Microsoft Not Worried about FireFox 674
didde writes "It seems like our friends in Redmond are quite happy about IE. According to this article, they won't be updating it until Longhorn. My favorite quote would be [We have a very, very innovative set of capabilities that we're putting in the next version. And in the meantime it's an extensible platform, and there will be a set of extensions that Microsoft does as well as others.] Oh boy, are they actually working side by side with the virusmakers and phishers?" That just gives the MozBoys a year head start.
We're heard this line before (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Informative)
Of course I may be wrong.
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Funny)
Context overflow. Core dumped.
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Informative)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Insightful)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not the really important thing though. The really important thing is that they have been unable to leverage those monopolies to gain monopolies in other fields despite trying desparately to do so.
They have suffered one severe setback another whether it's MSN, MS-TV (whatever the hell that was), set top boxes, MS at work, SQL server, IIS, NT server, Active directory,
Some of those products are successful but none of them have achieved a monopoly which is the only goal for MS that counts.
As long as MS fails to leverage their monopolies to achieve other the world is a better place.
In time their current monopolies will erode and wither, all empires fall eventually but the big ones take a while.
What about BOB??? (Score:3, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:4, Informative)
They will. Every single market that Microsoft currently dominates has solid gaining competitors, because the technology is becoming commoditized more and more. Office suites are something people should not have to pay a lot of money for, any longer, as are operating systems. That could be a big one-two punch for Microsoft.
When in history has there been such a broad line of software products with a common base? Sun JDS, Xandros, Linspire, Red Hat, SuSE, etc. all have the same overall source base plus their value added goodies for their target markets. This should be making Microsoft very very nervous about the future of Windows. No one can really take Windows, customize it, call it their own, and sell it, like people can with open source systems.
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Insightful)
You're thinking on too short of a timeframe. MS's market domination really has not been very long. Change is gradual, and 10, 15, 20 years isn't long enough to think in terms of "has this EVER happened?".
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft no longer dominates the world of talking Barney dolls.
Of course the Barney partnership was the real PR blunder, all that anti-trust stuff was just people trying to get at Barney through Microsoft.
I don't think Microsoft is under any threat in the desktop area from Linux any more than they are under threat from Apple. Its actually quite hard to loose a dominant market position in the software industry be
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Insightful)
You might argue that IE isn't "good enough" but for the vast majority of people, it is. At least as far as they're concerned.
Microsoft staved off a lot of problems with SP2, which really goes a long way toward making IE "almost good enough". So long as they can address major security holes within a decent amount of time, people will be content to wait for all these big changes that will happen in IE7.
Until web sites start breaking, some major IE related worm comes along that claims 99% of the users systems, or something equally as serious. They won't budge more than a few percentage points.
Of course it doesn't hurt MS that they have to keep IE around anyway to run Windows Update, or use the help system, run Quicken or a number of other apps.
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Interesting)
Internet Explorer isn't being updated.
Windows Server 2003 is a yawn.
SQL Server hasn't done anything exciting, except come out with a desktop version.
Anything new in Office?
On top of that, they are being sla
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Informative)
Here are some articles I wrote related to this topic:
- How to detect Internet Explorer [ericgiguere.com]
- Masquerading your browser [ericgiguere.com]
- HTTP header viewer [ericgiguere.com]
EricHope it's better than the current Longhorn Alpha (Score:5, Interesting)
It's a peice of crap. It's got a few minor improvements over IE6 (popup blocking, more security stuff), but adds:
1) The buttons are different sizes and placed in strange places to make it look more 'modern', but all it does is confuse the person using it.
2) On the File-Edit-View-etc bar, the background is light gray and the text is white. Very hard to see.
3) Back and forward buttons above the File-Edit-View bar, everything else below, and very small.
4) No major improvements over IE6 SP2.
5) Slow page load times.
6) Bloat- FireFox loads twice as fast.
In short, the current IE7 builds look bleak. Hopefully they'll improve for MS's sake, but otherwise, they're really not doing much other than ripping off Safari's look and rearranging the buttons to make it harder to figure out.
Re:Hope it's better than the current Longhorn Alph (Score:3, Insightful)
Are more standards suppoted? Does it fare well with xhtml sent as xml+xhtml? Does it support (more) CSS2 and CSS3 ?
*As far as my webdesigner mind goes... As it doesn't matter to me _which_ browser is dominant, as long as it supports standards fully.
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Insightful)
And again, I agree. [Lack of] Microsoft Office is probably the number one thing keeping Linux off the desktop at many businesses today. (It's not the only thing, but it's the biggest thing.)
It's unfortunately, really, that projects like OpenOffice and AbiWord are graded, not upon their own features and merits, but on how well they interoperate with the de-facto standard, Microsoft Office. (Of course, Microsoft is fully aware of this, and it's probably the #2 reason that they keep mucking with the Office formats every chance they get -- to 1) force people to upgrade to read the documents sent by their peers who have already upgraded, and 2) to `break' things like OpenOffice.)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Interesting)
Interesting you should say that. All the people I know who want new computers
are migrating from Windows machines to Macs based on the advice of their more
technically minded friends (who, by the way, run linux or plan 9 on their own
desktops).
The business desktop seems to be the last refuge of Windows. I expect this
to change in the near future.
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:5, Interesting)
Setup an X server with a pretty desktop.
Tell the users "We'd like to enable you to work faster. From this point forward, just doubleclick this. We installed a new version of Office and Internet explorer, they are called OpenOffice and Firefox. If you don't like this, feel free to use your Windows98 system."
I had zero Win98 users within a month, and zero Windows XP users within 3 months. That's a 400+ user environment.
They still think it's new Windows. The management thinks that not paying for 400 terminal services licenses is priceless.
Re:We're heard this line before (Score:3, Interesting)
If they have to say they aren't worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
Having an IE monopoly is a lynchpin in their designs for server-side control. Unless I'm completely off-base.
Re:If they have to say they aren't worried... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:If they have to say they aren't worried... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:If they have to say they aren't worried... (Score:3, Interesting)
-- Bill Gates, 1993
I am very thankful he had this attitude (apparently for at least a few years?) :-) If Microsoft had jumped on the web bandwagon and started offering a cheap web server with one of their server products, life on the web would probably be sucky indeed. Or if the web hadn't caught on for a few more years. They obviously clued in when they started including explorer with the OS though huh?
Re:If they have to say they aren't worried... (Score:3, Informative)
A year?! (Score:5, Funny)
Worse=better (Score:5, Insightful)
It all goes back to the OS (Score:5, Insightful)
That's it in a nutshell. Despite all the other endeavors Microsoft engages in, without the monopoly rents they receive from Windows and Office, Microsoft is dead in the water. They know this, and are doing everything possible to extend the Windows monopoly to the Internet. Once the majority of their customers realize that the OS has become of secondary importance, they're screwed.
For them it's about leveraging their browser dominance until the browser is fully integrated into the OS with Longhorn. They're relying on the ol' FUD train to keep things going in the interim. All declarations of confidence aside, they know that there is more pressure on them than ever before. With a year or more before Longhorn's arrival, I expect to see Microsoft talking more and more about how wonderful the browsing experience will be in Longhorn, while painting Firefox et. al. as relics of a bygone era.
Before long I expect to hear Ballmer say something like, "People just don't understand that the rich browsing experience built into Longhorn is going to make the tired old standalone browsers look pathetic!"
browser security check (Score:5, Informative)
At your own risk, of course. Firefox 1.0PR passed with flying colors.
Re:browser security check (Score:3, Informative)
Firefox 1.0 has 1 high risk vulnerability.
High Risk Vulnerabilities
Sun Java Plugin Arbitrary Package Access Vulnerability (idef20041123)
Description
Java Plugin allows web browsers to run Java applets. Java plugin may be used by Internet Explorer, Mozilla (and Mozilla-base browsers, such as Firefox), Opera and other browsers.
When a browser opens a web page that contains a Java applet the browser automatically downloads the applet and runs it locally. To protect the user from ma
Opera 7 passed. (Score:3, Informative)
Opera 7.54u1 build 3918 passed.
The Browser Security Test is finished. Please find the results below:
High Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Medium Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Low Risk Vulnerabilities 0
Re:browser security check (Score:3, Informative)
I had less success with FF 1.0 release for OS X. I tried the test a couple of times, and FF crashed both time midway through the tests.
New Exploit found (Score:3, Interesting)
Silicon.com [silicon.com] reports that there's a new Trojan named Phel that takes advantage of the Help (get it?) controls in internet explorer. Though the expoit's been known about since October, Microsoft is still "testing" the patch, and isn't expected to release it anytime soon.
Why should they worry? (Score:4, Insightful)
The default homepage (Score:4, Interesting)
If some other browser gets the marketshare then MSN loses exposure which costs MS ad revenue.
FireFox doesn't offer anything that MS can't offer in IE. It's also far easier to recreate than to innovate. This is why they aren't too worried. It's simply an issue of economic viability as to whether or not MS will implement those features and push the updates out the door.
To protect their cash cows. (Score:5, Insightful)
Now the problem with the web is that browser-based apps (think gmail) threatens Office and by extention Windows. We live in a time where bandwith is cheap and fast enough to run a high-quality spreadsheet or word processor as a web application. The ONLY thing stopping this from happening is the pitiful state of IE. If they made IE as good as it can be, they'll be opening the floodgates for web-apps that can replace Office.
If IE matures enough for this to happen, all applications can be web-based and run off ANY COMPATIBLE BROWSER on ANY PLATFORM. Thus I can move my grandma to Linux with Firefox 3.0 and she won't even know that something has changed, because she was already accessing all her apps via a browser. This can also happen if Firefox becomes the de-facto standard browser, and they start implementing all these new and great standards that's waiting to unleash the power of the web-app.
So that's why IE has changed almost nothing since the monopoly. MS realises that improving it is digging their own grave.
My company develops software for a specific vertical market. All web-based. It's great for our clients because they can access their data from anywhere, any time. It's great for us because we can upgrade and improve the system whenever we feel like it without sending out upgrade disks. 90% of all support calls we take right now is because of IE (spyware / 'special' toolbars). Lately we've been installing Firefox for all clients when training them, and that's helped a lot.
So all we can hope for right now is for Firefox to improve their browser as much as possible to try to become the standard (60% of the market would do it I think) before Longhorn. I don't know what MS plans for a browser in Longhorn, but I know it will be bad for all other browsers.
Re:Why should they worry? (Score:3, Insightful)
Since Mozilla is free it makes a lot more sense would for developers to make a version of Mozilla a requirement for a particular product than it would to have Longhorn as a requirement.
If full SVG and Xforms can a
why would they care? (Score:3, Insightful)
The second F! (Score:5, Funny)
That is all.
And they're NOT a monopoly? (Score:5, Insightful)
-- Night Goat, a proud Firefox/Safari user
Re:And they're NOT a monopoly? (Score:3, Insightful)
So really, lets not be too naive here. The last entity that c
Some other famous quotes... (Score:5, Insightful)
T. Rex, 30-some odd million years ago: "Mammals? Ha! I'm the biggest predator in town! Why the hell should I worry, I rule this place!"
Roman generals, c. 200 a.d.: "Barbarians, you say? We've got nothing to worry about. We're the biggest army on the planet. What could possibly go wrong?"
A Confederate general, 1861: "Those Yankees ain't nothin' to worry 'bout! We'll run 'em back across th' Potomac in a month, then we'll go back to plantin' cotton."
Adolf Hitler, 1942: "We can fight a war on two fronts! The Russians can't stop us! We're invincible!"
The Iraqi information minister, 2003: "The Americans will never set foot in Baghdad."
Re:Some other famous quotes... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Roman empire split and the real power had moved to the east, based in Constantinople (Istanbul), long before Rome was sacked. The western empire had been basically abandoned. As I understand it even the "sacking" was nothing like what you think - for a long time it was basically one group coming in and displacing the top tier of society. Some people argue t
Firefox is safe now. (Score:5, Funny)
What MS can do quickly is to release quick patch via windowsupdate which will disable all ActiveX by default and allow it only from trusted (whitelisted) sites with a BIG HUGE WARNING like this:
"I'm a stupid fucking idiot and allow this binary to run without any restriction on my computer.", type: "YES I AM",
next window: "I do understand what this ActiveX can delete all information, be a virus or spyware and I'm brave enough to Allow This"
Just like in Windows2003 default IE enhanced security configuration but more user friendly
"Conflict", Microsoft-style (Score:4, Funny)
Hachamovitch said he has to balance those concerns with the requests of customers who want new features such as the "tabbed" Web page displays offered by Opera and Firefox.
"You go through and talk to all these people and ask them what they want out of a browser and there are a lot of conflicting requests around: 'Hey, give me tabs right now' versus 'I want stability, I want a platform that won't break, I want to make sure I have extensability, I want to make sure have manageability,' " he said.
I'm not sure why he thinks those requirements conflict with each other. The Moz team doesn't
I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work. (Score:5, Insightful)
The Netcraft toolbar type addon which tells you which country a website is from is a good idea. Another idea would be to allow you to report malicious websites and report on history of commercial websites that steal your money.
Re:I am worried about Firefox. Still needs work. (Score:5, Interesting)
Now, I'm not saying your pet enhancement-bug isn't important, just that the devs have decided it's not worth the amount of work at the moment. Remember that there are over 5000 open non-enhancement bugs on the firefox product only...
Also, the enhancement you're talking about is going to be very, very difficult to implement without breaking stuff. I'm 99% sure that it's not even possible to do it without breaking some valid web-pages with onload and onunload javascript (and no, Opera hasn't succeeded in this, see this [quirksmode.org] for an example). Unless you have a solution for those problems, I suggest you choose a different tone for your critique...
Microsoft is install-driven (Score:5, Insightful)
A product like Linux is much more dangerous to them, because it fights back at install time, eg. Linspire or Linux server platforms.
Edmund
Head Start? (Score:5, Interesting)
They'll need that head start.. Has anyone here actually tried developing for the Mozilla platform? It isn't a walk in the park. The documentation available on XULplanet, mozilla.org, etc, although improving, is rather sparse and frequently out of date. Even some books on mozilla development are out of date already - RAD in Mozilla (published this year I believe) has some wrong details about XUL tree selections, for example. One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces. This is a tremendous amount of work, but I for one would be more than willing to contribute bits and pieces as I come across them. This basic documentation step needs to be done to encourage people to develop sites and applications for the Mozilla platform -- and to a greater extent, more modern w3c standards (DOM2/3,CSS2/3,etc).
I think that what the Firefox devs have done is an absolutely amazing feat of marketing and UI-cleanup, however, there is a huge amount of legacy code in web applications and scripts and pages in general dedicated to MSIE's own proprietary DOM, ActiveX, and rendering quirks. We need to bring those people to the standards-compliant world and, to a lesser extent, to the Mozilla platform.
I just don't see that critical mass in the application side of things yet, and that will be part of winning the battle. If XAML and so-forth start to make inroads, we are in trouble.
Re:Head Start? (Score:4, Interesting)
I couldn't agree with this more (and I wish that I hadn't already posted elsewhere in this article, so I could mod this up :-( ).
I have on three separate occasions started to attempt some some-scale Moz-based Web Service development stuff, armed with books and the lastest available info off the mozdev site. On all three occasions the result was the same: after about eight hours of massaging examples with increasing frustration, I finally admitted defeat and decided to wait until someone else has done something sufficiently similar so I could look at it and figure out how this stuff really works.
Now, I readily admit that I was doing this simply for fun to try to understand how things like SOAP are supposed to work in Moz -- so I wasn't in the usual panicy desperation mode that absolutely forces one to figure things out at any cost, but even so I found it disheartening that I couldn't simply read an article and example or two and make stuff work.
Re:Head Start? (Score:5, Insightful)
In the open source world, DOCUMENTATION IS EVERYTHING.
Think of it this way... in order for an OSS project to be successful it either needs corporate funding OR good documentation in order for the non-academic types to use it and learn to hack it.
In this regard, I consider most of the official GNU projects, perl, and many others to be failures.
PHP has amazingly good documentation. I was able to easily learn PHP only having a basic knowledge of C++ beforehand using only the docs on php.net. They're easy to navigate, pleasant to look at, and readable by NORMAL HUMANS. Now, from what I understand, PHP didn't start out as being much of a superior language to perl, python, asp, and many others... The fact is that php got good because it got popular. Php gor popular because it was easy to use and the docs were top-notch.
Now move on to Gentoo (no. I'm not a gentoo fanboy and do not have any systems currently running it). By all means, the installation process for gentoo is ASTONISHINGLY complicated and difficult --- without proper documentation. The official installation documentation [gentoo.org] is excellent. It's no wordier than it needs to be, and should be understandable by anyone with a decent amount of experience with windows or mac os. Gentoo's large userbase can easily be credited to its excellent (centralized) documentation and community. In my experience, when I ran into a problem with gentoo, I could find a solution easier than I could with RedHat because the documentation was all in one place, easy to understand, and logically organized. By all means, if gentoo's docs sucked, the project wouldn't exist anymore. Everyone would be scared off. My only gripe was that when I installed it, they gave no warning that it would take about a week on my ancient celron-466. live and learn.
OS X got tons of little freeware/shareware/oss apps once apple got its act together and started offering decent documentation on cocoa. the number of small independent software companies developing for apple has exploded over the past few years thanks to this.
As annoying as it is, the M$ office assistant is actually a nice thing to have. It gives short, concise answers to everyday questions with word and excel. Great for people who don't have much computer knowledge. Although most people like them, I don't like microsoft's developer docs...
now all mozilla needs is decent XUL / devloper documentation. Last time i checked a few months ago, it was virtually non-existant which is a pity, because I think XUL could really take off as an entirely separate entity from mozilla. XUL + Javascript could finally fufill Sun's original dreams for Java to create applications which were small, lightweight, and portable. XUL is to HTML as Applications are to Web Pages (XUL:HTML
To get an idea of the power of XUL, check out the Mozilla Amazon Browser which is in all ways a faster and easier method for browsing amazon.
Also think of the bandwidth savings! Web applications would no longer have to serve entire pages for each request processed.
Wikis don't work for technical documentation. (Score:4, Interesting)
One thing that the mozilla development community needs badly right now is a php.net, wiki-style website to encourage anyone and everyone to frequently update documentation easily and in small pieces.
Wikis don't work for technical documentation! In order for technical documentation to be usable, it has to be clear, complete, correct, and current. That is the bare minimum. In order for it to be good, it also has to be consistent.
Wikis don't guarantee any of the above criteria. Wiki advocates have even argued against completeness because it discourages participation. They've also decided against correctness in favor of a neutral point-of-view. Many under-edited contributions from different people also guarantee duplication, contradiction, and inconsistency. If anyone tries to straighten out the mess, then revert wars are the result.
So take it from a documentation volunteer, the best results are produced by a central maintainer. The maintainer coordinates contributions and edits them with the reader in mind. The maintainer can either be a person or a team, depending on the size of the task.
I'm not worried either. (Score:3, Interesting)
Microsoft seems to have fogotten that competition benefits everyone, including their own bottom line.
I for one, choose to use Firefox. Not because it's open source, but because it works for me.
Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits (Score:4, Interesting)
This is probbably true, at this point in time.
A common misconception (which happens to be one of my pet peeves) is that this is because microsoft write bad code, microsoft devs are not security minded or are incompetent, open source code is better code just because it is open source, or Microsoft are in league with virusmakers, and various other manner of of BS.
Here's the news people: Microsoft can afford as good a development team as anyone else. They can afford to hire extra devs for their QA teams as well as their dev teams, QA devs that read code, something many software houses just hire techs that know mercury products for. They can afford to have two (probbably more) devs per line of code - one to stick back and fix bugs, another to run ahead with the next generation of code. Not many software houses can do that (thus affording a larger dev attention span to bugs) either.
And Open Source is as prone to bad methodology, bad coding, non-security-minded coding, bugs and what-have-you as any other code. OS devs make mistakes too.
The advantage MS has in many highly-paid devs is offset by open source being exposed to immense scrutiny levels by being open, but, having seen quite a bit of OS, this doesn't always guarantee someone will volunteer to fix it.
I don't think either has a check-mate advantage over the other in this respect.
Today, Firefox's security advantage lies in one single factor: The very little attention it is getting from the people who write exploits.
Once it makes more sense for them to assume mostly FF browsers will be running their malware, they *will* write malware for FF, open source or no open source. They *will* find ways to exploit FF, or any number of its (sometimes very-widely-installed) extensions, which do not undergo the same code scrutiny of the core FF team. They *will* find ways to exploit plugins, which are often not Open Source at all and are as exploitable as IE in this sense.
All it takes is a critical mass installbase for FF, and that cozy misleading feeling of security will fly right out the window.
My 2 cents.
Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
Take Apache for example, just because it has a "critical mass installbase" doesn't make it any less secure then it was previous to that point.
Regardless, in my opinion anyone who thinks open source software is more secure than closed source is fooling themselves. In both cases human beings are writing the code. The big advantage open source has is that a fix can be released the instant it is completed. No formal QA teams to go through, no legal department to consult, no inefficient policies to follow, no press releases required to put a positive spin on a negative event need to be written, and no investors to consider, it is just done.
For me, thats where the "cozy feeling" comes from.
Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits (Score:5, Insightful)
> single factor: The very little attention it is
> getting from the people who write exploits.
People keep saying that, but you can't prove it until we get equal market share with IE. I'm looking forward to that.
In fact there are lots of other reasons why Firefox is more secure than IE. For example:
-- We use a string class library for almost all strings that flat-out prevents buffer overflows associated with those strings. My impression is that the IE code mostly does not.
-- IE is designed to be lax in its interpretation of the HTML, CSS, HTTP headers etc that it receives. Gecko is designed to be strict --- well, as strict as possible while making it possible to view 99% of the Web. IE's approach leads to confusion, which leads to security bugs. A great example is the raft of security bugs where different parts of IE guess the MIME type of incoming data and the guesses are inconsistent.
-- The IE-Windows integration means IE supports a lot of magic features such as special protocols that Gecko doesn't support or just blocks. So IE has more attack surface.
SP2 has improved things for IE a lot but they started from a bad position.
Re:Mozilla, Viruses and Exploits (Score:4, Informative)
> it.
Without access to the IE source code, it's hard to be sure, but there have been a number of bugs related to string buffer overflows in different parts of IE.
> In SP2, they recompiled all system libraries,
> including IE, using the VS2005 compiler with
> overflow detection.
That approach is not perfect, and would have been less necessary if they were using a safe string library. Still, it probably would be a good idea for Mozilla.org to build Firefox with the same options if they don't already.
> Has Mozilla done a code audit?
Mozilla.org has not done a systematic code audit, as far as I know, other than the regular code reviews that happen before checkin. I do know that people have studied the code, some using automated tools, others by hand, but we only know if people choose to tell us. (Which they often do to claim money under the bugs bounty program.)
Comment removed (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:The same old, same old theory. (Score:4, Insightful)
The same thing IS said about OS X and Linux, and although parent poster's opinion may be totally wrong, it's assinine to simply dismiss it (which you didn't seem to do, I just hate the raw ignorance of that stance). It's quite logical; the kiddies want to do a lot of damage, so they're going to code for the most popular platform out there so they can do the most damage. The whole theory really hasn't been tested too hard because there aren't many products MS competes against where it doesn't have a much larger market share. Apache is an excellent example, though. Personally, I think the whole reason MS/IE gets hit so much harder than anyone else is a combination of the two ideas; firstly, that IE was designed insecurely and this has plagued it, and secondly (but more importantly, IMO) that the kids are targetting IE users since they represent the vast majority and are probably not going to be technically inclined.
so why not change the plans of the devs working on IE?
I would imagine it's a combination of the numerous hacks they have to keep up with due to the obviously flawed security on IE.
with the many years that M$ "could" of worked on IE after its competition with Netscape, one wonders if its M$ that just don't give a shit anymore
I think it's extremely easy for
That's probably the case. Also keep in mind that the majority of FF users are probably more technically proficient than IE users, so clearly the softer target, for now, is IE.
PS: Can we please stop doing the "M$" thing?
Re:The same old, same old theory. (Score:4, Insightful)
You just led me to another simlpe observation I haven't made before:
The second *big* difference in this respect between IE and FF is the goal of the project.
IE is written by a commercial entity. Their goal is to get maximal revenue for minimum investment.
This is not a bad thing, it's the underlying principle of what we call an economy and the presence of which differs us from Afghanistan.
If they recon adding certain features to a product will not gain them anything substancial ($$$), they will not allocate the resources to do so. Period. The way I see it, it's totally understandable. I perform the same decision with my money every day.
FF is written by a group of volunteer engineers. Their goal, at this stage at least, is their product. Making it stick out due to is superb engineering.
For me, as an engineer, this definitely makes FF preferrable.
The point however is, this advantage also drops off once a certain critical-mass has been reached - only this time it's MS who closes the gap by becoming better rather than FF by becoming less secure.
Once enough people leave IE due to it lacking whatever it is they want, MS will reprioritize adding said features and IE will catch up, or, if we look at what happened in the past and the fact that the open community has more creativity and less red tape than MS does, they will probbably wait for FF to set the new requirements, then implement them in a robust way everybody from poweruser to 'Joe Sixpack' can use, surpass FF by a couple of steps, and FF will fall back to being in the same 2nd place it is in now. Then they'll lay back, and FF or its future counterpart will redefine 'cutting-edge' again. Ad infinum.
In short, this second advantage of FF is just as circumstantial as the first.
Why do Microsoft need a browser? (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? (Score:3, Insightful)
On the issue of dropping IE, I think to any geek, having a browser built into your OS is a nice feature. And one that shows to the end user that Microsoft is capable and willing to cover all bases. I think it remains more of a branding/marketing thing. Users feel com
Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because of this, lazy web developers, as well as Microsoft and their partners, will only develop their sites for IE - therefore lots of websites will only work with IE on Windows.
So people who want to use "the internets" will have no choice but to use IE on Windows. Which mea
Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? (Score:5, Insightful)
2. With that many users, you can't simply back out of IE support; it would be terrible business.
3. It would be giving open source a foothold and showing an incredible amount of users what open source can do... sort of like how iPods are converting folks over to Macs.
4. They lose control over things like internet integration in their applications.
5. They lose control over a lot of potential APIs/protocols since they wouldn't have their browers' users to use as a user base.
6. It admits a crushing defeat to open source. Shareholders probably wouldn't be too cool with that.
What you said makes total sense, but you have to look at it from a business perspective... Ditching IE would only confuse users, point them towards open source, and lock Microsoft out of potential future revenues related to internet browsers.
It's also important to keep in mind that from a non-techy's perspective, IE is not bug-ridden filth and that any viruses or nastiness that are caught at this point are just functions of the internets and not Microsoft's fault. Microsoft knows this.
Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? (Score:3, Insightful)
I hope your comment makes large on-line retailers nervous about optimizing their site for only IE. Microsoft could crush the whole on-line industry with one Windows Update. Funny, that.
Re:Why do Microsoft need a browser? (Score:5, Insightful)
Back when the web was new and exciting, Netscape was making waves with its browser. They predicted that web based apps would be the future, and all apps would therefore be client system agnostic. The head dude of Netscape said something along the lines of 'In 10 years, windows will be reduced to nothing but a buggy set of device drivers'. This pissed Microsoft off.
So they pumped huge amounts of money into IE to try and make it a better browser. Of course the idea of something being system agnostic really scares Microsoft. So to stop customers being able to just switch away from using IE and more importantly windows (the thing you give them money for) on the clients, they added a bunch of crazy features that would make webapp code that used said features not work with other browsers. Bingo. Clients have to stay running win/IE. One of these features was ActiveX which was touted as improving application interactivity.
So you see, this is/was not really about the web at all, but webapps.
Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla (Score:4, Insightful)
It might even be in MS's interests to sneak Mozilla a million bucks sometime to continue developing alternative browsers, because it would pay them back umpteen times in reduced support and bad press. I wouldn't expect them to do it openly, however.
Re:Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla (Score:3, Insightful)
That would be BAD for Microsoft. Therefore, they will be discouraging all movement off of their applcations to alternatives. The bad publicity doesn't matter if they can sti
Re:Another reason why MS shouldn't hate Mozilla (Score:3, Insightful)
In other news... (Score:5, Funny)
Brainstorm (Score:5, Funny)
1) 'Pusher' Technology - it would allow any website to 'push' un-signed software onto the users machine and run it totally automatically, this would be a boon for ease-of-use, it would also be able to force software to install without the users permission, bringing desktops into the DRM age peacefully.
2) 'PickPocket' - an extension to Mozilla's engine that would allow websites to access credit cards and other personal info without the user needing to lift a finger, this would speed up internet transactions and quickly fill the gap in the as yet un-patented '0-Click Shopping' arena.
3) 'MediaManager' technology will allow the user to enjoy a rich multimedia experiance by passing full control of the users speaker volume, microphone, web-can, monitor and force-feedback(r) joystick, we know users want to see your advert and they want to see it in full-screen video, lets not beat around the bush waiting for them to click on it..
Re:Brainstorm (Score:3, Insightful)
4) OS-Bundle-Technology - the browser needs to be locked into the OS permanently thru a billion registry keys. This way it will prevent competing no-good browsers to install.
Innovations? (Score:3, Insightful)
Look for patented IE-exclusive features in their next version.
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I forsee a beating or two in redmond tonight... (Score:3, Interesting)
Ouch.
I still have to use IE for a couple of sites - mostly ones inside my own company. And that's fine; I trust my own IT people and my own HR department. But using IE to casually browse the web just seems like a very bad idea.
Go-faster tweak for Firefox (Score:5, Informative)
[ from boingboing.net ]
Here's a great go-faster tip for Firefox, the free, rock-solid, secure browser from the Mozilla Foundation:
1.Type "about:config" into the address bar and hit return. Scroll down
and look for the following entries:
network.http.pipelining network.http.proxy.pipelining
network.http.pipel
Normally the browser will make one request to a web page at a time. When you enable pipelining it will make several at once, which really speeds up page loading.
2. Alter the entries as follows:
Set "network.http.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.proxy.pipelining" to "true"
Set "network.http.pipelining.maxrequests" to some number like 30. This
means it will make 30 requests at once.
3. Lastly right-click anywhere and select New-> Integer. Name it
"nglayout.initialpaint.delay" and set its value to "0". This value is the
amount of time the browser waits before it acts on information it receives.
If you're using a broadband connection you'll load pages MUCH faster now!
Enjoy!
Re:Go-faster tweak for Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
Firefox is not a problem for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
During the browser war between Microsoft and Netscape, Microsoft's primary worry was not people using Netscape Navigator as much as the Windows platform losing importance. Remember Andressen's quote saying that when Netscape was done, Windows would be reduced to a set of poorly debugged device drivers? Its easy to say that was foolery in retrospect, but Microsoft was sincerely worried about that. As far as Microsoft knew at the time, Windows could have lost importance in the same way that minicomputers declined after the rise of the personal computer.
Fast forward to the twenty first century. Microsoft is having a crapload of problems with spyware and this product called Firefox is getting rave reviews. But the worries of the mid nineties are gone. The reason that Microsoft stopped IE development is because they do not want to see web apps get more powerful; they hope that when Longhorn comes around, people will write distributed
Firefox does nothing to stop this future. While Firefox is a nice app and IMHO better than IE, it is not pushing the frontiers of web application capabilities, the way that Netscape did in the nineties. As nice as it is to not worry about slimeware, Firefox is just enabling the same ol' web.
As nice as Firefox is, it is not enabling people to switch away from Microsoft technologies other than IE itself. People are not switching to Linux because of Firefox. When Longhorn comes out and Microsoft starts hyping
Perhaps at some level, Microsoft risks losing mindshare from Firefox. But even if this is the case, they risk to lose much more mindshare by acknowledging Firefox as an issue so their response is expected.
Translation: (Score:3, Funny)
Its MS standard business practice.... (Score:3, Insightful)
I.E. when they hear of a competitor working on something they suddenly have an announcement that they are doing something similiar but better.
Even if they never come out with it the threat from MS competition can cause additional pressure..
In honesty, it is best to ignore all anouncements comming from MS, unless it is regarding current product that you can actually touch.
Makes perfect sense not to be worried (Score:3, Interesting)
1. Security.
2. Tabbed browsing.
3. Popup blocking.
4. Various little things, like a better Options dialog and nicer text searching.
Now let's look at this from the point of view of a multi-billion dollar sofware development house that already has an existing and popular browser (i.e. Microsoft):
1. The big security problem is allowing ActiveX controls. You can already fix this by raising your security level to High. Microsoft can make this the default in ten seconds of developer time.
2. Tabbed browsing is nice, but how long would it take to add to IE? A week? A month? Microsoft could do this in a hearbeat, and likely already has internally.
3. Popup blocking is something that Microsoft added as part of XP Service Pack 2.
4. Again, as with #2, these would be doddles for Microsoft to add.
Now what's more likely here is that Microsoft is thinking big and has something up its sleeve that the FireFox guys aren't even considering. The worry, for those people who insist upon viewing this as a battle, is that FireFox is going to look like an improved and polished version of IE, and the next IE is going to be leap beyond it.
Re:Working with phishers? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Working with phishers? (Score:3, Insightful)
Because it's a cheap way to get attention on Slashdot. With all the MS hatred around here it'll be assumed as fact that they are doing that. "Well, I wouldn't put it past them even though it wouldn't make good business sense to give everybody a strong reason to use another browser!"
Slashdot Editors really should enforce a little more professionalism. It's hard to take anything this si
Re:Working with phishers? (Score:5, Funny)
Deep breath.
You must be new here.
Re:extensions (Score:5, Funny)
Sure, but instead of "extensions" we call them "exploits".
Re:extensions (Score:3, Funny)
Re:'Innovations' (Score:3, Informative)
Re:'Innovations' (Score:3, Interesting)
Yeah, I'm really glad we have all of this freedom to innovate. I mean, look at how far the word processor market has advanced, give ten years of freedom. Since Office 95, Word has improved by... um... well, at least the paperclip is 3D now.
Okay, Word is stagnant. But - but - but we hav
Re:MS has no reason to fear loss of market share. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Firefox browsing speeds (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Extensible? How about extensions (Score:5, Insightful)
Microsoft wants Windows users to have plenty of reason to switch. They just want them to switch to Longhorn.
That's actually the biggest problem with Microsoft's current business model. With each new generation of their software they have to convince a substantial portion of their install base that to upgrade. If Microsoft releases Longhorn and customers decide that they would rather stick with Windows XP then Microsoft is just as screwed as if Linux had achieved Total World Domination. Microsoft's biggest competitor is old versions of its own software, and the competition gets harder to beat with each new iteration.
That's why Microsoft isn't interested in coming out with another version of IE for XP. Instead Microsoft would much rather bundle the new version with Longhorn in the hopes that it might persuade some XP users that now is the time to upgrade. After all, without WinFS, and with XAML being backported to XP there is going to be precious little that would persuade customers to upgrade. A new version of IE might very well be the biggest reason to upgrade to Longhorn from XP.
Re:Because FireFox has problems... (Score:3, Insightful)
For the site you mention:
www.titantv.com is NOT valid HTML 4 [w3.org]
www.titantv.com is NOT valid CSS [w3.org]
Validation of both shows about 50 errors - some of them very serious and obviously wrong.
FireFox isn't broken, some web sites are. You should be clicking the "contact us" links on sites that render badly, and ask them to clean their act (and code) up.
Don'