The Future of Firefox

sebFlyte writes "As Firefox moves swiftly towards 1.1 and Internet Explorer keeps trundling towards IE7, ZDNet UK has an interesting set of articles about Mozilla. Among other things, they look at the history of Firefox all the way from the pre-phoenix days, and have an interview with chief evangelist Asa Dotzler looking at what has driven the browsers success and why he thinks the release of IE7 will cause a massive boost in the uptake of Firefox."

Comments

boost leads to more exploits

[rockytriton]

It's quite possible that this boost will lead to more exploits which will lead to a decline...

http://www.dreamsyssoft.com

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[Quevar]

More options in browsers will be better for everyone.

If more people use Firefox, it's possible that more people will try to hack it, but that means less people hacking IE. So, any hack that does come out will probably not affect everyone. Software diversity is very important to preventing systems from going down. I can't believe people rely solely on one OS to do their stuff - a virus comes out and everything is messed up. I would rather have a backup running a different OS that could be swapped in or better yet, a mix of multiple OSes. Same with browsers - have multiple ones and everyone ends up more secure.

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[Captain Scurvy]

More likely, the open-source approach, meaning the pride developers take in making good (or at least decent) code, the peer review of said code, and quick fixing when a bug is found, will prevent a decline.

Or so one would hope. However, one must also take into consideration the fact that open source has a way of uncovering a lot more vulnerabilities. Granted, many of them as of late, at least with Firefox, haven't been very serious, were nit-picky, and were fixed rather quickly.

I have noticed, however, that a lot of people will just look at the number of vulnerabilities and make ill-formed opinions about open source products. They won't look at the severity or how quickly it was fixed, but they'll definitely look down on the product if they have to update it a "lot."

More than one of my clients has said something along the lines of, "Firefox/Linux/OSS? Isn't that really just as vulnerable as Microsoft stuff, but the community downplays the problem?"

So, in this way, the open source model can be a two-edged sword when it comes to persuading other people to go that route. The FUD seems to be working, at least from what I've seen.

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[syousef]

Publishing an open-source project is _never_ a bad idea. The more code and collaboration out there the stronger the community is. I never wanted to be the best at making program X... I just wanted to be helpful.

A lot of people operate under this assumption. Sadly they're just plain wrong, and here's why: If you have 1000 pieces of software that all claim to do roughly the same sort of thing, and 999 are hacks, finding that 1 good program is going to be an excercise in frustration.

End users are likely to come across one or more of the hacks, curse about open source rubbish and go back to using close rubbish that at least works a little better. More sophisticated users will go and find out what other people are happy with, but it still makes the process much more complex.

It's the same reason having thousands of distros,f ew of which work well, is a bad bad thing. Some diversity is a good thing, but too much diversity is almost as bad as none.

If open source wants to survive, we need more focus on a narrower range of products as well as solid lobbying of politicians to keep open source legal.

To be fair the sorts of software you're talking about writing yourself sound more like code snippets than fully functional programs. That's not so bad since your target audience is generally other developers, and they can be expected to sort through software.

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[mr.hawk]

Since MS is arguing that IE is an integral part of the OS, couldn't the Spyglass owners argue for a 5% share of a percentage of the Windows profits? That'd be a nice pile of cash to collect for being "royally fucked over"!

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[kwoff]

Then Microsoft illegally dumped Internet Explorer on the market for no cost in order to kill Netscape.

What if Microsoft had released IE as a free open-source project? Would that still have been considered "illegally dumping"?

Ironic

[deaddrunk]

That the page doesn't render properly in the browser they're biggin' up.

Re:firefox

[giorgiofr]

my friend, you are mistaken. no site depends on .net being installed on your system to be displayed. maybe they depend on .net being present on the server but definitely not on the client. no way.

Security

[ad0gg]

I want to know how firefox devs plan to address security concerns with the browsers. It seems as firefox gets more popular, the number of exploits keeps rising.

Firefox security information

Re:Security

[man_of_mr_e]

Wow, you are so completely wrong on a number of counts.

First, It takes the mozilla team an average of 2 MONTHS to fix security issues, not the "same day". Further, The vast majority of IE vulnerabilities happened before Firefox even reached release candidate stage.

For example, FF 1.05 patches 12 vulnerabilities. The oldest from April, the newest from late May based on the creation date of the referenced bugzilla reports.

http://www.mozilla.org/projects/security/known-vul nerabilities.html#Firefox

Firefox has had 56 publicly announced vulnerabilities this year. 24 of them of High or Critical severity.

Re:Main advantage

[dsginter]

Speaking of innovation, someone should innovate an ActiveX IE plugin that simply changes the IE rendering engine to Gecko.

Then we could all use CSS the way it was meant to be. The drone consumers will never know the difference.

Too bad ZDNet sucks

[Gothmolly]

I mean, they were alright and cool back in 93-94, when WfWG was out, and worked pretty well, and Novell was cool, and PC Magazine could review 8 or 10 word processors in a shootout article. But now they're just pundits, like Dvorak, who respin company press releases as insight. Sort of like a glorified, corporate, Roland Piquipaille.

Anyway, nice to see FF get some press, but I wouldn't take it too seriously - PHB doesn't trust it anyway, and Joe 4Pack doesn't read ZDNet.

Re:Main advantage

[superpulpsicle]

I'd be happy if firefox can just fix the CPU hammering/memory leak with Flash by 2.0.

Not designed with security in mind

[joebp]

Time and time again, we see the same basic design flaw rear its ugly head in Mozilla Firefox.

What need is there for a web browser to have privileged and non-priviliged scripting modes? What a horrible design decision. Did they not learn from IE?

Sad, but true

[ehaggis]

I like Firefox, I have deployed Firefox as the defacto browser in my company and it is my primary browser.

That being said, it is sad when only (a questionable) 10% usage rate is viewed as any type of challenge to IE. Have we lowered our standards for what real competition should be?

I'm glad I switched!!

[Anonymous Coward]

One of the biggest reasons why I'm glad I switched to Firefox is all of the customisations you can do to it - I get a seven day weather forcast sitting down on the status bar - because I want it there, if I decide I no longer want it there, well I can take it away just as easy.

Support for multiple proxy servers - the ability to right click and see who's site I am looking at and the interigate cookies. All good things that help people use the internet safely and effectively - simply plugged in to a mixture of customisations that suit me.

RSS feeds, tabbed browsing and pop up blockers are all fantastic additions by themselves.

If I really need to look at the page in IE - I can right click and view the site in IE, but it thats a last resort now - I don't mind the odd formating issues. Perhaps all of these features are not new but it's free and it works as I want it and well.

unhappy with Firefox 1.x

[dnaumov]

I will probably get modded down below the floor for this one, but after reading so many articles praising Firefox and preaching the impending death of Internet Explorer I just have to get this off my chest:

Am I really the only one here who is thinking that with every single version past the very last 0.9 releases Firefox has been GOING DOWN THE SHITTER? Don't get me wrong, I've been a Firefox user since the 0.8 days and truth be told it's still my primary browser (I am posting this from 1.0.5), but I think the quality of QA the latter Firefox releases have been getting quite frankly sucks and I am not talking about the security issues here. With every new release Firefox is becoming more and more unstable and these days version 1.0.5 is crashing at least 2-3 times a day for me. Yeah, surely Firefox has been getting all these nice new features and UI polish, but when it comes to stability, the 0.9 branch beats the newer builds hands down. Just a short rant and perhaps food for thought.

Spare me the "PEBCAK!" and the "You must be running an M$ OS, LOL!", thank you.

Re:unhappy with Firefox 1.x

[kihjin]

Part of the Open Source process is that the users have the ability to participate. Don't expect your problem to automagickly fix itself. There's code available, and a long process known as DEBUGING that you could be experimenting with right now.

Firefox 1.x branch has only crashed on me once since I downloaded 1.0.0, however many months ago that was. Your issue doesn't translate onto me, hence it sounds like an isolated problem.

Another plus for Firefox is that since you are so unhappy with it, you have the option to uninstall it... unlike a particular browser bundled with the OS.

Re:Dicey logic?

[nedder]

It's ok when the perceived good-guys do it.

I'm so glad they fixed the %£$@! space bar

[mooncaine]

I tried Firefox now & then for OS X, but one thing always made me turn back to Safari: I couldn't stand how the spacebar in Firefox didn't adhere to standard practice: scroll the web page down. I saw this /. story and decided to give Firefox another try. Hurray! The spacebar works as it should!

We are spreading firefox...

[B11]

I'm the "guru" to my friends and family, and when I'm asked to "fix" the internet, that is, get rid of pop-ups and such, I install or recommend Firefox. I show what it can do, how those annoying pop-ups, active-x download prompts, noisy flash ads, etc., can disappear and they are amazed.

My sister installed it on her computer at work after bieng so frustrated with IE problems. Now her boss has it on his computer, at work, at home, and on his laptop. Her co-workers are using it.

I'm sure other "gurus" are spreading the word.

Re:Main advantage

[Tumbleweed]

I've read that the upcoming new version of the Flash player solves the CPU usage problem quite nicely, but, of course, time will tell.

Firefox in the enterprise world

[bsquizzato]

I still think Firefox won't be used widely throughout the corporate enterprises until the team develops a good update system. It's enough of a pain for me to install over my old version when an update comes out, let alone hundreds of computers.

Re:The reason he thinks IE 7 will spur more FF gro

[thetoastman]

I have been avoiding the Windows/2000 Professional to Windows/XP Professional upgrade on one of my home systems for a long time.

I use Windows/XP Professional as one of my systems at work and I loathe the environment. About the only reason I would consider upgrading the home system is to investigate IE 7.

And the only reason I plan to investigate IE 7 is to make sure web sites I build will work in that environment.

The method is: Build the web to standards, and hack on it until IE can render it correctly. I don't imagine IE 7 will change this method. It just means that I will have to use different hacks for a new set of standards embelishments that Microsoft decides to make.

Migration to Firefox

[ShimmyShimmy]

from article "we rarely hear of companies doing wide-scale migrations from IE." Actually, I disagree with that. A lot of places use firefox, and have specific settings/features specifically for netscape-based browsers. I go to Lehigh University, where firefox is standard on every computer.
Somehow, I just don't feel like "migrate" is quite the right word. Obvoiusly, if a company put Linux on every one of it's computers, it'd be pretty damn migrated. However, since you obviously can't have a Windows box that doesn't run IE, it's still hanging on every computer. But the IT guys push it and tell all the professors/staff to use it for security issues, and all the Mail is Thunderbird.

I really feel like Firefox and Thunderbird are a lot more "migrated" than it seems like, but it's just not a complete move away from IE becuase you could still use it if you absolutely wanted to.

Long live Firefox!

XulRunner

[bahwi]

XulRunner is what I've been waiting for! We've got our fully functional CRM app, but having people download Firefox and run it through that just doesn't look as professional as it could.

Of course, firefox --chrome http://blahblahblah.../ works, but is still more difficult, and people begin to wonder where this Firefox thing came from. Yeah, spreading the browser is a great cause and good crusade, BUT, business is business. In fact, when people call tech support complaining IE won't work(why are they calling us? No idea, we're just too nice sometimes), we tell them to install FF, and they're good to go.

Hopefully with the Gecko Runtime Enviroment(GRE) coming along, it will make smaller downloads for the other apps once you've got one installed. (Installed FF, great, Tbird and Xulrunner are miniscule downloads). Perhaps not, but maybe...

Re:and...

[hkmwbz]

"Wait, Opera claimed on the front page of their website that they had won an award that didn't exist, and Asa called them on it in his blog... but Asa was the one who lied and got caught with his pants down?"

Yes, absolutely correct. Asa knew that there was some room for misinterpretation (as demonstrated by plenty of people when this was going on), yet he went straight for the throat in an all-out attack. Asa knew that Opera wasn't lying, so he was actually lying himself. This is not the first time he's done something like this either.

Opera made a simple mistake, but Asa couldn't resist the chance to attack Opera yet again.

"The logical hoops some people will jump through to make the facts fit their worldview (instead of the other way around) never ceases to astound me."

People who comment on something they know nothing about never cease to astound me.