Firefox Now Serious Threat to IE in Europe

Tookis writes "Mozilla's Firefox web browser has made dramatic gains on Microsoft's Internet Explorer throughout Europe in the past year with a marked upturn in FF use compared to IE over the past four months, according to French web monitoring service XiTiMonitor. A study of nearly 96,000 websites carried out during the week of July 2 to July 8 found that FF had 27.8% market share across Eastern and Western Europe, IE had 66.5%, with other browsers including Safari and Opera making up the remaining 5.7%. In some key European markets FF has already reached parity and is threatening to overtake IE as the market leading browser."

Comments

Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

Junk (I.E.) is being replaced with more junk (Firefox). Yes, it's better junk, but junk none the less.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Bin Naden]

Junk (I.E.) is being replaced with more junk (Firefox). Yes, it's better junk, but junk none the less.

At least it isn't proprietary junk that doesn't follow standards and tries to shut out the competition. It's a step forward.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

Just to play through with your argument here (which carries on the other who said "trading crap for crap"), that sounds an awful like saying "Nazi Germany? at least it's a step forward from Communist Russia!"

God-winned!

Re:Hoo-ray

[mrbluze]

I think the success Firefox is having at the moment will drive its development further. Because it's not a commercial product we're not going to get the IE experience where the lazy bastards never fix anything and just add features that are broken. There is a genuine drive to innovate and make something that withstands the scrutiny of the community.

Maybe it will pave the way for some proper competition like Opera and others, which are bound to win more market share as the firefox using public start to hear about other alternatives.

Personally though, I've found Firefox to have gotten better and better with time. It's gotten very stable and has plug ins which run well and reliably. It's definitely ready for prime time.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Knuckles]

Thinking that Nazi Germany is better than the Soviet Union? Yay for the school system on your country.

Re:Hoo-ray

[chiefbutz]

I am now in college and the public schools I attended NEVER touched on the Soviet Union, and they just barely touched on WWII. Basically we talked abot American History... as if I hadn't heard it ever year for 12 years....

Re:Hoo-ray

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

What's its problem? Does it not browse the web? Is it insecure? Is it unstable? Is it unpleasant to use? Does it lack features? Isn't it expandable or flexible enough? Is it poorly programmed?

For those of you who answered yes on the last count, ask yourselves this: Is it worth dismissing the entire software as junk?

For those of you who answered yes again, ask yourselves this: Why are you so f*****g picky?

Re:Hoo-ray

[Knuckles]

No, see, the school system wants you to think Nazi Germany is worse.

Yeah, the well-known insurmountable power of communism over Western school systems. I'm pissing my pants.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Pieroxy]

And AT LAST, Internet Explorer is back to where it belongs: A nice tool to download Firefox. ;-)

Re:Hoo-ray

[Seto89]

Well if people are switching to this junk, there is something about it to be learned from. Is it better marketing? Some feature people like? Or is it the image? People are nothing but a multicellular organisms and their behavior is clearly predictable...

Re:Hoo-ray

[Winckle]

I'm with you on tool, nice on the other hand... :-)

Re:Hoo-ray

[joshzweig]

Nah. I had a friend bring over firefox portable... I don't touch IE.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

Thinking that Nazi Germany is better than the Soviet Union? Yay for the school system on your country.

You got it wrong. It was a common expression used during the rise of the Nazi party in Germany.

Still, the comparison between IE/Firefox and Communism and Nazism is just plain idiot and trollish.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Knuckles]

Oh I see! I am not used to so much subtlety and historical knowledge on /. :) Thanks for pointing it out.

Re:Hoo-ray

[SpecTheIntro]

Yeah, the well-known insurmountable power of communism over Western school systems. I'm pissing my pants.

It has nothing to do with communism, and everything to do with the politics of WWII. The reason Nazi Germany is covered more thoroughly and often thought of as worse than Stalin's USSR is because:

1.) Stalin was our ally at the time, and pointing out the systematic slaughter he carried out against his own people would not have been good for domestic support of the war.
2.) The Nazis committed the Holocaust, and we in the West have convinced ourselves that killing based on political ideology is more palatable than killing based on ethnic/cultural/religious identity.

If you bother to pick up a history book, though, or even just look at the total dead under Stalin's regime, you'll quickly begin to see that Hitler had nothing on Stalin. Hitler killed roughly 9-11 million in the Holocaust. The general consensus, according to Wikipedia, is that Stalin killed at least that many, and likely killed nearly twice that amount. Stalin just chose the right group of people with whom to ally. And, he didn't specifically target the Jews. If history has taught us anything, it's that killing the Jews never works out as intended.

Re:Hoo-ray

[billcopc]

The best part about history is how they teach the useless bits, like the early military and colonial aspects of a nation. Kids know all about the founding fathers and world wars, but what the hell do they know about the thousands of other influential people and events that didn't carry weapons or invade other people's land ?

This isn't just US history, it's the same here in Canada. What the hell do I care about some inbred french colonist from the dark ages whose claim to fame was simply being wealthier than the other bums ? History repeats itself, so why aren't we teaching kids about the smart, revolutionary and forward-thinking people of the past ? It takes a lot more than guns and money to build a future.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Knuckles]

1. Hitler started WWII
2. It i not about the number of victims, or the existence of camps. The reason why any respectable historian (at least in Europe, dunno about the US) considers the Holocaust as a singular event is that the Nazis were the only terror regime that built factories solely for the extinguishing of certain people. It represents the point in history where the promises of enlightenment were shattered.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Bodero]

Because it's not a commercial product we're not going to get the IE experience where the lazy bastards never fix anything and just add features that are broken.

That has nothing to do with it not being a 'commerical product,' and everything to do with the fact that it's the underdog - it has to win customers over to gain market share.

Re:Hoo-ray

[RonnyJ]

Maybe it will pave the way for some proper competition like Opera and others, which are bound to win more market share as the firefox using public start to hear about other alternatives.

I'm not sure that's the correct term to use, since Opera already is 'proper competition', and has been for a long time. It may have a low market share, but it still gets huge praise from it's users whenever it's mentioned on Slashdot, and I consider it to be a better browser than Firefix. It doesn't get the mainstream attention it deserves though, and I don't see a 'Spread Opera' campaign happening like the 'Spread Firefox' one.

Re:Hoo-ray

[MightyMartian]

There's a reason why the Holocaust garners more attention than Stalin's purges or the vast number of deaths attributed to Mao's Great Leap Forward, and that is because the Holocaust wasn't merely a mass-murder, but an institutionalized bureaucratic machine. This wasn't some mad man forcing his subservient lieutenants to shoot Polish officers, but rather an entire government apparatus, with civil servants, budgets and records, all dedicated towards the murder of every Jew within the Nazi's grasp. No one is defending Stalin, whose own attrocities have come to light in very great clarity since the end of the Cold War. But Stalin was your typical monomaniacal paranoid tyrant (or you might say the very pinnacle of monomaniacal paranoid tyrants), the sort of prototypical Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein. Hitler and his cohorts were not ordering the murdering millions of Jews to force subservience out of conquered populations, or to destroy political rivalries.

There is also the historical aspect of the Holocaust; of over a thousand years of abuse of Jews, of countless demagogues calling for violence and even murder against Jews, against the entire culture of Christendom having in its foundation a hatred of the Jews. Stalin's madness is more an outgrowth of the French Revolution, of men who believed that sacrifices of this horrific nature were needed to create a better society. The Holocaust, on the other hand, is the most infamous and deadly chapter in a long sordid story of the hatred against the Jews. The Holocaust is the ultimate example of how racism can poison a civilization right down to its core, and convince people to commit the most insane and evil acts.

Re:Hoo-ray

[SpecTheIntro]

It i not about the number of victims, or the existence of camps. The reason why any respectable historian (at least in Europe, dunno about the US) considers the Holocaust as a singular event is that the Nazis were the only terror regime that built factories solely for the extinguishing of certain people. It represents the point in history where the promises of enlightenment were shattered.

You don't think Stalin's gulags and deportation camps were just that? He was less organized about it, but replace "Jew" with "someone I do not trust" and you've got Stalin's Russia. Hitler even tried (albeit pathetically) to create a pretext for his slaughter, by blaming Germany's economic state after WWI on the bankers, who were largely Jewish. Stalin didn't even bother with pretexts. If he didn't like you, he killed you, your family, even your dog. You are arguing what I pointed out as absurd, earlier: we in the West consider killing based on ethnic/religious lines to be more heinous than killing done for purely political purposes. Explain to me how this is internally consistent. You may argue that "someone can control their political beliefs; someone can't control their ethnicity," but then I would ask you to show me evidence of where Stalin accepted the political "conversion" of one of his former opponents. From where I'm standing, killing is killing, and the motivations for both Stalin and Hitler end up being fairly arbitrary: both created a system to dispose of those they wanted dead, and then both put them into practice. Stalin was ultimately more successful.

Re:Hoo-ray

[SpecTheIntro]

Hitler and his cohorts were not ordering the murdering millions of Jews to force subservience out of conquered populations, or to destroy political rivalries.

Precisely, and this is what I pointed out: what, inherently, makes Hitler's killing worse than Stalin's? Why do you believe that killing a particular ethnic group is more heinous than killing political prisoners? Stalin created his own institutionalized machine, he was just remarkably less adept at keeping records than Hitler. Why does Hitler's professionalism somehow make his acts worse? Why are we conditioned to believe that some types of slaughter are worse than others? It's an absurd and insulting statement.

There is also the historical aspect of the Holocaust; of over a thousand years of abuse of Jews, of countless demagogues calling for violence and even murder against Jews, against the entire culture of Christendom having in its foundation a hatred of the Jews. Stalin's madness is more an outgrowth of the French Revolution, of men who believed that sacrifices of this horrific nature were needed to create a better society. The Holocaust, on the other hand, is the most infamous and deadly chapter in a long sordid story of the hatred against the Jews. The Holocaust is the ultimate example of how racism can poison a civilization right down to its core, and convince people to commit the most insane and evil acts.

Terrible, to be sure, but how is it worse than, say, the Mongol invasion of Iran? I think it's telling that you believe Stalin sought to create "a better society," when really all I see is his desire to wield as much power as possible. And you still have not shown what makes Hitler "most insane and evil." What is it, in particular, that makes the systematic slaughter of an ethnic group more heinous than the systematic slaughter of a political group? And why, in particular, is the slaughter of the Jews so heinous in particular, when compared to the Roma? (I should point out that Hitler was at least partially successful in wiping them out; the Bohemian-Romani language was completely lost.)

Re:Hoo-ray

[Knuckles]

You don't think Stalin's gulags and deportation camps were just that?

Show me a Soviet gas chamber. Plus, regarding the singularity of the Holocaust, you are arguing against probably >> 90% of (as least European) historians, and your arguments are not new.

You are arguing what I pointed out as absurd, earlier

No I don't. I am arguing that Nazi Germany was the point where enlightenment horribly turned on itself. Prior to 1933, Germany was what was regarded as a modern nation, albeit with its problems. In the 20ies, prior to the world economic crisis, it was _very modern and liberal. _This is what is worse about it. The fact that atrocities occurred in some nation that had been stuck in that 17th century for too long (czarist Russia) and that was full of illiterate peasants, lead by a brutal peasant (Stalin), is not all that surprising. Plus (see my gas chamber remark) they had no industrial extermination.

Re:Hoo-ray

[TheRaven64]

Isn't that what ftp.exe is for?

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

>Basically we talked abot American History
>as if I hadn't heard it ever year for 12 years
Missed the English classes, I take it?

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

you must mod this parent up, it has much lulz

Re:Hoo-ray

[Skinny Rav]

I hate to quote such big blocks of text, but this is sooo wrong:

There's a reason why the Holocaust garners more attention than Stalin's purges or the vast number of deaths attributed to Mao's Great Leap Forward, and that is because the Holocaust wasn't merely a mass-murder, but an institutionalized bureaucratic machine. This wasn't some mad man forcing his subservient lieutenants to shoot Polish officers, but rather an entire government apparatus, with civil servants, budgets and records, all dedicated towards the murder of every Jew within the Nazi's grasp. No one is defending Stalin, whose own attrocities have come to light in very great clarity since the end of the Cold War. But Stalin was your typical monomaniacal paranoid tyrant (or you might say the very pinnacle of monomaniacal paranoid tyrants), the sort of prototypical Idi Amin, Robert Mugabe and Saddam Hussein. Hitler and his cohorts were not ordering the murdering millions of Jews to force subservience out of conquered populations, or to destroy political rivalries.

I cannot say much about China, but Stalin's crimes are furthest from 'one mad man forcing his subservient lieutenants to shoot Polish officers'. Communism in Soviet Union, Poland, East Germany, and probably in China, North Korea, Cuba, as you wrote it 'wasn't merely a mass-murder, but an institutionalized bureaucratic machine'. Read about yearly commitments of convinced and executed 'enemies of the Proletaryat' - yes, administrative units in Soviet Union had to 'provide' each year a fixed number of kulaks, members of 'bourgeoisie' etc.

Read about the whole bureaucracy of Gulag, of Cheka and later NKVD. The only difference between nazis and commies was that Nazis wanted to kill nations (especially two of them: Jews and Gypsies, but also Poles and Russians) while Communists wanted to kill classes. Are you a priest? Bullet in your head. An entrepreneur? Against the wall! A former-regime politician, police or army officer? Dead. A farmer having enough land to survive of it in free-market? Shot or sent to gulag.

How is it any better than Holocaust? The only real difference is PR. Compare Hitler's slogans: Lebensraum, final solution of Jewish problem etc. with communists' variations 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité'. The typical comment on communists' atrocities is: yeah, it went wrong but the goal was noble.

Yeah, right.

It is not about a bunch of Polish officers killed in Katyn and elsewhere. It is about millions of Russian, Ukrainian, Polish, Estonian etc. farmers, shoppers, teachers etc. whose only guilt was that they could live a decent live before revolution and (abomination!) they had soft hands or wore glasses!

Cheers

Raf

Re:Hoo-ray

[alexhmit01]

Hitler and his cohorts were not ordering the murdering millions of Jews to force subservience out of conquered populations, or to destroy political rivalries.

Precisely, and this is what I pointed out: what, inherently, makes Hitler's killing worse than Stalin's? Why do you believe that killing a particular ethnic group is more heinous than killing political prisoners? Stalin created his own institutionalized machine, he was just remarkably less adept at keeping records than Hitler. Why does Hitler's professionalism somehow make his acts worse? Why are we conditioned to believe that some types of slaughter are worse than others? It's an absurd and insulting statement.

Because it challenges the assumptions of the west. Tyrant comes into office and kills his enemies is of the dog-bites-man variety. Every tyrant did it. Stalin happened to grab a large country so he killed a lot of people. On a moral plane, it's just as bad at Hitler, killing people is bad. However, it's the same reason people get on Israel's case for shelling Palestinian terrorist holed up in civilian areas and causing collateral damage, but nobody said anything when Lebanon did it a few weeks ago. Enlightened civilizations are NOT SUPPOSED to kill civilians, petty third world tyrants are EXPECTED to act like tyrants.

In Germany, the Jews were largely assimilated. In their modern western society, Jews were treated as Germans whose religion was Judaism, no different than Germans whose religion was Catholicism of Lutheranism. What stuns the west TO THIS DAY is how an enlightened country of "one of them" could pull out a segment of their society, call them "other" and get everyone to persecute them. When Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds, it wasn't unusual, dictators DO THAT ALL THE TIME. If France went and gassed a Muslim suburb, the world would be outraged. It wouldn't make France's behavior morally worse on an absolute scale, but it would be more newsworthy and attention grabbing.

Further, my great-grandfather's service to the Kaiser during "The Great War" and his member of the social elite as a business owner didn't change the fact that to the Nazis, he was a Jew. That is what stuns the world, the someone would go through their own culture, pull out a segment that nobody recognized, and designate them. Further, the Nazis further justified their attempt to capture the world as a way of wiping out the Jews. Plenty of would-be dictators tried to take over the world, that's pretty normal. Plenty of people tried to wipe out the Jews in their midsts. It's the fact that he tried to take over the world TO KILL THE JEWS that stuns people. The fact that when his army needed trains to move troops around to try to capture the world, and his SS needed trains to wipe out the Jews in an area, he would favor the later. He would give up territory solely to kill more Jews.

The US sent Indians to Oklahoma because it wanted their land. Many died. The US wasn't TRYING to kill Indians, it was trying to steal land, we understand that. What people don't understand is how he rounded up the Jews and put them in work camps as slaves, and still wanted to kill them. The systematic destruction stuns people. In most cases, people have been killed as people pursue rational goals (albeit immorally), this was unique in that nobody understood it. The Spanish Inquisition was launched to steal Jewish property, they were happy to let the Jews leave and take their stuff. The Germans wanted to kill them MORE than wanted to take their stuff, that's what is SO disturbing.

There is also the historical aspect of the Holocaust; of over a thousand years of abuse of Jews, of countless demagogues calling for violence and even murder against Jews, against the entire culture of Christendom having in its foundation a hatred of the Jews. Stalin's madness is more an outgrowth of the French Revolution, of men who believed that sacrifices o

Re:Hoo-ray

[iminplaya]

It takes a lot more than guns and money to build a future.

But that's all you need to destroy it.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Kattspya]

It takes several times as long to download Firefox via the windows ftp app. The thing even lacks tab completion. If you're a lightning fast typer and know the path exactly it might be a good alternative if not then it isn't.

Re:Hoo-ray

[master_p]

It's also junk without all the security problems of IE.

Re:Hoo-ray

[ChrisMaple]

There's a third reason more attention is paid to Hitler's Germany that Stalin's USSR, and that's current politics. Most teachers, particularly at the college level, are leftist. They properly consider Stalin's USSR leftist, and ignore its evils; they wrongly consider Hitler's Germany rightist, and teach about its evils.

Re:Hoo-ray

[trifish]

Because it's not a commercial product we're not going to get the IE experience where the lazy bastards never fix anything and just add features that are broken.

IE is not "commercial product", so your comparison is pointless. By the way, you seem to have missed the fact that Mozilla Coproration (yes, they had to create a corporation because the foundation couldn't handle all the money), the Mozilla Corp. gets tens of milions of dollars a year from Google, as their search box defaults to Firefox. And that is not charity sponsorship, but commercial deal. Firefox is free, but on commercial basis (unlike IE, which is free and doesn't generate any revenue).

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

That comment is just stupid.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Poorcku]

no, he is right; 1789 was the sparkle that started the Marxist theories. while technically you are right; it is you who should read a bit more. the class-hatred started there.

Re:Hoo-ray

[gvmson]

Stalins' repressions were somewhat economical - he needed work force to build better future and gulag was supplying him with that, and somewhat power-struggle - anyone who possessed strength or looked like possessed strength to go against communist regime was imprisoned. This been said - OMG, comparing IE and FF to that ????

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

"...unlike IE, which is free and doesn't generate any revenue..."

Is it free? You have to purchase a MS license for the OS it runs on. And like any good car salesman, you roll the cost of the extras in the initial up-front purchase. And IE is defiantly not the other Free.

Re:Hoo-ray

[wvmarle]

Opera is closed source, and proprietary. They may have many happy users, but that's it.

Firefox is open source, and free software. This creates a strong and active following, if only for the fact that it's open source.

So for me it's no wonder that Firefox steels the attention from Opera. Opera may be a great browser, I never tried it, but it misses that one important thing Firefox has: the open source cult. The free advertising just because it's open source.

Anyway, good luck to Opera and all the others: competition is always a good thing. The more browsers in the 5-15% market share range and the less browsers in the >40% market share range the better.

Re:Hoo-ray

[trifish]

So by your logic, I could say that Linux isn't free of charge, because I have to pay for hardware to run it on and hard drive to store it on. Or maybe you know where I can get decent modern hardware free of charge?

Yes, IE is free as in beer. Just like Opera, Safari, and other programs for Windows are free as in beer. Free as in freedom was not being compared. The OP wrote "commercial programs". IE is not a commercial programs. It is freeware.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Nicolasd]

nope... It's not his logic... It's the MS EULA... Your license for IE is only valid if you hold a license for Windows...

Re:Hoo-ray

[weber]

Interesting how we went from discussing the proliferation of Firefox vs. IE ... to genocide.
One sure does get around here on /. :-)

Re:Hoo-ray

[weber]

I personally prefer 'wget' or aptitude for my acquisition of the fox!

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

"...SYSTEM schools YOU"!

Re:Hoo-ray

[Khazunga]

...unlike IE, which is free and doesn't generate any revenue...

Firefox gathers revenue from the default search engine setting (google). If I remember correctly, MSIE has the exact same search interface, default set to MSN. It does generate revenue, even if it is not accounted for by Microsoft.

There are other internal revenue streams. It's just that this one is in your face; perfectly identical to FF's.

Re:Hoo-ray

[dajak]

Hitler killed 34 million people, and Stalin 20 million. So you are wrong. These numbers are open to debate (Stalin may for instance have killed "just" 11 million, Hitler 55 million if he is made responsible for all WWII dead), but no serious historian argues that Hitler killed less people than Stalin.

A major reason that Russia -- and China -- make it to the top of any mass atrocities list is that they have many potential victims to begin with. By this reckoning killing one in ten of the national population to consolidate your position (Stalin) makes you a worse mass murderer than killing, let's say, one in five (Pol Pot), simply because you are a Russian dictator instead of a Cambodian dictator. I don't think Pol Pot is a better person than Stalin, and as for instance this list (see the proportionality table) shows, Hitler's activities in Poland (specifically) do rank higher than Stalin's activities in Russia as a horror scenario for the people involved. When you limit the subjected population to jews only, Hitler obviously jumps solidly to the number one position. And when you consider the more limited time frame in which the Nazis made their victims, you will appreciate that some populations victimized by Hitler are entitled to a greater national trauma than the Russians.

Note: when you look at the proportionality table you will also see another interesting thing, as the author puts it:

If I had simply picked 25 countries out of a hat, I could not have gotten a more diverse spread than we've got here. We've got rich countries and poor countries; industrial and agrarian; big and small. We've got people of all colors -- white, black, yellow and brown -- widely represented among both the slaughterers and the slaughterees. We've got Christians, Moslems, Buddhists and Atheists all butchering one another in the name of their various gods or lack thereof. Among the perpetrators, we've got political leanings of the left, right and middle; some are monarchies; some are dictatorships and some are even democracies. We've got innocent victims invaded by big, bad neighbors, and we've got plenty of countries who brought it on themselves, sowing the wind and reaping the whirlwind.

Re:Hoo-ray

[filesiteguy]

Actually, the poster stated "great step forward" which was an obvious reference to China and NOT the USSR or NSDAP.

Remember: Revolution is just a t-shirt away!

Re:Hoo-ray

[Knuckles]

Um, he said "step forward", not "great step forward". And why would it refer to China? China's post-revolutionary phase has nothing whatsoever to do with Nazi Germany.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

He was joined by Stalin 16 days later, in accordance with a treaty they had earlier.

Re:Hoo-ray

[Anonymous Coward]

when Germans first entered Ukraine and the Baltic states the local population was actually greating them with enthusiasticly beliveing nothing can be worse then the russians.

Re:Hoo-ray

[trifish]

nope... It's not his logic... It's the MS EULA... Your license for IE is only valid if you hold a license for Windows...

Logic... Why was Internet Explorer available as free download for Mac OS? And as for the Windows version, could you run it if you don't have Windows? And, can you run Firefox for Windows if you don't own a copy of Windows? No. Unless you're a thief (sorry, "pirate").

Red herring shit.

Re:Hoo-ray

[SpecTheIntro]

Israel is around to remind everyone that this isn't the first time a Persian (Iranian) leader issued a decree to kill all the Jews, Purim celebrates our defeat of Haman's effort. If the Jews had completely died out, people wouldn't remember their destruction, it'd be another people that died off. However, the Jews outlasted the Greek, Roman, Assyrian, Persian, Spanish, Nazi, Communist, and Muslim attempts to wipe out the Jews, so that's what makes it unique.

Believe it or not, I completely forgot about this thread, and I wish I hadn't, because this is an interesting issue you raised. I'm going to let the other argument go because I think you made a compelling one, but I disagree with parts of it, and I think hammering it out would be for a distinction that's ultimately not very important.

When you refer to Persian attempts to wipe out the Jews, exactly what events are you describing? To my knowledge of Iranian history, prior to the Iranian Revolution and the ascent of power of batshit loco mullahs, Iran has traditionally been a safe-haven for Jews. It is perhaps the only nation in history that has repeatedly freed the Jews from slavery or protected them from persecution, beginning with the Achaemenids, continuing to the Sassanids, and even during the Safavid era. Jews have had it pretty good in Iran, from what I can tell. The historical accuracy of linking Purim to Xerxes I doesn't make much sense, and most modern historians dispute it. I'm certainly not trying to absolve the Persians of their sins; we have a long history of being complete morons. But I like to think that religious tolerance and individual liberty is one of Iran's continuous and shining examples: we were the first to outlaw slavery, and we were the first to proclaim that one should be free to worship however one chooses. I've no doubt that there were Iranian despots who wanted to suppress religious groups in the past, but the vast history of Iran as an autonomous nation shows it being remarkably tolerant of other religions.

Also,

That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

Europeans love foxes. Rawr!

Re:That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, but they've banned hunting them in the UK :-(

Re:That's because

[Andrewm1986]

You've obviously not seen the fact that in the UK we've had to force through a ban on fox hunting...

The middle and working class love foxes.

The upper class doesn't!

Re:That's because

[trewornan]

Total bollocks - support for hunting has nothing to do with class, it's much more of a town v country divide.

Re:That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing fox hunting is short sighted, they are very useful in helping keep the population of burrowing mammals from spinning out of control.

Now, deer are a whole 'nother matter.

Re:That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

the whole fox hunting issue in UK is little rediculous, have you ever been to a slaughter house?

Re:That's because

[AberBeta]

Even more bollocks, do you really think all the proles in the countryside support fox hunting?

Re:That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

obviously grandpa didn't mean real foxes. real foxes make all sorts of cute sounds but rrarely rrawr.

Re:That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

Howard Moon does, anyway. Oh no, British humour. Get it away!

Re:That's because

[trewornan]

Not "all" obviously, but "most" definitely.

Re:That's because

[QuietObserver]

Are you aware that foxes don't roar?

Re:That's because

[iBod]

If by 'proles' you mean rural working people, then yes, they do support hunting - overwhelmingly so!

Anyway, who are you to call hard working people "proles", you miserable, elitist arsehole?

Re:That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you aware that foxes don't roar?

If that's the case, yer doin' something wrong, sugar!

Re:That's because

[madprof]

Which bit of "the countryside" do you live in then? Obviously not mine where most normal people think it's an archaic excuse to ponce about on horses and no better than lamping.

On the other hand most people are not using Firefox either, which is totally wrong.

Re:That's because

[trewornan]

I live near Newquay in Cornwall, it's pretty rural here.

I don't quite understand why someone would think it's "no better than lamping", that's a very odd statement, each has it's adavantages and disadvantages but in general lamping is more efficient at controlling the fox population than hunting and (depending on the proficiency of the individual) not much more likely to leave foxes injured. Personally I think (skilled) lamping is a more sensible solution although hunting is slightly more humane (if less effective) - unskilled lamping I am opposed to, but (as I say) it depends on the individual and is thus very difficult to regulate.

As far as the "archaic excuse to ponce about on horses" - yes, most of the people at a hunt are poncing about on horses (and in my personal opinion, mostly pratts). I may be wrong but I get the impression you don't actually know that much about hunting (I assume you've never actually been hunting), so just for your information: as a general rule, at most hunts, only two or three people are actually hunting (the Master and one or two Whips) the rest are (generally) a load of dentist and stockbrokers who've got nothing better to do than ride along.

I suspect I move in much more diverse circles than you do. Perhaps you're only likely to come into contact with people of similar background to you and that is why people you consider "normal" tend to agree with you. I have good reason to believe my circle of acquaintances is more socially diverse than most other people's but I don't really want to go into the details of my personal life so you can either accept my word on that or not.

Anyway I'm tired of this discussion - I think I'm extremely unlikely to change your opinion (based I suspect, mostly on Disney films) so feel free to reply as you please, I won't respond further.

Re:That's because

[QuietObserver]

Lions, Tigers, and even bears roar, but foxes are dogs, so they bark, yip or howl like all other dogs.

Re:That's because

[Anonymous Coward]

So anyway... Back to the lab ya pair of whamee's This thread's about firefox. Now I obviously move in much more diverse circles than either of you two clowns. Firefox is a COMPUTER PROGRAM. FOXES are furry mammals that eat your trash/chickens depending on where you live. I know it's hard but just say to yourself each morning; "FIREfox=computer FOX=animal" You'll get the hang of it. Along with " This one is small those ones are FAR AWAY. SMALL... FAR AWAY."

Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

CmdrTaco reports from the our-logs-show-nobody-using-ie-anyway dept. but this has got me interested: what are the percentages of usage of browsers for accessing Slashdot?

Re:Browser usage

[nysus]

To me, this is evidence of a better educated society in Europe. I think a larger portion of the population over there understands the politics behind software (and anything else, for that matter).

Re:Browser usage

[jimbug]

oh, you know it's links!

Re:Browser usage

[A beautiful mind]

Mod parent up, please share some details!

Re:Browser usage

[TheRaven64]

Mod parent up, but can we also have a breakdown on weekday Vs weekend figures. During the week, a lot of people are accessing Slashdot from work, where they are not allowed to install non-IE browsers. At the weekend (hopefully) the percentage of Slashdot users at work will be lower. Just don't forget about time zones...

Re:Browser usage

[nbert]

To me, this is evidence of a better educated society in Europe

Or maybe it's because people in Europe are in general less skilled on the computer / not willing to take risks, so people like me are asked to install a proper set of programs for them.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

NONSENSE

This is because the Yurpeens are atheist libruls!!1!

Re:Browser usage

[samkass]

Can someone offer up a Flamebait mod point for the parent post's aggressive stupidity?

Re:Browser usage

[Crayon Kid]

How relevant would the Slashdot figure would be, anyway? Of course a bunch of geeks worth their salt wouldn't use IE unless somehow forced (work computer, office policy and such).

Re:Browser usage

[z_gringo]

Just guessing here. You are an American?

With an inferiority complex?

Re:Browser usage

[A beautiful mind]

It's not relevant, only for those who visit the site. I guess people are just curious, that's all.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh right. And americans are oh so more skilled on the computer that instead of installing good, solid software they instead prefer to run whatever come pre-installed on their brand new 'puter from the store. That's a big sign of skill there, running whatever pre-installed application there was on the system at the time they bought it.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

That just means more w3m over ssh on weekdays.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

care to point out where is the "stupidity" in GP's post? Oh I see... It was your inferiority complex kicking in.

Re:Browser usage

[gammaraybuster]

http://www.shelleytherepublican.com/2006/04/20/lin ux-a-european-threat-to-our-computers-by-tristan.a spx

If you see a company using Linux, it may be that they have not paid for this software. Report them to the Business Software Alliance who have the legal authority to inspect any company's computers for illegal programs like Linux. This is one of the most bizarre links I've ever visited in my life. Please tell me it's a parody. Please! Please?

Re:Browser usage

[ynososiduts]

Most people are probably using Mozilla based FF/Galeon/Iceweasel/etc., but I would like to see how many are actually using things like Konqueror, Opera, lynx (maybe?), and other less commonly used browsers. It would just be an interesting figure. Of course, it wouldn't come close to reflecting real world usage.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh, no. It just means more http tunneled over ssh on weekdays. Firefox usage is based on whether or not usb storage is locked down.

Re:Browser usage

[ColdWetDog]

OK, it's a parody. Now, do you feel better?

It is pretty weird. This might serve as a good site for testing one's sarcasm detector. ONTH, how do people find time to do this sort of thing? Oh, wait.

Re:Browser usage

[bvimo]

It's a paraody (I think).

Re:Browser usage

[ehrichweiss]

If this isn't a parody then we need to get all the people with IQ >120 together and get them to start making babies like crazy cause "Shelley" goes beyond retarded. I mean she argues that Google/blogger is hosted on M$ servers when it's well known that they are not. Maybe it's a Micro$loth troll site. Who knows...but send the smart hotties my way for "population explosion therapy". Only 3 at a time please.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

or that. or ssh -Y. or nxclient.
w3m goes nicely with screen though

Re:Browser usage

[mackid]

It's a parody, for sure. http://friendlyatheist.com/2006/12/01/shelley-the- republican-debunked/

Re:Browser usage

[Repossessed]

I work sundays, so I'm probably busy throwing the percentage off. Speaking of which, I have to go, like now.

Re:Browser usage

[level_headed_midwest]

I would be willing to bet that it won't be as different as it was a few years ago. It's not usually the IT department that's against OSS, but generally the PHBs and the beancounters as they tend to hear as much as the MS FUD as the geeks do but none of the rebuttals. As such, they get scared and it's easy to say no when the financial benefits are unclear but the (apparent) risks are. Firefox has become popular enough without any legal trouble from MS or others that it's become a known quantity to most of the PHBs and beancounters, so they are starting to allow it.

There is also an uptick in interest in and installations of Linux and other non-MS OSes on the desktop in companies due to the planned forced license migration to Vista, the fact that most of them already run it in the server rooms to good effect, feature set, security, etc. Firefox is generally the default browser in those systems, so if you're in a non-MS shop, you'll not be using IE. I happen to work in a shop where all but one of the computers are Windows (my Linux dev machine is the exception), but almost all of them have Firefox installed and most people use Firefox instead of IE.

Re:Browser usage

[Main Gauche]

Mod parent and grandparent up, but can we also have a breakdown on full-moon weekdays Vs non-full-moon weekday figures? Wiccans may have a tendency to take the day off during full moons, hence have a higher likelihood of using FF during such days. Just don't forget about the Julian calendar...

(All joking aside, do we really need to verify that a large contingent of Slashdotters don't use IE?)

Re:Browser usage

[Thexare Blademoon]

If this isn't a parody then we need to get all the people with IQ >120 together and get them to start making babies

You know what? Let's start doing that anyway. I'm tired of being left out, damn it!

Re:Browser usage

[Organic User]

I used Internet Explorer the other day to browse Slashdot. Right now I am using Epiphany. About ten minutes ago I was on another computer using Safari. In about 5 minutes I will be using Opera and in about 2 and half hours from now I will be back to using Safari. Does it make a difference? Not really. They are all tools. If one of them gets a little rusty or starts cracking I would be less likely to use but as long as it does the job I still will use it occasionally. No browse is perfect yet and they all have things that annoy me so I have learned not to give a damn.

Re:Browser usage

[gearloos]

It would be a totally irrelevant number. I'm sure there are many, many, myself included, who are forced to use IE at work. Now, the real question would be: If forced to use IE, would you be wiling to wait until home to keep up with /. for the day? Hmm, maybe a well devised plan by the worlds corporate upper management to keep all of us geeks focused on company business while at our company issued keyboards. "Computers ae a lot like Air Conditioners" "They both work great until you start opening Windows"

Re:Browser usage

[the_middle]

I don't care for firefox myself, and I know in the USA and UK many who do use it do so only as kind of a protest to microsoft, I'll use systems that works right for me, and I'm not changing just to make some kind of political statement or anti corp. statement like I've seen so many phonys do, pretending to care so for the earth and its people, but what is the biggest thing they do? Change software, not shop at walmart, while buring countless hours on the computer making silly websites and statements using more energy.

Re:Browser usage

[Jah-Wren Ryel]

Parody or not, she has an 'official' page with the GOP:

http://shelley.gop.com/

Re:Browser usage

[WK2]

Yes, it's a parody. How do they know that Osama bin Laden runs Linux on his laptop? They also have a rapture index to parody the terrorist threat index. "Put Jesus Back into the USA; vote Billy Bob Neck." Sounds like a generic hillbilly name.

The "pro-Windows" comments appear to be written by a small circle of friends who are in on the joke, or possibly all by the author.

Re:Browser usage

[CastrTroy]

Ok, IE isn't that bad. I mean, I'd rather use Firefox, but given the choice between not visiting a website and visiting it on IE, well that's a pretty dumb choice. It's like saying, I'd really only want to win the lottery if it was powerball, not one of those $50,000 scratch tickets. This is where you realize I'm equating winning the lottery to visiting Slashdot.

Re:Browser usage

[FewClues]

I don't care for firefox myself, and I know in the USA and UK many who do use it do so only as kind of a protest to microsoft, I'll use systems that works right for me, and I'm not changing just to make some kind of political statement or anti corp. statement like I've seen so many phonys do, pretending to care so for the earth and its people, but what is the biggest thing they do? Change software, not shop at walmart, while buring countless hours on the computer making silly websites and statements using more energy. Wow, this is the angriest high school girl I've read. I hope she remains as strong in her opinions when she gets out into the working world.

Re:Browser usage

[morari]

Pfff, Firefox! I want to see how many Slashdot viewers are actually using Linux... :P

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

Since Firefox doesn't necessarily require a setup file ,you could simply copy the Firefox folder and start using it. At least that's how I do it in my office.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

> This is one of the most bizarre links I've ever visited in my life. Please tell me it's a parody. Please! Please?

Anyone who didn't realise that after reading the first few words, really needs to be beaten up with the clue stick.

Re:Browser usage

[ycochard]

If you can not install any software, i.e. run any setup.exe, can't you run Portable Applications ? You just have to copy the folder, and run the software from there. You can even keep it on a USB stick, where it will save prefs, etc. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_portable_soft ware

Re:Browser usage

[Bert64]

Your right, it *shouldnt* matter.
If all browsers complied with standards, it wouldnt make any difference which one you were using.
That's why people are against IE, which doesnt comply with standards. It's goal is to force people to use it, by getting sites rewritten in a nonstandard way such that they don't work with standards compliant browsers.
Aside from that, even if you do make a standards compliant site, IE is so far behind other browsers, that if you want to use any of the more modern technologies you either have to write nasty kludges, or exclude IE users from your site.
And for the same reason, you have to test your sites first in a proper browsers, and again to make sure IE doesnt break them horribly, and then implement the aforementioned kludges.

Re:Browser usage

[Organic User]

Internet Explorer supports HTML, CSS, and Javascript. Does it matter if IE doesn't support CSS curved corners? As long as IE can display the main information it is good enough. Firefox doesn't support many parts of the standard but I don't here you complaining. The only reason why you complain is because firefox supports more than IE. If you were a true standards fighter you would be complaining at firefox too. I understand that there is reason to be upset at Microsoft not for progressing IE but there is no reason to spread FUD. It will be Microsoft's loss in the long run not yours.

Re:Browser usage

[lazybeam]

I am, you insensitive clod!

Re:Browser usage

[maccallr]

Talking of meaningless statistics, how about this weekday/weekend analysis? (Is the blip on Fridays due to the alliteration?)

Or perhaps more interesting/informative is the trend in recent years...

Or the slightly bizarre, but believable trend for conservative US Presidential 2008 candidates to use IE... (although the reverse is not true for Democrats and FF)

Re:Browser usage

[elrous0]

Yes, education begets ethics. Just like in the academic center of the Western world with the most well-educated populace in the 1930's: Germany. Just like we see in well-educated gentlemen like Osama Bin Laden, Ted Bundy, Theodore Kaczynski, etc.

Re:Browser usage

[marcosdumay]

"All joking aside, do we really need to verify that a large contingent of Slashdotters don't use IE?"

Yes. Every time we've done that in the past, that large contingent was much smaller than we tought.

Re:Browser usage

[Anonymous Coward]

It's spelled "lynx"

Re:Browser usage

[Stooshie]

... (Is the blip on Fridays due to the alliteration?) ...

Must be. Our work doesn't have dress-down Fridays it has Firefox Fridays!

Re:Browser usage

[madprof]

Or they were referring to the other text-only browser, known as Links...

Re:Browser usage

[RockDoctor]

Mod parent up, but can we also have a breakdown on weekday Vs weekend figures.

Please define "weekend" for your locale. (You did see the critique a couple of days ago on the poor definitions of functions in the OOXML "standard" document?)
"weekend"= {Thursday,Friday} OR "weekend"= {IF(user in {infidels}){Friday}ELSE{NULL}} OR "weekend"= {Friday,Saturday} OR "weekend"= {Saturday,Sunday} or "weekend"= {Sunday} ?

Re:Browser usage

[kenjun]

This study uses W3Schools stats to forecast that Firefox will overtake IE6 in August. It will then have more market share than IE6 or IE7 for several months. Research here: http://www.abraxor.com/research/firefox-leads/

Re:Browser usage

[Bert64]

Firefox should support more that's true, however:

Developers who should be working on improving standards support, are instead spending their time trying to improve compatibility with IE bugs.
Firefox is more or less equal to other modern browsers in standards support (IE stands out by being hugely behind everything else)
And finally, if the most common browser doesnt support something no web developers will use it anyway because a big chunk of their audience wont be able to see it, so there is little practical value in other browsers pulling even further ahead of IE.

Re:Browser usage

[nbert]

I don't know where you are from, but you are obviously better at reading the beginning of a sentence than reading its end. I usually don't reply to AC's, but this time it might look like AC has a point, so let's make sure nobody will find parent reasonable anymore:

I didn't say that people with computer skills would prefer to use preinstalled apps. I was simply assuming that more people in the US install OS's even if they don't know anything about it. This isn't a bad thing at all because those people will archive more themselves in the future. It's the way noobs become experts. I simply believe that a lack of tech affinity explains why so many people in Europe tend to ask someone to set up a system for them (which leads to lots of Firefox installations).

However, I should have known that this discussion would only result in hatred from both sides of the pond. First negative mod-point in my life...

Great

[niceone]

Now I'm going to have to find something more obscure to avoid the attentions of the malware makres... what was the name of that other one... Icemeasles?

Re:Great

[muffen]

If you want to avoid malware, go for Lynx, I bet you there isn't even one threat that works under Lynx.

... the actual webpage might not work either, but that's just a minor detail :)

Re:Great

[clang_jangle]

Icemeasles?

RiceDiesel

Re:Great

[dvice_null]

Lynx might not have known threats at the moment, but Lynx has had it's share of them also. At least two (highly critical) of them listed here:
http://secunia.com/product/5883/?task=advisories

Re:Great

[yohanes]

Ah, even lynx can be exploited (for example: http://www.ubuntu.com/usn/usn-206-1) to make room for malwares.
I want to use wget, but it is also has a history of bugs that can be exploited.
I'll stick with telnet, and parse it with my eyes. Although it is a bit difficult for HTTPS sites.

Re:Great

[freakxx]

Dont forget IE7....after a year or two, you may find it a better candidate :-)

Re:Great

[Lavene]

Now I'm going to have to find something more obscure to avoid the attentions of the malware makres... what was the name of that other one... Icemeasles? I just upgraded to the latest Icemeasels and it's great! No two page views look the same! MiceTeasels seem to render every page with a random font size offset, bold is really b o l d and italics doesn't work. The Twicegiggles developers are of course hard at work and it should be fixed soon.

Nothing is like a good fork! (Yeah yeah... I know Icepeacle is not a real fork, it just feels like one)

Re:Great

[MattBurke]

openssl s_client -host secure.webserver.net -port 443

Re:Great

[catscan2000]

Or you can use `openssl s_client -host www.somesite.com -port 443` for HTTPS sites :-)

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

less typing with:
openssl s_client -connect website:port

Re:Great

[vitalyb]

Here is one:
http://goatse.ch/ascii.html

Re:Great

[Anonymous Coward]

With all these "secure" browsers you don't even notice many hacking attempts. If you want to know who your enemies are, which sites are malware, use IE 7.

Re:Great

[EnsilZah]

You get used to it, though. Your brain does the translating. I don't even see the code. All I see is blonde, brunette, and redhead.

Re:Great

[kwark]

And telnet never had any exploits ofcourse!

Let's see what happens when the HTTP request returns some terminal control sequences.

IE 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Once you've seen IE 7, you too will want to switch to any other browser.

Re:IE 7

[Svippy]

Once you've seen IE 7, you too will want to switch to any other browser.

You're telling me I want to go back to IE 4 all of the sudden?

Re:IE 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorta like when we saw your mom....made you want to go gay.

Re:IE 7

[quintesse]

You might be modded funny, but it's TRUE! I don't know what MS was thinking but IE7 is butt-ugly! It's turning in one of those christmas tree decoration interfaces like those media player skins. Out the window with consistent design etc, let's make it actually more difficult to use our products, maybe then the people will understand the added value of windows! No, really , I have NO idea why they're doing it, it just seems illogical.

Re:IE 7

[Dan_Bercell]

IE 7 made me switch from Firefox back to IE. Because it was available I used to use firefox 80% of the time, since IE7 was released Ive had no reason to use firefox unless some old website was not designed properly.
Mind you I do use Vista, therefore I am not sure if the Windows XP version of IE7 works as good, I cannot remember if I had issues with it or not. As an IT professional I have no issues with spyware/viruses regardless of the browser I use.

Re:IE 7

[ethicalBob]

"IE 7 made me switch from Firefox back to IE."

Did IE 7 add a "hold a gun to your head" plugin recently that we don't know about?


"As an IT professional I have no issues with spyware/viruses regardless of the browser I use."

Wow... I didn't know that 'IT Professionals' were immune to viruses! Who would have thought that viruses, trojans, etc. were clever enough to check your resume...

So, you are an 'IT Professional' that proudly proclaims they use Vista... Oh wait - you forgot mention that you were a Micro$oft employee... :-)

Re:IE 7

[Niten]

since IE7 was released Ive had no reason to use firefox unless some old website was not designed properly

That's more likely to go the other way around: With few exceptions, a properly designed site should render just fine in Firefox. On the other hand, IE 7 is still quite buggy, therefore any quirkiness you happen across is likely to be for the benefit of IE and not other browsers.

Re:IE 7

[_xeno_]

IE7's interface makes sense (somewhat) under Vista, where it matches Windows Explorer and generally fits in with the rest of the Vista interface. Of course, as you imply, it absolutely does not fit in under Windows XP.

Although my favorite IE7-ism is that it fails to emulate the scroll bar correctly. None of the mouse-over effects work. (If you're using XP's look or Vista's look, the scroll bar should "light up" when hovered over, Firefox emulates this.) In Vista, mousing over it should cause the arrows to gain a button background.

Thanks to this, I now know that IE7, like Firefox, doesn't actually use native controls. Instead it emulates them in the same way Firefox does. The hilarious part is that it actually does it worse than Firefox does.

Re:IE 7

[KarmaMB84]

I've never seen this behavior with XP SP2, XP x64, or Windows Vista. The scrollbars look and act perfectly native (they probably are since it makes no sense for IE7 not to use native scrollbars).

Re:IE 7

[JM78]

IMHO IE7's redesigned UI falls squarely into the relm of if it ain't broke, don't fix it. They should have left it the hell alone and focused solely on security.

Re:IE 7

[_xeno_]

Look again - closely. The effect is fairly subtle under the XP look but much more noticeable under Vista with the full Aero Glass effects enabled.

When you position the mouse cursor over a scrollbar, it's supposed to light up. Under Vista, this means going from a gray color to a blue color, making it fairly noticeable. Under XP's look, this means going from a light blue to an even lighter blue. If you're using the Classic look, there's nothing to see, since there is no mouse-over effect.

Vista's full Aero Glass additional has a fade-in effect where the button background on the arrows is supposed to appear. (Firefox fails to do this, just like IE7.) Likewise, there's a fade-out effect when the mouse leaves the scrollbar that both IE7 and Firefox fail to do. Of course, IE7 can't do it since it never did the original mouse-over effect.

Under IE7, this effect never happens. Mousing-over the scrollbar does nothing.

I've got a movie of it happening under Vista using FRAPS. Unfortunately I'll have to go hunting for something to change it into a useful format, since I doubt a lot of people have the FRAPS codec installed.

Keep in mind this only happens in the MSHTML control. All form controls inside of MSHTML are emulated. You can easily verify this by looking at a form button with a very large caption - IE6/IE7 stretch out the button background to the point it looks strange. Not to mention that all form controls in IE7 are missing Vista's Aero Glass fade-in/fade-out effects.

Re:IE 7

[dn15]

And boy did they break it. The few times I've ended up using a computer with only IE 7 installed, I find it extremely frustrating. I can forgive the absence of a reload button -- what I can't get over is that there's no friggin' menu bar! (I understand that these may be present but not enabled by default, but they're such basic components that I find it mindboggling that the default configuration does not include them.)

Re:IE 7

[baadger]

The Internet Explorer 6 user interface is still available on IE7 installations... at least on XP. I can't be bothered to trawl my Windows partition for the location of the executable you can run to get it though (I'm booted into Linux atm).

Re:IE 7

[Anonymous Coward]

Odd, his mom never made me turn gay. So, that must mean you were gay well before his mom came along.

Re:IE 7

[jasonwea]

It reproduces here in IE 6 and IE 7 (two different Parallels VMs) and works fine in Firefox 2.0.0.4. In Firefox hovering over the buttons and thumb triggers the hover effect for that scrollbar element. In both IEs there's nothing until you mouse down.

Good thing I don't use IE (except for testing what valid XHTML/CSS isn't working today) often otherwise this would really annoy me. FYI I'm using Watercolor 4.3's Ergonomic theme as I can't stand Luna.

Re:IE 7

[Dan_Bercell]

Their are a lot of websites that I and my clients use that require activex components or just wont even display unless I am running IE. Thats the reason why I couldnt switch 100% before. Before IE 7 I didnt have tabs and Firefox seemed better and felt better, now I just dont see the benefit of Firefox, I dont dislike it, I just dont have a need for it.

Re:IE 7

[Dan_Bercell]

Did IE 7 add a "hold a gun to your head" plugin recently that we don't know about?
No, but it did remove the need for firefox.. IE is needed for many sites that I use, but I have never encountered a site that I required firefox to use. With IE7 I do not have to use 2 browsers.

Wow... I didn't know that 'IT Professionals' were immune to viruses! Who would have thought that viruses, trojans, etc. were clever enough to check your resume...
No, I am more computer savy then the normal user. If you work in IT and are in charge of 100's of workstations and servers you should be smart enough to be able to avoid viruses, if not you should probably look into other fields of work.

So, you are an 'IT Professional' that proudly proclaims they use Vista... Oh wait - you forgot mention that you were a Micro$oft employee... :-)
As an 'IT Professional' it is my job to learn new technologies, especially the ones that will be extremly wide spread in a few years. Why wait till everyone is using it to learn it, its not like MS is going to come out with another version next year that will work more like XP. Vista is here to stay

Re:IE 7

[dn15]

I can't be bothered to trawl my Windows partition for the location of the executable you can run to get it though (I'm booted into Linux atm).

No big deal, I was just venting about those few times I've been in a situation where I had to use it. I normally run SeaMonkey on Mac OS X myself. :)

Wish for US

[markdavis]

Well, I wish that were the case in the US. There are still *FAR* too many sites that have IE-only components. So, although the vast majority (90%+) of sites we use (at work) work for us (we use only FireFox), there are still a few important sites that cause a nightmare for us. Since we use Linux only, running IE is not an option. (And yes, I know about emulators and IES4Linux, which are nice, but don't work everywhere, don't work well for thin clients, and/or are difficult to maintain).

What is more irritating is that those few IE-only sites are about 95% working with Firefox. There are usually only a few parts of the site that don't work (but that is all it takes). With minimal correction/effort, those sites would work on any platform. But even after repeated begging (on one, for YEARS), a few such sites have still had no interest in "fixing" things. I do wish there was a version of Firefox/Mozilla that had an IE-compatibility mode... "FireIE Fox" or something, for use in such cases.

Fortunately, another few broken sites finally "saw the light", probably due to complaints from people like us, and fixed things.

Re:Wish for US

[Anonymous Coward]

IE Tab

Re:Wish for US

[janrinok]

I was reading a few weeks ago that, in Europe, the impetus to change web sites that only supported IE was significantly increased by showing how large a market share they were missing out by tying their site to proprietary software 'standards'. I am trying to find the professional journal in which I read the article and, when I find it, I will try to find if there is an electronic link that I can post here for others to read. The usage of Firefox, Opera et al in Europe is much higher than in the States and so our businesses have much more to lose but the principle is the same wherever you are, particularly in these days of globalisation.

There is no need for a IE-Compatibility mode in Firefox/Mozilla, simply get MSIE to use the accepted standards and the problem is solved.

Re:Wish for US

[Anonymous Coward]

simply get MSIE to use the accepted standards and the problem is solved.

Oh, I see, that does sound simple! Why didn't anybody think of that before?

Re:Wish for US

[janrinok]

Now look, I didn't say the Microsoft isn't stupid, but changing the rest of the world to suit MS is not the way I choose to go. Why should we modify everything else to suit one company?

But the solution is easier still. MSIE doesn't have to change, if people just stop designing websites that use MS-specific extensions. It can be done, you know. MSIE can accept whatever it wants but if no-one is using MS specific extensions then it will still work.

Re:Wish for US

[A beautiful mind]

According to some large site's owners/administrators (in the top25 traffic-wise in the country) that I was talking to, they're actively supporting web browsers that pass 5% marketshare in their logs. I guess it is just sound business sense.

Re:Wish for US

[gratemyl]

Since we use Linux only, running IE is not an option.

Re:Wish for US

[markdavis]

>$this->isa(joke)&&laugh()

I assure you, it is not a joke, nor is it funny

Re:Wish for US

[markdavis]

>IE Tab

Runs under MS-Windows only.

Re:Wish for US

[gratemyl]

Well, if $this->isa(joke) == 0, then $this->{funny} == 0, quite clearly, so yes, you are very correct about that.

But you shouldn't be laugh()'ing either - since $this->isa(joke) == 0, laugh() will never run.

Re:Wish for US

[gratemyl]

Oh, and god bless($this, joke) - there you go, laugh()!

Re:Wish for US

[Anonymous Coward]

they're actively supporting web browsers that pass 5% marketshare in their logs. I guess it is just sound business sense.

It's awful business sense. If they are doing browser-specific things that require intentional support, then no browser that they do not currently support will pass the 5% threshold in their logs, because people using those browsers will hit the front page, see that it doesn't work in their browser, and go elsewhere.

For instance: I've got an XHTML+SVG website. If I said "well, I'll support Internet Explorer when 5% of my hits come from Internet Explorer", then I will never support Internet Explorer, because it can't even display a single page, hence I will never have any significant number of Internet Explorer hits even if there are a billion Internet Explorer users in my target market.

Why is there this near-religious fervour for web stats? They aren't at all accurate, they aren't even inaccurate to a known degree. You might as well just make up plausible-sounding numbers.

Re:Wish for US

[MtViewGuy]

There are still *FAR* too many sites that have IE-only components.

That is particularly true if you use the right-click mouse command to download media files from a webpage. That's why I'm hoping that the Mozilla Foundation offers an add-on for Firefox 1.5x and 2.0x versions that allow you to do a right-click media download (particularly bad is ESPN.com's Podcenter, which uses Andomedia media servers).

Re:Wish for US

[newr00tic]

Damn you hi-UID cocksuckers are thoroughly useless..

Re:Wish for US

[dissy]

There is no need for a IE-Compatibility mode in Firefox/Mozilla, simply get MSIE to use the accepted standards and the problem is solved. I'll bet the former would be MUCH easier to accomplish than the later.

Re:Wish for US

[Anonymous Coward]

Note that he said "Actively support", which mean that the browsers with less than 5% market share won't get a special case, and if they choke on your page tough luck.

If they follow the webstandards though, chances are high that it won't choke, and if it does, it's the browser's fault. Sounds like good business sense to me.

Re:Wish for US

[roadsider]

Oh, if only. I'm currently working on a site for a LARGE pharmaceutical that has yet to progress beyond a Windows 2000 environment running IE 6. My IT dept had to install a six-year-old computer in my workspace just to run that system. Works great as long as I remember to keep feeding the gerbils.

RE: Wish for US

[TallDarkMan]

So, although the vast majority (90%+) of sites we use (at work) work for us (we use only FireFox), there are still a few important sites that cause a nightmare for us. I gotta tell ya, I agree with you, for the most part (I rarely run across this in my travels any more, but sometimes); BUT, ever since IE7, I actually find more "broken" sites in IE! In other words, there are several sites I go to regularly in FF that I've gone to with IE (or on a 'IE Tab'), and it looks all screwed-up in IE. For such a "new" browser version, IE7 make some sites look like the early 90's web. Then trying to use an interactive site (read: one you can edit your self, like a wiki), then things get really weird! (disappearing borders, strange text rendering, etc.)

Then there's the interface... As a Win user since 3.11, I'd expect to pick-up any new MS program and figure it out pretty quick, but I still scratch my head in IE7. Looking backwards, IE6 was really good... not as good as FF, of course... But they went back to caveman status with IE7.

Luckily, I pretty much only use IE for the MS Update site.

Re:Wish for US

[TheRaven64]

The former would require a lot of effort for the FireFox team to track down all the bugs in IE, and provide compatible behaviour. The latter just requires someone to write an ActiveX control embedding Gecko or WebKit.

Re:Wish for US

[geekboy642]

Well, actually it is an option. Not, of course, a good option. But, if you just HAVE to download a movie from WalMart.com, you actually can. The IEs 4 Linux project will install IE 5.0,5.5,6.0 on a Linux box, and I believe they have a beta working with IE7.

Now if only Wine had proper access to the SANE driver, I wouldn't need windows for anything.

Re:Wish for US

[markdavis]

>Well, actually it is an option.

Not IE tab, it isn't.

> Not, of course, a good option. But, if you just HAVE to download a movie from WalMart.com, you actually can.

If you mean IES4Linux, yes

>The IEs 4 Linux project will install IE 5.0,5.5,6.0 on a Linux box, and I believe they have a beta working with IE7.

And it was IES4Linux that was actually letting me "get by"... it was a life saver... UNTIL, after upgrading from MDK 2006.0 to 2007.0 (or 2007.1). Then, no matter what I did, it was simply not possible to get Acrobat Reader plugin working in IES anymore. Downgraded IES, downgraded WINE, nothing. So I am stuck again :(

Re:Wish for US

[Bert64]

But if your site doesnt work on browser X, then you'l never get many hits from that browser...

Much better would be to:
Code the site to open standards
*TEST* it in any browser that sees more than 5% usage

It should still work in any other browser, if the site follows open standards then it's the browser that is broken anyway.

Re:Wish for US

[CarpetShark]

But even after repeated begging (on one, for YEARS), a few such sites have still had no interest in "fixing" things.

It would help if people didn't put "fixing" in quotes, as if they're not really broken. Those ARE broken: they violate standards, function on only a few of hundreds of clients (possibly thousands, if you include applications and libraries), and discriminate against whole sections of communities -- even entire countries, given that some countries favour open source.

Re:Wish for US

[JamesP]

I've found that some sites that have some critical thing that does not work with Firefox (like dell) happen to work with Konqueror (or Opera).

Methodology

[echucker]

While the article doesn't mention how, a previous study on XiTiMonitor's site shows that they're using share of visits by each browser type to the sites in question.

Re:Methodology

[arivanov]

Are the sites representative of the overall web demographic?

If you are trying to sell wine for 25+ quid a bottle over the web you very soon realise that Safari and Firefox on Mac is actually 40+ of your audience followed closely by Firefox on other platforms. IE simply does not show up on the radar.

If you are trying to serve pornography for the soul like Daily Mail or Sun IE is 99% of your readership and is not going to change any time soon.

Re:Methodology

[Technician]

Thanks for the link. From there I went a step further and checked the OS reported.

http://www.xitimonitor.com/en-us/internet-users-eq uipment/operating-systems-may-2007/index-1-2-7-100 .html

What I found amusing is Vista finaly passed Windows 2000 Professional and Mac OS. The overall Windows share is shrinking which is mostly picked up by Mac OS.

I hope they keep the site updated. The last datapoint is May 2007.

Where do the stats come from?

[thona]

From the largest site i have access to - a medical online shop, in fact: last 30 days: IE: 78,26% of visitors Firefos: 16,33% of visitors Gets funnier if you look at the revenue: IE: 85,9% of revenue Firefox: 9,46% of revenue. I can not really see "great advances". Firefox is a respectable and solid nr 2, but that basically is it.

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[6Yankee]

From the largest site i have access to - a medical online shop

Ah, it's you! Stop sending me email. :P

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[A beautiful mind]

So you're saying that your sample is indicative of the trend, while a much larger sample consisting of 90k websites - isn't?

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[quintesse]

Well what would you expect from someone who posts on /. admitting he's a Microsoft MVP? ;-)

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[A beautiful mind]

A large degree of masochism, personally. :)

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[mahlerfan999]

And if you just look at the stats in TFA-- FF users are less than 1/2 IE users. That's no great victory, you might as well say well at least we have more than 10% are FF users. lol Some people are too quick to celebrate news that doesn't even seem noteworthy to me.

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[thona]

Actually no, I just wonder. See, this particular customers shop targets the end user, and I would say that from the medical products offered there it is pretty much "joe use average". It is so joe average that the percentile of Linux or Mac users is terribly low, and the revenue from these systems is approaching zero. Taking 90.000 online sites may have a high percentile of very computer savy people, or another thing. Never trust a statisti that you ahve not faked yourself. I am sure I can find 90.000 sites that are mostly surfed by people using Linux as desktop, but it will not be representative. So, without a list of sites or hot the sites were selected - I just question how relevant the statistic is in general.

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[AtrN]

All that tells us is something we already know, IE users are sick!

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[wvmarle]

Then still it's probably interesting for your website to cater ALSO for the FF users. I mean, how are you going to explain to your bosses (or shareholders) that due to some IE extension you just have to use that you loose out on over 16% of visitors and almost 10% of revenue? No matter what, 10% is quite a chunk, and for many businesses can be life or bankrupty.

Not to mention that those 16% refused visitors may give negative reference about your site to other potential customers.

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[CarpetShark]

revenue: IE: 85,9% of revenue Firefox: 9,46% of revenue

That says more about what you sell, than about browsers. People who go with firefox are discerning enough to have made a choice. They're also discerning enough not to buy bad products, most likely.

Re:Where do the stats come from?

[Johannes Laire]

> From the largest site i have access to - a medical online shop, in fact: last 30 days: IE: 78,26%

Only sick people use IE. Or IE makes people sick.

Not what we're seeing

[abhi_beckert]

This is not at all what we're seeing with a UK based employment site with ~40,000 hits per month. What we see is 55% IE 6, 25% IE 7, 12% FireFox, 4% safari, and all other browsers below 1% (every browser from opera to lynx (!!)).

Re:Not what we're seeing

[kriss]

It's important to keep in mind that 'Europe' is a number of hugely disparate markets. If you say that 50% of the (commercial home) internet traffic in Scandinavia is BitTorrent, 50% of the traffic in parts of southern europe would be eDonkey. You'd need to sample a LOT of different countries and types of sites to get a fair picture, extrapolating just about anything from just one and saying 'this is Europe' is doomed to be irrelevant.

Re:Not what we're seeing

[dvice_null]

It is no wonder if you see low statistics in UK. That is because it is one of the worst countries in Firefox market share:

Slovenia 47.9%
Finland 45.4%
Slovakia 40.4%

6 nations 35-40% ( Ireland jumped here (55% more users since last monitoring 4 months ago) and now has 38.6% share )
6 nations 30-35%
0 nations 25-30%
8 nations 20-25%
8 nations 15-20% ( UK is here with 18.7% )

http://www.xitimonitor.com/fr-fr/barometre-des-nav igateurs/firefox-juillet-2007/index-1-1-3-102.html

Re:Not what we're seeing

[SiChemist]

If you had read the article (and ignore the typo where they put IE instead of FF), they say:

"Although clear market share gains for FF were reported in every single European territory, countries where [FF] still has not reached 20% market share include Britain, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Ukraine, Norway and Denmark."

So, your results DO match up with theirs.

Re:Not what we're seeing

[Anonymous Coward]

OK, if we're discussing numbers, let's take some from today on one of my clusters (1.5 million hits so far in the last 12 hours, everything is in .de). On a site that is on msn.de, there's about 96% MSIE, 0.2% opera and 2.9% Gecko based browsers (i.e. firefox). Looking at the same stuff on the site of one of the two most read weekly news magazines, we get 22.3% firefox, 76.4% MSIE and .4% Opera. The same stuff one one of the largest internet portals in germany gets 69.7% MSIE, 29.2% Firefox and 1.0% Opera. Different cluster, different application: 69.3% MSIE, 30.6% Firefox, no visitors today with opera. Since it's Sunday, and due to the nature of the sites, there were probably no significant number of "enterprise" users with corporate mandated browsers in those counts. The portal however did get 70.1$ MSIE, 28.5% Firefox and 1.4% Opera on Thursday, indicating that these numbers are stable between weekends and workdays.

On another site, we get 40% MSIE (pocketPC), 12.8% Nokia, 4.6% Opera mini, 3.4% SonyEricsson, 4.6% Blackberry and a lot of other rubbish nobody cares about.

Actually, the ITWire article has Firefox market share in the UK at "below 20%", which would fit in with the 12% you are seeing. The 30% I get around here is about as far from the "nearly 40%" mentioned in the article for Germany. I'm quite dissapointed by the Firefox market share on the site of that news magazine. I'd say that's one point against the guy above claiming that FF marketshare is an indicator of beeing well informed.

Re:Not what we're seeing

[Anonymous Coward]

Just checked the last million page views on one of my sites, this is what Google Analytics reports

IE: 71.24%
  IE6.0: 70.62%
  IE7.0: 28.43%
Firefox: 20.02%
Safari: 6.18%
Opera: 1.19%

OS:

Windows: 89.85%
Mac: 8.8%
Linux: 1.15%

Source:
About 2/3 Europe 1/3 North America

Re:Not what we're seeing

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't be surprised if a UK based jobsite found that the hits were biased more towards IE than the average. When I was looking for a job not too long ago I found that the governments own Job Centre website would only work properly with IE. Happily, I am now not in a position to know if this is still the case.

Re:Not what we're seeing

[lysse]

Um, your sample might be a little bit biased there...

IE7 WGA?

[physicsnick]

I wonder if this has anything to do with Microsoft refusing IE7 upgrades to non-genuine Windows installations. Everyone I know who has a pirated copy of Windows (mostly self-made boxes) uses Firefox, while nearly everyone I know who has a genuine copy of Windows (mostly laptops) uses IE7.

I'm not sure why they refuse it to non-genuine users anyway. I can understand security patches, but this? No one is going to go out and buy Windows just to use IE7.

It seems everything Microsoft does to curb piracy these days hurts its monopoly.

Re:IE7 WGA?

[All_One_Mind]

All my pirat... err, I mean all my friend's pirated versions of Windows activate just fine. However, I've seen some people actually buy Windows and then get a false positive. Ha ha. WGA works great.

Re:IE7 WGA?

[Cythrawl]

Most people who pirate Windows dont use Windows update anyway, they use Autopatcher.

Seeing that Autopatcher has ALL the security and windows updates that renders that argument null and void.

Re:IE7 WGA?

[physicsnick]

Hmm. I don't think that applies to the general population. I know a lot of people who have pirated copies of Windows, but I don't know anyone who has bothered to apply whatever the crack is to validate as genuine. Most people really just don't care.

Re:IE7 WGA?

[physicsnick]

Hm. I've never even heard of Autopatcher. I don't know anyone who uses it.

Interesting...

Re:IE7 WGA?

[arashi no garou]

It's my understanding that there is a version of pirated XP floating around out there with a standalone, runs-from-a-folder copy of IE7 slipstreamed in. I know I've seen references to it on Digg or OSNews or somewhere like that.

Re:IE7 WGA?

[Kjella]

Look, as much as Microsoft would like to stop geeks who install their own pirated windows and WGA cracks, not to mention upgrading when it breaks, but they won't and even Microsoft knows that. They're out to stop everybody else who has someone install it for them, by constantly breaking it somehow. "Can you take a look at my computer again? I tried to upgrade to IE7 but it didn't work". While a DIY pirate would probably have that fixed in two minutes, it might be days until your wiz kid down the street can look at it, while you're being nagged about your version being "not genuine".

As for security patches, it's a double edged sword because they also get killed in the media over unpatched pirated windows copies being spam zombies and botnets and whatnot, even though it's completely unreasonable that they should offer support for them. Not getting the latest Internet Explorer or Windows Media Player is harmless, which means they can deny it to pirates with impunity. I think however you want to count it, it's a win for Microsoft that the pirated Windows versions don't have the same features as the genuinue windows versions. Again going back to the wiz kid, if he has to say "Well, it won't be exactly like a legit copy but I can show you this other program..." then that makes them even more dependant, which most people loathe.

Re:IE7 WGA?

[Captain_Chaos]

I wonder if this has anything to do with Microsoft refusing IE7 upgrades to non-genuine Windows installations.

Why would that cause a greater market share for Firefox in Europe?

Re:IE7 WGA?

[Anonymous Coward]

I've never heard of autopatcher, but the few "pirates" I know just use a little widely available package that makes any XP Pro install valid. Then do all the updates you want, right from M$ themselves. It basically consists of a license key finder/replacer app, an XP Pro Valid License key generator that uses random seed strings, a WGA quick-fix in case you've been previously flagged non-legit, and a WGA updater that checks with M$ then happily declares your copy Genuine.

No, I don't use it myself. No, I won't say where to get it. C'mon, this is /. ... I'm sure this isn't news to most of you, just pointing it out as it's relevant.

If you don't have a job...

[MacDork]

what are the odds you don't have a computer? How many are accessing the site from public libraries and state run employment centers? There could easily be some considerable bias in your numbers.

Popularity Contests

[gerrysteele]

FOSS should not be obsessed with the popularity contest of userbase size. It will only come back to haunt you in the end. Like the man said, "The majority are always wrong"

Re:Popularity Contests

[gerrysteele]

Did I mean the "majority are always wrong"? I think i did.

Re:Popularity Contests

[dvice_null]

Apache has largest market share on web server market. Are they haunted?

You have to understand the difference between propriety software and FOSS software. It is much easier to fix problems in FOSS software than it is for propriety software. That is because with FOSS, I can just fix a problem if I like to. With propriety software, I need permission from the management and a very good money-related reason to do so.

And even if Firefox would fail badly after gaining remarkable market share. At that point world's web sites would have already been fixed to work with any browser. So at that point you could really choose the browser you want to use. Firefox is changing the world for the better. It has already done a lot in the country where I live in (2nd in the Xiti monitor). We also used to have some nasty ActiveX websites, but those are history now.

Re:Popularity Contests

[Anonymous Coward]

I, too, dislike popularity contests and "Linux ready for the desktop" hypes. Some see it as necessary to beat those "We don't support Linux because everybody uses Windows" ogres (computer sellers, Adobe products, web sites). The fact is, even if Linux was the only software in the world with a 100% monopoly, these same ogres would rather gouge their eyeballs out with dirty sticks than admit it anyway.

The war to simply compute in liberty rages on.

Re:Popularity Contests

[gerrysteele]

ok.. i appreciate the mini lecture on the benefits of FLOSS and such, but i'm fairly involved in several communities and run 1, soon to be 2, projects. My point is, the obsessive public giving a crap about meaningless percentages is not helpfull to a project. Apache never did that, they just got on with the job. I also happen to be a big big fan of the Konqueror browser. I think the KHML engine does a really good job. I am formerly an Opera user.. however they have managed to do something terrible with the multi threading in their linux browser of late that is making it near unusable.

Re:Popularity Contests

[gerrysteele]

If it linux gained 100% we would all jump to Solaris. Then when it got too popular we would try freeBSD and so on until we reach Plan9 :)

Re:Popularity Contests

[Anonymous Coward]

Quality depends on resources depends on customers depend on users

Re:Popularity Contests

[dvice_null]

> My point is, the obsessive public giving a crap about meaningless percentages is not helpfull to a project. Apache never did that, they just got on with the job.

That is where you are wrong. Apache and Firefox are in different gategories. Apache is used by people who actually know about different alternatives. Web browsers on the other hand are usually used by people who don't even know that there are alternatives. This is why marketing is everything, if you want to be popular. Being just 1000 times better than anyone else is not enough. You must have marketing. Be that on newspaper, tv or mouth to mouth marketing, but without that, you can't have even 10% market share.

With browsers there is also another obstacle. That is ActiveX. If you can't use the browser, it doesn't matter how perfect it is. To overcome the ActiveX problem, you need to have a very big market share to get webmasters fix their websites so that they are usable with any other browser than IE. Writing almost any other kind of software is easier, because you don't have the ActiveX problem with them.

Re:Popularity Contests

[gerrysteele]

I understand your points... but I can't believe there are people building new web applications that depend on MSFT dependant technology...

Re:Popularity Contests

[SharpFang]

Most of web server software user base are admins with a clue, trained professionals who know what they want and know what they are doing. Most of web browser user base are plain users without clue, people who got no training whatsoever and want things 'just working'.
Admins usually know what is good for them.
Users rarely so.

The figures are misleading

[janrinok]

There are many Firefox users who select MSIE as their User Agent string in order to get sites to even allow them access, banks being one particular group that springs to mind, but I am sure that there are others. I cannot imagine that any MSIE users would need to select Firefox as the User Agent. In which case the figures will be conservative for Firefox usage and optimistic for MSIE usage. What we don't know, or at least I don't know, is how much this skews the figures.

Re:The figures are misleading

[6Yankee]

Can you change the User-Agent in IE?

Re:The figures are misleading

[Crayon Kid]

Please give it a rest. If this old argument carried some water when used with Opera, it's silly to use it with Firefox. Common sense dictates that there's far too little to gain by simply changing the UA string, and even so there are far too few people knowledgeable enough to attempt it to make a sizable difference.

Re:The figures are misleading

[janrinok]

Well changing the UA string with my UK bank's website makes the difference between 'Your browser is not supported' to a fully functioning web page which obviously doesn'trequire anything in IE to make it work. Mock all you want, I have to do this all the time - and I have just checked again to make sure that I am correct.

Re:The figures are misleading

[janrinok]

Don't know, I haven't got it.

Re:The figures are misleading

[evilbessie]

Sorry but I've used many bank sites (in the UK) and not had a single problem in the 4 years or so (v0.8) I've been using FF. Alright if I was in Korea then I would have to use IE (custom active X shit does encryption, not SSL/TLS like most sensible places).

Re:The figures are misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Natwest used to be IE only about 3-4 years ago so maybe you were just lucky. However thankfully they've seen the light and have a fully functioning site in firefox these days.

Re:The figures are misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

There's something called ie pro - plugin for ie 7 - which allows this.

Re:The figures are misleading

[jgc7]

The number of people who do that are slim to none. Changing the user agent from Firefox to IE for all sites breaks more stuff than it fixes, including Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo Mail.

Re:The figures are misleading

[freeweed]

And the point of the post you're replying to is that YOU as a single user aren't likely to have skewed these statistics in any meaningful way.

I'd eat my hat if more than 0.01% of the web-browsing public even KNEW what a UA string was, let alone how to change it.

Re:The figures are misleading

[janrinok]

I do it for the one site that needs it, not for every site. I do not use Gmail/Hotmail/Yahoo Mail.

Re:The figures are misleading

[glwtta]

Seriously? Still on this?

It might have been conceivable that a noticeable proportion of Firefox users did this when the market share was %0.005 or thereabouts, but do you seriously think anyone from the "general public" does this?

And what are these impenetrable banking sites that people keep harping on? I haven't seen one that doesn't work with Firefox (at least in the last 3 years or so).

Re:The figures are misleading

[hkmwbz]

Opera automatically spoofs as other browser for many major sites like Microsoft, Yahoo and eBay, actually. And they spoof in a way that the useragent string doesn't show "Opera" at all.

Re:The figures are misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many Firefox users who select MSIE as their User Agent string in order to get sites to even allow them access, banks being one particular group that springs to mind

Say what you will about Bank of America -- I sure have - but their online banking site has always worked fine for me with Firefox, going back to v1.5 under Winblows, and recently Firefox 2.x under Ubuntu. No problems.

Re:The figures are misleading

[jaiyen]

If this old argument carried some water when used with Opera

I'm not sure it ever made any sense with Opera either. Setting Opera to identify itself as IE would cause it to add a "MSIE" into the UA string, but the word Opera was still in there as well, so any of the web browser stat sites would still be able to easily identify it. I think it was only in the latest version (9) that they added an additional option to "Mask as Internet Explorer" that would mimic IEs UA string, but at the same time buried it 5 clicks deep in the preferences (actually, not even in Preferences at all as far as I can see but only in "Quick Preferences").

I find it very difficult to imagine there's enough people who both bother to change it and are aware of the difference between "Identify as Internet Explorer" and "Mask as Internet Explorer" that it would make any difference at all to global net browser usage stats.

Re:The figures are misleading

[Anonymous Coward]

Opera may have done such things in the past; I believe Opera 9 always identifies itself as Opera 9, unless the user changes some per-site preferences.

Re:The figures are misleading

[soliptic]

Out of interest, which bank? Natwest works fine with Firefox, I'd be really surprised if one of the other big guns like Barclays, Lloyds etc thought it could get away with cross browser compatibility!

Re:The figures are misleading

[soliptic]

"With" = "Without".

Use the Preview Button!

*SMACK*

Re:The figures are misleading

[Skrynesaver]

Yup, you can change the registry key
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\Cur rentVersion\Internet Settings\5.0\User Agent]
An interesting choice is @="Googlebot/2.1" "Compatible"="+http://www.googlebot.com/bot.html"
Many sites offer a cleaner more navigable site to the googlebot for some reason

Re:The figures are misleading

[SharpFang]

bph.pl

It "theoretically" supports Firefox, but you need to jump through hoops to get it running (e.g. extract a filename from source of the page, download it to hard drive, save it in a directory somewhere in Firefox plugins). Otherwise you can log in, you can view your account, but you just can't sign (and in effect finalize) any transaction.

Re:The figures are misleading

[SharpFang]

Not without reason too. Hotmail and MSN were purposedly breaking the site in Opera. If you browsed the site in Opera with user agent spoofing set to MSIE, it worked just fine. If the string contained 'Opera', it would break.

Re:The figures are misleading

[hkmwbz]

No, Opera automatically spoofs based on a list of sites which is updated regularly from an online resource.

Re:The figures are misleading

[Pentagram]

Which bank? I'm thinking of changing, and this would be useful info. FWIW, HSBC works fine with Firefox.

Re:The figures are misleading

[glwtta]

bph.pl

Well of course - what do you expect from a site written in Perl?

Re:The figures are misleading

[janrinok]

You are the second person to ask that question. I can understand why, but I hope that you will understand why I am going to decline - if I answer you will then have an ID and my bank. Others who look at /. know my email address, where I live, and other personal details. I don't expect you to ask for my account number and password but someone else might use a little bit of knowledge to try to go one step further. It is very unlikely that you will be changing to the bank that I use. Paranoid, me? Yep, but I would expect that most people on /. would respond the same way.

Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[Bob9113]

In some key European markets FF has already reached parity is threatening to overtake IE as the market leading browser.

Suddenly monopolies don't sound so bad. OK, how do we abuse this new power?

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[dvice_null]

Firefox's goal is to make the web use standards, so that you could select what browser you want to use. How many websites you have seen that work only with Firefox? And how many that work only with IE? That is they key difference.

So once Firefox has majority of the global market share, the web has already been converted to work with any browser and we (users, companies, developers, anyone except Microsoft) have won.

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[Anonymous Coward]

I've seen a couple.

They were quite obnoxious. Simply because I didn't have a Firefox Browser Identification, the site made sure that I, instead of seeing whatever the hell I clicked on, redirected me to getfirefox.com

Instead of the desired effect, I simply thought "That's nice. I'll stick with Konqueror though, and never visit your crappy ass site again". Please. For the love of god. Don't design for a specific browser. Use as simple a form of the standards as possible for your design. If you do that, it'll probably work in all browsers, even IE, the exact same. I know, shocking right? Yeah, some of the more complicated designs will run into problems, but it annoys me when I see sights with simple designs and complex code that seems to serve no other purpose than to make it a maintenance nightmare...

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[sznupi]

"How many websites you have seen that work only with Firefox?"

All Google apps, sort of (yes, I know, they aslo work under IE, but that's pretty much given). They certainly limit functionality on Opera and KHTML (Webkit - don't know).

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[Anonymous Coward]

One of Firefox's major benefit is extensions. I'm certain that once it gains critical mass, there will be many sites that you need x-plugin in order to use. Sure, it'll be the minority, like, y'know, banks, government sites, games, but if we could dismiss that, we'd have nothing to complain about with the current situation with Microsoft.

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[Dolda2000]

How many websites you have seen that work only with Firefox?

How about Google? ;)

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[roca]

> How many websites you have seen that work only with Firefox?

There are many actually that only work with Firefox and IE.

However, we handle this situation very differently from IE: We are always fixing standards compliance bugs. If some site depends on a glaring Firefox standards-compliance bug, we will almost always fix it and break the site, forcing the Web developers to fix their site. This, plus the fact that WHATWG keeps tightening up specs, should mean that the situation keeps getting better over time for users and developers of other browsers.

Note that this actually hurts Firefox, by creating work for our developers, annoying Web developers, and making life easier for our competitors. But that's OK: it's the right thing to do.

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[shutdown -p now]

Many of AJAX-based web apps do that sort of thing. Lots of Google offerings, for example.

Re:Whee! Monopoly Exploit Time

[complete loony]

The day we don't have to fight with IE to get it to render correctly, is the day we've won. Either because we don't have to support it, or because Microsoft have finally fixed it.

Re:but what about google

[janrinok]

I don't think 1 is a majority, unless everyone else is 0. But I know why you are trying to say.....

You can download the source code for Firefox to check that it is not being naughty, you know? And you can then compile it yourself so that you can sleep at night. If not use Epiphany, Opera, Lynxs or make your own fork.

Re:but what about google

[janrinok]

Sorry, too many typing mistakes in my last reply: s/why/what/ s/lynxs/lynx/ . Its probably an age thing, it must be time for my cocoa and bed.

I'm forced to use IE 8+ hours a day

[postmortem]

...and pretty much most of US office workers. The Internet Explorer is corporate choice. Although I have local admin account, the "remove firefox" script runs daily. There's not much workaround it, most of corporate intranets do not work with anything but Internet Explorer - mostly because authentication issues.

So this should be taken into consideration, IE share at home might be lower than statistics show.

Re:I'm forced to use IE 8+ hours a day

[Anonymous Coward]

Another obstacle for corporate Firefox use is the lack of a good deployment method using MSI and Global Policies.
 
Unfortunately, it might not even make Firefox 3 because of a lack of developers. http://forums.mozillazine.org/viewtopic.php?t=5434 05

Re:I'm forced to use IE 8+ hours a day

[gratemyl]

Just as a tip - try PortableFirefox (http://portableapps.com/), it should bypass the "remove firefox" script.

Re:I'm forced to use IE 8+ hours a day

[Dan Ost]

Talk to the people who make and enforce the corporate desktop standard. Show them why you prefer Firefox and, if support is their issue, explain how you won't be burdening their support infrastructure with Firefox issues since you're perfectly capable of supporting Firefox yourself (even if that's not true, the internet community is more than capable of supporting you if you make the effort).

If you can do it without coming across as an asshole, it's possible they'll give you some consideration. Best case is that they'll solicit your opinion next time they adjust the desktop configuration.

Re:I'm forced to use IE 8+ hours a day

[goarilla]

what about portable apps, if you have access to a cdrom or usb key it could come in handy i think
here it is http://portableapps.com/apps

Re:I'm forced to use IE 8+ hours a day

[Technician]

The Internet Explorer is corporate choice. Although I have local admin account, the "remove firefox" script runs daily. There's not much workaround it, most of corporate intranets do not work with anything but Internet Explorer - mostly because authentication issues.

Save intranet stuff for work. Try booting a live Linux Distro for breaktime. It works here without admin privilages. Set it to autoproxy and surf away. Naturaly nothing requiring a intranet login works, but hey, it's breaktime.

Lesson: Complain.

[twitter]

My rate of failure these days is less than one percent. It's very rare to find a site that I NEED that is IE only.

I do wish there was a version of Firefox/Mozilla that had an IE-compatibility mode... "FireIE Fox" or something, for use in such cases. Fortunately, another few broken sites finally "saw the light", probably due to complaints from people like us, and fixed things.

It's better to complain and get the issue fixed than it is to waste time on the endless task of chasing M$'s tail. The great thing about Firefox use is that it punishes people who blindly set up M$ servers or carelessly cater to IE. It's foolish for a company to turn away 1/10 of their customers but suicidal to turn away 1/4 or 1/2.

M$ can't win this one. Their browser is harder to use and less secure. The only thing it has going is the few sites you have noticed but those are bad for the business that runs them.

If Firefox passed up IE

[ClosedSource]

the worst that would happen to MS is that they would be better protected against future antitrust cases. Web sites built using ASP.NET 2.0 work as well on Firefox as they do on IE, so it wouldn't impact the server side.

Re:If Firefox passed up IE

[jedihamster]

"Web sites built using ASP.NET 2.0 work as well on Firefox as they do on IE" Try googling before talking. http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=asp.net+2.0+f irefox I googled "asp.net 2.0 firefox" first page included:

1. ASP.Net 2.0 Webparts don't support Firefox out of the box
2. The Gridview control does not appear to display correctly on Firefox but is OK on IE.
3. Does anyone know if ASP.NET 2.0 is going to incorporate "maintain scroll position on postback" in non-IE browsers like Firefox?

Re:If Firefox passed up IE

[Dan Ost]

That's fine with me. As long as my client and their server can play nicely, I don't care what their server is.

If they don't tell me what to use, I won't tell them what to use.

Re:If Firefox passed up IE

[ClosedSource]

I stand corrected. I know there were a number of non-IE problems in ASP.NET 1.1 that were corrected in ASP.NET 2.0, but I wasn't aware of these issues. Seems like new features in ASP.NET aren't non-IE ready until future releases (just an observation, not a guarantee).

Still, it appears that MS isn't going out of its way to avoid supporting the other browsers.

Re:Lesson: Complain.

[markdavis]

>It's better to complain and get the issue fixed than it is to waste time on the endless task of chasing M$'s tail. Well, I agree with that, which is why I *do* complain, and give lots of info and why. I also tell my staff the same thing, and also my LUG. But if they don't fix it, it is still me that suffers. This is a case where I can't choose to just "use another vendor", unfortunately.

Leaving 5.7% to the other browsers....

[walter_f]

...like Opera and Safari.

That makes Steve Jobs' recent presentation using a diagram with just I.E. (ca. 75%) and Safari (supposedly ca. 25%) shares shown for some time in the future an even more ridiculous event... :-)

Re:Leaving 5.7% to the other browsers....

[TheRaven64]

Safari might not have that much market share, but WebKit will almost certainly pass IE fairly soon. Nokia include a WebKit-based browser with all of their phones (mine came with Opera, but apparently the latest firmware has their WebKit-based replacement). There are a lot more mobile phones than desktops in existence already, and they are starting to get large enough screens that browsing the web on them is no longer painful. Even if people use their desktops for browsing more, I wouldn't be surprised if WebKit-based accesses hit around 25% in the next couple of years.

Protectionism?

[goombah99]

Does this statistic underline or undermine the argument that integrating and bundling IE with Windows harmed the competition? The answer to that has wide ramifications. Not just for MS. Depending on how you define markets, someday things like the Iphone may face the same questions. However the Iphone will have atleast one advantage, since it was bundled with Safari from Day one, when it was not yet a dominant player, it cannot be argued that Apple abused a monopoly position move into a new technology area.

Re:Protectionism?

[cp.tar]

Does this statistic underline or undermine the argument that integrating and bundling IE with Windows harmed the competition?

It does neither.

That the bundling of IE with Windows practically destroyed the competition at one point is a historical fact; however, the competition's picking up again has got to do with something completely different, though related: having annihilated the competition, MS stopped innovating - actually, MS stopped doing anything about it. The war was won, there was nothing left to do, and any further innovation in a market you monopolize would be redundant.

Netscape failed because Microsoft managed to build a good enough product, bundled it with Windows and then improved at least to the point people wouldn't bother downloading Netscape. It was a hard blow, and Netscape never recovered, though they might have.

Now, history is repeating itself; this time Microsoft sat on their collective heels and Mozilla hit them.

Re:Protectionism?

[Aazn]

Microsoft didn't build IE, they bought it from SpyGlass.

Re:Protectionism?

[theshowmecanuck]

mosaic

Re:Protectionism?

[PastaLover]

The bundling of IE was only a problem in a time when everybody wasn't so well connected to the internet. Downloading netscape was a big hurdle for many people at the time MS started bundling IE, but it certainly isn't any more.

What about google anyway?

[NDPTAL85]

First of all how is Google evil?

Second of all how is Mozilla tainted? Whats wrong with executives riding 1st class to a conference in the carribean?

Are you one of those people who is automatically supspicious of wealth and success and puts the poor/underdog up on a pedastal when in reality both groups consist of humans?

As for other options, there's Opera, Opera is free as in beer but not as in speech. Konquerer is open source. Since you seem to despise anything corporate you are probably running Linux already so I'm surprised you haven't heard of it yet. Making a browser requires a LOT of developer resources if you expect it to perform anywhere near decently. You may be dismayed to know that the source code for Konquerer, KHTML, is used to make Apple's Safari web browser and Apple has improved it so greatly that the KHTML guys are pretty much going to adopt Apple's changes wholesale instead of continuing with their original codebase. As Apple is a corporation that sells things for filthy evil money instead of giving things away for free this may make Konquerer unacceptable to you.

Perhaps you should try coding your own web browser? Because any other way you look at it based on your overly restrictive morals.....you're fucked.

It's about Freedom.

[twitter]

What's its problem? I'm not sure, let's see!
Does it not browse the web? Yes, but so does Dillo.
Is it insecure? Yes. With special mechanisms like BHO and sabotaged java engine it's unsafe at any site.
Is it unstable? Yes, using it means you get to wipe and reload your computer once a month.
Is it unpleasant to use? Oh God, yes. Even when you don't consider the obtrusive OS it requires, the lack of features is glaring.
Does it lack features? Try Firefox or Konqueror for a while.
Isn't it expandable or flexible enough? No, only M$ has the source.
Is it poorly programmed? I think the above answers this question.

Why are you so f*****g picky?

I'm not. Why are you so fucking stupid?

The most annoying thing about IE is that it's tied to a DRM'd asspain. It will auto install all sorts of malware along with "security" applications from Sony and others. The impossible and stupid goal of these programs is to keep you from making copies. IE is the browser of slaves.

Re:It's about Freedom.

[anethema]

He is talking about Firefox :P

Re:It's about Freedom.

[Ansoni-San]

Does it lack features? Try Firefox or Konqueror for a while.
Isn't it expandable or flexible enough? No, only M$ has the source.
Is it poorly programmed? I think the above answers this question.

Why are you so f*****g picky?

I'm not. Why are you so fucking stupid?

The most annoying thing about IE is that it's tied to a DRM'd asspain. It will auto install all sorts of malware along with "security" applications from Sony and others. The impossible and stupid goal of these programs is to keep you from making copies. IE is the browser of slaves.
I think he was referring to calling Firefox junk. Because the answers for IE were obvious:

It's a web browser that can't even browse websites without the designer taking the time to break their own code and make sure it (the mangled code) only gets given to IE. The other points are irrelevant until it can actually read html/css and not brain-fart on a million basic things. The entire rendering engine just feels like a giant hack that they mangled until it "looked about right"; The whole thing is like a house of cards, and this is IE7 we're talking about, the version we'll probably be stuck with for a long time to come.

But of course they have their html table implementation working fine and dandy, so all the crap sites too lazy to fix their backends to use html properly, exactly the kind of idiots to create IE-only websites, will probably carry on oblivious to everything except IE7's still-crap PNG support.

As for Firefox being junk: I can forgive all the memory issues people go on about and the strange unresponsiveness and problems saving to fat32 volumes the Ubuntu version seems to have because at the end of the day it can actually do what it is supposed to, It can display a website, and along with Opera it is the best at what it does.

Re:It's about Freedom.

[cloakable]

Actually, if you're talking about displaying websites, its Konqueror and Opera that are the top :) Both pass the Acid2 test. IE doesn't even come close, though FireFox is better.

Re:It's about Freedom.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

You think I was referring to IE?

Or to put it another way, if anyone answered yes to more than one or two of those questions, let me ask you this: Why are you so f*****g forgiving? :)

Re:It's about Freedom.

[Ansoni-San]

You do know the Acid2 test is meaningless right? No browser fully supports CSS2, so even out of the best browsers it's still a lucky dip depending on exactly where your weak-points in support are and exactly what the minor issues are. So the Acid2 test is pretty useless if you're a user that wants any realistic information on how good any of the current browsers are. I would have thought it was well known to be useless by now.

Opera and Firefox CSS2 support are pretty much equal, with Opera being miles ahead in print support and Firefox having better support (read less niggles) in other areas more important to screen media. Which pretty much balances out to me. Of course the print support etc. trade off balancing out is only my personal opinion.

Re:It's about Freedom.

[Anonymous Coward]

Stupid git.

For the first time...

[deesine]

last week, I found a site that worked in FF, but not in IE. I use the IE-Tab extension in FF for those sites (mostly news sites with video) that do not work with FF. I had the IE-Tab activated and next thing I knew the site I went to (sorry, don't remember which one) wasn't working. I went to turn on IE-Tab not realizing it was already on. I smiled.

IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[twitter]

You're telling me I want to go back to IE 4 all of the sudden?

Dillo would be easier. As a bonus it has tabs and better rendering. Both, however, have fewer digital restrictions and would be preferable to the terms of use of IE7.

Firefox, of course, offers better rendering, more user customization, ease of use, security and hardware choice than IE7. Combined with GNU/Linux, you can install Firefox on just about any computer without loss of modern web standards, flash and all that. IE7 is PIII and above because it only works with XP and Vista. With IE7 you are stuck with the choice of seven year old software that has to be patched and still sucks or software that barely runs on the latest and greatest multicored watt burner.

Just to confirm these stats I checked our site

[vorlich]

and found that IE gets 67%, FF gets 22% Opera is at 4.4% and everything else is less than 0-5% (probably our geeky staff using obscure browsers!) So I am guessing that the last time I actually looked at those stats, FF was a lot lower.

Data point

[Anonymous Coward]

I do information security for a medium-to-large internet company that I won't name which, whilst not exactly a security company per se, makes more than the usual token gestures towards taking security seriously.

We have finally managed to get executive approval to push Firefox as the default browser, after several years of trying, even though we still have a handful of MSIE-only apps internally. We're only a few hundred users, but I really believe that the corporate position on IE vs Firefox* is a good indicator of whether a firm really "gets it" about security.

I'm biased as I've been a Mozilla / Firefox fanboi since long before it was what some like to call "enterprise ready" :)

Think that's bad?

[dbolger]

Where I work, one of the systems has us completely locked in to using Netscape 4.0. I can't see any reason for it in terms of what the system does, but it refuses to even give you access with any other browser. Netscape is installed on every PC so they can access this system, and because management hope to "eventually" get rid of the system entirely, they refuse to update it to work on any other browser.

So, when you are cracking up because of idiot webmasters locking you in to using IE7 to view their sites, just know you don't have the absolute worst of it :)

Re:Think that's bad?

[Anonymous Coward]

You aren't really locked to netscape 4.0. Get firefox, set the user agent string to exactly the same as what netscape 4.0 reports. :-)

Re:Think that's bad?

[Bloater]

because management hope to "eventually" get rid of the system entirely, they refuse to update it to work on any other browser. That would be on the advice of the IT department. If it is internally updatable IT will want rid of it (IT does not trust software if the company has access to the code and will sell control of the business to avoid flexibility every time), and making the user-crap continue longer and longer is the best way to make management finally get rid of it. The IT department wants buy an annual subscription (cost shared among all departments) to some off the shelf solution that cuts one person a year from their department even though it costs the company 3 people a year - because it makes the head of IT look like he's saved money - and look like everybody else is losing money, giving him/her a bigger bonus and a better chance of joining the board.

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[Dan_Bercell]

Who would want to use a machine without a PIII or higher chip in the first place. I am running a dual core centrino chip + 2gigs of ram and it still isnt enough. When I work on an older machine I just want to cry they are so slow compared to todays standards.

IE Tab

[dna_(c)(tm)(r)]

from their site:

IE Tab is not available for Linux.

And that is because it IS IE embedded in a tab. The guy said he was using Linux anyway...

Re:Mod Parent Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Right... except I'm not American, dipshit. Maybe I was pissed for exactly the reason I said: the fact that people reply to the first post to get their comments on top.

FORCED?

[huckamania]

Or maybe you should open up a dialogue with the IT staff about why FF can't even be loaded. Going around company policy would not be my first choice. At my company, FF is the only way to use the intranet, go figure. However, I don't think there are any restrictions for others. I am a developer so I get to load anything I want.

Personally, I don't see how anyone is forced to do anything, however the original poster could be in China, North Korea, Russia, South Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America or Africa, where there is known slavery, in which case the possiblity that the poster is shackled to a windows box is somewhat there, in a hazy, ghost like shimmer along with ID, nessie and Xenu.

Somewhere in the world actual people are forced to dig for diamonds every day, forced to produce crap electronics, forced to sew garments, forced to make sneakers, forced to do sex acts, forced to commit murder. For many of these people, they are forced at an age when they are helpless to resist. I know most of the slashdot crowd has lost all perspective, but please try to think about the world you inhabit and the other people that are in it before posting your sob story about the man keeping you down. You have no idea.

I'm willing to bet that you could afford an I-phone, so there's a second option for you. Third option, go work some where else. Cheer up, things aren't all bad.

Re:FORCED?

[huckamania]

The offtopic tags around the third paragraph were stripped by /. I'm off to complain about it on my blog.

JK! As bad as slashdot can get, it's easily in my top 5 sites on the web of lies.

Re:Mod Parent Offtopic

[innerweb]

Connecting educational levels with political and business ethics awareness is very much at the heart of questions such as this, in fact a lack of higher educational levels/standards are the primary cause of the monumental mess we are currently in. As we read more and more about the failure of American (US) schools and as foreign exchange students come to the US to find themselves ahead of the equivalent grade level when they get here. As we forgive companies for gross breaches of law (anti-trust, racketeering, abusive use of monopolistic powers ...), gross abuses of public trust, gross abuses of corporate morals (see below), are we showing ourselves to be a better educated people? The decisions we make increasingly sacrifice long term viability, profit, well-being and world standing in favor of current financial and political profit.

The members of this site have largely been far more politically aware and educated, whether correct or not, than the average person and we use firefox more than the average public does as well. Members tend not to agree with each other in large groups on most topics and provide for some heated and humorous debates. That is one of the things I like most about slashdot - many different viewpoints, from the nonsensical and flat out wrong to the deeply insightful and hotly contested! But, on this topic (to MicroSoft or not to MicroSoft), there seems to be a large agreement on the harm that companies like MicroSoft and others cause to software development and any company that treats its market the same (phone, cable, internet ...). Before you reply, I know there are members on here who are clueless, I never said perfect society.

Those of us who are Americans are held responsible for the war in Iraq, the progress or lack thereof on the war on terror, environmental issues and many others *agenda* items, whether or not we voted the Bush group into office, prefer businesses having more rights or not. These are all very politicized topics, from the global war on IP freedoms waged by MS, RIAA, MPAA and others to the lack of quality security and interoperability in Microsoft applications (I know, I am going to get hit for that). MS is seemingly improving, but not there yet. Choosing to use Internet Explorer or something else is a huge issue, as it strikes directly at the goal of MS to own the Internet, the Internet's standards and further tighten their control over all information with another level of lock in. Have you not noticed the business model they have used for at least two decades now?

The people in slashdot (as a whole) tend to not fit other market demographics. On our own as individuals, we each fall into some market demographic, but as a whole, slashdot is different. Europe seems to be rather different from the US (which many people in power automatically assume is the *prime* market example to follow). Why are these two groups so different from the US? There are many answers and theories. The important point is that they are different. Whether you are hoping for some group to crack the corporate stranglehold on business and freedoms in the world, or you think that there is not enough controls and big brother in place to manage the current security threats, these have serious implications. Understanding them is important. And understanding starts with knowing what is there (the statistics). MS wants to know so that it can better target its marketing, FUD, lawyers and products. IBM wants to know for the same reason. So does AT&T and MCI. So does every web designer out there who thinks about customer experience. So does every virus maker, malware maker and add-on product maker.

InnerWeb

On corporate morals...

As a corporation is an entity under law with nearly the same rights as any living citizen and with dramatically more impact on the laws, finances and political directions of anyplace they assert their power, they ought to be held to a higher moral expectation. Hence, entities lik

Windows next?

[polyex]

Perhaps Windows will share a similar fate? One can hope.

Re:Windows next?

[Baumi]

Perhaps Windows will share a similar fate? One can hope. Not as long as changing your OS is as painless and non-commital as changing your browser. And should that ever be the case, the OS itself probably wouldn't matter much anyway.

(Actually, things like VMWare and WINE do make switching easier, but it's still a far cry from the "grandma acceptance" state.)

Re:Windows next?

[TheRaven64]

A LiveCD with NTFS support is probably the answer there. Pop in the CD, reboot, and have it start up in the new OS, with access to all of your existing files. Have it copy applications to a folder on the hard disk in the background, and automatically generate accounts from the disk. You could even try running existing apps in Wine automatically.

Re:Windows next?

[Baumi]

Not as long as changing your OS is as painless and non-commital as changing your browser. s/is/isn\'t/;

I'd like to know...

[Cleeq]

What the % of IE developers use FF.

Re:I'd like to know...

[dbolger]

I'd wager the majority; where else are they going to get their ideas?

Re:I'd like to know...

[WK2]

IE developers use firefox for testing. They have to make sure that firefox chokes on their "extensions."

Re:I'd like to know...

[Anonymous Coward]

I bet Ballmer has a Monty Burns style trap door just for those M$ staff who use Firefox (or Linux or any software that maybe cancerous or slightly communist).

Re:Mod Parent Offtopic

[karlwilson]

Sounds more like someone else has an inferiority complex.

IE still had some + points

[Toreo asesino]

Can I just first I'm a huge FireFox fan, and am indeed writing this very message from it.

That said, IE is the only browser where you can easily configure it enterprise wide, extremely easily. Want to lock down specific websites to text & images only for thousands of machines remotely? It's as easy as doing it in "Internet Options" in Windows. Want to switch off JavaScript internet-wide for specific departments/offices in your enterprise? Same again - just set the group policy option.

Basically, ALL of the IE options are over-ridable at a Group Policy level, built into every AD system since Windows 2000 Server. IE is the only browser that makes this possible. That, folks is quite often why IE is the corporate browser of choice - it's the only one that can be centrally managed like that.

Re:IE still had some + points

[Yosho]

That said, IE is the only browser where you can easily configure it enterprise wide, extremely easily. Want to lock down specific websites to text & images only for thousands of machines remotely?

I would argue that this isn't the sort of thing that a browser should be doing. If you want to strip Javascript out of particular sites or something similar, you should set up a transparent proxy at your router to do that to all outbound traffic. Why modify software on hundreds of computers when you could just do it on one instead? Not to mention that in that case, you don't have to worry about anybody installing an alternative browser or plugging an unauthorized computer into the network. They'll still get filtered, too.

Re:IE still had some + points

[BiggerIsBetter]

That's doable for Firefox as well:

http://wiki.mozilla.org/Firefox:2.0_Institutional_ Deployment

and inparticular:

http://homepages.ed.ac.uk/mcs/FirefoxADM/Readme.ht m

Re:IE still had some + points

[Shuntros]

That's because you have a lame desktop policy management system. Group policy is, well, a bit shite really. ZENworks can do everything group policy can do, and god knows how many things it can't.

Re:IE still had some + points

[Toreo asesino]

Including support for configuring Firefox across thousands of desktops? As it turns out AD does that fine with a free extension - posted in this thread. If it's as easy as AD, wake me up.

Re:IE still had some + points

[the not-troll]

However, IE also has a very big drawback: It doesn't run Linux. So I can't use it. Yay!

Re:IE still had some + points

[the not-troll]

However, IE also has a very big drawback: It doesn't run Linux.

Whoops. I meant "It doesn't run on Linux."
After all, it's a piece of software and no toaster, so it's expected that it can't run Linux.

Re:IE still had some + points

[Just Some Guy]

If you want to strip Javascript out of particular sites or something similar, you should set up a transparent proxy at your router to do that to all outbound traffic.

If you have enough desktops for this to be an issue, you should do it anyway. Why on earth would you want to fetch 500 copies of Google's home page when you could let your trusty Squid cache fetch one and serve it 500 times? If you have more than a handful of people visiting external websites, Squid is a huge win for bandwidth savings alone. Throw in a content filter (like DansGuardian, which is GPL and therefore free to use regardless of his idiotic ramblings to the contrary) and it's a no-brainer.

Re:IE still had some + points

[a.d.trick]

I always chuckle at retarded sysadmins who try and control their user's this way. Then I bring in a copy of Firefox via USB stick or one any one of 100s of possible methods.

Re:IE still had some + points

[Arancaytar]

How is this a drawback? :P

Re:IE still had some + points

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry, but IE is perfectly usable on Linux.

No, it doesn't run natively, but you can use it.

Re:IE still had some + points

[SolitaryMan]

Since IE is installed on most computers by default, what matters is not its "+" side, but a "-" side.

The main problem of all alternative browsers (ff, opera) is that there is almost nothing they can offer to a mere user and there are no major disadvantages in IE which can be seen by a mere user.

I think that the main reason for decline in IE market share is that it was not updated for too long and users wanted something new. Now, IE7 is out and I guess FF will have a much harder time getting users.

I'm a big proponent of Free Software, but all this being "compliant" and "standard" stuff in FF won't get us far, what it needs the most now is some focus on user experience.

Re:IE still had some + points

[SharpFang]

"there is almost nothing they can offer to a mere user and there are no major disadvantages in IE which can be seen by a mere user."

The keyword being "almost".
Tabbed browsing in IE7 lags by a decade behind the competition, and it seems to be the major feature people look for. With the rest, there's no one single 'killer feature' that would appeal to most users, but there are hundreds of small ones that appeal to few each. Often including extensions. Adblock being one of bigger ones. Mouse Gestures being another. DownThemAll as alternative to external download accelerators. There's a forum post: "I'd love this site to have..." and answer: "Grab Firefox, GreaseMonkey and this script, and you have it." Another happy FF user. "Don't you find these new commercials annoying?" "What commercials? Oh, you use IE? You poor bastard.", "How do I display these SVG images?" "Grab the plugin or (recommended) move to Firefox". And so on, and so on. There's no single big hole that gets IE users on the firefox side. There are hundreds of small cracks that leak them in tiny groups.

Re:IE still had some + points

[SolitaryMan]

I think this is exactly the reason FF is winning over Opera and other browsers: extensions add tiny bits, but there are A LOT of them.

Re:IE still had some + points

[arantius]

Who's modding this post up? If you actually (gasp!) read the link, it just says that you can't do exactly what the OP said Firefox can't do.

Still trying to decide which I prefer

[kennylogins]

Rampant security flaws or "Illegal Operation in Plug-in
-----------------
The Plug-in performed an illegal operation. You are strongly advised to restart Firefox.
[ ] Don't show this message again during this session.
---
OK" every 5 minutes.

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[NickFortune]

Who would want to use a machine without a PIII or higher chip in the first place.

Someone who isn't running Vista or XP? Someone stuck with ten year old hardware?

I am running a dual core centrino chip + 2gigs of ram and it still isnt enough.

I have a ten year old P266 machine I still use from time to time. It runs Gentoo Linux, X.Org, a heavily customised FVWM desktop, and Firefox. For most purposes, it's still quite nippy. (And yes, emerge -avuD world is kind of slow; but that's why distcc was invented :)

When I work on an older machine I just want to cry they are so slow compared to todays standards.

Oh, certainly. But in most modern operating systems, most of the speed increase gets used up by infrastructure overheads. That's why a Dual Core monster now doesn't seem much faster to the user than my top-of-the-range P266 did back in 1997. The gripping hand is that if you use a lightweight distro, then firefox will run just as happily on 10 year old machines as it will on the latest hardware.

Which, if you're stuck using something from the dark ages, can be a good thing.

Re:but what about google

[Anonymous Coward]

Googl$e

/me applauds

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[MightyMartian]

Who would want to use a machine without a PIII or higher chip in the first place. I am running a dual core centrino chip + 2gigs of ram and it still isnt enough. When I work on an older machine I just want to cry they are so slow compared to todays standards.

I was using a 500mhz Pentium II with 256mb of RAM running Ubuntu last year. Firefox worked fairly well, though as usual Java would be a pain. I could even watch DivX movies, something I couldn't do when Windows 2000 was installed on it. It was certainly adequate for surfing the net, email and wordprocessing.

damn MSDN still insists on IE+ActiveX

[r00t]

WTF? When are they going to support Firefox, Opera, and Safari?

The ActiveX, required for all downloads (to "optimize" downloads), is particularly evil. That only runs on Windows. When are they going to switch to something sane, like pure Java?

Really, they ought to just throw everything on an FTP site. They could use Bittorrent for the big ISO images. It works for Fedora.

Re:damn MSDN still insists on IE+ActiveX

[syntaxglitch]

WTF? When are they going to support Firefox, Opera, and Safari?

The ActiveX, required for all downloads (to "optimize" downloads), is particularly evil. That only runs on Windows. When are they going to switch to something sane, like pure Java?

Really, they ought to just throw everything on an FTP site. They could use Bittorrent for the big ISO images. It works for Fedora.

Not to mention, have you seen how useless the MSDN developer library site's search feature is? I don't know why they don't just use an embedded Google search or something like a lot of other sites do.

It's FX, not FF!

[Tutsumi]

Bloody hell, it's people like you who spread a false abbreviation. FX is Firefox. FF is Final Fantasy. Check the spreadfirefox website for FX. They ask people to stop calling them FF. DO IT.

Re:It's FX, not FF!

[Anonymous Coward]

FUCK THEM AND THEIR OPINIONS.
FF it is and FF it will stay.

Lameness filter encountered. Post aborted!
Reason: Don't use so many caps. It's like YELLING.

Re:It's FX, not FF!

[janrinok]

No, I looked at http://www.spreadfirefox.com/ and searched for "FX". It doesn't even appear on that page. Would you care to back up your claim, because I have only ever seen Firefox abbreviated as FF. I haven't a clue what Final Fantasy is - a game perhaps?

Bloody hell, it's people like you who spread a false information

Re:It's FX, not FF!

[Tutsumi]

Used to be there, I'm sure it's still there in one form or another but here...it's straight from the Firefox site: http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/releases/1.5. 0.11.html and one from Slashdot: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=216542&cid=175 75552 What was that about false information?

Re:It's FX, not FF!

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought FF had something to do with goatse.cx?

I know!

[r00t]

We could pop up a warning when the user transmits a form to a Microsoft IIS server. ("This web site may be insecure...")

I'm sure Bill Gates will be happy to take some of his own medicine.

VM

[r00t]

Either VMWare or Paralels should do the job.

If you make Windows the guest, you also get Qemu+KVM.

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[twitter]

Who would want to use a machine without a PIII or higher chip in the first place.

I think you mean "lower".

There are lots of nice laptops with PII and PIII class chips in them and they really are all you need if you are using GNU/Linux. My best laptops are 1 GHz PIIIs and Etch works great on them. My favorite laptop is still a Thinkpad 600. It has a 233 MHz PII and 300MB of RAM. Etch works great on it. Sound works, and I can watch movies with it. It's a little old for number crunching and it's a lot heavier than an X30, but it's low power enough for me to use in my lap without getting burnt.

Re:Lesson: Complain.

[twitter]

if they don't fix it, it is still me that suffers. This is a case where I can't choose to just "use another vendor", unfortunately.

I'm sorry to hear that. You might try IE under Crossover Office or XP under Parallels. If that does not work, you need to have an XP box in the corner.

Alternative

[Chris Daniel]

Portable Firefox + USB thumb drive.

OT, but still...

[Conanymous Award]

In TFA there was a Flash ad about biblical prophesies concerning the Middle East. What the heck? "YOU need to understand what is prophesied yet to happen in the MIDDLE EAST." Yeah, right. And this is related to IT in ..what way?

Spam response correlated to IE usage...?

[Joce640k]

The people who respond best to spam are more likely to use Internet Explorer?

No big surprises there.

Or maybe it's "money grubbers who'll go to any lengths to save $0.02 on their prescriptions more likely to use Internet Explorer"?

It's the same thing really...

Mod parent up

[Joce640k]

I don't know how to change the UAS and there isn't an option for it in the settings. How likely do you think the average Firefox user is to do it?

Firefox users like me are much more likely to use IEtab or similar to get garanteed 100% compatibility instead of a hack like changing the user agent.

Re:Mod parent up

[janrinok]

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/59

FX also means alot of things....

[VMaN]

FX is an abbreviation for effects... or fed ex...or an instrumental song from Black Sabbath's 1972 album Black Sabbath, Vol. 4

FireFox F...F..

See how that works?

I dare you to find a 2 letter abbreviation that is unused. :)

Re:FX also means alot of things....

[Tutsumi]

FireFox? No. Look at the name, it's Firefox. Look up at the person who commented above you, I proved it was FX. Now, you show me a company/thing with an actual abbriviation of FX and I'll say I'm wrong. :3

Re:FX also means alot of things....

[goarilla]

following your logic SuSE linux should be called
SELX, seriously it makes more sense calling firefox ff since it's the unity of the word
fire and fox, just like halflife is abbreviated as HL, ok bad example
but still stop being so zealous about final fantasy. the world consists of so many things abbreviations are destined to be used for multiple things
just get over it !

I wonder about OS X

[bryan1945]

As far as I can tell, there is no IE for OS X (I looked because a local radio station can stream only to IE for some weird reason).

Since there is no IE, and there have been some goodly (for random value of goodly) Macs upgraded to OS X, plus some switchers, perhaps this has helped?

Also, there is also the fact (where fact = my opinion) that IE is FF's whipping boy.....

Re:I wonder about OS X

[Anonymous Coward]

There was once a IE for Mac (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Explorer_for _Mac), but it was discontinued.

It's true

[mrk1283]

At work the number of times a user has phoned up for administration help or regular support and they are using Firefox has doubled over the past few months and it's still growing especially when browsing is far more easier in Firefox. People are also tagging onto the idea of extensions like IEtab where some sites only work in IE so people use IEtab in Firefox. It's awesome.

True

[12357bd]

The stats on my own little site (thousands page hits a day) shows a clear incremnent in Firefox usage on those last 6 months, I am not sure about being an european only trend.

Re:Mod Parent Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

They fooled Tony Blair.

Re:IE 7 - but it's so beautiful!

[Tumbleweed]

I thought the decision to use a design team they hired away from Play-Skool was brilliant, man, a true stroke of genius! And removing features IE6 had (* hack) was also much appreciated by the developersdevelopersdevelopers.

And the Outlook 2007 team - what brilliant people they are, too - removing abilities Outlook 2003 had for a 'consistent' HTML renderer base - fantastic move. You know, avoiding the *obvious* move of using the more-capable Outlook 2003 HTML renderer in Word 2007, instead of what they did (using the less-capable HTML renderer from Word) - that takes real vision.

I think it's *great* that Microsoft hires retarded software developers, really I do. They've got bills to pay just like everyone else, right?

My stats for my website...

[BigBadBus]

say this: (browser, hits, ):
MSIE 6 - 5,380 - 37.61%
MSIE 7 - 3,733 - 26.10%
Firefox 2 - 2,526 - 17.66%
Firefox 1.5 - 829 - 5.80%

All other MSIE/Firefox contributions are less than 1&. So far, Win + Safari have made NO contribution to the stats.

Re:My stats for my website...

[amyhughes]

So far, Win + Safari have made NO contribution to the stats

Check again :-)

Re:My stats for my website...

[SharpFang]

Oh well, here the kind of beta Safari/Win is, is called alpha.

And I don't think Apple could do any worse than to load a test release with crapware. (okay, I don't mind Quicktime but I have no desire to install iTunes, and it won't even let me pick "never update it" (where 'update' means from 'not uninstalled' to 'current').)

MOD PARENT INSIGHTFUL INSTEAD OF OFFTOPIC

[Anonymous Coward]

The parent has been modded offtopic while he is absolutely right, this isn't fair, grandparent has abused the slash system in his favor... It's kindof sad to see moderators not taking their job seriously :-( I love Slashdot because of its moderation system and I don't like people abusing it!

(sorry for the title with the capitals...)

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[petermgreen]

I run firefox on an old latop (among other machines) under windows 2000 (which was a current OS at the time the machine was made and is in the list on the machines "designed for" sticker). After the initial load time its fairly snappy on most sites provided I don't open too many tabs but only because of the flashblock and adblock plus extentions (normally i don't block ads on principle but the heavy javascript of some adds was really bogging the machine down and i really didn't want to turn off javascript completely).

Re:Mod Parent Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

Not American == British?

How fucking stupid can you be? There are 191 other countries, genius. If you must know, I'm from the one called "Canada".

France Surrenders?

[Bushido Hacks]

A preview of things to come no doubt.

Market Share Matters

[roca]

Browser market share matters. As long as IE had all the market share, Web developers tended to ignore Web standards and build sites that only worked in IE --- it's a simple economic decision on their part. Wherever Firefox has major market share, they can't do that anymore. They are forced to build sites that at least work in Firefox too. That has the nice side effect that those sites are now usable by Linux and Mac users, and they're also much more likely to work in other browsers. Everybody wins --- except Microsoft.

This is why it's not enough for us to just believe in freedom and build free software. We have to make sure it succeeds in the market, or we'll lose the ability to communicate with the non-free world and ultimately our free software will be useless.

I hate IE 6

[martin_henry]

I am forced to use IE6 all day because McAfee deletes firefox as a security threat (fair enough) and my corporate lan won't let me Windows Update.

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[Dan_Bercell]

Ive had Ubuntu loaded on this machine and it didnt seem any faster then XP, sure I probably could have custimized it to hell, but who has the time and the need to do that?

Re:Mod Parent Offtopic

[Anonymous Coward]

ha ha!

Fix the bugs in Firefox

[dynomitejj]

I love firefox, but running it on Linux lately has been a pain. It keeps crashing. So much so that I've considered using opera or something else. What's going on with Firefox lately ? Can't you guys just keep it small and simple and stable ? I don't want every feature except the kitchen sink. I just want it to work.

YES... It's a joke!

[supaneko]

Look for "Shelley Goodman" here.

To be expected...

[pravuil]

Just my opinion, don't take any of this seriously. Think of it like a brainstorming session where there are different variables offered up on the table in a variety of ways. Neat things come from it sometimes.

We'll see this more and more overseas, especially in developing countries who wish to find their place within the current IP related markets. It's just a sign that an acceleration towards a shift has already started. Funny thing about this is that MS just outsourced a research lab to another country to remain competitive.(Needs to be cited or have clarification) Unfortunately, it's a catch 22 when it comes to globalization. Companies need to be competitive as much as any other company needs to be. While we have a certain advantage, we might have to take some losses due to new competitive forces on the horizon. While I only support Microsoft insomuch as to keep a certain level of wealth within the states, it sucks to see that the market might marginalize the company to obscurity. It will take a lot to get there but you never know. Given any opportunity for certain developing countries to succeed, something might pop up here and there which would give us a run for the money. I would hate the world to be homogenized but with the amount of diversity in resources for each area, it shouldn't be too much of a problem. I hate the concept of interdependence but it's been that way for quite a while and I doubt that will change any time soon.

Well, with IBM, Novell, Sun, and Red Hat being US companies, there is a certain technical advantage that will help the US over time in terms of *n(i/u)x related IP. Who knows what OpenSuSE (Germany), Ubuntu (Britain/Isle of Man), Mandriva (France) might come up with over time. I would like to mention a Chinese distribution of Linux but I can't seem to find one yet. If India ever gets a sense of entitlement outside of their dependency on MS outsourcing, I wonder where they will put their interest towards. Swaraj can be a double edge sword sometimes.

Don't mean to sounds ominous but I think its time to bring this conversation to the table in an open manner. We see very little of it because when someone talks about globalization they come off as wearing a tin foil hat. Somethings happening, don't really know what but I do think there should be a certain invested interest in certain things that are currently going on in the market. At least have some reasonable argument to pacify certain concerns. Spreading democracy is one thing but spreading capitalism is another. Not that I necessarily disagree (double negative, I know) with what's going on, my main concern is what's keeping it together. Simple answers bind truths further than any excuse or reason.

Re:To be expected...

[slashbart]

You're in marketing or something (management perhaps)?

I don't have a clue of what you're talking about.

So now...

[fan of lem]

Firefox is the new IE.

Opera is the new Firefox.

IE is (will be) the new... Netscape?

Eventually, Opera will get the attention it deserves. Hooray!

Who says...

[Eric Damron]

...that all those Firefox browsers are running on Windows? Could it be that alternate OSs that run Firefox are adding to the numbers? Maybe IE isn't the only Microsoft product in trouble?

Funny...

[Torodung]

This article is featured in the "Internet Explorer" category, and has a big blue IE logo next to it.

It's an odd way to celebrate Firefox and Mozilla's success.

--
Toro

Re:Funny...

[marcosdumay]

That is because we are celebrating Internet Explorer's fall.

HAHA

[Anonymous Coward]

That's because your spambots can only penetrate lame people's machine who use IE/Outlook.

mod parent up

[toddian]

mod parent up

Re:IE 7 - but it's so beautiful!

[Bert64]

It's better than that...
They removed the IE based rendering engine, that has been so completely battered with security holes there can't be too many left yet, in favour of the word one which is just starting to be attacked, and is based on much older kludgier code.

Re:Mod Parent Offtopic

[CmdrGravy]

Well never mind, maybe one day you'll be able to save up enough money to leave and live somewhere nice ? I'll ask my prayer group to pray for you.

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[NickFortune]

Ive had Ubuntu loaded on this machine and it didnt seem any faster then XP

It won't. Full fledged Ubuntu needs a decent system spec. Gnome has got its own framework overheads, and Ubuntu adds a lot more newbie friendly stuff that ups the system reqs to about the same as XP. Ubuntu is a lovely distro in a great many ways, but svelte it ain't.

sure I probably could have custimized it to hell

You could try XUbuntu. Uses XFCE rather than Gnome, and uses a lot less in the way of resources. You can install it from Ubuntu using synaptic. Did it in about 10 mins on my wife's old desktop machine. I'm still not sure it would cope with a PII, but it runs just fine on a Windows ME era AMD Duron system. Which is more than can be said of vanilla Ubuntu.

Failing that, look at some of the lightweight distros. The slackware derivatives seem to be good at this, so Vector Linux might be a good place to start. Or else Damn Small Linux, if you can persuade it to install on the HD and not run from a ramdisk.

but who has the time and the need to do that

Well, if you don't need it, don't do it. Personally, I'd sooner my resources were doing what I tell them to, rather than monitoring the system to see if I needed a help bubble popping up, or a usb drive mounted - but I admit I'm not the typical user. Then again, if you have old hardware, and you can't upgrade for whatever reason, it's not a bad angle to explore. It certainly beats using out-of-support Windows 98 because you can't cope with XP.

Re:IE 4 vrs Dillo.

[NickFortune]

After the initial load time its fairly snappy on most sites provided I don't open too many tabs but only because of the flashblock and adblock plus extentions

Yeah, flash and heavy duty javascript can be a problem, certainly. And not just for older machines, either.

the heavy javascript of some adds was really bogging the machine down and i really didn't want to turn off javascript completely

I use NoScript for that. Turn scripting off by default, and then whitelist sites that use it in the Furtherance Of Good. It apparently doesn't get on with FlashBlock - but then you don't need flashblock if you have NoScript. It's one of my must-have extensions these days.