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."
Not so much switch... (Score:2, Interesting)
Cant switch... (Score:3, Interesting)
World is too IE centric.
So many vulnerabilities, so little time (Score:5, Interesting)
IE vulnerabilities are dime a dozen, that I could well be a thousandaire (just doesn't ring right, uh?) Latest one is the drag-n-drop exploit. In fact, it becomes a down outright security risk just to have the blue E icon available on your desktop and startup menu.
So, I deleted the blue E icon thereby forcing the end-user to get exposed to Mozilla and Firefox.
They too went home and switched as well.
Looks like the groundswell support is brewing here. I wonder if this is also true elsewhere.
Firefox baby! (Score:3, Interesting)
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I switched, and could not be happier... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Dangerous ?? (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Dangerous (Score:1, Interesting)
bad for marketing (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Am I the only person that thinks IE is ok? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Mozilla is just as vulnerable. (Score:4, Interesting)
I tried to... I really did! (Score:5, Interesting)
What is it with OSS software? They want to get noticed on the Windows platform, but the very people they need to have accept it (mainly corporations) can't/won't use it because of the hassles involved with profiles and/or user permissions.
Sometimes it's just minor problems - like Moz' inability to have things set up for multiple users on a box, but then there's OpenOffice.org. Not only is it a NIGHTMARE to install in a lab environment (although through reghacks, I got it to work well enough), but it also has problems with Terminal Server.
Now that said, there is progress being made. OOo 2.0 beta lets you install for multiple users and there have been discussions on Mozdev about my very issue with Mozilla.
I understand that 99% of the people who develop for these projects don't know/care about how a Windows shop operates, but if they want their programs to be used on this platform in larger environments, they'll have to start learning how to make them more friendly.
Re:IE Momentum (Score:4, Interesting)
It maybe wrong to do it without telling them but I would rather have them safe and secure than in the know.
Moderated informative, but no information? (Score:3, Interesting)
Maybe you could be a bit more specific?
At the very least, what the trojan was... then we could all look up how it installs itself, and maybe let the firefox guys know there's a vulnerability.
I imagine they'd also be interested if you could give them a page that's circumventing the popup blocker.
Re:Am I the only person that thinks IE is ok? (Score:2, Interesting)
This is because what you (and 95% of all web surfers) want in a web browser is different than what I and other IE critics want.
What I want is a web browser that's secure, stable, fast, free, and easy to develop web pages for. IE isn't secure and its manufacturer is not good about fixing bugs quickly, IE is free but requires the purchase of either Windows or MacOS, and it's a pain in the ass to develop for because it doesn't even support CSS1 properly, let alone CSS2. And just forget IE's DOM support. [caveat: actually IE for the Mac, although discontinued, is much more secure and provides much better standards support than IE for Windows, making it the second-worst browser]
So of those requirements, I'd imagine you like that it's stable (like all other modern web browsers), and it's fast (also like every other modern browser). It's likely that needing to buy a copy of Windows or MacOS isn't an issue for you, and that you don't care how hard it is to develop for, as long as the person paid to write your web pages can finally come up with a way for the web pages you browse to render properly in IE. So it's exactly as good as every other browser by your standards, except that IE came with your computer so you don't have to bother with that whole download and install process. And that's the clincher for most other IE users, too.
Normally two people having different priorities isn't a big conflict and we can just laugh about it over some beers. But your set of priorities is why I have to work four times as hard to develop a simple web site (code the site using standards, then sniff for IE and throw it different styles and occasionally entirely different pages), and your priorities are also responsible for my mailbox filling up with e-mails about penis enlargment. In summary--please re-evaluate your priorities. Switching from IE may not make your life better, but it certainly won't make it worse, and it'll make mine MUCH better!
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:5, Interesting)
The owner of this store was deeply impressed by Mozilla. She now uses the Mozilla suite itself exclusively on her three computers on the store. What has impressed her more than anything hasn't been the fact that she has to deal with less spyware and more to do with the fact that she now has a *better browser experience.* Among other things, pages now load significantly faster...
Re:Stick / Dead Horse..., (Score:5, Interesting)
The general public simply don't know any better. In my experience, anytime I do a spyware removal ($30-$60) I offer to install Mozilla for free. I explain that if they mostly use Mozilla, they will need my services less frequently. When put in terms of frustration and money, most people do listen and are willing to try it.
Firefox is NOT for me (Score:3, Interesting)
Now if Firefox 0.93 would just run.... (Score:2, Interesting)
However, Mozilla won't show me the submit button on the Skytel page to set my pager to nationwide roaming mode, but IE and Netscape 4.x do so - I've looked at the source Javascript, and, although no expert, I don't see anything particularly weird. Unfortunately, I can't just give my Skytel id info to the Mozilla team to see what to fix, and after trying once recently to see how to file a bug report, I'm not even sure I *could* get the info to them - opaque, hard-to-use support is not too encouraging. It has had this problem since about 1.2, and I keep hoping each new release will finally "catch up" to Netscape 4.x at least.
Oh well, it's nice for the other 75% of business browsing I can do with it, and the 98% of personal browsing I can do with it.
I don't really need Firefox anyway, and I found it (0.92) to not be any faster under Windows 2000 than Mozilla, and no smaller in memory footprint as long as I don't open the mail/news reader, so no big deal...
Student computer lab admin (Score:5, Interesting)
I volunteered to look after a student computer lab at university. We did a fresh install of Windows 2000 on all the workstations, set up NTFS, applied all security patches and turned on the auto updater. The lab is firewalled and NATed through a Linux server that's running Samba as a primary domain control for an NT domain. All users have low priv accounts, authorized through the PDC on the local network.
In other words, this is a pretty secure setup, except for the local machines (everyone has physical access). But regular users don't have admin privileges.
There was something I found quite odd. After running for a year or so, I discovered that when I launched IE from my own account, it came up with the Yahoo bar installed. That's weird, I thought, since I'm the only admin and regular users don't have that kind of privileges.
I double checked the patches and hotfixes, yup, we're still up to date...
Fast forward... things started to fall apart after 1.5 years. Some how, spyware entering via IE from one account was able to 'infect' other accounts. Launching IE would immediately pop up ads - even in accounts that were never used before. Whole system-wide applications and spyware seemed to be installed by low privilege users. It's a bloody mess, I don't want to touch it any more.
I'm not sure whether Windows or IE is to blame (my guess is: both) but if they want me to volunteer my efforts to admin the lab next year, a bunch of 1st year students are going to walk in and find a bunch of dumb consoles running stripped down X interfaces to a FreeBSD server.
Ex-Opera user here. (Score:3, Interesting)
I never tried mozilla because i didn't like the blocky texture that it had, and it just felt 'empty' when i first installed it.
A friend had firefox, i said, try opera, and after time testing it against a few heavy loading pages, opera was a *bit* faster because we configured it to open 128 server connections (sorry admins), but that was only on photoshop contests on fark, or other heavy image loading pages.
Other than that, we went feature for feature, they were the same speed on other pages, but what really got me was the mouse gesture trials (with the plugin extension) and the customized ad blocking (another extension).
After that, all the features we commonly used matched up, except gmail notification in firefox. These extensions were also really easy to install also, i've only been using it since this morning.
The sad part about this message is that it sounds like a piece of spam, marketting material. But i give this advice to opera users: you tried opera once, try firefox now.
one thing : i cant' figure out how to get every new window to open as a tabbed window, some open as a new firefox window. Oh well. I'll figure it out eventually... (there, now this doesn't sound like spam)
Re:Not so much switch... (Score:2, Interesting)
That's completely the fault of web page designers. The "designers" are the ones who are being pussies about this. They should get together and say "enough is enough, this is the standard, this is the test suite, we'll give you a certification when you pass the suite, otherwise we'll keep sending your browser a blank page." Yeah, that'll be hard to enforce, but until it's done, IE won't comply, Mozilla won't comply and neither will Opera or any other "web browser."
Re:Stick / Dead Horse..., (Score:2, Interesting)
But a lot have been burned. In fact, almost every Windows user I know that uses IE has had problems with unwanted popups, spyware, etc. Its a good way to get them to try another browser, like Firefox. The merits of the browser will speak for themselves when they use it. If you just tell them how much 'nicer' their browsing experience will be when they switch, that won't convince as many to switch, they'll just think its too much trouble. However, point out some of the vulnerabilities that we see so frequently in IE, that could allow malicious person to run, say, a keystroke logger on their computer, or hijack it to support illegal activities(whether the owner of the hijacked computer would have any legal liability is a question that has not really been tested in courts, as far as I know).
TALK RADIO HOST Neil Boortz PROMOTES FIREFOX (Score:1, Interesting)
Nationally syndicated talk radio host Neil Boortz, boortz.com, mentions a couple of times a week for the past few months.
Re:Yeah.... right. (Score:2, Interesting)
Yes, but if Microsoft made toothpaste, it'd be an analogue made of chalk, sawdust and water, and contain no fluoride. It'd be as effective against cavities as Windows is against exploits.
Home insulation is a fight against cold, not furnace companies.
But if Microsoft provided that insulation, you'd either be freezing your nads off, or your energy bills would skyrocket. You woudn't mind, though, because you know the ever-forthcoming upgrade will address that.
Quitting smoking is a fight against disease, not tobacco farmers.
Microsoft and the tobacco industry. A union too horrible to imagine.
Using a safe browser is a fight against assholes who write viruses, not IE.
Please never forget that it's IE that facilitated much of the mischief caused by those assholes.
Re:IE Momentum (Score:5, Interesting)
Call it IE upgrade or something.
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:5, Interesting)
I only managed to install mozilla on his second pc though. There is a stupid bug with netscape where it won't run if windows restores the registry. It has to do with profiles, pretty lame if you ask me. who uses those stupid profiles anyways. I tried all the fixes until I gave up and just installed mozilla. Seems to be working well.
Now if there was a button to make IE just disappear completely..
Maybe for you it's vulnerable, but... (Score:2, Interesting)
What version of Firefox are you using? Are you sure that you got this trojan off of a website? There are plenty of ways other than browsing the web to receive a trojan, such as downloading a program off a file sharing program, for instance.
As far as I know, it's impossible for anything to install itself in Mozilla without at least a dialog asking if it's okay to do so (for things like extensions or Java Web Start programs). Or are you one of those people who install Active X extensions?
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:IE Momentum (Score:3, Interesting)
You're referring to the Mozilla/FireFox users, right?
Look, I'm an IT worker. I program all day at work and then I come home and do mroe programming. I also tinker around with new software, keep up on /. and several other sites specific to my areas of expertise, and you know what else?
I run Windows XP and IE. Is it full-proof? Absolutely not? I've lost my crap to an MS crash before (mind you, those were hard-drive failures, or pre-NT-kernel). When I first started using dialup and playing with WINS as a teenager, I once found 20 strangers connected to my PC.
I've encountered problems, dug into them, fixed them, worked aorund them, and learned to prevent and/or avoid them.
Now things like my browser, I want to be able to use without thinking about it. I don't want to have to worry about nasty, complex upgrades (I'm assumign upgrading FireFox is no better than the uninstall/reinstall upgrade plan for Thunderbird). And then there's the things I also enjoy about IE, like HTML in the taskbar, bookmarklet,s flexible tolbars, file-system-based favorites, etc.
Call me an end-user if you want to be wrong. I am perfectly aware of the kinds of vuilnerabilities in IE and I do best not to stick my browser in dirty places to avoid these. But until the risk increases (or manifests itself to me personally) or MOzilla/FireBird get easier to use from install to every-day usage, I ain't switching.
my firefox experience (Score:2, Interesting)
I am a Mac user and I use Firefox exclusively (better compatibility than Safari, better [and more!] plug-ins availble for it, like being able to skin it), but have one pretty big complaint with it - the amount of system resources it takes up.
Right now on my iBook g4 800 w/640 RAM, Activity Monitor says that FireFox is using 83.85 MB of active memory and 417.46 MB of virtual memory. And that's with one window w/5 tabs open.
Having the same pages open in Safari Activity Monitor shows Safari using 31.98 MB of active memory and 143.21 MB of virtual memory.
So yeah. I couldn't really use Firefox when I only had 256 RAM...too many crashes. Now that I've upgraded, it is worth it.
blah blah blah (Score:2, Interesting)
The other way (Score:1, Interesting)
At my last job... (Score:1, Interesting)
However, I switched from IE to mozilla because it seems like the more Microsoft apps you have open, the more likely it is that your task bar settings are going to change. Excel and IE seem to be particularly bad about it. I don't know that I ever had a problem with Word, but I used it as seldom as possible regardless.
Re:Common misconception (Score:3, Interesting)
I had to use ASP.NET for an assignment while at University. I actually liked the language; I think it's extremely neat and easy to maintain. But some of the controls that render as HTML/Javscript (I'm particularly thinking of a paging control) don't work under Mozilla - or at least, they didn't when I was doing my assignment; Mozilla might have added workarounds by now.
Have you ever experienced one of these sec flaws? (Score:2, Interesting)
I still think IE has a better experience, and some neat stuff has been put together for IE recently, including Recall Toolbar [recalltoolbar.com], a browser add-on that indexes pages you visit and lets you later search them. Useful for finding pages when you later want to.
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:3, Interesting)
Many users didnt realize the browser changed for quite a while and I eventually taught them how to use tabbed browsing. Lots of happy users and no security/spy/ad related problems.
Mozilla (Score:2, Interesting)
By the way Mozilla Firefox has been working with my bank since version 0.6 (way to go Wells Fargo!) and I have not had any need to run IE with any other sites I visit. If it doesn't run in Mozilla, I don't want to visit the site, simple as that.
Most sites that do not seem to work with Mozilla are the ones using JavaScript to pop open unrequested windows to function. When MS released SP2 for XP it will block those, forcing many websites to redo their crappy code and make the web even more compatible with Mozilla... one can hope
Mozilla is painless (Score:3, Interesting)
I suggested to the secretaries one day that they d/l and use Moz on all their systems for security purposes. I d/l'd it once to their file server and let them have at it.
I was shocked when, a month or so later, I discovered they were all using Mozilla on all the systems, just like I'd recommended. There wasn't a single phone call, no complaints, no questions... nothing.
These are the people who call to ask if they should click "Open" or "Save" when they click on a PDF!
I was SHOCKED. Mozilla is clearly a winner!
I've been using it for years, but I'm a Tech Weenie and so really don't qualify as anywhere near your "average" user. For instance, using Windows, I don't feel comfortable until I can get a putty session up on a *nix box when I'm working...
What about the other applications? (Score:2, Interesting)
Not using IE is no problem. Just do what Ms. What's-her-face does and don't click on the blue E. But, there are many other applications that use the same HTML engine as IE. Aren't they just as vulnerable? HTML Help, Frontpage and Outlook are some of the most egregious examples. There are many others.
It's not that I haven't tried to secure IE and Windows. I have tried the various methods for securing out my machine via Security Zones. I ultimately had to turn things back on when my HTML Help stopped working, or I browsed to a website that just wouldn't render properly without ActiveX or scripting turned back on, and I just didn't trust it enough to add it to my Trusted Sites Zone. I have also used Group Policy Editor to enable the Classic desktop turning off Active Desktop.
Re:As with Linux, so with Mozilla. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Preaching to the Choir (Score:3, Interesting)
However, swapping icons can be very usefull if the user knows what is going on. The reason? People get used to clicking on certain icons for certain taks.
I realised the extent to which this was important recently, when I switched from using Mozilla 1.7x (I had been using the suite's browser as my primary browser for for about 2 years) to Firefox 0.9x on my PC. For a period of time I had both, the Mozilla and the Firefox icons on my desktop (I was still testing if Firefox was good enough for me). The trouble was that out of sheer habit I would always click on the Mozilla icon instead of the Firefox icon. I tried removing the Mozilla icon all together, but I had myself searching for for it for a few seconds every time I wanted to go on the web, completely ignoring the Firefox icon. Finally, out of frustration I ended up making the Mozilla icon launch Firefox.
I had it like that for a few weeks.
My problems with Firefox (Score:3, Interesting)
Tab groups:
Netscape showed a tabgroup as a single item in the bookmarks that you clicked on to open the group of tabs. Firefox shows it as a folder, and you have to open the folder and select "open as tabs" at the bottom, which is annoying. Is there any way to get tab groups to behave more like they did in Netscape?
When you select "open as tabs" for a folder it closes all other open tabs instead of adding the new tabs onto the end.
Tabs:
When you right click on a link it lists "open in new window" before "open in new tab" how do i switch the order of those two?
How do i get rid of the "x" box on the right side of the tabs that closses the current tab? It's annoying and i keep pressing it by mistake.
How do i get rid of the "close other tabs" option when i right click on a tab? I sometimes hit it by mistake when trying to select "close tabs." (Okay, those last two were issues in Netscape as well, but i'd still like to know how to fix them.)
Downloads:
The message "Download Complete" that slides up from the bottom of the screen is _really_ annoying, how do i turn it off? _Nothing_ should be moving around the desktop on it's own!
The whole grouped together downloads thing is annoying, how do i get it to show one download box with percentage in the task bar for each file i am downlading?
Icons:
Sometimes there's an error and a page without an icon gets associated with the icon of another page. How do i clear out the icon from a bookmark?
Is it supposed to save the icons permenatly? All the icons in the bookmarks list are blank again every time i open Firefox. At first i thought this was because Windows almost always crashes before i close Firefox, but i tried loading a few pages and then closing and reopening Firefox and the problem still occured.
Re:Preaching ... It's called double blind (Score:2, Interesting)