Firefox Reviewed in the Globe and Mail

Eric Giguere writes "Today's Globe and Mail has a Firefox review titled A bug-free surfing zone in its Friday review section. Slashdot readers probably won't like the last phrase, though: 'Until Firefox finds a way around that, you might have to keep Internet ExplORer around -- just for emergencies, of course.'"

Comments

negatives of the review

[Emugamer]

"Firefox isn't perfect. It still has some bugs, which isn't surprising considering it only recently came out of "beta" or testing mode. It also can't do much with pages that require features only Internet Explorer has, such as the ability to run Active-X programs. These features are part of the reason IE is so riddled with malware, but they also allow it to interact with certain websites."

Perhaps these websites should move from building apps with ActiveX? just a thought :p

Re:negatives of the review

[PoprocksCk]

Yes, exactly. People should begin to understand that Firefox's lack of ActiveX is actually a good thing.

In the article they say that it's a good thing because of security, but the Firefox programmers should find a way around it. Well there is an ActiveX extension out there, if you feel like voluntarily letting people hijack your computer...

Re:negatives of the review

[fm6]

Perhaps these websites should move from building apps with ActiveX? just a thought

Absolutely. And they should be more standards compliant, so a web page looks the same on all browsers. And there are a lot of other reasons web servers (or any kind of server) shouldn't rely on Microsoft's baroque, unpredictable, bit-tweaking approach to software.

But the fact is, a lot of web servers do use Microsoft technology, and a lot of people have to be able to deal with that. It's part of their job, or something else that's important to them, and their not interested in any Microsoft-Mozilla religious war. If you forget that, you have have no hope of helping people move away from their dependency on Mister Bill's Empire.

Re:negatives of the review

[Anonymous Coward]

"Well there is an ActiveX extension out there, if you feel like voluntarily letting people hijack your computer..."

or using your companies internal web apps that require ActiveX untill the bigwigs can be pursuaded to allocate funds and manpower "to rebuild something that already works."

Re:negatives of the review

[PoprocksCk]

Right, but version numbers are really just marketing schemes in commercial products anyway. In the commercial world 1.0 means "good enough to sell," whereas in the Free/OSS world, it means that it's feature complete, stable, etc.

I do think that IE has had enough rewrites to have changed version numbers a few times... but they really should be calling it 5.x at this point though.

But then again, they're not even shipping standalone versions of IE though, since it's supposedly an "integrated" part of Windows (even though it really isn't). Oh well, Microsoft will continue to fool people, because people don't know any better.

My favorite Firefox story

[Staos]

Microsoft used Firefox in a press image they sent out promoting their MSN Search.

Re:My favorite Firefox story

[Anonymous Coward]

My favorite is this article...

"A bug-free surfing zone [...] Firefox isn't perfect. It still has some bugs"

Did the editors who came up with the headline even READ the article?

Wait, I thought only Slashdot editors did that... GOOD LORD, "Globetechnology" is a front for Taco!

Re:My favorite Firefox story

[binkzz]

No they weren't. They flat-out denied having used Firefox in the press release, despite the obvious screenshots. If they now claim they were showcasing MSN search in different browsers (something they never do), it's a lame attempt to try and save some face. Here's a link to the newsarticle that does work: http://www.nrg.co.il/online/10/ART/825/507.html

might have to keep it around?

[Vermyndax]

You might have to keep IE around? What else are you going to do with it? It's integrated into the OS. The only way to get rid of it completely is to uninstall Windows. What's not to like about that statement? It's certainly worth a chuckle.

Re:might have to keep it around?

[enosys]

XP has automatic updates, a program that can check for updates, download updates using the Background Intelligent Transfer Service and even install them automatically. That program doesn't appear to use Internet Explorer.

choice

[Antonymous Flower]

'Until Firefox finds a way around that, you might have to keep Internet ExplORer around -- just for emergencies, of course.'

Not like Windows users have much of a choice..

Windows Update

[IO ERROR]

Windows Update is the big reason Firefox users keep having to use Internet Explorer. There's an ActiveX plugin for Firefox out there, but I don't know if (with masquerading the user agent) it will run Windows Update. Anyone tried this? There's also an extension that adds Windows Update to Firefox's Tools menu.

Mac IE is removed easily

[Vandil X]

It's integrated into the OS. The only way to get rid of it completely is to uninstall Windows.

On my Mac, I just drag the "Internet Explorer" icon from my /Applications folder to the trash.

It's uninstalled :)

Firefox or IE?

[narl]

Slashdot readers probably won't like the last phrase, though: 'Until Firefox finds a way around that, you might have to keep Internet ExplORer around -- just for emergencies, of course.'"

It isn't about using Firefox or Internet Explorer. Some of us don't have a Windows machine, so we don't even have the option of running Internet Explorer.

What do you mean?

[October_30th]

Slashdot readers probablyt won't like the last phrase

And why would I object to it? It's a pretty well known fact that there are pages that just won't work with anything else than IE.

At work, for instance, I can't use Firefox for certain tasks because the Java-based admin pages (finances and grading) at our University won't work with it. Java apps load and work to some extent, but the layout is so screwed up in a Firefox that the pages are essentially useless. In Linux the pages won't work at all because of some weird Java problems (I thought Java was supposed to be platform independent?).

Complaining won't help, because IE is such a de facto standard that, according to the people who maintain the admin software, there is no support for "non-compliant" software such as Firefox and never will be.

Windows Update

[s.o.terica]

Yes, it's another entirely ironic aspect of Windows: you have to use their insecure web browser to update their buggy OS. I'm really surprised that the detaching of WU from IE wasn't part of some antitrust settlement.

Memory Leaks

[rrowv]

My big complaint with FF isn't that you can't use Active-X. It's the massive memory leaks with tabbed browsing. FF routinely gets up to 350MB of memory usage. I use the internet *heavily* for research and reading news, so I open and close a huge number of tabs a day. Having to bookmark all the pages I have open every night so I can close down FF is a real pain (if I didn't, it would truely eat all my vm space). They really need to work on that...

(It's been a known issue for a long time, but nobody seems to be able to fix it)

Re:Memory Leaks

[jimicus]

Memory leaks are notoriously difficult to fix, largely because it's very difficult to find what's caused it.

The basic definition of a memory leak is "program requests memory, uses it, then doesn't give it back to the system afterwards". Here's an example of code that will cause a memory leak every time it's called:

int leakyRoutine () {
char *leak;
leak=malloc(1024);
return 0;
}

What happens here is: The program asks the operating system for 1024 bytes of memory. The operating system will return with a pointer to 1024 bytes of memory, which is stored in the variable leak.

It's the program's responsibility to give that memory back afterwards. But once you're out of the function leakyRoutine(), the context is lost - you don't know what the value of the variable (and thus pointer) was. And if you don't know what memory you've got, you can't give it back.

The operating system knows what memory every program has allocated, so can reclaim the memory back quite easily. But because the operating system doesn't know what the program is doing with its memory, it can't do so while the program is running. Otherwise, data corruption is likely.

The above is a trivial example, and it's easy to see the problem. But what if there's a million lines of code, pointers are passed as arguments and return values between functions and you're not clear as to which function is responsible for freeing which pointers?

Re:well firefox has something to learn too

[SuperficialRhyme]

Is this a joke?

I was going to ignore it thinking it was, but just incase you're serious I will respond.

The last phrase isnt that bad as you said.Nothing wrong in keeping Internet explorer for emergencies.I have seem quite a few pages that refuse to work in netscape - apart from those sites whose contents get juggled ( Yes ,Evene in firefox 1.0).

You're right here, this happens. MSIE is VERY good at rendering malformed HTML. Some have speculated that this was done to prevent HTML standards from being followed by most developers, but in any case, the HTML you're seeing messed up *is* malformed. At a fundamental level it's the website's fault. If you do have to use one of those pages, do make sure you e-mail the maintainer. Often they will fix it. As FF's marketshare increases, expect this to change.

Next,The start up time when I double click a html file in my hard disk :- IE is much faster than Firefox to open files in my hard disk.(WinXX).

This is because MSIE is preloaded in RAM. I'm not familiar enough with windows to tell you how to preload FF at startup but there is a way. You can use about:config changes in firefox to speed up page rendering if you'd like. You should look into both of these if you are often opening files from the hard disk.

Firefox needs to have a confirmation box when its main window containing the tabs is clicked for close.many a time i have accidently clicked the close and all the tabs are gone!

Ahh, finally to the reason I think you are joking. This is the default behavior in Firefox. If your copy isn't doing this it is because you turned it off. Turn it back on and once more it will ask for conformation.

Re:Devil's advocate vs. Go Firefox!

[kingjosh]

Previous place of employment: Me: Can I switch to Firefox? Boss: What's that? Me: A browser that is much better than IE. It's open source and doesn't suffer from all the malware that IE does. Boss: No, its open source so it might be insecure. We've always used IE, we need to stick with that. Me: Can I install Thunderbird? Boss: What's that? Me: An email client that's much better than Outlook Express. It's free too! Boss: Definitely not. Me: What about OpenOffice.org? Boss: What's that? Me: An open source, easy to use Office suite. It's free and the database inside the spreadsheet is really powerful. You can save things like you are in MS Office, but it doesn't suffer from a lot of the problems, like broken AutoCorrect. Boss: No way, it could be hard to uninstall. Me: Fuck it, I quit.

Re: Or just don't use Windows Update

[InvisiBill]

The extension that adds Windows Update to the menu is just a shortcut to wupdmgr.exe, the same thing you have in your Start Menu. It doesn't add any new features, it just mimics IE's feature of having a shortcut to it right in the browser. It's been a while since I tried, but I don't think the ActiveX plugin supports WU. This plug-in is designed for custom, legacy and intranet solutions and nothing else.

I find it easier just to not use Windows Update. I use Automatic Updates to get all my critical updates. If you're paranoid about AU, use their RSS feed and Security Bulletin Search.

Write the author and politely help him

[mauriceh]

Instead of posting "bitchfest" comments here, perhaps we should politely email the author and help him broaden his understandingof the issues?

Here is what I wrote to him, as an example.
While I am sure it is not perfect, I believe it touches on the matters he clearly does not yet understand.

Emailed to: mingram@globeandmail.ca

Re: Your article:
A bug-free surfing zone

By Mathew Ingram
Friday, January 14, 2005 - Page R31

Hi Matthew.
While I have to thank you for a relatively informative article, I also have to point out that you are still, in many ways "Not getting it"

You have fallen into two fundamental errors of understanding:

First:
" That engine forms the basis for a new browser called Firefox, which is free for Windows and Mac users"

In this you badly missed the point of the Mozilla project.
Firstly the Mozilla project is where various browsers, Gecko based and other, spawn from.
It was an example of the first major project ceded to the Open Source movement.
It was decided that the best way to encourage development, without being tied to a development budget, was to move the development to an Open Source model, where thousands of users/develeopers could adopt and continue the development unfettered by traditional copyright and ownership issues.
By moving the Netscape source to a "copyleft" model this has clearly demonstrated an alternative and much more useful model for ownership and develeopment.

Your second case of misunderstanding:
Adding insult to injury you only mentioned the old (and many say obsolete) Microsoft and Apple environments, and totally ignored the much more relevant and modern Open Soruce communities, such as Linux and FreeBSD.

Thirdly, in the last paragraph you wrote:
"Firefox isn't perfect. It still has some bugs, which isn't surprising considering it only recently came out of "beta" or testing mode. It also can't do much with pages that require features only Internet Explorer has, such as the ability to run Active-X programs."

While I fully agree that Firefox is NOT perfect, the one item you chose as an erxample is not a bug!
ActiveX and similar are not features, but instead are what can be called "malware".
A model for extensions that is so insecure and flawed is not to be supported.
It was a fatal error by Microsoft, and continues to be so.
Nobody is interested in "fixing" this.
If you want an extension model with some practical features, the world has already settled on a few, most notably PHP and Java. These can be secured, and can be considered "safe" extensions when properly implemented.

The only "bug" that is relevant here is the continued dependancy by a handful of misguided developers who are still using ActiveX on web pages.

The severity of this bug is such that the US Dept. of Homeland Security issued an advisory advising people to NOT use Internet Explorer.

Internet Explorer and ASP IS the "bug".
Avoiding it's faults is an improvement, NOT a "bug"

BTW, whether you want to Internet Explorer installed on a Windows system is not a choice you get to make. M$ have integrated the browser into the OS in a fashion that does not allow you to remove it.
All you can do is remove links to it. These are called "shortcuts" in Windows terms.

Maybe next time you foray into this arena, good intentions in hand, you might want to submit your article for peer review in the relevant communities. I will be glad to point you in the directions for this if you like.
Feel free to ask.

BTW, this highlights what is probably the strongest feature of Open Source software: Peer review.

By submitting code, text, and other means of expression to peer review, we utilize a wide community of people to assist in improving our works, avoiding the pitfalls of well intentioned, but misadvised concepts and cases where we simply were not aware of a relevant matter on the topic.

We are all going to make mistakes, but i

Re:Write the author and politely help him

[Doctor Crumb]

In future, please refrain from using childish insults like "M$". Writing such things just serves to make the open source community seem immature, and won't help you get taken seriously.

Re:It's the Globe and Mail

[Rary]

"They have a history of biased reporting..."

Anybody can (and does) make that claim about any news source. Every news source has a bias, since there are people involved and those people, no matter how objective they may try to be, will allow a certain amount of bias through. I'd guess that, assuming you read national news in Canada, you're a National Post reader. You probably don't see them as being particularly biased, because they probably represent your worldview, whereas the G&M does not. That's fine. But the G&M does, for the most part, represent my worldview, whereas a newspaper that thinks an editorial on the merits of creationism is outstanding journalism (just to take a single example from recent memory) does not really represent my worldview, so I tend to consider NP as being "biased".

It's suggested to not rely on any single news source as the only news source.

I hate biased articles like this...

[ltwally]

Right from the very start the author of this article showed either how ignorant he is, or how biased he is, with this little opener:

"Way back in the mists of time -- Internet-wise, at least -- there was a battle between a tiny startup company with a piece of software for browsing the Web (Netscape) and a giant software company with a reputation for playing hardball (Microsoft)."

I'm not saying I'm pro-microsoft. I'm not saying I'm anti-microsoft, either. What I am saying is this:

That one statement made by the author (Mathew Ingram) is complete bullshit. Anyone who actually remembers the start of the browser wars will know the following:
1. Netscape may have been a little startup at one point, but by the time the browser wars began, it was the biggest Internet application around -- and it held enormous weight behind it.
2. Netscape directly challenged Microsoft. Netscape thought that it could create a platform independant API, based around the Netscape software, that would make operating systems all but obsolete. They may not have been directly challenging windows, but they sure were threatening to make it obsolete. The challenged the Windows (Win16/Win32) API, which always has and (at least for the immediate future) always will be microsoft's bread 'n butter.

I'm not saying MS's tactics were fair, or even legal. I'm not saying the browser market couldn't use some fresh blood and some competition. Whether microsoft played fair or not is beyond my current scope. The fact is that Netscape made a direct move against microsoft, and making Netscape out to be the poor innocent victim is really starting to get old. They made a decision to challenge one of the largest and most powerful companies in the world. They lost. End of story.

Martyrs they are not. Examples of what not to do, they are.

/*end of rant*/

Re:well firefox has something to learn too

[hendridm]

I believe you can appent "-turbo" to your FF shortcut to enable this behavior as well, at least in Windows.

"C:\Program Files\firefox\firefox.exe" -turbo

Automatic Correctness From Day One

[EventHorizon]

Tools such as 'valgrind' are great for catching memory problems like the one you described. However, it is best to use them continuously during development (ideally running automatic regression tests inside them). It's virtually impossible to clean up a huge amount of low quality code after the fact.

Frankly the firefox codebase is the result of 7 years of development done largely without unit tests or even basic QA. As a result, they have leaks, bloat, and severe malformed HTML DoSes that lock up all browser tabs/windows.

The key to good engineering is complete self-honesty, but these days it looks like firefox is being managed by a self-delusional marketing organization with no interest in fixing its serious technical problems.

Linux users are encouraged to run 'valgrind firefox' prior to modding this post down for not towing slashdot's party line.

IE is also good for mutliple concurrent sessions

[kalirion]

This is another reason I keep IE around. Open up a new browser window, and you've got a new session, whether you need one to test a web app you're developing or just to be logged into multiple mail.yahoo accounts at the same time. With Firefox the only way to get a new session is to log out of the old one (or close all Firefox windows.) And no, I do not want to mess around creating multiple profiles for something that IE accomplishes with a single click.

'firefox --debugger valgrind'

[EventHorizon]

I did some more research after that post. If you want to run firefox under valgrind you actually need to use 'firefox --debugger valgrind'. With 'valgrind firefox', the startup script causes valgrind to analyze the script, rather than the actual browser process.

Anyway, results with a single blank firefox 1.0 window:

==6273== ERROR SUMMARY: 83 errors from 5 contexts (suppressed: 272 from 3)
==6273== malloc/free: in use at exit: 691499 bytes in 12633 blocks.
==6273== malloc/free: 163851 allocs, 151218 frees, 25635248 bytes allocated.

which IMHO is rather unacceptable for a 1.0 release.