Msn.com article suggests FireFox better than IE... - GoFuckYourself.com

goBigtime · 07-05-2004, 09:43 AM

Are the Browser Wars Back?
How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer.
By Paul Boutin
Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004, at 11:03 AM PT

I usually don't worry about PC viruses, but last week's Scob attack snapped me awake. The clever multi-stage assault, carried out by alleged Russian spam crime lords, infiltrated corporate Web servers and then used them to infect home computers. The software that Scob (also known as Download.ject) attempted to install on its victims' machines included a keystroke logger.

In less than a day, Internet administrators sterilized the infection by shutting down the Russian server that hosted the spyware. But not before a barrage of scary reports had circled the world. "Users are being told to avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole," the BBC warned. (Disclosure: Microsoft owns Slate.) CNET reporter Robert Lemos zeroed in on why the attack was so scary. "This time," he wrote, "the flaws affect every user of Internet Explorer." That's about 95 percent of all Net users. No matter how well they had protected themselves against viruses, spyware, and everything else in the past, they were still vulnerable to yet another flaw in Microsoft's browser.

Scob didn't get me, but it was enough to make me ditch Explorer in favor of the much less vulnerable Firefox browser. Firefox is built and distributed free by the Mozilla Organization, a small nonprofit corporation spun off last year from the fast-fading remnants of Netscape, which was absorbed by AOL in 1999. Firefox development and testing are mostly done by about a dozen Mozilla employees, plus a few dozen others at companies like IBM, Sun, and Red Hat. I've been using it for a week now, and I've all but forgotten about Explorer.

Continue Article

You've probably been told to dump Internet Explorer for a Mozilla browser before, by the same propeller-head geek who wants you to delete Windows from your hard drive and install Linux. You've ignored him, and good for you. Microsoft wiped out Netscape in the Browser Wars of the late 1990s not only because the company's management pushed the bounds of business ethics, but also because its engineers built a better browser. When Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale approved the Mozilla project?an open-source browser based on Netscape's code?in 1998, it seemed like a futile act of desperation.

But six years later, the surviving members of the Mozilla insurgency are staging a comeback. The latest version of Firefox, released this Monday, has a more professional look, online help, and a tool that automatically imports your bookmarks, history, site passwords, and other settings from Explorer. Meanwhile, all-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. The company now rolls out only an occasional fix as part of its Windows updates. Gates and company won the browser war, so why keep fighting it?

The problem is that hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer. Many of them take advantage of Explorer's ActiveX system, which lets Web sites download and install software onto visitors' computers, sometimes without users' knowledge. ActiveX was meant to make it easy to add the latest interactive multimedia and other features to sites, but instead it's become a tool for sneaking spyware onto unsuspecting PCs. That's why the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a partnership between the tech industry and Homeland Security, recently took the unusual step of advising people to consider switching browsers. Whether or not you do, US-CERT advises increasing your Internet Explorer security settings, per Microsoft's instructions. (Alas, the higher setting disables parts of Slate's interface.) Even if you stop using Explorer, other programs on your computer may still automatically launch it to connect to sites.

Firefox eschews ActiveX and other well-known infection paths. You can configure it to automatically download most files when you click on them, but not .exe files, which are runnable programs. I thought this was a bug before I realized Firefox was saving me from myself, since .exe files could be viruses or stealth installers.

For actual Web surfing, Firefox's interface is familiar enough to Explorer users. There's hardly anything to say about it, which is a compliment. Some interactive features designed exclusively for Internet Explorer won't appear, such as the pop-up menus on Slate's table of contents. A few sites don't display properly, but they're pretty rare. More common are those that stupidly turn non-Explorer browsers away by claiming they're "unsupported." Trusty, useful ActiveX-powered sites such as Windows Update don't load at all, but that's the idea. You can always launch Internet Explorer for those when you need to.

Firefox also adds a productivity feature that Explorer has never gotten around to: tabbed browsing. You can open several Web pages in the same window and flip through them as tabs, similar to those used in some of Windows' dialog boxes. It's tough to understand why tabbed browsing is such an improvement until you've tried it. But if you're in the habit of opening a barrage of news and blog links every morning and then reading them afterward, or clicking on several Google results from the same search, tabbed browsing is an order of magnitude more efficient and organized than popping up a whole new window for each link.

That said, be aware that getting started with Firefox isn't a one-click operation. After installing the browser, you'll need to reinstall plug-ins for some programs, as well as Sun's Java engine for any Java-powered pages. Let me save you an hour of head-scratching here: Save Sun's Java installation file to your desktop, then go back to Firefox's menus and select File -> Open File to install the downloaded .xpi file into the browser. That'll work where other methods fail without explanation.

Once you're set up, it still takes a day or two to get used to the interface and feature differences between Explorer and Firefox, as well as the fact that your favorite sites may look a little different. That's why I left it out of Slate's 20-minute anti-virus plan. But if you've got time to make the switch, the peace of mind is worth it. Mozilla also makes a free e-mail program called Thunderbird and a calendar tool called Sunbird, if you want to avoid using Outlook and Outlook Express, two other virus carriers. They're nowhere near as feature-packed as Outlook, but the e-mail client includes a spam filter that works pretty well after you train it on four or five thousand messages?in my case, one week's mail.

Will Firefox make your computer hackproof? Even Mozilla's spokespeople stress that no software can be guaranteed to be safe, and that Firefox's XPInstall system could conceivably be tricked into installing a keystroke logger instead of Sun's Java engine. But for now, there's safety in numbers?the lack of them, that is. Internet Explorer is used by 95 percent of the world. Firefox's fan base adds up to 2 or 3 percent at most. Which browser do you think the Russian hackers are busily trying to break into again?

http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/

David! · 07-05-2004, 09:49 AM

FireFox sucks

goBigtime · 07-05-2004, 09:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by PussyMan
FireFox sucks

Why?

blazi · 07-05-2004, 09:55 AM

is FireFox worth downloading then?

Goonx · 07-05-2004, 09:56 AM

Firefox sucks for me

07-05-2004, 09:59 AM

Come on guys.. why take one or the other side? Use both ..

I'm using IE, because I think the pages load faster and the browser loads up quicker. I'm also using Firefox because the better password management, good download management and the great tab browsing.

Corleone · 07-05-2004, 10:01 AM

firefox rocks.. i'm lovin' it

Fabuleux · 07-05-2004, 10:03 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gasper
Come on guys.. why take one or the other side? Use both ..

I'm using IE, because I think the pages load faster and the browser loads up quicker. I'm also using Firefox because the better password management, good download management and the great tab browsing.

I agree completely. IE is faster and Firefox has some nice features. But what sucks is sometimes I have to refresh the page because I can't click on some links.
If MS is smart they implement a confirmation box for downloading .exe files, make tabs and add a download manager. A good programmer can do that in one day.

David! · 07-05-2004, 10:06 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by goBigtime
Why?

I have firefox/ie/netscape on my pc
firefox just don't cut it yet, too many loopholes and non suported file types.
I don't have time to mess around with settings and such.
So I always use ie, and netscape for the tab browsing

goBigtime · 07-05-2004, 10:30 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by PussyMan
I have firefox/ie/netscape on my pc
firefox just don't cut it yet, too many loopholes

loopholes?

By loopholes you don't mean vulnerabilities, right? I'm not sure what you mean by loopholes.

Are you sure you didn't mean to say 'too many inconsistencies'... as in, it's not consistent enough with IE for you to switch over yet.

TheWildcard · 07-05-2004, 10:32 AM

Wtf? MSN = Microsoft. How is this possible?

loverboy · 07-05-2004, 10:37 AM

its a good idea to have an alternate Browser installed, whether Firefox or Netscape, aside from IE.

IE will forever be used by the majority surfers and its hard to get rid that at this point. Im sure despite extensive criticism about IE, pretty sure B. Gates will rise to the occassion and will defend its company from any attack. He never fails to resolve any problem, that's why he's always on top.

btw, im a Netscape fanatic

JSA Matt · 07-05-2004, 10:38 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by PussyMan
FireFox sucks

Doctor Dre · 07-05-2004, 10:42 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by blazi
is FireFox worth downloading then?

Off course

ModelBuffet · 07-05-2004, 10:52 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Corleone
firefox rocks.. i'm lovin' it

I use it.... WAY better than the microsoft CRAP

RandomNinja · 07-05-2004, 12:08 PM

Firefox isn't perfect, but I like it better than IE. I think it's worth the extra second it takes to start up.

polish_aristocrat · 07-05-2004, 12:44 PM

How can msn.com recommend firefox?
That's like Burger King saying Mcdonalds offers better burgers

goBigtime · 07-05-2004, 12:48 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by polish_aristocrat
How can msn.com recommend firefox?
That's like Burger King saying Mcdonalds offers better burgers

I'd like to think its more like Burger King saying you can make better tasting, healthier burgers at home.

Burger King -> McDonalds woud be more like IE -> Opera, imo.

extreme · 07-05-2004, 01:00 PM

2 usefull mozilla pluggins, first one might make an IE->firefox transaction easier.

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions...&id=35&vid=145
Adds "View page in Internet Explorer" links to the content and link context menu. Handy for previewing pages in IE, loading up IE-only pages when you run across them in Mozilla, etc.

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions...x&id=60&vid=63
Adds an usefull toolbar for HTMLcoders/webdesigners.

EviLGuY · 07-05-2004, 02:40 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by extreme
2 usefull mozilla pluggins, first one might make an IE->firefox transaction easier.

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions...&id=35&vid=145
Adds "View page in Internet Explorer" links to the content and link context menu. Handy for previewing pages in IE, loading up IE-only pages when you run across them in Mozilla, etc.

http://update.mozilla.org/extensions...x&id=60&vid=63
Adds an usefull toolbar for HTMLcoders/webdesigners.

God.. I hate that second extension. I had it installed for a while.. everytime you open a new window with that thing installed it takes a couple seconds and everything just stops. (like when you have a window open already.. it should be nearly instant..) Really annoying.. took me a while to trace it to that extension.

07-05-2004, 09:43 AM	#1
goBigtime Confirmed User Join Date: Nov 2002 Posts: 7,761	Msn.com article suggests FireFox better than IE... Are the Browser Wars Back? How Mozilla's Firefox trumps Internet Explorer. By Paul Boutin Posted Wednesday, June 30, 2004, at 11:03 AM PT I usually don't worry about PC viruses, but last week's Scob attack snapped me awake. The clever multi-stage assault, carried out by alleged Russian spam crime lords, infiltrated corporate Web servers and then used them to infect home computers. The software that Scob (also known as Download.ject) attempted to install on its victims' machines included a keystroke logger. In less than a day, Internet administrators sterilized the infection by shutting down the Russian server that hosted the spyware. But not before a barrage of scary reports had circled the world. "Users are being told to avoid using Internet Explorer until Microsoft patches a serious security hole," the BBC warned. (Disclosure: Microsoft owns Slate.) CNET reporter Robert Lemos zeroed in on why the attack was so scary. "This time," he wrote, "the flaws affect every user of Internet Explorer." That's about 95 percent of all Net users. No matter how well they had protected themselves against viruses, spyware, and everything else in the past, they were still vulnerable to yet another flaw in Microsoft's browser. Scob didn't get me, but it was enough to make me ditch Explorer in favor of the much less vulnerable Firefox browser. Firefox is built and distributed free by the Mozilla Organization, a small nonprofit corporation spun off last year from the fast-fading remnants of Netscape, which was absorbed by AOL in 1999. Firefox development and testing are mostly done by about a dozen Mozilla employees, plus a few dozen others at companies like IBM, Sun, and Red Hat. I've been using it for a week now, and I've all but forgotten about Explorer. Continue Article You've probably been told to dump Internet Explorer for a Mozilla browser before, by the same propeller-head geek who wants you to delete Windows from your hard drive and install Linux. You've ignored him, and good for you. Microsoft wiped out Netscape in the Browser Wars of the late 1990s not only because the company's management pushed the bounds of business ethics, but also because its engineers built a better browser. When Netscape CEO Jim Barksdale approved the Mozilla project?an open-source browser based on Netscape's code?in 1998, it seemed like a futile act of desperation. But six years later, the surviving members of the Mozilla insurgency are staging a comeback. The latest version of Firefox, released this Monday, has a more professional look, online help, and a tool that automatically imports your bookmarks, history, site passwords, and other settings from Explorer. Meanwhile, all-conquering Internet Explorer has been stuck in the mud for the past year, as Microsoft stopped delivering new versions. The company now rolls out only an occasional fix as part of its Windows updates. Gates and company won the browser war, so why keep fighting it? The problem is that hackers continue to find and exploit security holes in Explorer. Many of them take advantage of Explorer's ActiveX system, which lets Web sites download and install software onto visitors' computers, sometimes without users' knowledge. ActiveX was meant to make it easy to add the latest interactive multimedia and other features to sites, but instead it's become a tool for sneaking spyware onto unsuspecting PCs. That's why the U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team, a partnership between the tech industry and Homeland Security, recently took the unusual step of advising people to consider switching browsers. Whether or not you do, US-CERT advises increasing your Internet Explorer security settings, per Microsoft's instructions. (Alas, the higher setting disables parts of Slate's interface.) Even if you stop using Explorer, other programs on your computer may still automatically launch it to connect to sites. Firefox eschews ActiveX and other well-known infection paths. You can configure it to automatically download most files when you click on them, but not .exe files, which are runnable programs. I thought this was a bug before I realized Firefox was saving me from myself, since .exe files could be viruses or stealth installers. For actual Web surfing, Firefox's interface is familiar enough to Explorer users. There's hardly anything to say about it, which is a compliment. Some interactive features designed exclusively for Internet Explorer won't appear, such as the pop-up menus on Slate's table of contents. A few sites don't display properly, but they're pretty rare. More common are those that stupidly turn non-Explorer browsers away by claiming they're "unsupported." Trusty, useful ActiveX-powered sites such as Windows Update don't load at all, but that's the idea. You can always launch Internet Explorer for those when you need to. Firefox also adds a productivity feature that Explorer has never gotten around to: tabbed browsing. You can open several Web pages in the same window and flip through them as tabs, similar to those used in some of Windows' dialog boxes. It's tough to understand why tabbed browsing is such an improvement until you've tried it. But if you're in the habit of opening a barrage of news and blog links every morning and then reading them afterward, or clicking on several Google results from the same search, tabbed browsing is an order of magnitude more efficient and organized than popping up a whole new window for each link. That said, be aware that getting started with Firefox isn't a one-click operation. After installing the browser, you'll need to reinstall plug-ins for some programs, as well as Sun's Java engine for any Java-powered pages. Let me save you an hour of head-scratching here: Save Sun's Java installation file to your desktop, then go back to Firefox's menus and select File -> Open File to install the downloaded .xpi file into the browser. That'll work where other methods fail without explanation. Once you're set up, it still takes a day or two to get used to the interface and feature differences between Explorer and Firefox, as well as the fact that your favorite sites may look a little different. That's why I left it out of Slate's 20-minute anti-virus plan. But if you've got time to make the switch, the peace of mind is worth it. Mozilla also makes a free e-mail program called Thunderbird and a calendar tool called Sunbird, if you want to avoid using Outlook and Outlook Express, two other virus carriers. They're nowhere near as feature-packed as Outlook, but the e-mail client includes a spam filter that works pretty well after you train it on four or five thousand messages?in my case, one week's mail. Will Firefox make your computer hackproof? Even Mozilla's spokespeople stress that no software can be guaranteed to be safe, and that Firefox's XPInstall system could conceivably be tricked into installing a keystroke logger instead of Sun's Java engine. But for now, there's safety in numbers?the lack of them, that is. Internet Explorer is used by 95 percent of the world. Firefox's fan base adds up to 2 or 3 percent at most. Which browser do you think the Russian hackers are busily trying to break into again? http://slate.msn.com/id/2103152/

07-05-2004, 09:49 AM	#2
David! By the wrath of Agamemnon Industry Role: Join Date: Apr 2004 Location: Miami Posts: 6,501	FireFox sucks __________________ .

07-05-2004, 09:55 AM	#4
blazi Confirmed User Join Date: Feb 2003 Location: Closer now Posts: 4,321	is FireFox worth downloading then? __________________ makingcoin.com - 100% payouts coinscuties.com

07-05-2004, 12:44 PM	#17
polish_aristocrat Too lazy to set a custom title Join Date: Jul 2002 Posts: 40,377	How can msn.com recommend firefox? That's like Burger King saying Mcdonalds offers better burgers __________________ I don't use ICQ anymore.

07-05-2004, 01:00 PM	#19
extreme Confirmed User Industry Role: Join Date: Oct 2002 Location: lalaland Posts: 2,120	2 usefull mozilla pluggins, first one might make an IE->firefox transaction easier. http://update.mozilla.org/extensions...&id=35&vid=145 Adds "View page in Internet Explorer" links to the content and link context menu. Handy for previewing pages in IE, loading up IE-only pages when you run across them in Mozilla, etc. http://update.mozilla.org/extensions...x&id=60&vid=63 Adds an usefull toolbar for HTMLcoders/webdesigners. __________________ Browse and find new paysites with screenshot-preview Export FHGs/FLVs/Paysites by JSON, XML, CSV and Text Find FHGs/FLVs/Paysites from any given Category or Search-query

07-05-2004, 09:56 AM	#5
Goonx Confirmed User Join Date: May 2002 Posts: 1,048	Firefox sucks for me

07-05-2004, 09:59 AM	#6
Gasper Guest Posts: n/a	Come on guys.. why take one or the other side? Use both .. I'm using IE, because I think the pages load faster and the browser loads up quicker. I'm also using Firefox because the better password management, good download management and the great tab browsing.

07-05-2004, 10:01 AM	#7
Corleone C.R.E.A.M Industry Role: Join Date: Apr 2003 Posts: 15,262	firefox rocks.. i'm lovin' it

07-05-2004, 10:32 AM	#11
TheWildcard So Fucking Banned Join Date: Jun 2004 Location: The Netherlands Posts: 4,759	Wtf? MSN = Microsoft. How is this possible?

07-05-2004, 10:37 AM	#12
loverboy When it rains, it pours Industry Role: Join Date: May 2003 Posts: 20,609	its a good idea to have an alternate Browser installed, whether Firefox or Netscape, aside from IE. IE will forever be used by the majority surfers and its hard to get rid that at this point. Im sure despite extensive criticism about IE, pretty sure B. Gates will rise to the occassion and will defend its company from any attack. He never fails to resolve any problem, that's why he's always on top. btw, im a Netscape fanatic

07-05-2004, 12:08 PM	#16
RandomNinja Confirmed User Join Date: Jun 2004 Posts: 802	Firefox isn't perfect, but I like it better than IE. I think it's worth the extra second it takes to start up.