PCWorld Dubs Firefox Best Product of 2005

Peaceful_Patriot writes "PCWorld's list of the 'Best Products of 2005' is out and Firefox tops the list. Also notables are GMail at number 2, Apple OS X, Tiger at number 3, Skype ranks in at 8 and Ubuntu at 26!" From their Firefox article: "Are you sick and tired of Internet Explorer? Have you grown weary of the constant vulnerabilities and patches? Do you scratch your head at sudden program lockups and crashes? Are you dismayed that Microsoft hasn't lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape's Navigator browser at the dawn of the century? Yeah, me too."

PC World Product of the year 1995...

[curmi]

...was OS/2. So don't get too cocky. :-)

Old News

[Saganaga]

From page 1 [pcworld.com] of the article:

From the July 2005 issue of PC World magazine

I thought it seemed funny that the review of Gmail said "check out Gmail the moment it launches", and that the Firefox review was from December 2004!

Re:PC World Product of the year 1995...

[G27 Radio]

Yeah, but it was actually a pretty good product.

Re:awww wtf

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh wow, obviously someone with mod points doesn't have a sense of humor, that or they didn't understand. A tip for future moderators, if you don't understand it don't bother moderating it. Your mod points are better used modding someone up who deserves it. If someone deserves to be read, then let them be read!

Re:firefox ? WTF

[Punboy]

Funny. For giggles I threw together a page with 100 150k images on a single page, posted it and the images to my webserver, and loaded it with firefox. it took ~30 seconds to load... all the images loaded fine... and, when I checked how much memory firefox was using, it was using ~40MB. This is Firefox 1.5 RC3 on Windows XP SP2.

And um, I believe you mean opening anything with letters in the path which are not standard english characters, for instance something with an é in it. Admittedly yes, Firefox can't handle these well. But, if you knew about the HTTP standard, you would know these characters are not supposed to be allowed in URLs, and if they are in it they have to be specified using their ASCII character code (much like spaces are, with %20).

it just works.

[jasonhamilton]

You're right, on the surface it looks like any other gnome based distro.

However, if you install it on a bunch of diff laptops, then compare it to another linux distro, you'll quickly find that what makes Ubuntu so good is that there is a lot of polish underneath.

Widescreen is detected and configured. Most wifi cards, auto mounting of external drives, sound card. Even special keyboard keys function on most systems I've installed it on.

I think Ubuntu is headed in the right direction. What makes Windows so great for noobs is that they install it and then they click to get on teh interweb. No mess, no fuss. One shouldn't have to spend all day trying to get the damn OS configured.

Erm....

[Skim123]

re you dismayed that Microsoft hasn't lifted a finger to improve or enhance IE since it buried Netscape's Navigator browser at the dawn of the century?

I am not an IE zealot (I use FireFox), but this statement isn't 100% accurate. MS did add popup blocking support [microsoft.com] for IE in SP2. And there are a ton of new features for IE7.

Granted, too little, too late, and way behind FireFox's release/feature schedule (which is why I use FF and not IE), but at least Microsoft is doing something. Proof that competition is a Good Thing.

Re:Wow, Dell!

[Skim123]

Is it just me or do all media players really seem to suck ass these days? I use iTunes because I want a podcasting tool integrated with my media player, and I do buy the occassional track from iTunes, but I don't like how iTunes just basically has one big ol' library that I have to tag and create playlists to filter.

Not a big fan of WMP either. I liked WinAmp a lot, back before podcasts and before I bought "Apple" music through iTunes... I just wish someone would come out with a music/video media player that didn't blow. Of course, seeing as the going price for these pieces of software is $0.00, and all profit is made from selling content, and buying content essentially locks you into a particular player, I understand why we haven't seen this... (Yeah, yeah, I know you can burn a purchased iTunes song to CD then rip it back into MP3 for portability, but that's a PITA...)

Ok, enough rambling...

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss?

[roman_mir]

Have you grown weary of the constant vulnerabilities and patches? Do you scratch your head at sudden program lockups and crashes? - be careful, it is possible to say the same thing about FF now. I see FF crash very often now. Patches and vulnerabilities? FF has them too. It does look like FF gets the fixes much faster than IE though.

Re:Wow, Dell!

[Praxx]

Visual Studio 2005 should at least be in the Top 10, IMHO. Alot of Microsoft's products may suck, but their development tools are top-notch.

Re:PC World Product of the year 1995...

[splerdu]

I don't think the GP meant to insult FF by associating it with OS/2, just suggesting caution that being "good" doesn't necessarily mean long-term success.

Re:I know nobody cares...

[oztiks]

Firefox is what I would recommend to anyone needing a web browser, but it's still got tons of problems. It's a hog, a complete hog. Of course there are plenty of factors to blame - but it doesn't remove the problem.

Have you seen 1.5? Allot smoother to operate than previous versions i have to say..

Firefox vs IE...

[RoadDogTy]

I agree that it's valid to criticise IE for a lull in development once they won the browser war and ousted Netscape. I also think the competition between Firefox and IE is ultimately great for the consumer, since it has sparked a new emphasis in feature development for all the major browsers. This article seems to take it to an unwarranted extreme however, as the latest IE (particularly through SP2 and the optional MSN Toolbar) developments have added a lot in terms of security, for example the new anti-phishing filter. Also, Firefox has more than its share of critical vulnerabilities listed on Secunia [secunia.com], including more than a few that were as big of a deal as the recent IE exploit.

oo.org

[eneville]

What? Did these guys not hear about openoffice? How can media player be rated > oo.org!!!!

Re:Definitely a deserving #1

[Rits]

"Opera has been around for a number of years and has only just started to add better features."

Why does this post get marked as 'interesting'? There's no denying that Firefox' extension system is doing wonders for keeping the browser lean and still offering lots of (potential) functionality. But when manu of the extensions you can download are available by default in Opera (often Opera is the inspiration for the extension to begin with) it is hard to maintain that Opera didn't innovate in the past decade. It has pioneered the MDI browsing experience, spearheaded proper CSS implementation, and generally been focused on offering users control over their browsing experience. It is still the only browser where you can disable JavaScript with a simple shortcut. Etc.

Recently Opera has also focused on making all this power more accessible for everyone, and dropped the price tag and ads. You can attribute that to the power of real competition offered by Firefox if you like. But if Opera didn't have 'better features' in all these years, it wouldn't have been around for all this time.

Re:Definitely a deserving #1

[Kjella]

Opera has been around for a number of years and has only just started to add better features.

HAHAHAHAHHAHAHA. And this at +5? Come on guys, this deserves a -1, Troll. Seriously. Why do you think people have preferred adware or paying for Opera over sticking with IE? Why do you think Opera has survive the dark ages when IE was at 95% and lots of sites were IE-specific? Opera has been providing a much better browser than IE for years. Firefox has copied all the good stuff Opera has innovated and managed to bring it to a much wider market because they're free as in beer and in speech, but they were in no way first. That is revisionist history at best.

I admit Opera is feeling the pressure (it's not without reason they started giving away the browser with no ads recently), but give me a break. If you want a simple install (doubleclick-next-next-next-finish) but still powerful browser, Opera is still far superior to Firefox. What Firefox has brought to the table is one extremely moddable browser for powerusers (and overmodders, which are like the people who spend weeks styling their cars and hours driving it), and that is about on par with Opera for the common user (not that the common user would care much about browsers at all if IE cleaned up their security holes).

The biggest thing Firefox did, which Opera is profiting just as much from, is that more and more sites are becoming specs-compliant. Running Opera has become a very pleasurable experience, and I wouldn't hesitate to recommend it to anyone. That's also why I don't care much about converting Firefox users, because their marketshare doesn't inhibit my ability to use Opera at all. Every user not using IE is a win for Opera in my opinion (Opera the company may disagree). I think that if Firefox can win the market, there is room for more Opera users, not less.

Re:it just works.

[ccp]

What makes Windows so great for noobs is that they install it and then they click to get on teh interweb.

You mean like Mandrake (now Mandriva) has been doing since at least 1999?

Cheers,