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."

Comments

The biggest downside to Firefox

[DeadSea]

Is all the plugins, extensions, chrome, files, and settings that have to be configured after you have the Firefox browser up and running. It would be really nifty to be able to bundle all the things that I do when I install firefox into one mega "extension bundle" or some such that I could install with one click.

Re:The biggest downside to Firefox

[Blaskowicz]

this extension should be useful :
http://mozilla.doslash.org/infolister/
InfoLister is an extension for Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird and Nvu that collects various information about Firefox/Thunderbird and saves it to a file. Currently it prints the list of installed extensions, themes and plugins.

Re:The biggest downside to Firefox

[Zocalo]

Perhaps some kind of "shopping basket" download system on the Mozilla update site would be a good way to go. Personally, I quite like the "Download Basket" that Microsoft uses on its Windows Update site when you do a manual update. Something like a standard shopping cart to choose the plugins that you are interested in, followed by a Windows Update style confirmation and install process would be ideal. If you could also save the baskets and reuse them on multiple PCs that would make widescale deployment of Firefox sooo much easier...

Re:The biggest downside to Firefox

[steeleye_brad]

Urg...I know people will hate me for posting this...but look at Opera. Without Java, the install file is about 4MB. This includes a mail reader, IRC client, newsgroup reader, mouse gestures, and highly configurable tabbed browsing. I see no reason for Firefox to toss in a few basic features. While I think Firefox is great, and I love the "feel" to it, I dislike downloading plugins for mouse gestures, tabbed browsing configuration, etc. Hell, basic plugins like this aren't large at all, it wouldn't hurt Firefox to put that in. Most people here aren't asking for hundreds of pre-installed plugins and a ton of themes, just some of the simpler things.

I like the ideas posted by others, have a shopping cart or checkbox system, allowing you to sort of preinstall various plugins. Maybe create some standardized basic functionality plugins that one may choose to download, and have an option for popular, more advanced plugins as well. You'll still have a small initial download, and will still have the option to have a very small browser.

Re:The biggest downside to Firefox

[Hard2Grok]

The problem lies in that not all users know anything beyond point and click. For these users, getting to a site that says "You will need the flash plug in to view this site correctly" is a deal breaker. Even more so when all they see is just some inocous little image that doesnt explain to them why it isn't working. (Ala the little jigsaw piece)

I wholeheartedly agree that firefox needs to have two rollouts. One with and without extensions. The idea of having an application, with an appropriate disclaimer which says mozilla is not responsible for anything the third party extensions do or dont do, that lets you choose which extension you want installed along with firefox is amazing!

I currently sit on a standards committee for the school district I work in and we shot down firefox, even though many of the admins use it on thier machines themselves, because of several problems we saw as user issues with the browser.

Some of the other things we saw problems with were:

No Active X support (many of our online applications use active X)

Not as user friendly as other browsers (ease of use and clarity issues)

Lack of a real centralized support center (The forums are a rich resource..if you have time to run searches or wait for someone to answer your post, which in a real world environment, is not conducive)

Potential for abuse by students of all age ranges (The tabbed browsing is an exceptional idea! however, most teachers are too sued to window browsing and wouldn't even notice the extra three or four tabs that are in the background hiding god knows what kind of sites from her view.)

We really REALLY wanted firefox, but these issues just couldn't be countered. Everytime we tried to see if there were possible solutions, we were either met with hostility on the forums for daring to suggest that firefox was lacking in any area or we got silence.

Re:The biggest downside to Firefox

[Plug]

Check out FrontMotion's Firefox MSI page for an excellent 3rd party MSI for Firefox (currently at 1.0.2 but regularly updated).

Otherwise, it's a stated goal for 1.1 to have an official MSI installer.

Re:GPO Control

[numbski]

http://www.frontmotion.com/Firefox/

Have you tried this by chance?

I haven't personally, but I keep hearing good things about it.

there's no cure-all

[QQoicu2]

Maybe Firefox is a more stable, more secure browser than IE, but everything is gonna have its flaws. And the more people use it, the more it's gonna get targeted. This sounds kinda selfish, but I almost wish the geek crowd would have "hoarded" Firefox and kept it as their own. It's nice to give Microsoft the shaft, sure, but the more Firefox creeps into the mainstream, the more it's gonna inherently open itself up to exploits.

Con: You can't use autocomplete

[GigsVT]

Since the article concentrated on security, but didn't mention this:

If you leave autocomplete on, Firefox will save your credit card numbers in plaintext on your hard disk.

This bug has been known about for years. They won't fix it.

Issues with numbers

[ppz003]

<rant>

I have an issue with people who quote numbers of security notices and the like. They always seem to fail to mention the average severity of these notices or even the account for duplicates.

We see a large number of nitpick vulerabilities for open source because everyone can look at the source code and try to break it every which way. OTOH, finding exploits in IE is done by testers and hackers.

Regarding dupes, visiting Secunia shows many vulnerabilies for linux distros, but you see the same ones over and over again for each distrobution.

So while I agree that no software is perfect, and Firefox does have problems that arise from time to time, as does any software, I'll still be using the fox for my net browsing.

As for those testimonies in the article from people who can't get Firefox or Thunderbird working properly, wow. I've switched people's grandparents with no computer literacy with no problem. All I can say is that their system must be jacked up.

</rant>

Mr. Langa is a conversational terrorist

[rsborg]

It's enlightening until it's critical. I see.

You missed the point of the poster. He wasn't unhappy about the article being critical, but being very BIASED and critical. You know, it'd be like saying that Democrats/Liberals should listen to Bill O'Riley... as if he listens to the other side.

What I hate the worst is not those who are biased, but those who claim to be things like "Fair and Balanced" when it's clear they're not.

Take for example this nice strawman argument that Mr. Langa puts forth:

It's a very appealing concept, and has become part of computing's conventional wisdom: Non-Microsoft = More Secure.

Which he then cuts down systematically, as if his misposed argument had any value:

Trouble is, that's a falsehood based on a common error: Failure to adjust for the effects of the installed base.

I can tell when people use Conversational Terrorism, and I know then that they're highly partial and unreasonable to argue with.

Oh yeah...

[jim_v2000]

A lot of other security/AV companies get definitions out MUCH faster than Symantec. I remember occasionally using Sophos's and other AV sites to solve virus issues becuase we didn't have the info.

Re:symantec

[rizzo420]

i used to favor symantec over mcafee, royally...

now i've seen reason to doubt their products. the main one i've seen come up many times is a trojan. i don't know the name off-hand. and it's with even the latest versions and definitions. you can update it today and i will almost guarantee it won't find it.

also, my other issue with their home product is that by default, it's set to try to clean the infected file. today's viruses can't be cleaned because the file is the virus. so if it can't clean it, it takes no action. that's the most absurd setting i've ever seen. they should have it set to try to clean adn then quarantine if unsuccessful. i dread looking at computers that have norton installed, you know they're infected the minute they come in.

Re:Critical? Pfft... i've seen better.

[rainman_bc]

Just to point out though, for the most part when any site that reads the http_user_agent header and rejects me, I just change my user agent using the user agent switcher extension, and most of those sites look quite fine.

Even www.quicktaxweb.ca rejected my firefox on Linux install, but accepted firefox on Windows. Just change the user agent to appear like FF on Win and it was almost perfect.

What pisses me off most about FF is that there still appears to be a memory leak if you leave it running for a while. I frequently leave my PC on overnight, and when I get it in the morning it takes a ltime for FF to maximize in XP. Both work and home PC's show the same symptoms. That doesn't occur on my Linux boxen though.

And no, I didn't RTFA ;)

easy to detect cc numbers

[gad_zuki!]

Easy.

1. Dont do autocomplete (or make this a default off option) on ssl forms.

2. Credit card #'s are 16 digits with known prefixes. Detecting them isnt a difficult problem. Same with social security numbers.

Comparing Security

[stretch0611]

Wow you can actually compare a product that has not even been out for a year, and IE6 which has been over for over 3 years...

Actually IE6 has now been out for 4 years. And a person should hope that a 4 year old product that is used by millions of people everday should have the bugs worked out if it by now.

Now as far as how to compare them check out this article. It compares security on a very sound premise: If you keep up-to-date with updates how long are you vulnerable. The answer: IE: 51 weeks during 2004, Firefox: 8 Weeks during 2004.

Lets rephrase that; using firefox I was safe from known exploits 10 months last year. If I was an idiot and used IE, I was only safe from known exploits 1 lousy week during the whole year.

Which are you going to choose? Get FireFox!