Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Mozilla VP Talks the State of Firefox

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the what's-the-fox-up-to dept.

lisah writes "As Firefox downloads pass the 200 million mark, people are talking about how its security features stack up against IE7 and protect against malware. Mozilla VP Mike Schroepfer told NewsForge's Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier that security will continue to be an issue 'for anything written in native code' but Mozilla intends to meet the challenge by including JavaScript 1.7 with the browser's 2.0 release. Schroepfer also talked about the timeline of future releases and offered just enough information to wet our whistles for 3.0."

22 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. I believe... by archcommus · · Score: 4, Informative

    It's spelled "whet." Either way the 3.0 stuff is interesting.

    1. Re:I believe... by jejones · · Score: 4, Informative

      Something "whets your appetite," and that's probably what the author intended to write. To "wet your whistle" is to moisten your dry mouth (not necessarily to slake your thirst--wetting your whistle doesn't go that far), and has nothing to do with making someone eager for anything... but maybe the author was thinking of something like

      "After a long day of coding, I like to kick back and sip an ice-cold bottle of Mozilla..."?

    2. Re:I believe... by lisah · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I thought it was "whet" as well but deferred to this site:

      http://www.takeourword.com/TOW114/page4.html

      for the final answer. I also prefered "whet" as in "stimulate" (always a good thing) but went with "wet" since it seemed to come first in the days of olde. At any rate, I spent more time looking up that than anything else pertaining to the submission 'cause I know you guys are all about the details. ;-)

      Now, I will go wet my whetstone and whistle while I do it.

  2. Security? by remembertomorrow · · Score: 4, Insightful

    As long as people are running programs from administrator accounts, there will be far more security problems than there should be.

    Maybe when Vista comes out (circa 2020 AD) and becomes widespread, this problem will be alleviated a bit. Those of us using other OSes (Linux, MacOS, etc.) are fine at the moment.

    --
    Registered Linux user #421033
    1. Re:Security? by allusionist · · Score: 3, Funny

      AD 2101 Vista was beginning...

    2. Re:Security? by Emetophobe · · Score: 2, Interesting

      I run windows as an admin since it is much easier (iTunes is broken as a limited user, you can't sync your ipod unless you're an admin. This is just one of the dozens of problems you will encounter trying to run windows as a limited user). I use SysInternals' PsExec to run certain programs as a limited user while I am logged in as an admin. For example, all my firefox shortcuts look like this: psexec -l -d "C:\Program Files\Mozilla Firefox\Firefox.exe".

      PsExec allows you to run a process under alternate credentials.

      Here is a description of what the -l and -d parameters do:

      -l
              Run process as limited user (strips the Administrators group and allows only priviliges assigned to the Users group).
      -d
              Don't wait for application to terminate. Only use this option for non-interactive applications.]

      It's not the best solution, but it works, run firefox as a limited user using psexec and then try and overwrite something in c:\program files or c:\windows, it won't let you (which is a good thing).

  3. Realplayer bundling by User+956 · · Score: 4, Funny

    As Firefox downloads pass the 200 million mark, people are talking about how its security features stack up against IE7 and protect against malware.

    Protect against malware? They're bundling with it!

    --
    The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
    1. Re:Realplayer bundling by iknowcss · · Score: 2, Informative
      No no no! Haven't you been paying attention? It's the other way around. Right on the site it says this:
      Forbes reports that RealNetworks, the creators of the (un)popular media player RealPlayer, have signed a two-year agreement with Mozilla to bundle Firefox with its software
      Not the other way around.
      --
      Life is rarely fair. Cherish the moments when there is a right answer.
    2. Re:Realplayer bundling by dvice_null · · Score: 3, Informative

      Real Player is bundled with Firefox, not the other way around.

      This just means that Firefox will get users from Real Player user base, from those who don't already use it. It doesn't mean that Firefox will from now on delivered with Real Player. It might get some bad reputation for Firefox, but on the other hand it will get some reputation for Firefox and marketing is what OSS projects are usually missing badly. All the techies should know that this doesn't affect the Firefox product quality at all and other than techies.. don't really care about it.

  4. Re:when Firefox becomes as insecure as IE by ivort · · Score: 2, Funny

    And When Opera Becomes more Popular than Firefox we can all move back to IE : )
    http://www.thesecondchancemovie.com/_site/mediapla yer/index.php?id=9f72b0fbe5bde711a0696cac5b339a5e

  5. The State of Firefox? by Billosaur · · Score: 4, Funny

    Isn't that near Nevada? Or maybe Montana -- my geography's not good.

    --
    GetOuttaMySpace - The Anti-Social Network
    1. Re:The State of Firefox? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Funny

      I think it's North Carolina's Portugal.

    2. Re:The State of Firefox? by Fallingcow · · Score: 2, Funny

      Oh, come on. Everyone knows where it is. We all had to study ancient civilizations like Phoenix and Firebird in grade school, and they were located on the same land as the modern state of Firefox.

  6. They nailed it by quokkapox · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Security is no longer a concern with the Firefox installs I've set up for various family members. Firefox updates itself now, painlessly and seamlessly, and often within a day or two of serious security alerts. I wouldn't be surprised if some exploit gets announced over the weekend and everyone is on 1.5.0.7 by Tuesday morning. That is still way better than Microsoft.

    --
    it's a blue bright blue Saturday hey hey
  7. No "protected mode" please by Rog7 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I hope Mozilla/Firefox can maintain security without adopting a restricted "protected" sandbox mode ala IE 7 on Vista. I use a simple HTML homepage stored locally on my PC and Vista's method decides to segregate it from other browser windows, making it near useless in its basic purpose. It seems like a lazy way out on the issue at the expense of convenience for the user.

    Keep Firefox its own entity, don't copy this "feature" designed to bludgeon-patch IE's giant flaws.

  8. Re:I can't wait until IE 8! by dvice_null · · Score: 2, Informative

    > we not even know for certainty that Firefox 3.0 is in the works

    Eh? You can download the nightly version of it from here:
    http://ftp.mozilla.org/pub/mozilla.org/firefox/nig htly/latest-trunk/

  9. Re:Copy/paste bug STILL not fixed! Arg! by dvice_null · · Score: 3, Informative

    > Firefox also seems to be a huge memory hog,

    See this article:
    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Reducing_memory_usage_-_ Firefox

    It will tell you how to recude memory usage and also points you to an extension which you can use to track down extensions that leak memory: http://dbaron.org/mozilla/leak-monitor/

  10. Re:Firefoxpacks by dvice_null · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have 4 computers that have Firefox installed on them. All those computers use Linux, so those installations are not counted at all. There are also loads of websites which offer Firefox downloads for their users, those are not counted either. And then we have companies that might have thousands of users and the it-staff propably downloads Firefox once and then copies that to all the computers. That is propably 199 million more downloads.

  11. Re:Recent updates by dvice_null · · Score: 3, Informative

    Here is a pretty good resource for solving issues with Firefox:
    http://kb.mozillazine.org/Category:Issues_(Firefox )

  12. Re:Firefoxpacks by Kelson · · Score: 4, Interesting

    I've lost count of the number of times I've downloaded Firefox, but I can also say that each Windows download has gotten installed on roughly 10 different computers. So you subtract some, and you add some, and eventually you lose any hope of having a useful estimate.

    The downloaded count is a simple metric that tells you that there's still a lot of interest int he product. It's easier to determine than the number of times it's been installed, the number of copies in use, or the number of users.

    The number means what it means. Trying to translate from #Downloaded to #InUse is pointless.

    (Incidentally: no, automatic updates are not included in the total. And IIRC there was some effort made to avoid double-counting manual updates, like not counting downloads made using Firefox. I don't remember exactly.)

  13. Re:I can't wait until IE 8! by vux984 · · Score: 3, Funny

    Can MS speak the same on IE 8?

    Of course they can, just not yet. You just need a bit of patience.

    After all how can MS know what features they'll be inventing or innovating before their competition has invented and innovated them first?? ;)

  14. Re:Opera?? Why Bother? by Handlarn · · Score: 2, Insightful

    If you're the web developer then isn't it your job to make sure that the site works well in Explorer and Firefox and Opera?

    You're the expert; why wait for a client to tell you they need their stuff to work on Opera? They might not even know Opera or Firefox exists. If I hired someone I would assume they'd make it compatible with all the major browsers without me having to explicitly say so. Besides, Opera seems to render contents very true to HTML/CSS standards (more than Firefox and Explorer, in my experience) and that alone seems to me to be a good reason to make sure it's compatible.