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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."

5 of 674 comments (clear)

  1. Re:The biggest downside to Firefox by Blaskowicz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

  2. Re:GPO Control by numbski · · Score: 5, Interesting

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

    Have you tried this by chance?

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

    --

    Karma: Chameleon (mostly due to the fact that you come and go).

  3. Re:The biggest downside to Firefox by Zocalo · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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...

    --
    UNIX? They're not even circumcised! Savages!
  4. Issues with numbers by ppz003 · · Score: 5, Interesting
    <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>
  5. Oh yeah... by jim_v2000 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Don't take life so seriously. No one makes it out alive.