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."

Comments

Re:The 9 Reasons

[l3v1]

1). The theme: so he doesn't like the theme. That's why themes were invented for, go grab one which you like. Crap.

2). Weak antiphishing: there was none before, now he's complaining it's weak. Get lost.

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.

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.

5). Memory leak: I often run Firefoxes for a whole week long. Yes, you read that correctly. I often just leave important links open when I leave work, then I login back from home and continue useing it, then again tomorrow from work, and so on. After a week it often eats up around half a gigs of memory, true. But really, how many of you do such things ?

6). CSS with Yahoo: well, if it's such a problem for him, I can understand. For me, I don't give a frack. And in fact, when someone raises non-IE-related CSS-problems, all I can do is laugh.

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.

8). Buggy history: sometimes occurs, true.

9). RSS: also true, I hope RSS reading will become better (well, that should be easy, given) soon.

All in all, useless site, mostly useless points, definitely useless advice.

Re:The 9 Reasons

[PopeRatzo]

You guys will have to excuse me, but I haven't had the time to follow the scuttlebutt on the deep grapevine in the tech commmunity. (I don't browse at -1 iow)

When did we start hating Firefox?

Or does the MS spin machine really work that well?