PC Magazine Reviews Firefox, Opera

prostoalex writes "PC Magazine reviews Mozilla Firefox 0.9.1 and Opera 7.51, noting: 'Security concerns aren't the only reason to seek an alternative [to Internet Explorer]. IE's slow rendering engine and dearth of privacy features may plant the thought in some iconoclastic minds that it may not be the best browser for everyone.' 4 stars for Firefox and 3.5 for Opera, so looks like a Firefox win, although the editors do point out FF's troubles with DHTML as well as Opera issues with JavaScript."

IE User

[enforcer999]

Out of habit and ignorance, I have used IE for years. I think it is time to make the change to Firefox. Thanks for the article.

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

Re:What about IE?

[andyk62]

They Gave IE 4 Stare, but was choosen Editors Pick. Go and figure! Andy

Re:IE User

[Anonymous Coward]

As if the 5 /. headlines a day of pure Firefox lovin' couldn't change your mind.

Re:IE User

[Neil Blender]

Out of habit and ignorance, I have used IE for years

You have just spoke for a billion people.

Interesting perspective.

[digitalgimpus]

Interesting note here:

Default

installation doesn't include many functions; you have to download additional features via the Extensions Manager. Will not load ActiveX and VBScript; this prevents certain kinds of attacks, but also disables the normal functions of some sites.

Emphasis mine.

Now explain this? It's got boatloads more functionality (find as you type, tabbed browsing, popup blocker, livemarks [0.9+], etc etc.)... but it 'doesn't include many functions'.

Now how does IE rank? Please don't tell me feature rich. That's like calling is secure. :-D

Last Straw

[thung226]

Considering I'd give IE a 0.5/5.0, there's no debate. The point is to use either of these before you use IE. The failure to patch IE after the Russian hacking debacle was the last straw. All users at my work are now on Firefox or Opera.

Also, I have a lot of "non-techie" friends. You should see the amount of adware/spyware littered on these computers. It makes me sick, and it's all IE's fault (pop-up > get scared > *click* > install > forget > go back to "pop-up"... go to site > install under users' radar > repeat... I'm sick of it). IE sucks.

Install it for people

[blackmonday]

I install Firefox for everyone I help with PC's, and no one has ever complained or needed additional help to use it. I had one person tell me they need their old bookmarks, but I showed them where you can see IE's imported bookmarks in the menu.

I'm sure some of you already do this, but for those that don't, next time you're running ad-aware for your non-techie friends, install Firefox, show them the desktop shortcut, and tell them to click on that one for their Internet. They'll thank you for it when they stop getting pop ups and strange home pages and toolbars.

Re:Ingrained attitudes

[gid13]

Yeah even the extensions thing is beautiful. Anyone know why Winamp is still so popular? Plugins. If you're willing to put a little searching time in, you can make it work exactly how you want it to, no matter how picky you are. Extensions are THE way to go if you want to browse the web on YOUR terms rather than MS's.

For reference, I highly recommend the following extensions: Adblock, Flashblock, Googlebar, Context Search, Mycroft (pick and choose these though), All-in-one Gestures, and Tabbrowser Extensions. Wonderful stuff.

Re:Legitimate Browser Questions

[angle_slam]

1) Resources. I'm running Windows XP and from what I understand, there is no way I can remove Internet Explorer from my computer. Call me a space hog, but I don't like having un-used aps on my computer. I figure better to have an inferior browser on my computer, a little extra space, and less confusion then to load both of them. Can anyone solve that problem?

In the days of 256+ MB RAM and 40+ GB HD space, having an extra 10 MB app doesn't hurt you. I have both Firefox (0.8 because I can't get TabBrowser Extensions to work on 0.9) and IE on my work computer, for the increasingly rare site that requires IE to work.

Re:Alright Mozilla

[DAldredge]

It ain't FUD if its true.

PC magazine seems to be getting less funding by MS

[jellomizer]

I guess PC magazine has loss some funding from Microsoft. They seem be being slightly less "Window Is the Best" in their views. And starting to see that there are alternatives and they can be just as good.

Re:User-Agent stats?

[JollyGreenLlama]

I would move that a diagnosis of IE vs. Mozilla on a site like Slashdot might not be the best test of marketshare. Many people access Slashdot from the office, where they are more likely to use IE because it is part of the base software package. Many workplaces, like mine, have rules against downloading and running software other than what has been installed on the system by the sysadmin.

Re:User-Agent stats?

[Goyuix]

I doubt this is the case - I would venture to say those that are smart enough to change the User Agent string appropriately, are also smart enough to set it back when not needed so web stats are collected properly. Particularly with the explosive growth seen over the last few days/weeks - there are a lot of people using it now that I am sure don't have a clue how to change the user agent string.

Not to mention Sun's Java plugin complains to no end that Firefox initialized it but the User Agent is set to IE... that reminder keeps me honest as well.

from one of the recent switchers!

[Anonymous Coward]

after the last ie bug i switched to mozilla

i am very happy with it.

everyting works fine. I have also gone over to friends house and installed it.

i just change the location of the old ie icon to the
new mozilla and no one can tell the difference.

thankyou mozilla. you have just made a friend for life! now if i only could figure out hot to have the bookmarks open every time i start the browser!

Re:Mozilla, Opera and Firefox...

[D4Vr4nt]

The brutal part about IE being part of the OS is that people seem to be retarded about opening/closing their web browser.

I've heard that Moz loads too slow all the time... Waaaaa.. It's not as fast as IE.

Why don't people just realize that once you open your web browser you should just leave it open?! Why are you even on your computer? :P

Anyways.. back to my point. People will keep using IE simply because it's there, and the convience of being one of the fastest loading applications in Windows (oh wait.. I forgot about Calc.exe).

Oh.. And most people can't wrap their heads around tabbed browsing (or see the point of it). But tell them it blocks popups then they get excited.

There is no such thing as DHTML!

[Christianfreak]

DHTML is HTML with Javascript. Its just a buzz word, why do these PC magazines keep touting it as the latest and greatest thing???

The browser isn't perfect, however. Firefox does not render nonstandard DHTML properly, (emphasis mine).

Hello!! You said it yourselves! NONSTANDARD. Its websites that aren't perfect, not the browser. *head explodes*

Firefox and DHTML

[Mustang Matt]

Firefox doesn't have troubles with DHTML...

"Firefox does not render nonstandard DHTML properly, nor does the Mozilla Organization have any intention of releasing a browser that does."

Non-standard DHTML isn't really DHTML is it?

Re:Alright Mozilla

[Schwartzboy]

Well, I've never read FUD in a context other than the speculation and half-truths that you mention, but taken literally, I've always been told that it means "Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt". There may in fact be Fear, Uncertainty, and Doubt surrounding Internet Explorer and a great many other Microsoft-related things, but they're based on a great deal more evidence than we usually think of when we say FUD. Maybe "legit-i-FUD" would be better? "Factual FUD"?

Re:Mozilla, Opera and Firefox...

[Phiu-x]

"If you use WinXP or 2003 open the process manager and set the firefox/opera process to realtime, might do the trick."

Nice, if you accept the fact that the process manageer does not remember these settings once you close the instance of the program or when you reboot. Useless IMO.

And BTW, about slower loading time for FireFox:

Just keep it open, that is why they put tabbed based browsing in so you don't have to close your browser each time.

I don't know about other people, but at work, I rarely close my browser once I fired it up for the first time in the morning. Is the 1/100's seconds more that it takes to open vs IE is really that noticable? I prefer a more secure browser anyways.

Re:Alright Mozilla

[Ender Ryan]

You make no sense at all. If it's true that it's horribly insecure, then the fact that other organizations are recommending using something other than IE is not FUD, it is a recommendation based on facts. That the facts are perhaps scaring people into switching only means that people want more security than MS is currently providing.

Say what?!

[khendron]

The browser isn't perfect, however. Firefox does not render nonstandard DHTML properly...

So it is bad that the browser does not render bad source correctly?

Granted, the article does go on to mention that this is not Firefox's fault, but they way it is cast as a problem really rubs the wrong way.

Re:Last Straw

[thung226]

True, though I'm pretty sure 99.9% of the population doesn't like random pop ups flying all over their screen. Opera and Mozilla have had a pop up blocker built in for years. Why hasn't IE followed suit? (rhetorical... please don't answer that... )

Pop ups have been a huge problem for users for YEARS and IE has NEVER addressed the issue... that's bad software development.

Re:Interesting perspective.

[sfjoe]

Now explain this? It's got boatloads more functionality (find as you type, tabbed browsing, popup blocker, livemarks [0.9+], etc etc.)... but it 'doesn't include many functions'.

PC Magazine is really just a Windows mouthpiece. They have to pull their punches. You didn't think they'd put all that Microsoft ad revenue at risk did you?

Re:Alright Mozilla

[malfunct]

I am uncertain that IE Developers are competent programmers.

I'll bite, I can guarantee that some number of Mozilla developers are not competent programmers given the number of possible contributors to the project.

That said, I think MS realizes it has a problem now and is dealing with it, unfortunately it will take a year or two for it to really be dealt with. Mozilla knew (I hope and assume here) there was a problem right from the start and took steps to mitigate a lot of the problems that IE is plagued with (and netscape would probably have been plauged with before the complete rewrite of code). Its a new style vs old style mentality. Many applications (OSS as well as proprietary commercial) from the early to mid 90's are plauged with the type of problems that IE has. The problem is that MS rested on its laurels instead of continuing to push IE forward and improve it. They also were under the highly misguided impression that people didn't really care about security and weren't willing to pay for it. Hopefully the truth has come home to roost and we will see better products out of redmond.

Re:Does MS really care anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

After noticing that people generally hated web user interfaces, Microsoft started banking on network-distributed fat clients using XAML driving the sales of Longhorn. They deliberately didn't fully implement CSS, DHTML and XHTML because the less featureful web apps are in general, the more demand there will be for XAML applications (which btw, can only be consumed on a Windows machine).

Microsoft did put the IE features team back together last month as a response to the growing threat of Mozilla - I think they made a critical error in judgement and are now going to have to play catch up to Mozilla until Longhorn comes out. More than that, Microsoft has already started to reevaluate the selling power XAML will have because whether Mozilla beats IE in the next two-three years or vice versa, more sites will capitalize on new browser technology to deliver richer UIs that reduce the need for technologies like XAML.

Now if Mozilla just gets its act together and gets a strong managed framework backend for XUL....

Re:Alright Mozilla

[Mysticalfruit]

Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt. That pretty much sums up my parents experience of the Internet while using IE.

Anything that would keep them from calling me frantically wondering why their web browser now goes to some variation of cool web search sounds great.

Microsoft has dug IE this shithole by making the browser too much a part of the operating system, trying to get as much lock in as possible. Now they get to reap the fruits of their labors and lay face down in it.

Re:Opera... No Gmail for Opera.

[guidryp]

I agree. I am an Opera user since way back. It is still my main browser but I use Firefox extensively. Mainly because of Operas poor javascript implementation.

I can't read my Gmail with Opera, My online banking doesnt' work with Opera. I use add suported because if I need a second browser I am not paying for the first.

Fix that (or ignore that) and it is by far the best browser IMO. This is from someone typing on Firefox right now.

Opera even with all features integrated is leaner and faster. None of the features collide, which is a problem I have with some firefox extensions (to try and get Opera functionality).

Opera addiction. Opera seems to be the only browser with true page caching. Hit back 4 times as fast as you can and instantly you will be back 4 pages. No load times and seemingly no render times. It is totally cached. This is like browsing on JOLT. Once you get hooked on the speed it is hard to go back.

To me going to the slower browsers is like going from DSL to dialup. I need my speed.

Re:Alright Mozilla

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Here's a funny snippet of their Firefox review:

Con: Will not load ActiveX and VBScript

This should be under Pros, ActiveX is good for one purpose -- Windows Update. And I've never even heard of an real web site that used VBScript. Shall we detract points for not supporting every asinine scripting language ever invented?

Out of the frying pan...

[Hobophile]

It's great to see Firefox gaining momentum among regular computer users, but I can't help but feel that it won't fare much better, security wise.

We've already seen significant security holes in Firefox, and this is with a negligible market share. Once it gets targetted directly, exploits may be just as common as they currently are with Internet Explorer.

And if that happens, where is the security update infrastructure to ensure everyone gets patched? Microsoft won't integrate Firefox into Automatic Updates. Sure, mailing lists and /. will carry the news of new Firefox security flaws, but will the average user see those announcements?

The problem with telling users to switch to Firefox for security reasons is that it's usually sold as a permanent fix to the problem, when in all honesty it never will be.

But the user, having been told that "Firefox is secure", probably won't bother checking the Mozilla site on a regular basis, if ever. Automatic update notification is supposed to be coming in the future, but that does little for anyone who's installed Firefox in the past couple of weeks and doesn't plan to touch it again.

Re:Opera...

[NanoGator]

I really think Opera's notes feature is going to take over bookmarks. If I hightlight your post here, right click, and hit 'copy to note', then a note is placed into the notes tab which is similar to bookmarks. It shows me the first line of the post, and if I click it, a small window appears showing the entire set of data I've copied to the note. If I double click on it, a window opens up to your comment on Slashdot. I've tossed bookmarks aside in favor of this. I'd rather the note be a quick summary of why I thought it was interesting, as opposed to the title of the page.

Re:Say what?!

[yeremein]

No kidding. The fact that Firefox doesn't copy Internet Explorer's bugs can hardly be considered a flaw in Firefox.

In other news, Sun's Java SDK isn't perfect, because it doesn't compile J# code properly. But we're not going to fault Internet Explorer for not rendering CSS1 and PNG files properly; nobody uses those anyway.

Re:Legitimate Browser Questions

[Seekerofknowledge]

1) Resources. I'm running Windows XP and from what I understand, there is no way I can remove Internet Explorer from my computer. Call me a space hog, but I don't like having un-used aps on my computer. I figure better to have an inferior browser on my computer, a little extra space, and less confusion then to load both of them. Can anyone solve that problem?

Yes, get your head out of your ass. Would you remove the seatbelts from your car to have "less confusion", or "a little extra space" ??

It's 2004, not 1994. A few megs isn't even worth thinking about on a desktop computer. IE trojans and exploits are real. Deal with it.

Re:Alright Mozilla

[Aaden42]

Where's the Uncertainty and Doubt?

IE is insecure. It has multiple unpatched known security issues. It's probably got lots of UNKNOWN issues too (so there's some U & D for you), but there are more than enough known problems to instill plenty of Fear.

Re:Alright Mozilla

[gmack]

They are half right.. I do care about security but I am NOT willing to pay for it.

It had better come shipped secure and in the case it's not I had better get a free fix for it.

Software vendors who fail to comply with those requirements are relegated to as few tasks as possible at my customer sites.

Re:Opera...

[Asprin]

My favorite Opera feature is the page view zoom, especially for printing. Unlike Mozilla's zoom feature, which only scales the text, Opera scales the whole page including the images, so the layout and placement look very much the same, only bigger/smaller as requested. It wouldn't surprise me if Opera's zoom violates a few standards here and there, but I wish every browser did it like that. Very handy, indeed.

Grow Up

[krmt]

Yeah, everybody's ignorant because they don't know of an obscure browser they weren't looking for because IE's doing its job satisfactorally for them.

Ignorance is not neccessarily meant to be taken as an insult. Simply not knowing something is not so bad a thing. It's definitely not the same as being called stupid. Yes, these people are ignorant because they don't know about Mozilla. Whether or not this is an insult is another matter.

I think you're ignorant because you don't know what normal mapping is, even though all of use 3D artists out there consider that beginner's knowledge.

I'm sure every single 3D artist out there uses a web browser, but how many web browser users are 3D artists? Your analogy is crap. It's more like driving a car and not knowing that there are a number of models out there to choose from. I admit my ignorance in the realm of 3D modeling, but I'm also not insulted by this in the slightest.

Re:my only problems with firefox

[hackstraw]

some call the glass half empty, some call it half full. some say that a non-ie browser not working on a website is due to the browser, some say its at the hands of the website developers.

Re:Alright Mozilla

[MadHobbit]

I don't use IE, but I've helped several friends and relatives that do, and have been bitten by these bugs. The relatively benign ones added porn sites to the bookmarks, but others have installed keystroke loggers, back doors, and 900-number dialers, and hijacked the start page and search functionality.

If your question is "Are these bugs actually important, or just hype?" the answer is that they're real problems that really affect real, everyday users.

I suspect that anyone that actually -works- in PC repair or tech support can back me up on this.

Re:Does this mean...

[Ruediger]

"...it seemed to work as well as in windows." I am not sure if this is good or bad

Re:Does MS really care anymore?

[Anonymous Coward]

XAML is just XML markup, but each of the elements behind it represent a .NET object. As such, XAML is a sickly powerful language.

The problem lies in the fact that the GUI layer of .NET is part of the 5% that Microsoft didn't release to the ECMA standards body. 95% of Mono is protected from MS ever saying "We're exercising our patent, you can no longer use this" because of the waiver they put into place when they standardized the CLR, but System.Forms and Avalon are in the slim part they're maintaining IP control of. So they could release Longhorn and then sue Novell to remove XAML support from non-Win32 implementations of Mono.

Re:Ingrained attitudes

[mikeswi]

Does PC Mag not "fact check" their articles? Something as simple as a google search would have shown them that ActiveX is an optional plug-in. In my results for firefox activex, the site of the person who develops the plugin is listed 2nd among 47,000 hits. If they have a burning desire to use ActiveX, they can do so.

That said, I would never recommend that anyone use that plugin. That's like being rescued from a burning building and setting fire to the ambulance on your way to the hospital.

Re:Legitimate Browser Questions

[chill]

SPA w/NTLM was incorporated into Thunderbird at v0.5. I also believe it is in Mozilla.

As far as #1 -- you've probably gotten lots of answers on that. :-) The only real answer is if you get to the point where an extra 50 Mb is needed, then worry about it. And...if you are in that much of a bind for 50 Mb, you've got bigger problems than deleting a browser.

-Charles

The editors don't point problem of FF with DHTML!

[Anonymous Coward]

The browser isn't perfect, however. Firefox does not render nonstandard DHTML properly, nor does the Mozilla Organization have any intention of releasing a browser that does.

The problem is with broken sites. And I think (and I'm not alone) it is now time to say f... you to sites that does not respect standards.

Opera is the fastest and smallest

[rd_syringe]

Firefox and Mozilla love to hog up my memory. Again, I have to ask, why do they re-implement all their own widgets? It's completely insane. It's just a browser.

Opera is speedy, it renders Slashdot correctly (something Mozilla and Firefox still can't do), and it doesn't suck up all my memory just because some people wanted to reinvent the wheel. And all of Opera's best featurs have been ripped off and hailed as Mozilla innovations. Tabbed browsing? Mouse gestures? Pop-up blocking? It was all Opera first.

Re:Firefox and DHTML

[nine-times]

In all fairness, you should probably post a larger quote to put that statement in context:

'Firefox does not render nonstandard DHTML properly, nor does the Mozilla Organization have any intention of releasing a browser that does. While this isn't really Firefox's fault--it's because some sites don't follow W3C standards--the reality is that you may not be able to view everything on the Web with Firefox. That said, all of the pages that we regularly access loaded rapidly and accurately.'

They probably could have formulated the sentence in a better way, so as to accentuate that this a problem with IE failing to cohere to standards and developers doing a poor job. I would probably question what it would mean to "render nonstandard DHTML properly". Not being standardized specifically means there isn't an agreed 'proper' way of rendering it. Do they mean to render DHTML the way IE does, and, if so, why are they insisting that the way IE renders things is the "proper" way?

However, the statement (in general) isn't innacurate, or even very misleading: Mozilla doesn't render nonstandard DHTML the way IE does (let's leave out the 'properly'), and Mozilla doesn't really intend to have their browser display things in non-standard ways. Kudos for the Mozilla Foundation for supporting standards. Unfortunately, this does mean that some pages that IE users will see how the developer intended will not render as well, or may not work, in Firefox. However, most pages will render quite well.

So that statement isn't what bothers me. What bothered me far more were some earlier statements in the article, like implying that Firefox was for people who "merely want to browse the Web quickly without any bells and whistles". It seems to imply that Firefox is somehow lacking, and people who want a full-fledged browser should look elsewhere. The truth is, without extentions, Firefox is more feature-rich than IE. With extentions, it's pretty terrific. Or in the main article:

'IE's slow rendering engine and dearth of privacy features may plant the thought in some iconoclastic minds that it may not be the best browser for everyone.'

'Iconoclastic'? 'Iconoclastic' usually connotes unnecessarily destructive tendancies or even blasphamy. Is the writer was trying to be witty or something? Either way, it's a very odd word choice.

Interesting points...

[Schwartzboy]

I won't speak to people getting excited over a 1% drop in IE usage, because that just seems silly to me, but taking each of those FUD-sounding statements in turn I came up with the following:

"IE is insecure because of ActiveX"
According to Microsoft [microsoft.com],"An ActiveX control can be an extremely insecure way to provide a feature...the control may be vulnerable to attack because any Web application on the Internet can repurpose it, that is, use the control for its own ends whether sincere or malicious.". There are numerous other sources for the "ActiveX makes IE insecure" opinion, but if I were making a case for it I'd start with something directly from the company responsible for IE. To be fair, the article goes on to discuss what you can do as a developer to make your own ActiveX components secure, but I refer back to the first sentence and think about the old adage concerning chains and their weakest links...

"Microsoft has said they will never support CSS2"
Again, according to Microsoft [microsoft.com],"Stricter parsing is more consistent with the standards promulgated by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C)--the CSS, Level 1 (CSS1) and CSS, Level 2 (CSS2) specifications.". This seems to imply that IE does, in fact, support CSS2, but if a dissenting opinion can be backed up with proof (i.e.- "insert this CSS2 compliant stuff into a simple HTML page and watch IE 6 vomit on it") I'd sooner believe that than the MS site. I'm just lazy and attempting to address each point using only Microsoft-approved information...so on this point, at least, I have to admit that it's FUD according to what MS would have you believe.

"IE runs faster than Mozilla because it's integrated in the kernel"
Again, Microsoft [microsoft.com] has an archived news story that says, among other things, "DOJ's Request for New Court Order Shows that Internet Explorer is an Integrated Feature of Windows". Granted, this is from 1997 and refers to Win95/IE 3.0, but I'm lazy and couldn't find anything more current WRT IE's integrated/nonintegrated status. Given the assumption that IE's relationship to the OS has remained the same, I think it's reasonable to suggest that an application that's part of the OS will run faster than one that isn't.

So, through some very cursory research, it would appear that there is some factual basis for at least two of those three allegations according to sources at the organization that is the target of the supposed FUD.

And so, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, if Chewbacca does not make sense...

Your Analogy Is Still Crap

[krmt]

However, it is the general opinion here that people that use IE are stupid. You can't honestly tell me you think that the post I replied to meant that in a nice way.

I agree that the general opinion is that IE users are stupid (and it's the stupid people who hold that opinion) but what surprised me is that I really don't think the post you replied to was meant in a bad way. The grandparent post said that they used IE out of habit and ignorance, and the parent post to yours said that billions of people did the same. There wasn't any statement of condemnation in those posts.

Furthermore, the post you quoted simply stated that IE's horrible security record is demonstrable by evidence, also a fact without any real condemnation. None of these posts had any sort of condemnation of IE users, which is what you seem to have inferred. Perhaps you saw something in them that wasn't really there?

I agree. If my analogy had anything to do with 3D artists using web browsers, it would be crap.

It's still crap. Your analogy expects someone who doesn't use anything related to 3D modelling to know something about it, but this has no relation to the subject at hand. Instead, try asking someone for some basic knowledge about something they do use, like asking a 3D modeller using IE about Mozilla, since they obviously know and use a web browser. This actually applies, and as such it would make a better analogy than your own.

Re:Mozilla, Opera and Firefox...

[SimplexO]

I guess if you are going to make me fact-check, I might as well go all out. When I said IEHTML, I meant MSHTML -- thanks for not acronym nazi'ing me.

"According to Microsoft, IE 4 contains nine components that interoperate for full functionality (see Figure 2). These components include five DLLs--Wininet.dll, Urlmon.dll, Mshtml.dll, Shdocvw.dll, and Comctl32.dll--along with two executable files, Explorer.exe and Iexplore.exe, and a security and a Java virtual machine component. Both IE 3 and IE 4 require these DLLs to function and without them could not offer the displays we expect and the features we expect, nor access the Internet at all. Wininet.dll offers Internet services and capabilities, including HTTP and FTP access, modem dialing, and browser caching. Urlmon.dll lets developers treat URLs as if they were programmable objects and thus build them into their applications (Microsoft's own Office 97 does this). Mshtml.dll is the component that lets you view your folders as Web pages: Choose a disk drive from My Computer, for example, and what you see is Dynamic HTML, Microsoft-style, relying on this particular DLL. Shdocvw.dll (Shell Document View) lets developers build browser capabilities into software, while Comctl32.dll (Common Controls) provides low-level support for menus, toolbars, progress bars, and many other controls used across Windows applications." (emphasis mine)
Source. [wbaudisch.de]

As you can see, at least 2 of the 5 DLLs IE needs are in use by windows. Sure, this is IE4, but it was the first in-depth analysis I found.

Firefox's chrome is very thin layer on top of gecko, so that doesn't take long. Loading up the static GRE is what takes it the longest time. MSHTML.DLL (as well as comctl32.dll) is already in use by the windows shell before anyone double-clicks on "The Internet".

Re:Alright Mozilla

[FuzzyBad-Mofo]

Oh, I agree. There should be a clearly defined mechanism whose purpose is only to fetch, install, and manage updates. A web browser shouldn't be integrated so deeply into the OS, simply due to the havoc that can be caused by security issues. That said, of all the ActiveX applets on the web, there's only one I'd install, and that's for Windows Update. In fact, that's the only purpose I'd recommend for IE. (that, and downloading a better browser)

Re:What about IE?

[BollocksToThis]

Their "rating" is just a subjective opinion anyway. There's no info in either review to explain how the 3.5 and 4 ratings were given. In fact, there's no reference to the rating at all. I had a hard time even spotting the 3.5 and 4 scores that I read about, because it just looked like page decoration.

Basically, the scores are meaningless, and the reviews just say both are great browsers (which means I don't have to go trolling slashdot over how Opera should have scored better than Firefox).

Also, can someone tell me where this session management in Firefox is? I can't seem to see it. Is it brand new to 0.9.1, or is it an add-on I haven't installed?

Re:Alright Mozilla

[malfunct]

The other part of the security picture that I failed to mention is security vs ease of use. A very secure computer does very little and the general person in the past (heck even now) had little in the way of knowledge of how to work on a secure machine and less of why the security is important. Futhermore numerous poorly written apps failed to operate correctly without more privledge than necessary which gave MS the incorrect incentive to run everything with high privledge and open up all the doors. There will certainly be a large cost to MS in retraining XP users to handle the SP2 restrictions. Another big training period is going to come teaching people (after they teach 3rd party developers) how to handle living as non-admin. Again I think all of this stuff is in the works but it will take time. They really do act like they have to get security right this time. If past actions are anything to go by, once MS gets its mind set on something, it achieves it at all costs.