Redmondmag on Dumping IE 442
nSignIfikaNt writes "Here is yet another article discussing options to using IE. This one is from redmondmag.com who claims to be the independent voice of the microsoft IT community."
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Redmondmag on Dumping IE
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If you have a procedure with 10 parameters, you probably missed some.
Used to be MCP Magzine (Score:5, Informative)
Re:An idea to beat Microsoft (Score:1, Informative)
Douchebag.
AdSense (Score:5, Informative)
My Web site uses Google AdSense to display context-sensitive ads to my users. The AdSense administration site works only with IE
This seems dubious. The google site claims that you just need javascript. Can anyone who uses AdSense verify this? I'm guessing the popup blocker in firefox thwarted this guy's limited computer savvy.
Bad facts... (Score:5, Informative)
Which brings me to the real question: Can you live without IE? I try to use Firefox as my main browser, but I find myself firing up IE from time to time out of sheer necessity. My Web site uses Google AdSense to display context-sensitive ads to my users. The AdSense administration site works only with IE...
Well, I've been using Adsense for about 2 months now, and I have yet to open it in IE. I've only used Firfox so far, both on Windows and Linux, and never had any problems.
Re:An idea to beat Microsoft (Score:5, Informative)
ummm.. yeah.. nevermind that OPERA HAD IT FIRST
Re:AdSense (Score:5, Informative)
cunclusions retarded (Score:3, Informative)
Re:When was this article written? (Score:5, Informative)
Properly formatted karma whoring article text (Score:5, Informative)
Internet Explorer is a hacker's dream. Can you (and should you) drop it right now?
October 2004 by Don Jones
Internet Explorer is the Swiss Cheese of software--it's full of holes. Holes in software are never good, but when the browser is so integrated with the OS as to be as one--you've got problems. Add to that the sheer ubiquity of the Microsoft browser, and it's no wonder IE has become the hackers' No. 1 playground.
Now we're beset by increasingly common--and dangerous--security vulnerabilities. We knew IE was integrated with Windows, but we didn't have any idea how integrated it was. Even Microsoft doesn't seem to have a firm grasp on IE's internals, judging from the weeks it took to deliver an actual fix for the recent Download.Ject Trojan.
Not to say an integrated browser is all bad. To a developer, an integrated browser is cool because it gives you a built-in HTML rendering engine. You can then write apps that use HTML, knowing that the OS can render that HTML for you. IE can begin to take over the regular Windows Explorer shell and, in fact, has become so tightly integrated with Windows Explorer that it's a bit difficult to see where the shell ends and the browser begins.
The downside is a real downer. With a regular Web browser, a security vulnerability might let someone crash the browser. With an integrated Web browser they can crash the whole operating system. The tight ties to Windows means that the slightest IE security issue becomes an OS-wide panic. It's not just IE, either: Windows Media Player, Outlook Express, and even DirectX, are all, in my opinion, overly integrated and give hackers too much access to core PC functions.
But corporate users don't spend a lot of time playing with DirectX-based games, listening to Windows Media Player, or checking e-mail with Outlook Express. They do spend a lot of time in IE, and the more they surf the more they're vulnerable to its eccentricities. That's why more than a few corporations, not to mention individual users, are looking at alternatives--any alternative--to the built-in browser.
Browsing the Alternatives
Despite dire predictions from Netscape (now a unit of America Online, which, weirdly, continues to bundle IE with its software), the market for non-Microsoft browsers didn't go away. It sure as heck got small, though, with Microsoft now commanding around 95 percent of the market, according to some sources. But the times, they are a-changin'. San Diego Web metrics company WebSideStory recently reported IE losing 1 percent of that market, the first time IE has stumbled. IE is now down to 94 percent. Who's gaining? Mozilla.
The open-source code base of the Netscape browser, Mozilla offers a couple of browsers. Mozilla 1.7 is its base product (1.8 is in beta as of this writing); Firefox (currently at 0.9) is the next-generation browser. Both are available from www.mozilla.org. Netscape also offers 7.1 of its venerable browser based on Mozilla code. It's available from www.netscape.com, but you'd better hurry: It'll be the last Netscape-branded browser AOL produces.
There's also the well-known Opera Web browser, currently at version 7.53, available from www.opera.com. All of the Mozilla products, including Netscape's browser, are completely free. Opera offers a free, advertising-supported browser as well as a $40 version sans ads. And those are just the Windows browsers (see online extras for more on browsers for other OSes). While these are the major contenders, others exist: Search Download.com for "Web browser" and you'll get 356 results, many of which are small-footprint, self-contained Web browsers. Be aware that some of these simply throw a new cosmetic face on Windows' built-in IE objects, meaning you're still using IE. Others are completely self-contained and count as true alternatives.
Pros and Cons of Straying From the Pack
Forgetting security for a moment, there are functional
Re:AdSense (Score:2, Informative)
Better than dropping it, remove it (Score:5, Informative)
Create Windows installation CDs that won't install IE (and/or many other things, like Outlook):
A howto + files for Windows 2000 [vorck.com]
Free (as in beer) software with no howto for Windows 2000, 2003, and XP [msfn.org]
Re:An idea to beat Microsoft (Score:1, Informative)
(Ouch... I forgot to put on my asbestos suit.
Re:When was this article written? (Score:5, Informative)
Actually, if you "hurry" to www.netscape.com, you will see right on the front page they advertise Netscape 7.2. The article claims to have been written in October, when, in fact, Netscape 7.2 was released [mozillazine.org] in August, and AOL announced they would make that release [mozillazine.org] back in March; also stating that:
Re:AdSense (Score:5, Informative)
Complete bullshit.
Re:conclusion - missed the point (Score:3, Informative)
Re:should read "Alternatives to..." (Score:5, Informative)
Re:should read "Alternatives to..." (Score:4, Informative)
I have only encountered one website (other then MS windows update page) that gives me a problem via FireFox, and then it is only a loss of part of its functionality.
I dumped IE a long time ago... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Disconcerting IE (Score:3, Informative)
Then it is not a good setup..
You are looking for the wrong solution. You should NEVER trust the settings of $application on a client machine for a security purpose. What you need to do is block all outgoing port 80 traffic for everything but your proxy server(s) (or setup a working transparent proxy solution which will eliminate any client config). Any and all web browsing clients trying to bypass the proxy will be stopped.
Firefox is cool - on the PC (Score:4, Informative)
I've installed it on my wife's Portable (XP) though, and feel a lot better. Her IT guy seems to be quite good, but it's always me trying to keep her PC up to date, so that's one less worry.
I've noticed that FF behaves a lot better on a PC than on the Mac - compared to the alternative. Doesn't crash, is faster and overall renders better.
If it weren't for Safari, I'd probably be using Firefox too. I'm curious how much marketshare FF has on the mac.
Re:more troll food from the slashdot founders... (Score:5, Informative)
Only need IE to get past 'unknown browser' screens (Score:4, Informative)
Once you go in with IE, you can find the real target URL, and 9 times out of 10 it works fine in Firefox. If I care about the site, I just bookmark the inside page.
I suppose there are tricks I could do to set Fox to pretend to be IE, but I'm too lazy for that. If I were on Linux fulltime, I suppose I'd have to, but I just periodically import my Firefox bookmarks from Windows into the Linux version.
Re:Firefox (Score:2, Informative)
Re:cunclusions retarded (Score:3, Informative)
Last I checked, Mozilla and Opera did not offer such things.
Please advise.
Re:Only need IE to get past 'unknown browser' scre (Score:5, Informative)
User Agent Switcher.
Re:should read "Alternatives to..." (Score:2, Informative)
Funny thing, all this automatic downloading and updating is something that people used to like to bitch about with IE.
Re:could this be a trojan horse? (Score:3, Informative)
You're quite right, that's actually what one of my coworkers said. He had got tired of IE popups and security problems and I mentioned he could try Firefox. He liked the tabbed browsing and the popup blocking, but he didn't like the pluggin support (actually having to download plugins when most of the necessary ones are installed by default on IE such as Java). Also, our internal bug management system has a web frontend with lots of java that would randomly crash Firefox. If it was any other page, it would probably be okay, but we probably spend 80% of our web time on that page tracking bugs, modifying bugs, etc and having it crash so often (about every third time it was loaded), he gave up. Couple that with the fact that the other 15% of the web time he is on a web based conferencing system (WebEX) that uses ActiveX controls, it just became too much trouble to use Firefox and just switched back to IE.
Granted he did say it would give it a shot at home where he didn't need the Java and ActiveX as much, but I doubt he actually did. It wasn't the feature differences (he liked those), just the compatability differences.
Re:MSI repackaging tools (Score:2, Informative)
We use MSI internally for several reasons. One is that we have a legacy VB app that is broken down into about 25 separate dlls and ocxs and the VB Setup.exe tool proved completely inadequate for creating updated installations. With the budget we had for software ($0) we found that we could use the MSI tool that came with VS 6 and at least make the upgrade process work.
The other primary reason we use MSIs is that Active Directory prevents users from installing applications via Setup.exe, and we were able to create a loophole in the policy allowing execution of setup.msi.
Hope this answers your question.
Re:should read "Alternatives to..." (Score:1, Informative)
Please to tell me how to set default focus with PHP. Now get a fucking clue, twit.
FYI: WARNING when trying to remove or disable IE.. (Score:2, Informative)
IEView (Score:2, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:3, Informative)
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:should read "Alternatives to..." (Score:3, Informative)
Mozillia.org is not defaulted as a trusted site because it could be comprimised when you install. Given that the home page defaults to mozilla.org, this would be unacceptable for a parinoid security policy.
Although, given that the senario being discussed is migrating from IE to Moz, that doesn't make much sense.....
Re:should read "Alternatives to..." (Score:5, Informative)
They didn't forget. This is on purpose.
If you place mozilla.org as a trusted site, this would include bugzilla.mozilla.org as trusted (since it matches against the end of the domain). Anyone can upload anything to bugzilla.mozilla.org as an attachment to a bug report - including XPIs.
This would make it very easy for a malicious user to make you install a bad XPI from a "trusted" site.
Re:should read "Alternatives to..." (Score:3, Informative)
For anyone who doesnt know how to switch from IE (Score:2, Informative)
Switching from Internet Explorer to Firefox [bleepingcomputer.com]
Enhancing Firefox with Browser Extensions [bleepingcomputer.com]
Re:Linux Desktop (Score:3, Informative)
BTW what's so bad about thunderbird or evolution? I agree with you about KDE and Gnome though.