The Future of Firefox

sebFlyte writes "As Firefox moves swiftly towards 1.1 and Internet Explorer keeps trundling towards IE7, ZDNet UK has an interesting set of articles about Mozilla. Among other things, they look at the history of Firefox all the way from the pre-phoenix days, and have an interview with chief evangelist Asa Dotzler looking at what has driven the browsers success and why he thinks the release of IE7 will cause a massive boost in the uptake of Firefox."

and...

[cryptoz]

an article to go nicely with the story http://netscape.com.com/Opera,+Firefox+squabble+ov er+best-browser+claim/2100-1032_3-5740879.html [com.com] shows another side to the whole FF thing.

Re:firefox

[Anonymous Coward]

I haven't heard of that, and I'm not sure I believe it. My company uses ASP.net for our internal web server including some custom controls and everything is rendered properly in Firefox. It's much better than our old site design that used some ActiveX controls which, of course, wouldn't display in any browser other than IE.

Re:Main advantage

[Zathrus]

q[ I'd be happy if firefox can just fix the CPU hammering/memory leak with Flash by 2.0.]q

Given that the issue in question also occurs in IE, Safari, and any other browser with a flash plugin regardless of OS I'd guess that this is not a browser bug.

My guess is that it's a race condition inside the Flash code itself. It doesn't appear on all systems, even if they are running the same OS/browser/flash revision (and viewing the same content).

At least with Firefox you can install Flashblock [mozdev.org] and not be annoyed by CPU gobbling flash unless you really want it.

Re:firefox

[Lumpy]

typically because those enterprise web applications are written by no talent hacks that can not code themselves out of a paper bag. And yes this is true, I have looked at the code for many apps that cost the company I work for $50,000+ and the code is absolutely HORRIBLE.

php asp asp.net perl or java, your web app has no excuse to not support all compliant browsers.

code to real standards and spend another 10 minutes testing, anything less is plain lazy.

Re:Security

[Apreche]

Hm, that is true. However, compared to IE the number and severity of concerns is a drop in the bucket. If firefox really has 10% then for ever 1 firefox there are 9 IEs about. there are more than 9 IE holes for every firefox hole.

But more importantly than that, firefox holes have always been fixed within days, if not the day of. With MS you have to wait for the second tuesday to get your windows update. What will you do when an exploit is discovered the day after that?

Re:Dicey logic?

[QuantumRiff]

Actually, the downloads are only for new installs. The upgrade servers are not counted. There was an article here on slashdot talking about that, but I'm too lazy to look it up. It was when firefox released version 1.0.

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[frodo from middle ea]

Let's not forget, Firefox is not embeded in the OS, that itself makes is much secure (by design) than IE. e.g. In future it may be possible to discover a way to gain administrative previledges thru IE, even when running with a non previledged a/c, chances of that happening with firefox, atleast by design look slim.

The Future of Firefox is another 5 MB download...

[Steve_Jobs_HNIC]

Coding misstep forces new Firefox release

http://news.com.com/Coding+misstep+forces+new+Fire fox+release/2100-1002_3-5792635.html?tag=nefd.top [com.com]


well....at least we have extensions.... here's my list:

TextZoom [cosmicat.com] - because I'm blind as a bat
Adblock [mozdev.org] - use with Filterset.G from http://www.pierceive.com [pierceive.com]
Session Saver [extensionsmirror.nl] - saves tab sessions _when_ firefox crashes
Web Developer [mozdev.org] - lot of web dev options
IE View [mozdev.org] - click to view in IE
Target Alert [bolinfest.com] - let's me know what I'm clicking on
ForecastFox [mozdev.org] - show forecast
FindBar Switch [danakil.free.fr] - makes the find bar toogle hide/un-hide with CTRL+F
Download Statusbar [mozdev.org] - much better than the download window/popup
SpellBound [sourceforge.net] - because my spelling sux

Wrong!

[shoemaker251]

I'm sorry, but that is completely incorrect. The .NET Framework only needs to be installed on the web server, NOT the user's client machine. There is no requirement that users have the .NET Framework installed to render ASP.NET pages.

Re:unhappy with Firefox 1.x

[hilaryduff]

it doesnt crash for me. its possible you have something corrupted somewhere.
i think the win32 version of firefox is faster than on linux

Re:Security

[div_2n]

Uhh, show me any news stories about "exploits" in the wild. What you hear are security flaws that have been found due to the source being open and then promptly being fixed.

Using the word exploits seems to indicate that there are malicious websites out there taking advantage of a security hole. There may very well be, I just don't remember hearing about it.

Behind the scenes article

[Anonymous Coward]

ZdNet UK also has a new "behind the scenes at the Mozilla Foundation" article which talks about some of the contributors and has photos of the office (including a cool bridge made of soda cans)

http://insight.zdnet.co.uk/software/0,39020463,392 08853,00.htm [zdnet.co.uk]

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[Leroy_Brown242]

I'm not sure what you're tlaking about. Mine updates all automated style just fine.

Re:unhappy with Firefox 1.x

[kashani]

Try removing all your extentions. I had a number that weren't exactly compatible from version to version that were causing a number of problems.

kashani

Re:Extension security

[SonicRED]

The GreaseMonkey vulnerability was discovered by a good guy and is already fixed. This totally backs up his statement where he argues that being able to view the source of the extension makes things more secure.

Also, it isn't installed by default you know. I consider myself to be a power user and I've been running Firefox since version .5. Today was the first time I've heard of GreaseMonkey. An average user first of all has to know what an extension is, then they have to choose to install it, and then explicitly give a site permission to do so. This vulnerability has no active malicious exploit in the wild and even if it did it would still be a fringe issue.

Re:1.0.5 Still Not Auto-updating!

[Lukey Boy]

I think it's missing from the auto-update server because 1.0.5 breaks a lot of extensions. They're working on a 1.0.6 (there's already candidate builds out) that don't have that side effect.

false

[diegocgteleline.es]

"In future it may be possible to discover a way to gain administrative previledges thru IE, even when running with a non previledged a/c"

Huh, what the fuck? IE is a process and it runs with users' permissions. It's just not possible to gain administrative privileges through IE just because there's no part of IE running with administrator privileges

I'm tired of all that "IE is integrated with the OS" bullshit. Microsoft said that because otherwise they'd have to remove IE from windows and they've enought money to make the judgue believe that. IE is integrated in the "active desktop", the explorer or the help reader or msn messenger, but that does NOT mean it's integrated in the "os" in the real sense. It's integrated in the OS if you call "OS" to explorer.exe, but it is certainly not integrated in ej: the kernel or the libraries implementing the win32 API. And the programs which use it (explorer, etc) use it as a com object, ie: it's not really "tightly integrated"

Re:firefox breaks my laptop's ability to wake up

[Anonymous Coward]

Try setting the maximum meory cache size lower:

1) type about:config in the location bar (and hit enter)
2) Right click on any key, then click New, Integer
3) The name will be browser.cache.memory.capacity
4) The value will be the size, in kB, of Firefox's memory cache. I recommend 16 MB (16384), but you may want more or less, depending on how much ram you have.
5) Restart the browser and try it out

Re:Women in OSS

[westlake]

"The open source community generally has problems encouraging women to participate."
Why is this seen as a problem.

You might begin by asking how many women use open source software, make purchasing decisions or have shown the slightest interest in Linux. If you don't know the answers to these questions, or if 50% of the market is indifferent to your product and alienated from its developers, I'd say you have a problem.

Re:I'm all for MS bashing, but...

[whitehatlurker]

What's the difference?

24 February 2005

Update to Firefox Now Available

23 March 2005

Security Update to Firefox Released (One month)

15 April 2005

Updates to Firefox and Mozilla Suite Available (One month)

11 May 2005

Security Update to Firefox Now Available (One month)

12 July 2005

Update to Firefox Available for Download (Two months)

(From [mozilla.org] [mozilla.org].)

Now, there are rumours [mozilla.org] of an imminent update to fix coding problems.

When was the last release of MS IE?

There does appear to be a speed difference.

Re:boost leads to more exploits

[Anonymous Coward]

> Microsoft bought Spyglass and

No, they did not, quite the opposite, they tricked them into doing the work for free.

MS contracted Spyglass to write IE from Mosaic but the payment was to be $5.00 for every copy of IE _sold_. When they 'gave it away' they did not need to pay Spyglass anything.

Spyglass sued and lost. MS insisted that it was never 'sold' even when it was an unremovable part of Windows that was sold.

Re:Asa's blowing smoke

[Anonymous Coward]

You didn't RTFA, did you? Take a look - Asa's reasoning is completely sound. (And no, I'm not going to give you the clue you so badly want. Go RTFA.)