Firefox Or Internet Explorer?

POSTED BY: Haze
UPDATED: Saturday, February 25, 2006 20:03
VIEWED: 15669
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SIGMANUNKI

Sunday, February 5, 2006 7:43 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by Cleaner:

As for Firefox being more secure. 99% of IE spyware infections come down to 1 thing....... User Stupidity!

The security that we're talking about isn't due to user. That is something that only the user can fix. We are talking about the security of the browser itself.

Look at the track record and you'll see that Firefox is more secure. They also have far less of a turn around time for fixes. With M$, you have to wait for there what, once a month update. And that's if they even got around to fixing the problem, which seems to be getting more and more rare ie the critical WMF flaw (they only released the fix early due only to customer pressure).

Seems to me that a company that decided to make security there priority, what 5 years ago, should have a better track record than what they have now.

Quote:
Originally posted by Cleaner:

I'm a computer tech, I don't run an active virus scanner and have no firewall on this computer (filesharing reasons) and after 2 years of running IE on this install never a virus or spyware infection.

You're a tech and you don't know that you can have a firewall on and still have filesharing going? Oh... what's that. It's your credibility going straight out the window.

In all seriousness, you have lots of learning to do.

Quote:
Originally posted by Cleaner:

If u want a customizable interface use Firefox otherwise feel free to ignore all the fanboy talk.

If you kept track of things security, or even read /. regularly, you'd be aware that what you refer to as "fanboy talk" is actually looking at what is called reality.

Also, how in the world do you think that people will take you seriously when you refer to Firefox advocation as "fanboy talk" and then use "u" instead of "you"?

----
"We're in a giant car heading into a brick wall at 100 miles/hr and everybody's arguing about where they want to sit."
-David Suzuki

CITIZEN

Sunday, February 5, 2006 2:50 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Cleaner:
As for Firefox being more secure. 99% of IE spyware infections come down to 1 thing....... User Stupidity!

and 99% of hacking attempts work using buffer over-run exploits, which MSIE has in spades. It's full of security holes, don't believe me educate yourself, go look at the MS developer site, see the LOOOONG list of unpatched security exploits.

Quote:
I'm a computer tech, I don't run an active virus scanner and have no firewall on this computer (filesharing reasons) and after 2 years of running IE on this install never a virus or spyware infection.

A computer tech that doesn't run anti virus software and doesn't use a firewall? This filesharing you speak of, is this legal LAN kind or the illegal peer-to-peer kind? Either way it's easy to configure a firewall not to affect it.
Trust me, you've got viruses, Trojans, worms adware and the nasty types of spyware like keyloggers on your system, you don't know it because you haven't got anyway of detecting it. These types of software programs are designed to stay hidden; they don't show a splash screen at start-up saying "Virus-Software 1.0, destroying your system. (c)2000-2005".

MSIE is a pig. It encapsulates the normal MS attitude that other peoples (and often their own) standards are made to be broken. So we now have a situation where the web is a very difficult place to write for.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

CITIZEN

Sunday, February 5, 2006 4:28 PM

Khyron:

Quote:
There must be something that the web designers didn't bother putting into their code that most other web designers did put in.

Not necessarily, it may just be what that website is trying to do can't be done in Opera, or requires different coding to do. Sometimes you end up with a situation where in order to show your design in one browser you have to break the design in another. Sometimes it comes down to the choice of either changing the design, or dropping support for the offending browser.

Quote:
Anyway, as someone that obviously knows something about browsers, what is your preference between Firefox and Opera, not from a market-share or "well, it's better than IE" point of view, but from a technical point of view (without getting too technical)?

From a user standpoint I prefer FireFox, just fits me better. There are a few nice extra features the FF doesn't have but the latest Opera does, like the little rubbish bin that'll resurrect pages you've accidentally closed. I've done that loads of times in FF and been quite upset, especially if it's been while typing a web mail or post.

At the end of the day the differences between the user experience of FF and Opera these days are quite minor. The only problem it does have is under the hood, where sometimes it does have some problems rendering standard compliant code. No way near as bad as IE, but to be honest in some ways FF seems to support standards better.

One of the big reasons I prefer FF is that it as well as the underlying Mozilla technology is open source, I’ve just got a thing for open source

.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

CLEANER

Sunday, February 5, 2006 4:34 PM

Thats made my day

Firefox fanboys always get up in arms about security, almost too easy. Less porn sites and more news sites would be my advice (joke, except for SIGMANUNKI).

U seem to be reading alot into my post which isn't there. I have nothing against Firefox and have it installed on another machine (Opera too but I don't like it). All I was saying is if your not going to be customizing your web interface use whatever. Just do the updates and don't download stupid things. Firefox beats the rest hands down for customization.

BTW I said I don't run ACTIVE antivirus and firewall. They are both installed along with about 5 antispyware programs (I plug infected drives into this computer when I bring work home). This was not meant as advise (should have made that clearer but I didn't want to make a huge post at the time) but an example of how smart web browsing is more important than what browser u use. If I'm doing banking etc I do it on one of the firewalled machines.

I like to keep xp lean so don't have them autoloading on startup, xp uses 64mb of ram after startup if setup right.

And seriously who can be arsed setting up all the port forwarding for each program (file sharing, remote access programs, games servers), some of my games need up to 5 ports open to host a server. I like to have 1 machine completely open in the DMZ.

If you really don't like IE go to http://www.nliteos.com/ and try this utility to remove it from xp or create an xp setup that doesn't include it.

"If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak!!!"

VIOLETRIX

Sunday, February 5, 2006 4:43 PM

firefox is nice and stable. i like it a lot. we've been running it for awhile now.

i have an allergic reaction to microsoft. linux!

http://violetrix.blogspot.com
if i ever kill you, you'll be awake, you'll be facing me, and you'll be armed.

SAINT JAYNE

Sunday, February 5, 2006 5:24 PM

The browsers all have good and bad points. I use Opera myself, with IE as a backup for those pesky IE-only pages. Tabbed browsing and mouse gestures won me over, and now with voice recognition in Opera v8, how could you not? "Computer, Earl Grey, hot". Mozilla (Firefox) has great customization and secutiry, and a responsive development team.

CLEANER

Sunday, February 5, 2006 5:33 PM

I haven't looked at Opera in about a year but voice recognition?????? Thats got me interested, will have to check it out.

Last time I looked at Opera it felt like half a program and I had too many viewing problems compared to IE and FF.

I just opened it to have alook and it was version 8.0 and the text on the news site I have as my homepage over runs the pictures lol

"If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak!!!"

CITIZEN

Sunday, February 5, 2006 5:37 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Cleaner:
Firefox fanboys always get up in arms about security, almost too easy.

I'm not a FF fanboy, I just know which is better, and it ain't IE. IE security is abysmal; I could write you a JavaScript routine that can install spyware viruses etc that will work in IE because of its poor implementation of JavaScript security. You’d never even know it had done anything.

Quote:
All I was saying is if your not going to be customizing your web interface use whatever.

And that is what I take exception too. Use whatever browser you want fine, just please please please don't use MSIE. It is by far the worst browser there is, it takes the standards and throws them out the window, it is by far the least stable browser I have ever used, it forces everyone developing websites to use poor code, coding practice and hacks in order to support it. The sooner it dies the better, for everyone.

Quote:
If you really don't like IE go to http://www.nliteos.com/ and try this utility to remove it from xp or create an xp setup that doesn't include it.

It's easy to remove IE from XP, if you want too. Unfortunately I need it installed so I can check for IE compatibility when I'm working on a site. I tend not to use the installer though, I create Images and use those if I need to reinstall.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
The statistics on sanity are that one out of every four persons is suffering from some sort of mental illness. Think of your three best friends -- if they're okay, then it's you.

CLEANER

Sunday, February 5, 2006 6:12 PM

Thats your view form a writing perspective. From an end user support perspective IE is better.

End user support means dealing with alot of people that don't handle computers or new things well. Thats why they are customers and they pay u money.

You have to be very careful in recommending that they move away from IE because they blame you every time they can't view a page properly or you get endless phone calls if they install some plugins.

You can never say to the customer that FF is more secure than IE because when they do get infected its some how partly my fault that they downloaded something stupid. Even if u pointed out nothing is 100% secure.

Sure the easy answer is to have both IE and FF on the PC and almost always they stop using FF after the first few days and go back to what they know. For some customers IE is the best choice, they feel safe with it.

If you really wanted to put a black mark against IE you would talk about memory usage issues. My point was people have problems because of habits, not browsers.

"If wishes were horses we'd all be eating steak!!!"

BARCLAY

Sunday, February 5, 2006 6:27 PM

IE Tab

I highly recommend this Firefox extension. It let's you open up an MSIE window in one of your Firefox tabs. Greatest tool ever for those IE-only sites or to check for compatability.

"You are on the Global Frequency."
http://www.frequencysite.com
http://kfmonkey.blogspot.com

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