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Nine Reasons To Skip Firefox 2.0
grandgator writes, "Hyped by a good deal of fanfare, outfitted with some new features, and now available for download, Firefox 2.0 has already passed 2 million downloads in less than 24 hours. However, a growing number of users are reporting bugs, widening memory leaks, unexpected instability, poor compatibility, and an overall experience that is inferior to that offered by prior versions of the browser. Expanding on these ideas, this list compiles nine reasons why it might be a good idea to stick with 1.5 until the debut of 3.0, skipping the "poorly badged" 2.0 release completely." OK, maybe it's 10 reasons. An anonymous reader writes, "SecurityFocus reports an unpatched highly critical vulnerability in Firefox 2.0. This defect has been known since June 2006 but no patch has yet been made available. The developers claimed to have fixed the problem in 1.5.0.5 according to Secunia, but the problem still exists in 2.0 according to SecurityFocus (and I have witnessed the crash personally). If security is the main reason users should switch to Firefox, how do we explain known vulnerabilities remaining unpatched across major releases?"
Update: 10/30 12:57 GMT by KD : Jesse Ruderman wrote in with this correction. "The article claims that Firefox 2 shipped with a known security hole This is incorrect; the hole is fixed in both Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Firefox 2. The source of the confusion is that the original version of this report demonstrated two crash bugs, one of which was a security hole and the other of which was just a too-much-recursion crash. The security hole has been fixed but we're still trying to figure out the best way to fix the too-much-recursion crash. The report has been updated to clear up the confusion."
Update: 10/30 12:57 GMT by KD : Jesse Ruderman wrote in with this correction. "The article claims that Firefox 2 shipped with a known security hole This is incorrect; the hole is fixed in both Firefox 1.5.0.7 and Firefox 2. The source of the confusion is that the original version of this report demonstrated two crash bugs, one of which was a security hole and the other of which was just a too-much-recursion crash. The security hole has been fixed but we're still trying to figure out the best way to fix the too-much-recursion crash. The report has been updated to clear up the confusion."
Firefox to internet:
.0 release to an established release, and to Internet Explorer, is just pretty laughable where I am sitting. I have not experienced a single crash or bug, but then I have not exactly been trying to break it. Overall, I am quite impressed and look forward to seeing where this release takes the community.
If you are for any reason dissatisfied with your Firefox experience, we will gladly refund your money.
There will, of course, be growing pains. TFA highlights a known security bug, and points out that the memory leak has found its way into Firefox 2. CSS is initially seeing some compatibility hickups. There is always room for improvement. I began using Firefox 2 a few hours after the actual release. I was surprised to see an article complaining.
The other points of the article are matters of preference and wishful thinking.
-"I don't like the theme." ORLY well how is that IE theme support working out for you?
-"The anti phishing is weak!" ---compared to what? The antiphishing in 1.5?
-"Extensions did not automagically compatible-ize themselves!" OOOOHHH, well let me switch to that other browser that inherently supports third-party code. Perhaps we have overlooked the ".0" in the release version number. Third parties will have to adapt to meet the changes as Mozilla works to meet them. This does constitute a reason to potentially delay switching if extensions are absolutely necessary for your casual web usage.
-"I don't understand the options screen!" BWAHAHAHAAAHAHAHAAAAA!!!! This can't be serious.
-"I don't like the RSS thingy! IE does it better!" Where was it again that RSS originated? Was that Redmond? While IE's RSS Just Works (TM) there are clearly many custom options for this feature with Firefox, and unimaginable numbers of extensions are to follow.
So why delay switching to 2.0? Because 1.5 is just fine. Not because 2.0 is broken. Comparing a
FairTax baby!
It seems like quite a few people are out defending Firefox, but that's actually a disservice for Firefox.
What it really comes down to is to make Firefox into a browser that can convince the other 80+% of the users to switch. Saying "oh but, Firefox did it first!" or "you can just change x setting to make it better if you like" is irrelevant because when it comes down to it, it's whether the average users think it's better than the other browser. Making excuses for issues that even be perceived as problems doesn't help Firefox.
I like Firefox and upgraded to 2.0 on Tuesday, but it's not really the opinion of the Firefox crowd that really matters, it's the users still using Internet Explorer, the crowd that Firefox is really going after.
1). The theme: so he doesn't like the theme. That's why themes were invented for, go grab one which you like. Crap.
No, it's not crap. This will be an important reason for many people to avoid 2.0
Yes, there are themes and I immediately installed one of them after I set up Firefox. But you can't ask this from the user base Firefox is aiming at.
3). Confusing Options dialog: hell, have you ever really gone through IE's Tools->Internet options ? Thought so. Anyway, it's really hard to spot well designed dialogs these days. Not a reason for not using the browser. Crap.
It seems you agree on his point and yet call it crap. The options dialog DOES suck. And yes, it's really easy to spot well designed option dialogs, take a look at Microsoft Office.
4). Compatible extensions: man, people need some time for updating their extensions, but they are quick, e.g. all my extensions have been upgraded in a few days. But, if you're willing, in most cases you can fix them on your own.
The cited article is about reasons for NOT upgrading from the good and working 1.5.x. Indeed my most needed extension is not working with 2.0 yet. His objection is solid, yours lacks in more aspects than style.
7). Freezes: yes, they occur. But hello, restore session. I don't say it's no problem, I'm saying it's no reason not to switch.
So you say that it's ok to upgrade to a buggy new version. I really don't think you are entitled to an opinion on Slashdot.
>> 2). Weak antiphishing: there was none before, now he's complaining it's weak. Get lost.
Weak antiphishing is worse than no antiphishing. If a user gets used to seeing antiphishing messages pop up every time they do something stupid, then when one doesn't appear they're going to assume everything is okay.
This might be acceptable if you were talking about a tiny percentage of transactions, but Firefox can't guarantee that.
The Firefox phishing protection is host based, which means that someone has to submit a site and then it has to be verified before being added to a database. Worse, connection to the live blacklist is optional, so you may be browsing with an antique blacklist.
All that will happen is that the scammers will spread their phishing sites more widely: there are hordes of compromised PCs out there, you can't track them all.
A heuristic approach would be better: at the moment all the phishing mail I get seems to use a hole in php. Better surely to have mandatorily updated list of rules in the antiphishing engine:
Alert if apparent domain in #text of tag does not match href attribute
Alert if URL contains a space
Alert if URL is IP address with no dots
&c&c
If people have problems, they are more likely to speak it up, than those who don't have problems. Just to make things a little more equal, I for one have had no problems with Firefox 2.0.
1) Theme: matter of personal opinion
2) Anti-phishing: better than nothing; BTW, it's the same anti-phishing technology used in the Google Toolbar
3) FF2 options dialog is a lot like FF1.5's options dialog. Not much change.
4) The extension authors tend to be slow to update. The whole point of Beta1/2 and RC1/2/3 was to give developers, especially extension developers, ample time to update their extensions. If they don't make use of that time, it's their fault for not supporting their users. But on that note, very little changed API-wise between FF1.5 and FF2, so much extension updates involve nothing more than bumping the "maxVersion" string. If that's the case, you can disable extension compatibility checking in about:config and force 1.5 extensions to be accepted in 2.0. That's what I do, and I encounter no problems.
5) Show me a piece of software with no memory leak issues.
5a) FACT: IE7 uses *MORE* memory for the same number of tabs and sites.
5b) FACT: FF2 is MUCH better than FF1.5 in the memory leak department.
5c) FACT: Many of the memory leaks are actually caused by extensions. And there are a LOT of poorly-written leaking extensions out there (in fact, switching from the SessionSaver extension to the built-in session saver in FF2 brought about a very noticeable change).
5d) People forget that webpages these days require lots of memory now that people are using more an more images. And remember that when an image is displayed, it is decompressed into a raw format in memory (since compressed formats like JPEG and PNG are for storage and transport only) and people forget about that effect on memory.
6) It's better than 1.5's CSS engine. It's certainly not a perfect engine, but it's a hell of a lot better than IE7 (now if some sites decide to make use of incorrect behavior in IE7's CSS engine, that's their problem for not following W3C specs).
7) I can't speak for other others, but I have not encountered this. And I have been using Firefox 2 for well over a month, ever since RC1 was spun in mid-late September. Keep in mind that most of the bugs that people report with Firefox are actually the result of crappily-developed extensions.
8) No comment.
9) How could it possibly be a step backwards. 1.5 showed RSS feeds as raw XML. I'm sorry, but I fail to see how a pretty display of RSS feeds is worse than a XML parse tree. 1.5 also didn't give people much options on what to do with them: only live bookmarks were available. 2.0 now lets you pick an aggregator of your choice. Explain to me how this is worse?