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Plugin Lets Users Turn IE into Firefox
An anonymous reader writes "There is a new plugin available for IE that can make Internet Explorer resemble Firefox by adding tabbed browsing capabilities and an integrated search box. Moreover, the plugin improves IE's privacy and security by integrating a firewall designed to block out Internet exploits, phishing sites, spammers, spyware and worms, with a special HTTP filter that removes private data, and an anti-spyware tool that can identify and remove all pests in less then 10 seconds"
What I need is a Firefox-plugin that looks exactly like IE (including the lack of tabs and search box) while still providing the same level of security.
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
or they could just use firefox.
In case the main site is slashdotted, you can also download the program in question here.
The article's claims of "and an anti-spyware tool that can identify and remove all pests in less then 10 seconds" are exceedingly hard to swallow.
What heuristics are they using that can find and zap all unmentionables in 10 seconds? Has "anonymous reader" ever run a virus/spyware scan before?
The president has been kidnapped by ninjas!
Are you a bad enough dude to rescue the president?
Mods be damned, Scuttlemonkey's submissions are getting more and more similar to mass-media headlines. This title has the express purpose of starting a flamewar on the world's most popular anti-ms site.
It makes IE look somewhat like firefox, and adds some lacking functionality that makes it work somewhat like firefox. The two are neither identical nor interchangable.
A couple fans told me that my last journal entry was mint; give it a shot. Hope you like.
What's the point? There's numerous add-ons for IE that have been around for a long time now that give this kind of functionality. The only difference is that they don't try to emulate the look of firefox
Any man who afflicts the human race with ideas must be prepared to see them misunderstood. -- H. L. Mencken
that you can't polish a turd. I guess somebody thinks you can.
My humor is probably your flamebait
Did anyone else see that for a second (or maybe longer?) the format of Slashdot changed? "Read more" was replaced by the headline title, the right sidebars were gone...?
...even, good!
I don't think it could have been a glitch in the rendering; it looked too orderly and intentioned.
I don't see the point. If you want it to look, feel, and act like firefox, why not get firefox. Yes that is the redundant part. As for the office (scuttlemonkey's idea for a place where this can be useful): if you're equipment is being held so tightly that you can't install firefox, don't you think installing this will get you fired? Many companies keep really tight control over such equipment. Seriously, this is interesting for any ie fanboys, but I don't see any practical application for such an extension (nor do I envision a market for such a thing).
Or maybe their Apache/Linux server is just mimicking IIS/Windows
A big part of what makes Firefox good is its Gecko rendering engine, which happens to be much better at rendering web content according to w3c specifications than IE does.
Does this plugin address any of that? I'm guessing not, since it wouldn't likely be possible to do that with IE through a simple plugin. At any rate, that makes this thing much less interesting IMO.
Can it replace the broken rendering engine with Gecko too? Simple PNG transparency support, unbroken absolute positioning, this kind of stuff?
Does it support popup blocking? Find-as-you-type?
well...
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format c: /q /x /y
Ho ho ho!
http://www.websitepromotion.ws/firefoxie/
Trademark infringement, anyone? Did you see their logo? And the layout of their web page is clearly designed to blur the distinction between the Mozilla Foundation and whatever organization or company owns this project.
It appears to me that this group is trying to piggy-back on the success of the Firefox name and image in order to further their own product.
here
It wasn't obvious to me if you needed to be admin to install. If so, it kind of blows the argument of giving corporate types who are locked to IE an alternative.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
There appears to be nothing in the EULA that makes it claim to be spyware/adware.
It's heavily tied in with Ask Jeeves; it comes bundled with their desktop search, and you can't change the search button to go anywhere else.
It comes with a desktop firewall, spyware cleaner and privacy shredder (cookie/temp files deleter) but I'll leave someone with a clean VM image to try those things on thankyou!
While it would be nice to have tabs and a search box in IE, those are not the features of Firefox that make me use it. If you did something like "block ActiveX in IE", you'd get close, but then all those things that require IE wouldn't work.
The adblocker works. It displays boxes with "Ad blocked" rather than no ad at all, and lets you show them by clicking on them.
I look after a lot of people who need to keep using IE for various sites, but I still think that Firefox for general browsing and icons on the desktop for broken sites is the best option.
Hats off to the Foxie people though; it's not OSS and it's likely to be funded/sponsored by a search engine, but will be interesting to see if it gets better. It might be worth throwing on the PCs of people who need to use IE for regular browsing.
Just for one second PLEASE realize that there are legitimate reasons for this plugin. They might not be reasons you would choose, or it could be that are forced on you (businesses), but they are valid nonetheless.
Not even heard of Maxthon (by the makers of MyIE2 apparently) - I've just tried it for a good hour or so and its actually quite slick.
:)
:) - and its good! [although theres no close button the right, which confused me somewhat :)]
Supports multiple proxies, autorefresh (these are available as addons to firefox), and has tabs (inc undo), switchable disable of activex, download and ad managers.
Took me a while to find the Gecko engine, but there's details at their forums. Unfortuately its a bloody ActiveX plugin with the Gecko engine in, and its huge!
I'm impressed - Its certainly better than IE - and suitable as a replacement for it, and very quick. Surprisingly, it actually runs WindowsUpdate faster than IE6 does on my PC [after Disabling Windows Advantage, naturally]
There's some faults that let it down but working with IE, its probably the best they could do
Having said that and having used it, I'm still going to stick with Firefox!
Though I am going to keep it installed along with OffByOne - [thanks to Artifakt who i saw mentioned it yesterday] not many features (no iframes, even!) but small enough to run on a floppy! Comes in very useful occassionally!
Duguk
1) create an IE plugin. In side of this plugin put a full, decompressed, working firefox install
2) when your site detects IE, try sending your page as data for the plugin you just had the user install.
3) the plugin passes the rendering of the HTML to firefox which renders inside of the IE window. Your IE window appears to have all of the benefits of firefox while your users still think they're using IE.
You laugh, but I've done it before and it works. The only problem is the big install and making sure that your site uses the plugin if its available.
Encouragement to use IE is the last thing we want to give Windows users. If IE weren't the dominant browser, web designers couldn't get away with making pages that only work in IE. If a web page uses ActiveX, and you're not using IE and Windows, you're out of luck.
By reading this you acknowledge that you have read it.
Just wanted to let you all know that when I went to install this plugin to test it out, Anti-Vir definitely found a deleted a Keylogger. WARNING: Contains suspicious code HEURISTIC/Trojan.Keylogger! C:\PROGRAM FILES\FOXIE SUITE\SWEEPER.EXE File has been overwritten and deleted! No thanks, I'll pass.
Sunday night, I was browsing the web in IE via my Windows 2003 Server that hosts my web site (and is conveniently located next to my main computer). I had turned on JavaScript, ActiveX, and a few other things to make the browsing experience less annoying (I hated having to put every site I visited into the list of Trusted Domains). Since there's no free AV software for Windows 2003, I was running with a firewall, fully patched, but with no anti-virus running.
Well, fate finally caught up to me. I was browsing a Google cache of a discussion group. Within seconds, the IE toolbar had been taken over, icons were installing on the desktop, and my computer rebooted, only to never come up again.
The aftermath was really messy. I got about four hours of sleep that night, trying to clean and fix things. By the next day, I'd mounted the drives on another computer and cleaned it, but it still wouldn't boot. I then had massive problems with Windows Activation, getting stuck in Microsoft call center Hell. Eventually I managed to install the Windows 2003 Server setup from an inactivated Windows XP Pro installation and it worked.
Needless to say, I've added additional security, as well as switching to Firefox. Going through that level of pain and suffering is the biggest motivator to moving away from Microsoft that I've experienced in a long time. My guess is that since the Windows 2003 Server browser is so locked down, they don't bother fixing holes.
This "foxie" installs iun6002.exe (desktop surveillance personal spyware) on your computer. I just ran Ad-Aware SE with the latest difinitions. Before I had installed this program I didn't have this nasty spyware installed. I could be worng but I don't think I am. Following links: http://www.lavasoftnews.com/ms/display_main.php?ta c=Favoriteman
http://www.auditmypc.com/process/iun6002.asp
http://www.derkeiler.com/Newsgroups/microsoft.publ ic.inetserver.iis.security/2004-06/0260.html