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Microsoft Exploits Firefox 4 Uproar, Beats IE Drum
CWmike writes "A Microsoft executive late Thursday used the furor over Mozilla's decision to curtail support for Firefox 4 to plead the case for Internet Explorer in the enterprise. 'I think I speak for everyone on the IE team when I say we'd like the opportunity to win back your business,' Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft, said in a post on his personal blog. 'We've got a great solution for corporate customers with both IE8 and IE9, and believe we could help you address the challenges you're currently facing.' Bixhorn addressed his open letter to the manager of workplace and mobility in the office of IBM's CIO, John Walicki, who, along with others, had voiced their displeasure with Mozilla's decision to retire Firefox 4 from security support. In a comment appended to a blog maintained by Michael Kaply, a consultant who specializes in customizing Firefox, Walicki called Mozilla's decision to end security support for Firefox 4 a 'kick in the stomach.'"
Hardly surprising; businesses like some stability in their apps. You don't want stagnation, but you don't want to have to test and deploy entirely new releases every 3 months just to maintain a supported environment either.
I'm not sure Microsoft need to be worried about that particular market anyway because, as much as I hate to say it, IE is really the only browser that's suitable for use in a large Windows environment. It has ludicrously granular control available via Group Policy and updates can be deployed via WSUS without needing any user interaction or elevated rights. Firefox doesn't even offer an MSI installer, let alone any practical way to manage settings or control updates across multiple machines (but then Chrome, Opera and Safari are similarly lacking so they're hardly alone in that regard).
Why wouldn't they? I mean, IE isn't my cup of tea and standards support is still a little behind the curve (though improving) but IE8 and certainly IE9 are solid browsers for your average corporate user.
I often get the impression that some people are rather stuck in the IE6/XP era when it comes to any product that Microsoft puts out; they're not *all* shit you know :)
Microsoft gives IE away for free. The only reason they want to "win back your business" is to take advantage of vendor lock-in. I'm not seeing where this is good for the business, especially considering that the security fix for Firefox 4 is well-known and free (upgrade to Firefox 5).
You're right, they aren't quick to update, and that's exactly why this move by Firefox could be such a boon for Microsoft. Corporations like to test the hell out of software and then deploy it, after which they'll keep that version for months or years, updating only for security reasons.
So, a company currently on Firefox 3 may have been testing Firefox 4 for the past couple of months, with an eye toward deploying at some point a quarter or two down the line. Suddenly they get news that they won't even be able to get security updates for it. This means whatever work they've done on Firefox 4 is wasted, and they're skittish about starting work on Firefox 5 because that might get de-supported in a matter of months as well.
Enter Microsoft, who tells them they can move to IE and whatever version they go with (8 or 9) will be supported for a predictable length of time, and that length of time is measured in years. Since Firefox has suddenly become schizophrenic about their support cycles, it's in the business's best interest to work on moving toward migrating to Microsoft as soon as possible.
Firefox already barely has a foothold in corporate America, as you pointed out, and shenanigans like this will effectively kill that market for them.
Part of the reason that I'm pissed off by this version a week crap is that plugins that should work no longer do, simply because they expect a version number. Google Toolbar doesn't work because of that. That's a serious WTF moment.
For the technologically confused, it's just a change in version numbering. That's all. 5.0 is essentially 4.1 (or maybe even 4.0.2). Nothing super-crazy going on. Sure, if someone *really* wanted, they can change the 5.0 to a 4.0.3 and feel all warm and fuzzy about 'stability'. The only real issue is the possibility that some extensions weren't properly updated to understand this. Any that aren't can be remotely updated by addons.mozilla.org, though, and anyone with the Addons Compatibility Tester extension can enable disabled extensions and report any issues directly to Mozilla.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
Each company and such has a bizarre meaning to version numbers.
FF 5 IS the security update to FF4.
Much like Chrome goes up by major numbers.
Then you look at open source where things often start in the 0.01 range and every digit could be a new feature release.
A number of companies use major.minor.build however it really isn't as standard as you think.
Cisco ASA devices look like major.minor.build however new features regularly appear in the "Builds"
Juniper security gear has gone to a year.quarter. release numbering system
take your pick.
EA David Gardner -"... but the consumers have proven that actually what they want is fun."
I hope FF loses some market share. Stupidity should be punished in the business world. I don't personally care if it's Microsoft with IE, Google with Chrome, or Apple with Safari, or any other browser. I don't care about rapid releases. I'm against them, actually. In a business environment, rapid releases only muck up the works and makes life harder for the IT staff.
Life is hard, and the world is cruel
Firefox 5 is the security update to FF4. I don’t think anything was broken apart from the version number.
Its just really confusing to people not following this why they would do this way. I was a 5 mb update on windows for me.
The only change I have seen is maybe a new animation on the left of URL bar (and that might have been there anyway).
It's not change is bad, it's needless change is bad.
If Firefox wants to be a cutting edge testing environment for whizbangs great, make that clear. If it wants to be used in production environments where long term stability and available time for internal test cycles trump access to whizbangs then this is bad.
We use firefox for everything, random websites with new versions of dancing cat videos, personnel apps like timecards, purchasing etc and monitor and control for instrumentation.
Don't really care if the new dancing cat video works, don't even really care if the craptastic PeopleSoft works, do care that monitor and control stuff works.
I think most people are just pissed that Mozilla appear to be rather pathetically trying to mimic Chrome of late rather than focusing on improving Firefox where it actually needs improving.
MS cares so much about version numbering, that Windows 7 is actually Windows 6.1....
That being said, I find the decision by Mozilla to be equally stupid. 4 versions in seven years, and suddenly we jump to a new version every month? It's just odd.
When the alternative is a browser that is EOL'ed after 4 months on the market? You bet your shiny metal ass it does. Maybe Chrome becomes the official IT alternative to IE.... I don't know. But I can guarantee you that this epically moronic decision just handed IE and Chrome the corporate market.
Those who can, do. Those who can't, sue.
Perhaps Firefox should take a page out of Ubuntu's playbook, and offer a special LTS (Long Term Support) release that will receive back-ported security fixes for the next two or three years. That will give the IT departments and embedded systems manufacturers the long term stability they want, while general users and browser enthusiasts can continue to update their browser every three months.
Or they can do nothing, and continue to lose marketshare to Internet Explorer and Google Chrome when IT departments start adding Firefox to their unapproved/unsupported software lists. Their call, I guess.
The Mozilla foundation needs to understand that their recent bad decisions have consequences.
I use Firefox, and have for quite a while. I've gone from a strong supporter and proselytizer to... less enthusiastic. It's still my first choice of browser, but just barely.
It was the Awesomebar debacle, and their refusal to include an option to turn it off, that first made me suspect they were headed in the wrong direction. Removing the status bar was a bad idea, and then this ridiculous botchup with versioning... sigh.
They have positives. They have the best plug-in architecture, and they aren't including patented/copyrighted codecs in the browser, which is good (although they should allow a direct interface to the underlying OS codecs, not simply forbid them from playing). Still, I was contemplating shifting over to Opera. Now, today, we learn that Opera is probably going to go to hell in the next few months.
At this point, I'm hoping that somebody will fork Firefox back at the 3.6 version, and take it from there. It needs to go in a direction the users want, and stop trying to force the users into a direction the designers want. If you stop listening to your users, they will leave. It's beginning to happen with Firefox.
3.6 is a previous major release, that is used by many, and a part of 3.x releases.
4.0 and 5.0 are essentially 4.0 and 4.1 if mozilla went by the numbering scheme of 3.x releases. A minor update.
Therefore it's pretty SMART to continue to support 3.6.
Just to name a few...
- Almost 1000 bug fixes including fixes related to security and performance
- Improved performance of HTTP connection logic, canvas tag, JS engine, memory management, and networking
- More support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas standards
- CSS animations
- Increased discoverability of Do-Not-Track header preference
- Better spell checking for some languages
- Better Linux desktop support
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
It really makes me wonder whether these large companies have an IT department.
Surely they can replace FF4.0 by FF5.0 without exposing their net to Chinese hackers.
Apparently you've never worked in big IT, where software must be thoroughly tested before being rolled out. Image you're the guy that convinced your company to roll out FF as a replacement for IE and them that it was fully compatible with all their corporate websites. Before you've even fully tested and started deploying it, Mozilla EOLs that version number. Kinda sets you back to square one and you look stupid for having suggested it in the first place.
Mozilla screwed themselves on this. FF5 is hardly different than FF4, yet yhey bumped the major rev number trying to convince people they are innovating and ended pissed off the corporate customers who want stability. Fedora still hasn't learned this lesson with their 6 month cycle and a hearty fuck you if you don't keep up because you can only safely upgrade from 1-2 versions behind. The corporate world wants stability and good manageability damn it. They don't want a constantly moving target with questionable long term support.
It's because they want to do what Chrome does, as only release on major version numbers. It's not going to work, though, and the public reaction to the first upgrade shows it
Well, like I said, if they want to choose a marketing-based versioning plan in order to manipulate people's perceptions, they'll have to accept the fact that it will manipulate people's perceptions.
I was a 5 mb update
I was a 12 MB update to my family, although I've always been a pretty big kid.
Random Thoughts From A Diseased Mind (Not For Dummies)
How that's different from an update from the last version of FF 3.6 to FF 4.0?
Mozilla _just_ EOLed 3.5.x. 3.6.x isn't EOL yet. People expected that the release of 5 would be concurrent with a security patch for 4, because that makes sense. Mozilla showed they lacked sense with the awesomebar debacle.
The Awesomebar is a debacle? Wow. Gee. For me, it's the only thing that keeps me using Firefox. I love the Awesomebar.
Uuum, dude: I had 3 years of psychotherapy after having designed a web app that was supposed to run in IE in fall 2005. This is not a joke. And I have to really pull myself together to not rage and say you should die or something. :/
I got to know IE extremely well over the years. Every tiny quirk. Even the race conditions depending on a dozen independent factors. Even that horribly illegal code (illegal according to MS too, that is) does not only often work, but in some rare cases even is necessary for it to "work" (this case is also a race condition on top of it all!). And yet I still haven't found the bottom of the pit of chaos, where some inner sense and logic is supposed to be.
The problem with IE is, that it must have the most advanced AI in human history inside, as it manages to simulate utter irrational and unpredictable behavior with sheer perfection.
Yes, you can say IE has "improved" since then. But the problem is, that it's still Trident. The engine that is named after a tool of the devil for a good reason. ;)
It's an utter mess. Calling it "spaghetti code" would insult even the worst spaghetti code any twice-outsourced enterprisey consultant called "The late Paula Bean" could ever write. It just doesn't fit it anymore.
So apart from a complete rewrite, there is no chance in hell (literally? ;) that it will ever be something even remotely acceptable.
If MS decides to throw away Trident, we may get a good IE. Until that, anyone who defends IE, just doesn't know shit and never has done some real coding for that monster. And so he should better keep quiet, as every time an IE loads a page, a thousand web developers shiver and shed a tear of past mental rape horror.
No, the change is NOT only a number. Mozilla has stated that every major version change breaks ABI compatibility.
That probably doesn't matter to you (it certainly doesn't to me) but if a company distributes Firefox extensions for their employees, they're going to have an upgrade headache on their hands.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Yes, I'm sure any IT'er worth his salt will confirm that, however many company policies handle things differently between dot updates and number changes. Vendor did something similar with a program we use at my work. If they had left it a dot update (as it originally was), we could have installed it without issue, but because they decided to also make it a new version number instead, company policy demanded that it had to go through review process, more extensive change control involving different departments, and could only be paid for out of certain budgets because it was technically "new software" rather than a patch to exiting software.
It's only a number and an IT'er worth his salt should be able to confirm that much.
Yes they can. The problem is that they aren't the ones that make the decision. Large corporations usually have stifling configuration management and strict rules about testing. It's usually non-technical managers that see the new version number as a major upgrade and insist on retesting before they risk rolling it and potentially breaking large number of computers. Yuo should be happy that you're ignorant of this fact.
About Fedora's 6 months release cycle, maybe you missed Fedora is the cutting-edge development version of and for Red Hat?
Wow, you were so close to getting my point. Maybe I needed to continue the train of thought just a tad more? Fedora is unsuitable for the corporate desktop for the exact same reason Firefox is. It's not version stable and changes to rapidly. Both products are targeted and marketed to the hobbyist, or environments where a near constantly changing platform isn't an issue.
That's why I need to know what is an update and what is a new version. Until now I just needed to look at the version number, now I have to *investigate* and *waste time* to find out if the new version is really a new version or not.
That looks like a good description of Mozilla's current position. Personally, I think it's mad.
The very small IT department for whom I work for part time is not IBM, yet share some of the same issues. Like IBM we have users on Windows Mac and Linux. Like IBM we were not ready to update our users to Firefox4 before it was out of support. We have internal apps which have been developed by people who have left, and by contractors. Dotzler's answer of use IE, is impossible across our OS mix.
IBM's 500000 users are, to Asa, a fraction of a fraction of a %, but he's not just turning off IBM. Replicate it across many other businesses and it's harmful to Mozilla as a whole.
Chrome also follow this policy of upgrading everyone to the latest version, security updates, new features, UI changes all included. This was one of the reasons we didn't switch during the period before Firefox4 (when Firefox 3.6 lagged noticeably behind Chrome in speed). Now Firefox has an even shorter Eol, we might as well switch.
It's a shame there's no Open Source browser in the market for business use (even 12 months between release and EoL would do).
Firefox's market share is vulnerable at the moment, and I really don't think becoming more and more like Chrome will help them. As they remove the things they did differently to Chrome, why expect to compete against the heavily marketed alternative from Google.
Many of our non technical users were introduced to Firefox because we installed it on work machines. They often wish to have the same browser on home and work machines so use it there too. I don't think being so corporate hostile will help Mozilla retain share. Nor will building up bad will with those of us long term Mozilla supporters who are paid to support businesses.
Then Number it that way.
Just because Google puts out a major revision number every 2 months doesn't mean everyone should. In fact I'm getting really sick of every browser on earth copying Google Chrome. Minimalistic doesn't always mean Functional.
In Soviet Russia, Trojan exploits YOU!
That would be true if everything continued to work. But Firefox 5 broke quite a few extensions. In principle I agree that if things just continued to work, then it all comes down to a version number change, and Firefox 5 would be a security update for 4. However, if you also add to the mix that in the "enterprise" a typical user can't do much with their computer, so a simple auto update like this requires admin intervention and you have a real problem.
As the island of our knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance.
I have nothing but problems with IE8. I get the "Internet Explorer Has Stopped Working" several times per day . . . mostly when working in SharePoint!
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/pc_ie_intro
I have been through each option and none of them have solved the problem. I have had to switch between FF and Chrome to accomplish various tasks in SharePoint. Each have their own unique compatibility issues with SharePoint, but I can manage having to use differents tool for various tasks. I cannot manage random crashes while I have too many time pressures to get things done.
-rd
Not for me. It only understands Windows line feeds, so anything else I have is all on one line.
I am sure they will fix this eventually.
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AFAIK IE7's rendering engine do feels like a hack of the IE6 rendering engine. IE8 feels more like a rewrite, at least in terms of CSS. I can tell by similarities of bugs.
The fact that IE9 doesn't run on xp might be a bigger upgrade headache. At least FF5 runs on the commonest OS.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Changing version numbers were a way for me to avoid updates until I had a chance to see if they completely ruined the UI with major changes. Now instead of just updating I have to research to see if it's "just a security update" or an "oh my god WTF" change that has me fighting the UI configuration to get it back to what I want it to be.
Same thing goes for releasing websites as a developer. Now that I can't rely on version numbers, how am I going to break down support and compatibility?
What are they thinking? Do they WANT to piss everyone off, or do they have their heads up their asses? If they keep this up, MS will be perfectly right to point out that they have kept a sane versioning system, and that it is kind of a big deal.
It's probably going to aggravate your condition, but they did that deliberately for three reasons. First, it gives their server side frameworks a leg up on the competition because they have the secret map and you don't. Second, once their server side tools are adopted, they promote Microsoft browser because the to deliberately misserve other browsers. Third, it traps you in that once you have adopted either the server or browser side you have to take the other because migrating away is too painful.
The good news is it screwed them too. People who signed up for this theater of pain found themselves so locked in they couldn't even migrate away to the next version of any of OS, browser, or server side tools. There was no way forward at all - no migration path. This may have something to do with their recent discovery of W3C and HTML5. Given the history I hold little hope but that this embrace step will be followed by extend and extinguish steps as they revert to type.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
EMC needs to be force-closed if IE9 is installed. This is a issue that was first discovered in March. Is that a feature?
"History is the realm of the true lie." A.Szerb
I am the IT Manager of a mid-sized Health Care company of about 150 employees. I am currently preparing to switch all our users from using IE to FF (with IE Tab Extension for IE-Only sites/applications). Why? The feature-set of FF is far more standard and is MUCH MUCH faster for just about everything we need to do with our custom-built in-house and web-based business partner applications. For all our internal stuf, we will continue to test with IE to make sure it is as least marginally usable, but, we're not going to worry about the worthless performance of IE any longer. Trust me, it is not even a competition. FF and Chrome both are orders of magnitude faster in every way (actual use). You don't need a stopwatch to see it either. You just need to use it. The difference is DRAMATIC. Testing and deploying new version of FF every 3 months will be absolutely zero problem. Anyone who finds that challenging, should probably be in another profession.
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.