Firefox Users Stay Ahead On the Update Curve 328
Reader Alex links to news of a study comparing the currency and patch level of various Web browsers, excerpting:
"Firefox users were far and away the most likely to use the latest version, with an overwhelming 83.3 percent running an updated browser on any given day. However, despite Firefox's single click integrate auto-update functionality, 16.7 percent of Firefox users still continue to access the Web with an outdated version of the browser, researchers said. The study also revealed that the majority of Safari users (65.3) percent were likely to use the latest version of the browser between December 2007 and June 2008, after Safari version 3 became available. Meanwhile, Microsoft's Internet Explorer users ranked last in terms of safe browsing. Between January 2007 and June 2008, less than half of IE users — 47.6 percent — were running the most secure browser version during the same time period."
47% (Score:5, Funny)
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ftp://ftp.ncsa.uiuc.edu/Mosaic/ [uiuc.edu]
Download. Bring back the good ol memories.
Re:47% (Score:5, Funny)
Re:47% (Score:5, Informative)
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Oh, nice job. It's Slashdotted. Gopher site run over by Mack Truck of internet traffic from Slashdot. Poor little Gopher never saw it coming. :(
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Re:47% (Score:4, Funny)
breaks repeatedly on my system which is so cool and better than all yours here are its specs
Re:47% (Score:5, Funny)
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I heard they were testing Vista out on a BlueGene to see if it would run acceptably fast, but trials had to be stopped after a few thousand CPU's went on strike protesting against cruelty.
Re:47% (Score:4, Funny)
I found this file [uiuc.edu] rather amusing:
We are currently in the process of writing a new FAQ due to some recent changes in licensing policy. Questions concerning commercial licensing of NCSAMosaic should be directed to mosaic@spyglass.com
Questions concerning the copyright on NCSAMosaic should be directed to: mgoode@ncsa.uiuc.edu
A new, up-to-date FAQ will be appearing here shortly.
-David Mitchell
08/24/94
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Read the report http://www.techzoom.net/insecurity-iceberg
IE, Firefox, Opera and Safari dominate, >98%
Trust (Score:5, Informative)
I leave the auto-update feature on in Firefox because I trust that when Mozilla pushes updates they are valuable to me in terms of security or features and that they've been well tested. This has generally held to be true.
On the other hand, on any system I administer I immediately disable automatic updates because Microsoft sometimes pushes patches that only partially address a problem, creating a false sense of security, and then later re-issue them, push things like updates to Windows Media DRM as critical updates (it's not critical to me, Microsoft!), and release updates that go on to cause problems with other software or system stability in general.
When I can trust Microsoft to apply only security updates to IE (or other components of my choosing), maybe I'll consider turning automatic updates back on. Maybe.
Re:Trust (Score:5, Interesting)
If users are asked to upgrade their software shortly after they've launched it, it's firstly an annoyance, but secondly it means that the software they don't launch regularly won't get updated regularly, and other software which might need to interoperate will fall out of sync with the new version.
Perhaps it's time to define a standard package manager API (not a standard package manager, just an API available in all major languages), before we get a culture where every piece of software manages its own updates interactively?
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http://packagekit.org/ [packagekit.org]
Re:Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
You're approaching this too much from a geek's perspective. Updating "the system" is too esoteric for the majority of users. If the user has to be bothered with such a concept as a package manager, it's bad UI.
Anyway, microsoft has a package manager, somewhat, and they have a consistent auto-update system that takes care of dependancies. And yet half of IE users use an old version.
Re:Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
And yet half of IE users use an old version.
Yes, but I'm sure that a lot of them prefer IE 6 to IE 7. For me IE 6 was good, rendered pages rather quickly, had a decent looking UI, sure it didn't have tabs, but that wasn't a big deal for me. I had seen IE 7 on another person's computer and I decided not to upgrade to it, it's UI was ugly and it seemed to be a bloated version of IE 6, sure it was more secure but really, when running a Windows box, security isn't that big of a deal. I later wiped the HD and installed Ubuntu.
Re:Trust (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but I'm sure that a lot of them prefer IE 6 to IE 7.
On behalf of webmasters everywhere: those people should be taken out and shot.
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Trust (Score:5, Insightful)
Not to mention Apple sneaking in Safari with an iTunes critical update and many programs having regressions in updates.
Can we trust Apple not to issue a firmware update that makes the iPod stop working with 3rd party media players?
I myself keep everything updated (as much as Ubuntu repos let me anyway). But things like kernel updates force my to recompile my wifi driver so I can understand how people don't upgrade.
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Push to get your wireless driver into mainline or at least the Ubuntu modules package, so it will be re-integrated and distributed when new kernel versions are. All of my devices, including proprietary video drivers and wireless cards, are supported in Ubuntu's official packages because other thoughtful people already did this. I never have to compile, let alone recompile.
Re:Trust (Score:4, Informative)
It is supported, just badly.
It's an Atheros 5005G chipset, works fine with the supplied modules until I use WPA-EAP at university, where it will lock up the system every 2nd connection attempt. Compiling from source is the easiest way to fix it, but (back on topic) needs to be recompiled every kernel update.
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Is there something about your compile-time options that can be moved upstream so that Ubuntu (and other users) can use it?
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So what happens when Mozilla sends out a bad/buggy patch/update? I like to be notified about the updates and I will decide to get them or not.
Re:Trust (Score:5, Interesting)
When Mozilla sends out a buggy update, which has happened twice to my memory, a) it doesn't cripple the entire system, and b) there's a new version the next day. This goes back to my personal definition of trust: I don't necessarily expect a software vendor to be perfect 100% of the time. That's unrealistic. But I expect mistakes to be infrequent, non-severe, and for them to correct them quickly so that I'm not inconvenienced too much.
OTOH when Microsoft sends out a buggy update you have to keep your fingers crossed for something to be available in a few weeks. I don't want to come across as anti-Microsoft, but realistically that's the difference between the two in my experience.
Portable Firefox (Score:4, Informative)
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It's arguable that you're less secure if you use auto update in Firefox because you're running as administrator instead of as a limited user.
If 83.3% run the latest version of Firefox on any given day, what percentage of people run as a limited user? A single digit number, probably.
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Understandable (Score:5, Insightful)
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Windows Updates are so damn obnoxious that I always consider turning it off and doing my updates manually.
C'mon, what's so obnoxious about that little shield asking you every 5 minutes, "You need to reboot your PC because I just updated your web browser and a few other nonessential apps. You wanna reboot now? How about now? Huh? Can I reboot now? OK, if you don't reboot now, then the next time I ask I'll pop up the OK button right under where you were about to click and you'll lose all your work anyway..."
Re:Understandable (Score:5, Funny)
Frankly, I'm sorry I upgraded to Firefox 3. Had problems with my google homepage and with YouTube since. Good thing there's IE Tab.
Somewhere deep in hell a demon just snorted battery acid and gasoline on the keyboard and then Alt Tabbed back to Visual Studio, project title IE8.
Re:Understandable (Score:4, Interesting)
There is an option in the group policy manager you can apply locally by running gpedit.
Usual drivel (Score:5, Funny)
When Microsoft has shit flashing on the screen automatically to remind you to do updates, it's evil intrusion in to one's privacy. But when Firefox does exactaly the same thing, they're God's gift to enlightenment.
The reason most Firefox users use the most up to date version is that it's the only way to get rid of the annoying pop-ups.
Re:Usual drivel (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Usual drivel (Score:5, Informative)
In XP I found out you could type
NET STOP WUAUSERV
That stops the Windows Update service if you're not ready to reboot. When you do reboot the updates will be installed as a side effect.
In Vista you can set it to download the updates automatically and only install them when you reboot - I've never seen a deathclock.
Re:Usual drivel (Score:4, Funny)
(I know I probably shouldn't say this... but I can't stop typing!)
You see, this is why ____ will never make it. If I have to keep using these obscure command line fixes in order to make my system work the way I want, regular people will never use it.
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I'm going to have to try that, I find it incredibly annoying that the reminder will interrupt my games of Diablo to inform me that the update I didn't want it to start required a reboot.
I suppose it's my fault for forgetting that MS chose such an insane default. But I shouldn't have my games ruined by a notification after I've put up with the significant performance drain that all that hard drive accessing resulted in.
One of the bigger complaints I have about XP is that when I reinstall, I have to either sp
Re:Usual drivel (Score:4, Funny)
What?? Why should I have to type out arcane commands just to get basic functionality??
If the answer to everything on Windows continues to start with "Just drop to a terminal...", it will /never/ be ready for the desktop!
Re:Usual drivel (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, the Windows XP way is to run "Computer Management", then go to "Services" and stop the appropriate service. Computer Management is found inside Administrative Tools, which by default appears in Control Panel. You can also make it appear in other locations. No idea where they put it in Vista, but it makes actual logical sense in Windows XP. I'm not really sure what they were thinking, changing the XP GUI layout so much.
Microsoft is way way WAY behind the curve on basically everything but market position, but boy did they get XP right (for a very Microsoftian value of "right".)
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Re:Usual drivel (Score:4, Funny)
When Microsoft has shit flashing on the screen automatically to remind you to do updates, it's evil intrusion in to one's privacy. But when Firefox does exactaly the same thing, they're God's gift to enlightenment.
Firefox requires you to restart your browser, but Windows requires you to restart your whole computer.
Then again, with Firefox it takes just as long...
Re:Usual drivel (Score:5, Funny)
What computer are you using, Babbage's Difference Engine?
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Re:Usual drivel (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh, wait.
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How am I suppose to tell grandma to do that.. frankly if you need a command line to do that it's not ready for desktop.
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Um, Windows, OS X, Linux, *BSD and pretty much every OS ever have required command line knowledge to make the most of things.
Realistically, the biggest problem with Windows is that there's so much stuff there that is just available through the CLI and isn't particularly well publicized.
Things like robocopy are far more useful than the GUI tools, and in most cases don't even have a proper GUI equivalent.
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Opera has annoying popups as well for updating, which generally appear upon loading and ask, "Do you want to update to x.xx?" I guess it's just not quite as pesky as Firefox's. I've only used Safari a few times, but last I recall, I had to manually go to the site to update it. I guess Apple is pretty confident or doesn't care if users (at least on its Windows version) update. No idea how updates go for the Mac version.
Re:Usual drivel (Score:4, Informative)
Safari uses the same update method as all apple's software -- in OS X it uses the built in software update mechanism, and in Windows, it uses a port of that mechanism. It's about as annoying as all the others (except windows update, because it doesn't pop up every 5 minutes, and it doesn't have a death clock before destroying all your work by restarting).
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and it doesn't have a death clock before destroying all your work by restarting).
You know something? It's even worse than that.
You can disable auto-reboot as part of group policy - perhaps have a scheduled task do the job overnight or something. However, it is still possible for an update to override group policy and say "No, reboot now".
Net result - even if you're doing everything in your power to administer a bunch of Windows machines properly, you are more-or-less guaranteed to still get the occasional
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I would wish that Firefox had shit flashing on the screen automatically.
Unfortunately, it only does so if I run Windows as a user with administrative privileges or have Firefox installed in an alternate location where I have write access.
As a limited user, I don't even get a message that it is t
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Unlikely, anybody knowledgeable enough to not be running an admin account in Windows is knowledgeable enough to know when a new version is out.
I suppose it's possible, but considering the many applications that don't work right as a non-admin user, I'd be surprised if those people were the ones not updating.
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The reason most Firefox users use the most up to date version is that it's the only way to get rid of the annoying pop-ups.
Go to "preferences" -> "advanced" -> "updates", uncheck "check for updates to firefox" and no pop up anymore, very hard indeed
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Unlike Windows Update, Firefox warns you exactly once per program startup, and only if you haven't disabled it. Firefox can also automatize this in the background without you ever noticing until you start the application again; Windows Update not only behaves obnoxiously, but it forces you into immediate system reboots.
Windows Update can be disabled too, but unless you really take steps, Windows warns you about every 10 minutes that you should turn it back on.
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Actually, the difference is that MS flashes shit in your face in the most obnoxious way. It'll happily interrupt your full-screen application just to tell you that there are new updates available, then again to tell you that it has finished downloading them, and then it'll bugger you every few minutes if you want to restart the computer now or later. It does not provide a "stop buggering me" button, or as it should be named after the 5th or so interruption: "Go fuck yourself in a corner, you stupid $%#$
This makes sense (Score:3, Interesting)
It's rational fear of the unknown.
I've never had a Firefox or Safari issue toast my machine. I've had IE updates do it twice before (on different machines).
I just don't see how a browser can cause such mayhem to the OS - considering it's the browser that supposedly runs inside the OS, and not the other way around.
Well ok, I can. To rephrase: I don't see how a browser should cause such mayhem to the OS.
Re:This makes sense (Score:5, Informative)
It's easy when you consider that Internet Explorer and Windows Explorer are the same program. I remember back when IE 5 came out. If the upgrade program failed in just the right way you would reboot to a blank desktop with no icons, no task bar, no way out except the power switch or reset button. You had to reboot in DOS, edit win.ini to use progman instead of explorer, enter Windows and revert to the previous version of IE. (Sometimes progman didn't even work right. I found it much easier to use control.exe as the shell, because that brought up control panel, which was exactly what was needed.) Then, you had to restart in MS-DOS mode, undo the change to win.ini so that you could go back into Windows and try again. That is, if the tech support person you called knew what the problem was and how to fix it. If not, you were pretty much hosed until you re-installed Windows.
You happy now? (Score:2, Offtopic)
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If 83.3% of Firefox users are deemed to be using the 'most secure' version, then that definition probably means they're using either Firefox 2.0.0.15 or Firefox 3.0.0 as opposed to any earlier version. So you'd be fine with Firefox 2.0.0.15, which is exactly what I'm using right now.
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I run Ubuntu 8.04 and found ff3.0 to be a bit buggy esp when opening multiple tabs
I actually had a much worse experience. I opened up Firefox 3, it seemed OK. I closed it and opened Firefox 2 again, only to find it completely fucked. All of the extensions that had been disabled for Firefox 3 wouldn't reactivate, some extensions that hadn't been disabled were dead for some reason, I couldn't configure any extensions, and couldn't even uninstall any of them. Firefox 3 seemed to have pretty solidly FUBARed something. Not being able to figure what the hell had happened, I backed everything u
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the reason (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of IE users use IE "because it's there." These people see no reason to download a different browser because one is already provided for them. These are the same people that usually end up relying on Automatic Updates to secure their browser, in most cases not even aware that these updates were taking place to begin with. Chances are that these people don't know that their browser even has updates, much less that they are running an insecure, outdated browser.
Users of alternative browsers, by contrast, use their browser deliberately. They know that IE is there, but they blatantly decide to go against the tide and use something else. Whatever the reason for this depends on the user, but most of them share this common trait. Said browsers can't use Automatic Updates, so they must have their own update checking mechanisms in place. Every alternative browser I've used will check every so often for an update and display a pop-up for the user. The user then knows that their browser is out-of-date. Such users also tend to want the latest version, again for various reasons. Firefox is a bit more aggressive that most, downloading the update by default and installing it regardless of whether the user chooses to have it done now or later, which better explains its higher percentage.
Likely business users skew the results. (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Likely business users skew the results. (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, this type of situation might be one of the (many) reasons why Vista hasn't been widely deployed in enterprise (not as widely as XP, anyway). I don't think IE6 is available for Vista, so apps that don't work with IE7 would give some companies yet another reason to think about holding off on deploying Vista.
Well jeeze, you guys! (Score:4, Interesting)
If I spend all my time keeping up with upgrades, I won't have any time left to actually use my damn computer. And sometimes an older version works better for me. All that automatic crap is turned off. My disks are backed up...I think... I'll upgrade if something breaks. I hope you're ok with that.
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"Most secure" (Score:5, Funny)
That many people still run IE 2.0?
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I believe they're referring to the browser that came with Prodigy. I can't recall the last time that thing had a browser exploit, it must have been years ago at this point.
What has single click got to do with it? (Score:2, Interesting)
I'm not sure why they couldn't have the update option for version 2.xx at least offer the option to update to version 3. It just kept telling me there were no new updates available. I wouldn't call it 'single click' at all.
Re:What has single click got to do with it? (Score:5, Informative)
I'm not sure why they couldn't have the .update option for version 2.xx at least offer the option to update to version 3. It just kept telling me there were no new updates available. I wouldn't call it 'single click' at all.
The option to update to Firefox 3 instead of another security minor version of Firefox 2 (which will still get security updates till the end of the year) hasn't been turned on at the server end yet, and will likely only be done at the next minor version update, like Firefox 3.0.1 or later.
THEN, you'll have a single click.
Aren't I the living satan (Score:3, Insightful)
Well I still use version 1.5.0.12. Just minimize those annoying upgrade popups every time they pop up. 10 clicks & they just give an error & next day it's another popup for another upgrade. You mean those weren't advertizements? Well, probably just destroyed someone's TimeWarner stock.
easiest to update means it gets updated (Score:4, Insightful)
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For at least some of those cases, the reason why we don't update is because Firefox doesn't tell us when an updated version is available when we're running as limited users (i.e. not root). I don't know how it works on other OSes, but in Windows XP, if you don't have write access to the Firefox directory, it won't even notify you that an update is available. Sometimes I don't find out until a month or two after the update is released that it even exists. It's ironic that a user who tries to run more securel
Types of users of different browsers (Score:4, Informative)
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It's not just corporate users. It's everybody who isn't running XP or higher. For a huge number of people, upgrading to the most recent version of Internet Explorer means buying a new operating system. Of course there are a lot of people who aren't upgrading. It's one of the consequences of Microsoft tying Internet Explorer to Windows so tightly. To upgrade to Internet Explorer 7, you need to tak
Live CD ? (Score:2)
Stop making it optional (Score:4, Interesting)
Web developers heed my call. Stop making websites accept security corrupting browsers because half the time they are pry zombies. Look at your logs and see the rate at which these computers increase revenue. Drop them at whatever delta you think prudent.
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That's not practical, one of the parts of a proper security policy is to not have information like that leaking to an unknown server. Last time I checked, none of that information was making it through my firewalls. I'd be blocked, even though I'm completely up to date. As would anybody with a less popular browser.
I know that right now IE is broken enough that websites have to test to for it in order to get things to look right, but there's really no reason why anything beyond the browser type and major rel
User group (Score:3, Insightful)
Corporate policy? (Score:2, Interesting)
Old Firefox usage (Score:5, Insightful)
I wonder how much of the old Firefox usage is old installs in Linux? You can't use the built-in updater if you installed the RPM/DEB because the permissions are (or should be) wrong for letting you write to the folder. AFAIK there's only a few distros who have moved to Firefox 3 so far, so the rest would be showing up as out-dated.
Similarly for Windows, if they're counting Firefox 3 as "up to date" then how many people are still on old v2s because they don't know about v3?
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True. There is also the fact that Firefox is not self-contained. I can't install Firefox 3 yet because it needs a more recent version of something (pango? - I forget) than I have installed. And I can't update that because various other things are out of date. So I'll install Firefox 3 when I update the whole system soon.
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Meh (Score:3, Insightful)
Anyone who uses linux should know this.
For example, wine v0.9.58 works perfectly for me; I blindly updated to
Usually, updates are a good thing, but not always.
The Camino folks have it just right (Score:2, Insightful)
I use Camino [caminobrowser.org] as my browser on my Mac and choose to leave the home page as the default "Camino Start" page. Its very minimalist, just shows a small Google search box, and a link to the latest version which changes colour to red if my version is outdated.
No in-your-face messages, no irritating popups, no external syncing software... though I guess it only works if you keep it as your home page. Makes sense to use a feature that's built into every web browser (sarcasm aside): the ability to load a web page!
Big Company Structures (Score:2, Informative)
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Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
fanbois (Score:2, Interesting)
I think this just shows that firefox user are, just like my fellow opera users, just a bunch of browser fanbois. Hell, i even run weekly snapshot builds of opera for no reason. IE users dont care about the browser in the first place, Safari isn't something Mac users chose to use because it's so great either. So why would they bother updating all the time? ...
So in conclusion, this study shows: If you chose to use some special software, you will update it when you use it. Big suprise
Many Problems With Methodology In This Study (Score:3, Insightful)
(Warning: Self-promotion)
In my eWEEK column on this study [eweek.com] I point out numerous problems with it. Many have been mentioned by others.
The main issue is that the study is based on user-agent string data from Google's logs, and Microsoft does not supply minor version information in that string, unlike Firefox, Safari and others. Microsoft considers this to be an "information disclosure vulnerability" because it would help an attacker to commit version-specific attacks.
Because of this, the authors only know about IE major versions (5, 6. 7, 8) and decided that all IE7 users were secure, while nobody else was. Microsoft is still providing security updates for IE5 and IE6; while they are not as secure as IE7 for a variety of reasons, it's not reasonable to lump them into a group with people who don't update their browser. Conversely, if you have IE7 and haven't applied any of the security updates to it, the study says you're up to date.
Be that as it may, as others have said, the issue here is that business users use IE and the other browsers have minimal footprint in it. Firefox, by default, has no support for managed updates, and IT in a big company would (make that should) never allow users to apply updates willy-nilly to their systems. Another point is that while Microsoft supports old version for years, at the demand of their customers, Mozilla withdraws all support for old versions within 6 months of a new one being released. In fact, support for Firefox 2 will end in December of this year. Businesses won't tolerate this. IE5 support on Windows 2000 will continue till 2010 and IE6 as late as 2015.
Re:*shrug* (Score:5, Funny)
No reason to fix what isn't broke.
What the hell are you doing on Slashdot?
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Cracking lame jokes and offering solutions to most of the worlds problems for free, just like the rest of us.
The original poster can't help it that most of /. didn't see the delicious sarcasm in his post.
I for one welcome our MicroSoft-Loving, IE toting overlord.
Re:*shrug* (Score:5, Insightful)
No reason to fix what isn't broke.
Oh it's broke. You just don't know.
Re:*shrug* (Score:5, Informative)
Well, browsers are a little different, from a security perspective you could argue they *are* broke whenever new vulnerabilities are discovered. For a web browser, they need continuing updates to address new security vulnerabilities. Unfortunately there's only so much interest in continuing security-only fixes to older versions...
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AC makes no sense. Assuming it takes users some constant time C to update, and all users update theri browsers (big assumption...), then with two updates per week, users will run the latest version of the browser 1-C/7 of the time. With updates twice per month, users will run with the latest version 1-C/30 of the time. Obviously C/7 > C/30 therefore if you update less often users will be up-to-date more often.
That firefox users are up-to-date 83-ish% of the time is MORE, not less, impressive because Mozi
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IE7 was rammed down most of the populations throat with an automatic security update a while back, though it has the graces to not try to install it again if you say no to the IE7 license agreement. I'm also not sure if this happened before the start of the study.
Re:IE7 is not installed with automatic updates (Score:5, Informative)
I can't tell you how annoying it was to have IE7 forced through the automatic updates system. I would normally say it is a good thing to update the browser... as it is the single most common entry point for spyware, adware, etc (with the email client being the single most common entry point for viruses).
HOWEVER:
a) The "Menu" bar is missing by default (yea the File, Edit, View, Etc... toolbar).
Try explaining to a client over the phone how to "Right-click in an area toward the top of the browser below the title bar, but above the content window, and not in the address bar, oh and not on another toolbar, somewhere kinda blank, maybe to the right of the green arrow, oh that area isn't blank on your screen, oh yea I don't mean blank, just without buttons, did you get the menu, well it should have check marks next to toolbar names, uh something like Standard / Address Bar / Links, yea you got it, wait no, I didn't say click on address bar, ok do it again and turn address bar back on, oh it wasn't on... yea turn it on and then turn on, yes I mean make a check mark by it, yes, ok try it again and turn on the one called, uh something like, just read me what your menu says, yes, that one, ok now do you have File / Edit / View at the top of the window, oh no it's below the address bar and buttons, yea, ok bring up the menu again and uncheck "lock toolbars", then click on the edge, it has little bumps, well more like lines, yea you can grab it there and move it, then you didn't click on the right area, yea try again, ok move it up, well then you have to move the address bar back down, try wiggling it at the top, move it around until the address bar goes onto its own line, yea keep trying, you aren't wiggling it properly, then just drop it there and move the address bar, no it can't go all the way at the top, I don't know why, ask Microsoft why, yea, ok well was there anything else..." and so on.
b) The "Address" bar is hidden by default
See "a"
c) FTP is broken (yep, just fails with "cannot be displayed" when you click an ftp:// [ftp] link ... you have to go into "File > Open With Windows Explorer" to get it to open properly)
Here is a big problem, most software download sites have mirrors at ftp:// [ftp] links, which fail without any reason. IE 6 and previous would re-task the current IE window to a Windows Explorer window and process the FTP request... no so with IE 7(they may have fixed this since). The net result is that users who may try to update their software, or download new software, are unable to. Sites that worked last night suddenly don't. (I first ran into this when a customer called me saying they couldn't download the new version of their anti-virus software, talk about security updates).
d) Common buttons are missing or drastically re-skinned to the extent that users are lost
e) Tabs confuse IE Users (yes I know they are off by default, but users click on things and enable things accidently, and then call me asking why it is broken).
. . .
Shortly after IE 7's relese we implemented a remote desktop application for all phone support requests.