.
And Open Source is as prone to bad methodology, bad coding, non-security-minded coding, bugs and what-have-you as any other code. OS devs make mistakes too.
The advantage MS has in many highly-paid devs is offset by open source being exposed to immense scrutiny levels by being open, but, having seen quite a bit of OS, this doesn't always guarantee someone will volunteer to fix it.
I don't think either has a check-mate advantage over the other in this respect.
Today, Firefox's security advantage lies in one single factor: The very little attention it is getting from the people who write exploits.
Once it makes more sense for them to assume mostly FF browsers will be running their malware, they *will* write malware for FF, open source or no open source. They *will* find ways to exploit FF, or any number of its (sometimes very-widely-installed) extensions, which do not undergo the same code scrutiny of the core FF team. They *will* find ways to exploit plugins, which are often not Open Source at all and are as exploitable as IE in this sense.
All it takes is a critical mass installbase for FF, and that cozy misleading feeling of security will fly right out the window.
My 2 cents.
-
I know this sounds outlandish, but given that Microsoft don't make any money from IE, and it's vulnerabilities are giving them a lot of bad publicity, is there any sound business reason for them not to scrap it (and the staff that write it), save themselves a fortune by recommending Firefox? This would also solve their legal problems with the EU over bundling.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
Edward John Smith not worried about icebergs.
I've been thinking about some innovative new features for Firefox and ive come up with a few that should really push the competition..
1) 'Pusher' Technology - it would allow any website to 'push' un-signed software onto the users machine and run it totally automatically, this would be a boon for ease-of-use, it would also be able to force software to install without the users permission, bringing desktops into the DRM age peacefully.
2) 'PickPocket' - an extension to Mozilla's engine that would allow websites to access credit cards and other personal info without the user needing to lift a finger, this would speed up internet transactions and quickly fill the gap in the as yet un-patented '0-Click Shopping' arena.
3) 'MediaManager' technology will allow the user to enjoy a rich multimedia experiance by passing full control of the users speaker volume, microphone, web-can, monitor and force-feedback(r) joystick, we know users want to see your advert and they want to see it in full-screen video, lets not beat around the bush waiting for them to click on it..
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
Now, I'm not saying your pet enhancement-bug isn't important, just that the devs have decided it's not worth the amount of work at the moment. Remember that there are over 5000 open non-enhancement bugs on the firefox product only...
Also, the enhancement you're talking about is going to be very, very difficult to implement without breaking stuff. I'm 99% sure that it's not even possible to do it without breaking some valid web-pages with onload and onunload javascript (and no, Opera hasn't succeeded in this, see this for an example). Unless you have a solution for those problems, I suggest you choose a different tone for your critique...
It's hard to take anything this site says about MS seriously.
Deep breath.
You must be new here.
Microsoft wants Windows users to have plenty of reason to switch. They just want them to switch to Longhorn.
That's actually the biggest problem with Microsoft's current business model. With each new generation of their software they have to convince a substantial portion of their install base that to upgrade. If Microsoft releases Longhorn and customers decide that they would rather stick with Windows XP then Microsoft is just as screwed as if Linux had achieved Total World Domination. Microsoft's biggest competitor is old versions of its own software, and the competition gets harder to beat with each new iteration.
That's why Microsoft isn't interested in coming out with another version of IE for XP. Instead Microsoft would much rather bundle the new version with Longhorn in the hopes that it might persuade some XP users that now is the time to upgrade. After all, without WinFS, and with XAML being backported to XP there is going to be precious little that would persuade customers to upgrade. A new version of IE might very well be the biggest reason to upgrade to Longhorn from XP.
Microsoft had BETTER improve IE7. I have it in the latest build of Longhorn (it's still in Alpha so there is a lot of improvement room).
It's a peice of crap. It's got a few minor improvements over IE6 (popup blocking, more security stuff), but adds:
1) The buttons are different sizes and placed in strange places to make it look more 'modern', but all it does is confuse the person using it.
2) On the File-Edit-View-etc bar, the background is light gray and the text is white. Very hard to see.
3) Back and forward buttons above the File-Edit-View bar, everything else below, and very small.
4) No major improvements over IE6 SP2.
5) Slow page load times.
6) Bloat- FireFox loads twice as fast.
In short, the current IE7 builds look bleak. Hopefully they'll improve for MS's sake, but otherwise, they're really not doing much other than ripping off Safari's look and rearranging the buttons to make it harder to figure out.
That's it in a nutshell. Despite all the other endeavors Microsoft engages in, without the monopoly rents they receive from Windows and Office, Microsoft is dead in the water. They know this, and are doing everything possible to extend the Windows monopoly to the Internet. Once the majority of their customers realize that the OS has become of secondary importance, they're screwed.
For them it's about leveraging their browser dominance until the browser is fully integrated into the OS with Longhorn. They're relying on the ol' FUD train to keep things going in the interim. All declarations of confidence aside, they know that there is more pressure on them than ever before. With a year or more before Longhorn's arrival, I expect to see Microsoft talking more and more about how wonderful the browsing experience will be in Longhorn, while painting Firefox et. al. as relics of a bygone era.
Before long I expect to hear Ballmer say something like, "People just don't understand that the rich browsing experience built into Longhorn is going to make the tired old standalone browsers look pathetic!"
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Yet ANOTHER reason Firefox is a great browser is the great plug-ins and tweaks the community produces!
i ning.maxrequests
[ from boingboing.net ]
Here's a great go-faster tip for Firefox, the free, rock-solid, secure browser from the Mozilla Foundation:
1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down
and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipel
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This
means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it
"nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the
amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!
Enjoy!
-Valiss
What you say? Mod me down as a troll, but even if people jump ship en masse to Firefox, that is not a problem for Microsoft. There are several reasons for this - times today are very different from the good ol' days of their browser war with Netscape.
.NET apps.
.NET web applications, from MSFT's perspective it is fine if people use Firefox 90% of the time and use IE for the 10% of .NET mission critical apps. As long as those apps exist, people are still tied into their platform.
During the browser war between Microsoft and Netscape, Microsoft's primary worry was not people using Netscape Navigator as much as the Windows platform losing importance. Remember Andressen's quote saying that when Netscape was done, Windows would be reduced to a set of poorly debugged device drivers? Its easy to say that was foolery in retrospect, but Microsoft was sincerely worried about that. As far as Microsoft knew at the time, Windows could have lost importance in the same way that minicomputers declined after the rise of the personal computer.
Fast forward to the twenty first century. Microsoft is having a crapload of problems with spyware and this product called Firefox is getting rave reviews. But the worries of the mid nineties are gone. The reason that Microsoft stopped IE development is because they do not want to see web apps get more powerful; they hope that when Longhorn comes around, people will write distributed
Firefox does nothing to stop this future. While Firefox is a nice app and IMHO better than IE, it is not pushing the frontiers of web application capabilities, the way that Netscape did in the nineties. As nice as it is to not worry about slimeware, Firefox is just enabling the same ol' web.
As nice as Firefox is, it is not enabling people to switch away from Microsoft technologies other than IE itself. People are not switching to Linux because of Firefox. When Longhorn comes out and Microsoft starts hyping
Perhaps at some level, Microsoft risks losing mindshare from Firefox. But even if this is the case, they risk to lose much more mindshare by acknowledging Firefox as an issue so their response is expected.
MS makes most of it's money from Windows and Office. If they lose Windows and Office they can shut down shop. So they must do whatever they can to protect the income from those 2 areas, and specifically Office because Windows is nothing without Office for the average user.
Now the problem with the web is that browser-based apps (think gmail) threatens Office and by extention Windows. We live in a time where bandwith is cheap and fast enough to run a high-quality spreadsheet or word processor as a web application. The ONLY thing stopping this from happening is the pitiful state of IE. If they made IE as good as it can be, they'll be opening the floodgates for web-apps that can replace Office.
If IE matures enough for this to happen, all applications can be web-based and run off ANY COMPATIBLE BROWSER on ANY PLATFORM. Thus I can move my grandma to Linux with Firefox 3.0 and she won't even know that something has changed, because she was already accessing all her apps via a browser. This can also happen if Firefox becomes the de-facto standard browser, and they start implementing all these new and great standards that's waiting to unleash the power of the web-app.
So that's why IE has changed almost nothing since the monopoly. MS realises that improving it is digging their own grave.
My company develops software for a specific vertical market. All web-based. It's great for our clients because they can access their data from anywhere, any time. It's great for us because we can upgrade and improve the system whenever we feel like it without sending out upgrade disks. 90% of all support calls we take right now is because of IE (spyware / 'special' toolbars). Lately we've been installing Firefox for all clients when training them, and that's helped a lot.
So all we can hope for right now is for Firefox to improve their browser as much as possible to try to become the standard (60% of the market would do it I think) before Longhorn. I don't know what MS plans for a browser in Longhorn, but I know it will be bad for all other browsers.