Get Rid of Internet Explorer - Browse Happy! 816
Matt writes "BrowseHappy not only tells us why IE is unsafe, but also provides "switcher" stories of people that stopped using IE and switched to a safer browser. This campaign is not so much against IE, but for the use of safer and more user-friendly browsers."
Preaching to the Choir (Score:4, Insightful)
please put all Firefox/Opera/Mozilla/etc stories below this line
____ _ _ _ ____________
but seriously you are preaching to the choir here, you think we (and our families/friends) dont know about Mozilla.org [mozilla.org] yet ?
Stick / Dead Horse..., (Score:1, Insightful)
Havent we talked about this enough allready?
YES IE SUXS!, and move on to mozilla, but the general public
A. Dont Care.
B. Not technically inclined enough to do it.
C. Think changing wont help any.
Dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
This campaign is not so much against IE, but for the use of safer and more user-friendly browsers.
So it's against IE.
Yeah.... right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, right. This is rhetoric nonsense. Of course it's "against IE", if it's for the use of a better browser. If you're making a case for something, it - at the very least - implies that the item it's comparing it to is inferior in some way. Yes, this is a case against IE.
Don't say foolish things like this just to seem like you're not partial. You are. There's nothing wrong with being partial, when your partiality is based off of sound logical reasoning.
Not too much real information there (Score:2, Insightful)
Am I the only person that thinks IE is ok? (Score:0, Insightful)
The anti-microsoftism here is tiring...
As with Linux, so with Mozilla. (Score:4, Insightful)
And I use Explorer because there are websites that don't render properly under anything else. Sure, it's bad design to create your website such that it only works under IE, but that's really not my concern; I just want the content and the pretty pictures.
My machine is secure. I'd sooner have an insecure browser than does what I need it to do than a secure browser than doesn't.
IE is too often required (Score:5, Insightful)
For irony's sake, I'll list the biggest offender (in so many ways) in my life: *IBM*'s Lotus Notes.
Re:Deceptive Headline (Score:5, Insightful)
Which is why MS needs to take a few extra hours to write a stand alone app for windowsupdate instead of relying on IE and ActiveX. Then most people could leave IE installed and blocked by their firewall.
No women stories? (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm certainly not going to share this with any women as long as the switching stories only feature guys. This hopefully a) wasn't done on purpose and b) is going to be changed really soon.
IE on slashdot (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:WooHoo (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WooHoo (Score:1, Insightful)
If hackers find lots of security holes in Firefox, and the developers refuse to release a patch for 6 months, then fine... we'll have to switch again.
Re:As with Linux, so with Mozilla. (Score:5, Insightful)
If you're using an insecure browser, then your machine is not secure.
I don't know what websites you're using that don't render under Gecko properly, or refuse to acknowledge anything other than an MSIE user agent string. When I run into one of those sites*, I make a note to avoid it. If it's something "essential", like a government site, I either find a workaround, see if there is an offline alternative, and lacking that, complain.
* So far, I've only run into one government site that refused a Galeon user agent. I know it wasn't anything more than that, because changing the user agent string allowed me to access the site--signing up for Canadian employment insurance benefits, incidentally. Beyond that, I haven't run into any sites that don't render properly under Gecko. My bank's site has run fine since Mozilla still used M designations for its milestone releases.
IE Momentum (Score:5, Insightful)
I've managed to switch a few people to Firefox, and that's good. However, there's the frustration of knowing there will be people out there who will not switch, not even know what a "Browser" is, and will definitely not be going to a web site, downloading an executable, and running it to install Firefox. Too intimidating, they'd say. Now what?
We've given them sufficient reason, and enough encouragement. There will be a LOT of people out there who will not bother installing a browser that didn't come with their machine. Though they'll happily install a Bonzi Buddy or Comet Cursor. How do we handle that great majority?
I love the Firefox, don't get me wrong. I'd love to see more people using it instead of IE. However, like any good soldier that's been out in the battlefield long enough, a morale boost would be nice on occasion...or at least more words of wisdom.
Re:Am I the only person that thinks IE is ok? (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, well, its relatively easy to get a thing just working when every website is designed to cater to it.
Re:Mozilla is just as vulnerable. (Score:5, Insightful)
There was a /. article a few weeks ago about spoofing Firefox, which pointed to a demo. Sure enough, the script could turn off your title bar, status bar, etc. and looked quite real. Then the follow-ups pointed out where in the config to change things so that the spoof wouldn't work properly. Examples, proof, showing us instead of just claiming it's so.
Also, a hardware firewall will almost never protect you from a web-based trojan; you *requested* the data from the server to your PC, and any hardware firewall (not an IDS) that blocks that is failing to do its job.
Nothing is 100% fool-proof. You know the line: "if you make it fool-proof, the world will build a better fool."
-paul
Re:Am I the only person that thinks IE is ok? (Score:5, Insightful)
They won't release the names of the major sites that have been hacked so when you visit them with IE, you're screwed. Man, that's annoying. Just how they won't tell you who is selling contaminated beef when Mad Cow was found. If there's a problem, out with the info.
Most slashdotters are anti-M$ as long as M$ are being jerks. IE, and most of M$, is an easy target, but how many people here have an Xbox? MS$ is a double-edged sword. Run with the sword idea.
Re:Mozilla is just as vulnerable. (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox can't show browser windows without a caption. (unless you're running with Java enabled), and in that case it will show a Java frame. (which can't do much harm, and is possible in any java-supporting browser)
Firefox can't install anything other than XPI (which you need to give explicit permissions for).
Spyware/Adware already on your PC won't be magically removed by switching to another browser.
Your post sounds honest, but implausible.
Re:Yeah.... right. (Score:5, Insightful)
Brushing your teeth is a fight against tooth decay, not denture companies.
Home insulation is a fight against cold, not furnace companies.
Quitting smoking is a fight against disease, not tobacco farmers.
Using a safe browser is a fight against assholes who write viruses, not IE.
Etc, etc.
Common misconception (Score:5, Insightful)
It doesn't matter if the page is
The reason why many apps require Internet Explorer might be an Active X control. Active X controls run on the browser, on the client, and only in IE. Such controls are sometimes used to provide word procesing like text input capabilities in the browser, instead of plain boxes like the ones that slashdot uses to write comments.
No, you don't need IE to view
Yes, your programers were dumb enough to use non standard / non compliant client side coding or scripting.
Cheers
Adolfo
Re:Yeah.... right. (Score:5, Insightful)
There are no safe browsers (yet?), just ones that haven't been picked on much.
Re:IE Momentum (Score:5, Insightful)
I think you answered your own question. What we really need is an installer for mozilla that functions exactly like the installers for bonzi buddy, comet cursor and their ilk. "Do you want to install Mozilla Firefox and set it as your default browser? Yes, No". The next time these users click on "The Internet" from their start menu, they'll get Firefox instead of IE, and given a decent default theme, would probably never notice the difference. If it's good enough for spy ware, why not for an alternative browser?
While I don't ever see such a thing ever being written, it would be very interesting to see how quickly it would boost adoption of Mozilla.
Re:Not so much switch... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why would this be a good thing? Imagine the nightmares web page designers would have to go through if they had to support two completely different non-standards-compliant browsers. We'd need to use several different browsers on a day-to-day basis just to view all the pages correctly.
Now, if firefox could gain a 30% market share while remaining standards compliant, that would be something good because it would destroy Microsoft's attempts to corrupt web languages. If 30% of people used firefox (or any non-IE browser, for that matter), designers would no longer be able to get away with IE-only webpages. And isn't that preferable to having firefox-only pages in addition to the IE ones?
Re:I tried to... I really did! (Score:5, Insightful)
Thankfully, there is a "solution"... reducing the size of your cache to 5MB-10MB. While not spectacular for bandwidth savings and load time, at least this allows you to have a functional profile while maintaining some level of a browser cache.
Re:Not so much switch... (Score:2, Insightful)
FireFox is a branch of Mozilla, which descended from Netscape. You might remember some of their extensions such as Javascript, and plugins.
Re:Dangerous (Score:5, Insightful)
2) I am fairly sure that ActiveX security is SO broken that IE is not only unsafe but irreparably so.
Re:bad for marketing (Score:2, Insightful)
My mother used to work in an art supply store. The owners would only order two of one certain pen per month. My mother would sell them with a couple of hours after they arrived and then turn several people a day away for the rest of the month.
When she went to the owners to ask them to order more they refused. You see, they checked their records and found that they only sold two per month.
KFG
Microsoft is indeed quite dangerous. (Score:5, Insightful)
However, your post is wrong in a much more profound way--arguing from perfection. Arguing from perfection is a form of a false dichotomy. This scheme presents two alternatives: perfection, and what the speaker wishes to railroad you into. Since perfection is never really available in anything, the only remaining option is the one the speaker wants to railroad you into.
No network program of the complexity you'll commonly use (like a web browser, chat client, or e-mail client) is "totally safe". That frame is a useless one with which to understand the problem. Far better to analyze it from the frame of providing everyone the freedom to share and modify the program so people can find problems, fix them (or make enhancements), and then help the rest of us by sharing their improved version of the program. This frame gives a realistic means to weigh which programs can be genuinely useful and which can be shown to be consistently bad.
Microsoft (being a corporation) has a profit motive behind working on MSIE. Thus once they have achieved market dominance there is little interest in improving the program further. Only competition will pressure them to improve the program, and then it will only be improved along lines that not determined by the users of the program. Users get no opportunity to determine what is valuable for the next release because corporations are not democratically run organizations and the software is not free for sharing and modification. This doesn't just apply to Microsoft, it applies to any other proprietary software. But we happen to be talking about this situation in the context of how Microsoft fails to address reasonable safety when web browsing.
Re:Yeah.... right. (Score:2, Insightful)
If we had, say, three browsers each eating up a third of the market, and suggested a new one, we wouldn't be bashing anyone, but somehow, since MS has a monopoly, we suddenly become biased for suggesting alternatives?
Re:Stick / Dead Horse..., (Score:5, Insightful)
According to Marketing Warfare (ISBN: 0070527261, Al Ries and Jack Trout), maketing is a war fought on the mental battleground.
Not, lets consider your computer locks up. You will simply reboot it, and think this is something normal. Right ? Even if you don't, most people do.
And there is where Microsoft really shows its maketing domination. It is not that users don't get burned by its products. They simply think those are normal things in computing. When I tell someone that one of my computers (running a firewall, and so I never turns it off) has a 2 years uptime, they think I'm lying. That my workstation was running for 7 months without a single reboot. After that, I had to turn it off cause I was replacing the video card.
That is the real problem, isn't it ? It is not that the Internet Explorer uses are getting burned (or not). It is that they don't see that as burning. Their mindset if so frozen into the Microsoft partern that they think those are normal things, and they even think about the possibility that it can be different. They don't see that a browser crashing should not take the OS down with it. That just by accessing a homepage it should not be possibly to automaticaly install a program on his computer.
Having a better browser will never make Firefox/Mozilla/Opera/Galeon/Konqueror/Safari/Net
Anyone developing opensource software, most expecially softwares that are alternative versions well entrenched on the market, should read the book I mentioned. Expecially the part about attacking an entrenched enemy.
So, I don't agree that "a lot of windows users out there haven't been burned". The whole point is that they don't see that they are getting burned, no matter what happened. Most of them don't care even when they do get burned, a situation even worst than you described.
I don't like things that are different! (Score:5, Insightful)
Once our IT dept sent out the warning and urged everyone to use Mozilla for regular browsing I installed it on two of my three co-workers PC's (the third is dating our SysAdmin so it's his job to get her to switch) and offered to help them with anything having to do with Moz. The only thing they've asked me to do is uninstall it (which I won't do.) Whenever they use it they gripe about how it looks (well mostly about how they don't like the "godzilla" head) say it loads slowly and they don't have time to learn how to use it. Yet they still whine about pop-up ads, spyware etc... Whenever they start griping I chime in with "Ya know that's not a problem in Mozilla!" Their replies are always the same "We don't like that godzilla thing, it's got an ugly head, har har."
I even made them an offer: For one week use Mozilla exclusivly and I'll always stop whatever I'm doing to help with you any question you have, be it how to install a plugin, how to use tabs, how to block ads etc... and if you still don't like it better than IE I'll remove from your system. But you have to use it and take the time to learn it before I'll take your complaints about how it 'sucks' seriously.
The response I've gotten when the topic comes is that they stop bitching about IE and go back to closing pop-ups. My boss actually said to me "I don't like learning new things"
These are the type of people that will never, ever switch. They know enough to know that Mozilla and IE are different programs and they just refuse to give an alternative to what they already know any serious consideration. I fear these represent the vast majority of IE users.
Oh and the company I work for? We provide online, webbased training and learning management services to corporations, mostly for OSHA type regs and similar subjects that are well suited to the CBT format. About 80% of the company (those with technical or content creation roles) uses Mozilla or Firefox for most of their general browsing but the non-geek staff stubbornly use IE. If we can't convince our holdouts to switch, without forcing the issue by management fiat, I don't know that they ever will. *sigh*
[1] Not to be confused with customer service, we dont' deal with end users, we work at the corporate level.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:2, Insightful)
white guys! (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:IE Momentum (Score:3, Insightful)
The best method is to just be patient and nice. Explain to these people why to switch, but do it like a large company does. For example: Tell them hackers will have a harder time getting their credit information. Tell them that they won't have to worry about spyware installing itself and slowing their computers down.
Use the same crappy lines you see the big guys using, because they work.
bank on IE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Stick / Dead Horse..., (Score:3, Insightful)
In a word, no.
The horse is dead when the worms stop coming.
The current main page of Slashdot is a good place to find out what's happening now. And not just for regulars. I don't mind dupes. I read
Firefox needs just a couple more things... (Score:5, Insightful)
If Firefox was available (from mozilla.org) in a Windows installer (.MSI) format and settings could be made using policies, you'd see a rapid increase in corporate desktops moving to Firefox.
Windows admins want to be able to install Firefox on ALL their desktops, with extensions pre-installed and the settings (optionally) controlled via system policies.
This should be goal #1 for 1.1 of Firefox and Thunderchicken. The brower is great. Now lets banish IE from the corporate Windows desktop. (Then the migrate to Linux will be that much easier)
Am I the only person who can't wait 15 hours? (Score:2, Insightful)
Windows XP Service Pack 2 would take 15 hours or more to download on dial-up Internet access. During those 15 hours, your computer is vulnerable. Not everybody can afford the $800/mo T1 line that is the only broadband available in areas not serviced by cable or DSL. Is SP2 available from Microsoft on CD-ROM yet?
And what about those users who cannot upgrade to Windows XP yet, those who are still on Windows 98se or Windows 2000?
Re:Not so much switch... (Score:3, Insightful)
Until Microsoft quits cramming the whole damn browser into the HTML control so they can claim that IE is essential to the system (it wouldn't be, if they split the relatively safe 'html rendering' part from the 'internet access' and 'scary plugins and active content' parts), I don't care what they do with IE, it's a typhoid mary by design.
Re:I tried to... I really did! (Score:2, Insightful)
You're thinking about this the wrong way. Writers of open source software have their own agendas and sets of priorities, as does Bill Gates. In either case these agendas may or may not coincide with your particular wants and needs. The only way to be sure that your particular wants and needs are being met is to (a) code it yourself, (b) pay someone else to code it for you, or (c) suggest it as a feature and hope that someone else decides to code it because they like it. If you decide to go down this path, then Mozilla is your obvious choice (simply because IE is not an option).
If that kind of development work is not realistically possible for you (which it probably isn't -- not many have the required time and/or money), then you just have to make an informed choice between your available options: do you want the bundle of idiosyncrasies that is Mozilla, or the on-going security circus that is IE? It's entirely your call. Of course, if you have any complaints about your product, you should address them to Microsoft, since that's the product you're paying for. (Note: immediately prior suggestion exists purely to highlight the futility of said action.)
Re:WooHoo (Score:4, Insightful)
While yes hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer, let's not forget that holes would likely be found in Firefox et all as well, if the hackers decide to start concentrate on these other browsers once they have a large enough market share.
There is one gaping security hole, ahem, feature, that only IE has: ActiveX. Firefox will never have a vulnerability involving ActiveX or other proprietary Microsoft technologies because those technologies are proprietary and exclusive to IE. That is not to say that Firefox and other browsers are immune to security vulnerabilities, just that they have an inherent advantage.
Re:Yeah.... right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Any suggestion for the use of non-MS software is "Anti-Microsoft".
Any realistic evaluation of various software is "Anti-Microsoft". (That excluded funded by Microsoft studies)
Any attempts by users to regain their computers from Microsoft must be "Anti-Microsoft".
The joys of a monopoly. Whatever the problems with current computers, blame it on Microsoft. Legitimately. Microsoft is the only one really in a position to do anything about it.
Re:Mod Parent Up. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:bank on IE (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Student computer lab admin (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Mozilla is just as vulnerable. (Score:3, Insightful)
I wish I knew who said that. Maybe I will look it up on Google some day.
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:5, Insightful)
I am not sure I agree with these sort of tactics. I tend to think that if you respect the intelligence of the customer and help them to learn and understand, then they will be more likely to return that respect. Also occasionally a few customers of mine require IE to access certian sites (most notably, insurance agents need to access Safeco). Hiding this from them does not good and actually can create some harm...
But if it works for you, great, I will find it easier to compete with you in the long run if our paths ever meet
Re:WooHoo (Score:1, Insightful)
That's the difference. You can chose what to enable, and what to not enable, based on what you need, or what potential risks you wish to mitigate. PHP has had a number of problems, for example. So if you have no need for it, don't load it, and don't even install it.
The same can't alway be said about IIS.
Re:WooHoo (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:WooHoo (Score:4, Insightful)
That said, lets think about this practically for a minute. There are very few applications other than Mozilla Firefox, and a few niche applications for Linux I can think of that depend on the same gecko run time that Mozilla does in the same installation. So assuming a hacker could get in and screw up the Gecko run time or XPCom, how much damage could they really do? They could screw up the application framework, for a single user... possibly the whole system if the user is logged in as root or administrator, but it's not going to take down say... the Window manager your OS uses.
In contrast Internet Explorer uses components that are integrated so tightly with Windows and the application tools it uses, that if you screw those up bad enough, you can hobble, disable, or even kill the computer system the exploit is deployed in.
I think our friends at Microsoft could learn a thing or two from the way Mozilla is constructed, and it seems like they are from the new registry configuration scheme they've proposed for Longhorn. I don't know if it will make IE or Windows more secure, but it will keep guys like me working for many years to come.
Re:Yeah.... right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Tell us all, have you ever actually kissed a woman?
Re:Yeah.... right. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:1, Insightful)
If I found that you'd switched my icons, I'd laugh, I'd switch them back, then I'd call your boss and try to have you fired--or I'd never hire you again. How's your rehire rate?
A