The Fox Is in Microsoft's Henhouse (and Salivating)

Published on December 19, 2004 By Black Xero In WinCustomize News

FIREFOX is a classic overnight success, many years in the making.

Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.

Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9. Just over a month later, the foundation celebrated a remarkable milestone: 10 million downloads. Donations from Firefox's appreciative fans paid for a two-page advertisement in The New York Times on Thursday.

Until now, the Linux operating system was the best-known success among the hundreds of open-source projects that challenge Microsoft with technically strong, free software that improves as the population of bug-reporting and bug-fixing users grows. But unless you oversee purchases for a corporate data center, it's unlikely that you've felt the need to try Linux yourself.

With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.

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For the first time, Internet Explorer has been losing market share. According to a worldwide survey conducted in late November by OneStat.com, a company in Amsterdam that analyzes the Web, Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. Firefox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.

Read detailed article from New York Times at Link

Comments (Page 2)

WARCRY

on Dec 20, 2004

im one of the few that does not like firefox at all nothin on made me want to switch in my view avant is all around the best browser to get the fastest by far

JeremyG

on Dec 20, 2004

Firefox will never win over any significant market share. Why?

Because businesses will never use anything but IE. (and most home users dont even care) Anyone who takes their corporate IT issues seriously will understand somethign about switching your users browser......you don't gain anything.

People can go off for hours about how IE is not as secure as other browsers, etc etc etc. But the simple fact is that most organizations have at least one critical appplication that relies on IE. 3rd-party developers integrate IE into their programs in DROVES. No other browser software offers robust AND supported browser controls that can easily be used in their programs.

This being the case, you still have to make sure that IE is fully patches with all latest security fixes. After all, even if your users are using Firefox to look at the web...it doesnt mean they aren't retrieving updates to their accounting software using IE.....or posting payroll information to the bank, using IE. They probably don't even know they are using IE, and worse, there's probably a lot of Admin's who dont know either.

As soon as you have discovered one critical application in your organization which uses the IE controls, it makes little sense to use an alternative browser. It only serves to increase your security overhead.

The moral of the story: Microsoft wins AGAIN, by catering to developers. I wonder when the linux people will finally "get it".

JeremyG

on Dec 20, 2004

By the way...i think Mouse-Gestures are a really poor feature.....even back to when they were used in the game "Black & White".

Why are they bad? Cause they assume people use a mouse. Not only do I use a pointing device as little as possible, but when I do I use a trackball. Gestures are pretty much useless to trackball users.

mr.bo

on Dec 20, 2004

I've been using the Mozilla Suite forever. I love it, and will probably use it as long as they make it. I've tried switching over to Mozilla Firefox every time they hit a big milestone, but it still seems kind of clunky compared to Mozilla (atleast to me). I always end up sticking with Mozilla suite. I do like what they've done so far with Thunderbird though. It's sticks pretty close to Mozilla -mail. from what I've seen.

Kobrano

on Dec 20, 2004

I use Maxthon and love it. I've never had a single piece of spyware/adware on any of my computers, nor have any of my clients who all use IE

This is 100% NOT TRUE, and you know it.. Maxthon is nothing more than a buggy cheap IE shell browser, and as such, is vulnerable to the entire internet, just like IE is. A mere hour of web browsing with IE is all you need to have a half dozen pieces of spyware/adware installed on your PC.

Maxthon is no different than the 20 other cheap IE shell browsers. Whats the point of using Maxthon over Firefox? Firefox has better tab support (with Tabbed Browser Preferences), is faster, doens't infect you with spyware, and has much more stability.

Bottom line, anyone that still uses IE, is either in denial, or just doesn't understand computers very well.

Adam Najmanowicz

on Dec 20, 2004

Kobrano, disabling ActiveX support in IE makes it so much more secure in that case. It kind of amuses me that Firefox is considered more secure because it does not have ActiveX support. It's a LACK and NOT security feature. It's not there not because Mozilla coders are so brillian, but because they would not be able to make it work across all the platforms Gecko runs at. You CAN disable ActiveX support in IE. Using that same logic the most secure way to view web pages in would be downloading them and viewing their code in notepad.

Disable ActiveX + use a tabbed shell to IE and you have more or less matched standard Firefox (no extensions).

That said - I use Firefox as my primary browser but all the myths around it are kind of funny. I am impressed how well Gecko (the rendering engine) works, though I am MUCH less impressed with their GUI toolkit. It simply does not look well with almost all dark WindowBlins skins and even MSStyles. Not to count it's other sizing and painting bugs. I can live with them - because as a whole it's really a decent and well put together set but in my understanding there is nothing in Firefox Microsoft could not match within a month of development.

As someone said it once: When in doubt - throw money at it.

Septimus

on Dec 20, 2004

Firefox is very good. Opera is better

MDAW2254

on Dec 20, 2004

Firefox is the best. What I like the most about it is the built-in download manager, and accelerator on it, because you wouldn't belive how many downloads I have on my PC. But, really, I hade NO clue that IE's share dropped less then 89%!!! I also like the theme manager, too. The WebBlinds for IE really does kind of stink. Firefox has everything (maybe more then) I need. Thanks for the info, Sir Black Xero.

jeoson

on Dec 20, 2004

I've heard a lot of good things about Firefox then I try it and I've been using it since 0.9.3 ,it has lot of useful features like tabbed browsing and you can add search engines from google to dictionary.com, and if Firefox crashes there is a safe mode. For people who still uses dial-up

(like me) will think twice before converting to DSL. I'm very happy with Firefox and I wonder what feature can they add in the future 'cause for me it is already complete

Tombiepoo

on Dec 20, 2004

Such a tempting topic... Yummm...

1. As SkinStudio mentioned, you can make IE just as secure. The problem is, out of the box, IE does come out less secure than FireFox. But then again, FireFox is less compatible. I'll vote for more compatibility and more care during browsing.
2. @Kobrano: HOLY CRAP! "A mere hour of web browsing with IE is all you need to have a half dozen pieces of spyware/adware installed on your PC." What the hell kind of web sites do you regularly browse? I have not had any kind of crap on my computer for about four years straight now. On the other hand a family friend's computer is contaminated by thousands of stuff just because their 15 year old downloads every crap that's forwarded to them. I'd say that's quite a user issue. Don't download porn and cracked software, and you won't have problems with that much crap.
3. Maxthon: I've been using it for a long time now (since it was MYIE2). I'd beg to differ with the notion of Maxthon being a cheap IE shell. Yes, it is an IE shell but I think it's a very useful one indeed. Mouse gestures? Got it... Tabbed browsing? Got it... Search toolbar that highlights search terms and searches the engine of your choice without having to find and download extra toolbars from here and there? Got it... Crashes? None in the past several months. I think Maxthon is definitely an alternative to using vanilla IE. And it still gives you all the compatibility that IE browsing provides.
4. JeremyG has a great point. All of these browsers are focusing on browsing only. Note that IE is used in many programs as an HTTP provider and even some programmers use it as a file viewing control on their forms. It makes developing very easy and when you deploy it on pretty much any Windows machine, you get results easily. FireFox, Opera, and the likes never address any of these needs from programmers and hence will never "replace" IE (unless attitude change happens) but merely be an alternative browser.

</2cents>

Tombiepoo

on Dec 20, 2004

Oh... and don't get me started on Netscape...

I have been web developing for a long while now and still the biggest pain in tha a$$ is to make everything work for the gazillion of browsers out there. i.e. different browsers translating HTML, JS, etc differently. Now we have to worry about FireFox and all the others as well! Oh joy!

Thomas Thomassen

on Dec 20, 2004

I hope this will make the IE devs get their finger in gear when it comes to working on their browser to more than security. Rendering and speed is things that'd be nice to see some work on in IE.
All though, I really don't expect to see any new IE before Longhorn. As long as the browser people use render pages according to the standards I don't care what browser people uses. I'm happy with Firefox and will stick with it until I see something amazing happend to any of the others. Yes, I have tried Opera, but I've never felt happy with it.

MadPyro

on Dec 20, 2004

i personally, was a little suspisious of firefox ... but now that i switched, its sooo much better: no popups, no spyware and almost no crashing (crashed once because i was using 2gb of memory and i only have 1.5 installed

) lol yeah i love firefox. and the thing about everyone in college using it, that just 100 PERCENT TRUE!!! i went to pick my brother up for the holidays at UW and walking down the hall, i saw at least 90 percent of the people using firefox. the rest were playing PIRATES! by sid meyer lol. either that or good ole CS. anywayas, i love firefox and ie should be tossed... too bad no way to uninstall it

PolynesianMedic

on Dec 20, 2004

I love it when people are trying to get you away from something they have never tried. I have tried Netscape, IE, Opera and for almost the past year, Firefox. Let me tell you, that Opera is based on IE, so if you think that you are safer, you are wrong. I had more problems with that piece of software then I have ever had with anything. IE, well we all know how that works. Netscape, was in fact a solo competitor back in the day, that is until it was bought by AOL. That is the reason that they are not liked today. Sure the coding for Netscape comes from Mozilla, but they DO make some changes to it to suit their needs. As far as Firefox is concerned, it is the MOST customizable browser you will ever use. It is also leeps and bounds faster then IE and Opera and Netscape. Try it you'll like it, just as Mikey likes it. Happy Holidays to all.

dukeofchutney

on Dec 20, 2004

IE beware, other browsers may rule the world yet...their foots in the door...

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