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- aptget, on 10/12/2007, -13/+91Everytime I hear about someone using Internet Explorer, I always cuddle up in a corner into a little ball.
I whisper to myself "It'll be okay" in a soft voice over and over until my sanity returns. - becominglumberg, on 10/12/2007, -3/+55I agree fully. I used to have to have the webdevs tell me that they needed to test on IE (which they did) but thank xenu somebody made a way to test the IE engine in FF (in an extension).
Whenever I work on a family members computer any more, I install FF and reicon the FF launcher with the IE 'swoopy e'. Only one family member has noticed the difference, and the spyware problems have gone way down. - sremick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+25Microsoft cares because the web-browser is a loss-leader that ensures purchases and lock-in with other Microsoft software that DOES cost money.
The more people who use IE, the more Microsoft can strongarm de-facto standards that are IE-only. The more IE-only stuff on the web, the more Windows products are necessary for a "good web experience". The more Windows products are sold (not just thinking Windows PCs here, but cell phones, PDAs, cars, fridges, etc), the more money Microsoft makes.
Giving IE away makes MS money if they can maintain significant marketshare for the above to work. Firefox (and other browsers) don't need to knock down IE use to below 50% to break the system... all they have to do is become a significant-enough factor that MS cannot enforce IE-only standards and encourage an IE-only web. With Firefox and now Safari, many would consider that line already crossed. There's still more work to be done (far too many vertical-market and intranet website apps require IE) but for the general public consumer-web, I feel the battle has been won. - jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -0/+22Most Firefox users, especially the evangalists, don't care if you use Opera, Konqerour, Safari, etc as long as you're not using IE. The more pressure to build a standards compliant and modern browser is what is needed, as far as I am concerned Opera is just another Ally in the cause...
- motang, on 10/12/2007, -1/+23Well you don't have to buy Firefox either.
- gothsquirrel, on 10/12/2007, -3/+24Going to forbes for technical advice is pretty bad. By the time it gets to Forbes it's pretty much common knowlege for most diggers.
- becominglumberg, on 10/12/2007, -0/+19In a saturated market 2% is a huge gain, especially against an opponent as big as MS. Consider it as big of a victory as if Target pulled 2% of Walmart's sales ($316b) away from it. That's a paltry $60b.
On such a large base, this is very substantial. - Terc, on 10/12/2007, -2/+20I needed to read the first word in your comment before I decided to mod you down.
- greves, on 10/12/2007, -1/+15Umm...
"Current global estimates (2004-5) indicate that there are upwards of 700 million of us online, 840 million according to the GlobalReach research agency."
(Source: http://www.bcentral.co.uk/business-information/marketing/ebusiness/how-many-people-use-the-internet-what-do-they-use-it-for.mspx)
Ok so lets see... 2% of 700,000,000 that's 14,000,000. 2% of 840,000,000 that's 16,800,000. That's a HELL OF A LOT OF PEOPLE who now use firefox instead of Internet Explorer. It's certainly a lot more people than you can shake a stick at. - jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -1/+14Most Firefox users care not about the looks but rather the functionality and usability which Firefox, even in it's plain manilla version, is leaps and bounds ahead of IE7. If you care so much about looks there's way to fix that too.
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -3/+16It may look better but there is one problem... Its Internet Explorer. Not matter what version they make or how good it will look, its still Internet Explorer. The name alone scares people from using it :D
- Grimdotdotdot, on 10/12/2007, -10/+22It's gained 2 whole percent in the last six months? Wow.
At this rate, it will have over half the market share in just under ten years.
What do Microsoft care, anyway - it's not like you can buy IE. - Iviz, on 10/12/2007, -2/+14If we all relied on looks over usability, I would take my PC, throw it out a window and buy a Mac.
FF 2.0 won't lose users to the looks since all users of FF are well aware then the 2.0 themes will be rolling out soon. So, in my opinion, IE7 looks like crap. - astrotrain, on 10/12/2007, -0/+12Microsoft is worried due to your not using their name when it comes to web browsing,
they are being put on the side burner when it comes to your web habits.
That and the simple fact is that Microsoft does not like competition, they want to
be king of the PC mountain.
I for one tried IE, and liked it years ago , I've also tried Netscape, and Opera. As they
grew and advanced they tended to get a bit more taxing on my system(s). With Firefox
I do not see it taxing my system.
Not to mention, it is easily DR'able, so if my Windows box blows up, I can swing over and restore the Firefox data to my Linux box and continue running. You can do that with Opera too.
But as for Internet Explorer, it lives in a Windows environment, take it out of that .env and you can't do that much with it.
In my book I like applications that can be easily transported from OS to OS, and not 'jailed' to one OS. When your app is jailed, so is your data. - upfrontfanatic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+13If you by "MS hater" means "hating to use days to hack compliant CSS into semi-compliant CSS to make it work in MSIE", I guess you have a point.
I want standard compliant browsers, so making websites ain't that much of a PITA, and MSIE wont be standard compliant until hell freezes over. - cam18, on 10/12/2007, -1/+12@ Burmask
It could be that:
1. Every version of Windows comes wih IE
2. Most users don't know about Firefox, Opera, or any other alternative browsers - Escamillo, on 10/12/2007, -3/+14IE7 looks nothing like FF.
- hyperlobic, on 10/12/2007, -2/+13cybersamurai:
Firefox was definitely not created because somebody was "tired of waiting for IE 7". Where did you get that idea? Firefox is a browser from the Mozilla project, based off the Mozilla framework. The Mozilla open source project was born years ago when Netscape released their source in an attempt to continue to compete with IE. Netscape supported many platforms besides Windows, and Mozilla/Firefox do as well. To say that Firefox is a stop-gap until IE 7 is laughable. - jinexile, on 10/12/2007, -1/+10Thing is that companies like Dell are shipping with Firefox preloaded now, so this arguement is becoming moot. It will be like the good ol' days where you get both IE and NS and the best browser gets the marketshare. It wasn't until IE was hands down the better product and that MS stopped shipping NS that IE was able to win the entire marketshare and languish for 6 years without so much as a single innovation since.
- dengar69, on 10/12/2007, -3/+12Unfortunately Microsoft's IE will always dominate the market for the simple fact its included with the OS. The average Joe or Jane Windows user is not going to care about Firefox, all they care about is getting on the internet and looking at their news, email, or online shopping and they'll use whats staring it front of them on their screen when they turn on the PC...IE.
- cam18, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7@Burmask
Because most users (the non-tech savvy crowd) don't know about it or don't care. - sremick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+7It's not a matter of being a Microsoft-hater as much as it's hating the lack of standards in IE and the fact that it's a virus/trojan/spyware magnet due to its bad design.
The "anything but IE" stance often comes from that, not some unfounded hatred of Microsoft. If Microsoft produced a safe, standards-compliant browser, not so many people would care. But IE is a scourge on the internet. The less people who use it, the less infected PCs will be out there, which means less DDOS attacks and fewer friends and relatives in tears because their PC has been rendered unusable and it's going to take hours of labor to clean it. Less IE use also means that sites cannot safely design themselves to only work in IE, which means Everyone Else can also have a pleasant web experience and use the internet as it was meant to be. - cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -3/+10The newest version of Opera is very full featured and it would be my 1st choice.
- iAmGeek, on 10/12/2007, -4/+10You know, FireFox is awesome, I love it. Personally, I wish everyone could use it, however, one of my preferences for FF is that the userbase IS so low. I personally don't want it to get to high, because that's when viruses and the such start targeting FireFox, and then I can't use it. So if IE7 is so amazing, you can have it, I'll stick with my low user-base.
- GreatDrok, on 10/12/2007, -0/+6You need to try IE7. It often struggles on the same sites that cause FF problems because the idiots who are coding the sites are being stupid and filtering based on the browser ident. They don't recognise IE7 as being valid so block it just as often as FF. Also, the new activeX model will cause sites that expect the free and easy way IE6 works will also break with IE7. Oddly enough, I think IE7 is going to be good for FF because developers who have to recode for IE7 might as well support the other popular browsers or better yet, standards!
- DoubtingThomas, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7Yes, however, Mozilla has an exceptional track record when it comes to turn-around time on patching security holes. The one thing that makes IE-specific viruses such a threat is the intimacy it (IE) shares with the operating system. Firefox, Opera, et all, do not share this "feature" , therefore they present much less of a security hole, even when specifically targeted by exploits.
- sremick, on 10/12/2007, -0/+5At my corporation, (5000+ employees?) Firefox is the standard browser and is rolled out on all new PC images.
The logic is that it's better to let individual PCs update their own copies of FF than it is to deal with the nightmare of cleaning systems. Too many IE-users were getting infected with stuff that would spread like wildfire on the corporate network, taking down systems, locking accounts, etc. SUS is all fine and good (I use it) but when even a fully-patched IE is vulnerable to serious in-the-wild exploits for months on end, you need to look elsewhere for your safe corporate browsing solutions. - Septimus, on 10/12/2007, -2/+7If only Opera had had the foresight to make their browser free 3 years ago, we may have a decent browser making inroads into IE market share.
Mod me down fanboys, but FF is getting worse not better. It's even started crashing out (with no extensions to make sure) in Ubuntu since the latest release. Bloody annoying. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4IE should continue to rule. I make so much money of noobs coming in here with their spyware riddled bogged down computers.
Customer : "My computer has become so slow now"
Me "You will need more ram"
Customer "Ok I will have some of that"
Me: "Please come again"
IE forever. - flash200, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4@dengar69
In the computer industry, "always" or "forever" translates as 5 - 10 years. 10 years ago, Java as we know it didn't exist, and the world wide web was still a fairly new thing to most people. 10 years ago Linux was relatively unknown and the term "open source" hadn't been coined yet.
5 years ago, Google was simply a company with a good search engine, and social software like digg and Wikipedia either didn't exist or were in their infancy. In the computer industry, there's not much that can't change drastically in 5 - 10 years. - acurism, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4As long as FF is more secure than IE, I will always use FF...
besides, IE may have copied FF on some things but that is a sign that FF will have more useful features in the future that IE7 does not have, until they can COPY it in IE8.
and, FF has cool extensions. - spacyt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4I hope EVERYONE will eventually wake the *&^% up and more people will start using Mozilla and other web compliant browsers. Designing a CSS layout so that it looks good in IE wastes so much of my freakin time that I sometimes want to take my keyboard and throw it across the room. :)
- danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+4Very good explanation sremick. The intranet is still the biggest problem though, and that is going to take a while to break. The problem is most companies IT departments are composed of MCSE people who would not know of a product that was not from Microsoft if it had 70% market share.
Unfortunately the only way I see the intranet being won is by increasing the share of non-windows PCs ( i.e. Linux & Mac). They will have to support open standards if 10% of their workforce can not use their corporate intranet. - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+5If the tech industry had the same involvment with the US government that other industries do this news would inspire "browser disparagment laws" ( food disparagement laws ) and open source programmers would be declared as terrorists
- tehmoth, on 10/12/2007, -3/+6i thought the opera fanboys always crowed how they had more features without extensions than firefox?
- danielwsmithee, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I've been using the 2.0 beta for a while. I love it.
- tommis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3I think most important thing is that there needs to be competition and more than one company/group of people developing browsers, inorder to keep pushing browser technology forwards.
Honestly, these days I'm almost having trouble trying to decide on FF or Opera. IE7 is looking nice as well, but it's biggest problem is still the lack of good quality addons, which is mainly due to the fact it's relatively difficult to build addons for it.
I've been using Firefox since Firebird 0.4 (or something), but few days ago I decided to give Opera (the weekly build) a go and I was positively suprised: They have now included "Adblock" in Opera, which is one of main reason for me using FF. The strange tabbed browsing interface on Opera became more Firefoxy after I installed a skin called LikeIE (heh, funny I know).
Opera seems to quite a bit faster than Firefox. Probably due to XUL being quite resource heavy.
On a completely different note: am I the only one that find's it strange that Microsoft's Internet Explorer homepage offers IE7 as the main download eventough it's still in beta? - inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+4"I think once the FF breaks about 20%-30% barrier there will be new viruses developed specifically attacking FF vulnerabilities and at that point people will stop downloading it."
If there were a new virus written for everytime I've seen an anti-FOSS protester type this tired line in, there wouldn't be a working computer left on the planet.
You know what will happen if exploitz for FOSS start happening? The millions of FOSS users who code will be all over it like ants on a donut and it will get patched, because nothing motivates you like fixing your own house. Oppose MS, which has your damn money already, so if it breaks, they can stall forever until the next time they need to sell you something.
Will, baby. FOSS has the will of the users on it's side. - cbiz, on 10/12/2007, -0/+3agreed...when I suggest to friends and family to stop using IE I point them towards FF because most folks have heard about it. If they already use FF then I would tell them at least try O.
- crex, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2I wonder how far in Mozilla's marketshare is with business users and other managed enviroments. At my workplace we've banned Firefox. It isn't that we hate it by any means, most of the IT people use it home, its just that patching Firefox can't be done centrally. When we roll into work and see a CERT or whatever out for IE you just tell the WSUS to start rolling patches, scan the network to make sure everyone is patched and go back to playing with the servers. Whereas if we had let members of our user pool put Mozilla products on their system we would have had to run around and check all those systems by hand or via a remote tool after the July 27th flaw annoucement (Cyber Security Alert TA06-208A for people that want to fact check me).
Don't get me wrong I don't hate Mozilla, I just love central control more. Personally I use Avant browser and haven't seen spyware in years. Every so often I run a SpyBot scan and it always comes back clean aside from a cookie or two it doesn't like. - LSUMyrtleBch, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3I prefer Fire fox but some sites I use will only work property in IE. IE7 is an improvement... (MS copied FF's best features) I really like the fact that you can choose program to open a link or save download in FF. IE should copy this feature.
- Giever, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2If only all web developers would simultaneously design their websites completely standards compliant and not bend for IE at once. Everyone would complain about sites looking strange and messed up, and (so long as they know someone who uses FF, which is probable) people would point them to the browser that fixes their "intarnets problem."
- inactive, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Don't be silly. IE7 is just as insecure and unreliable as every previous version. Microsoft don't understand the meaning of security, and have no developers capable of writing anything secure - all the capable people left years ago (I was one of them).
- ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -0/+2Yeah, but when's he gonna release it?
- upfrontfanatic, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3Microsoft makes money from the fact that people -need- MSIE (and thus Windows) to view certain sites and content.
Add Windows Media Player and DRM-hooks, and watch Mozilla fail completely. This again benefits Microsoft and Microsoft only. They can only do like this as long as MSIE has a significantly big enough market-share.
But, yeah. 2%. Wow. - Septimus, on 10/12/2007, -1/+3We can hope that pre-loading FF will make MS innovate again.
One of the dev's on the IE blog said 7 is just an interim version (ie. firefox copy) to keep the mom and pop crowd going with a slightly better browser and that 8 will have the real innovation back in it.
We can but see. - ThirdPrize, on 10/12/2007, -1/+2Anyone got the time on 'em?
- gbresnahan2, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1this is hilarious...
- spacyt, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1lol... You have a point.
I guess I meant to say that I wish people weren't so brainwashed or "afraid" of trying something else. Many people don't even have a clue that there are other browsers out there. I like the guy's idea who commented that he skinned his families Firefox to resemble IE and they haven't a clue. I just might try this with my father as well... - tommis, on 10/12/2007, -0/+1Replying to my own comment here.. but just wanted to add a word about Opera.
Looks like my joy over Opera's speed was shortlived as after just two days of using it it again started with the old quirks I remember seeing in previous builds: some pages just simply wont load. After browsing a few pages, you click on link and nothing happens. Nothing. Back to trusty FF for me. -
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