IE7 versus Firefox
p2pnet.net News:- “Touched a nerve, did we?” – says an editor’s note on CNET’s AnchorDesk, going on, “Many of you took issue with my prediction that IE 7 would drive out Firefox. In fact, the debate is still raging, so in the interest of fairness, we picked one user’s argument to represent the other side of the story. Here, verdyp defends Firefox.”
Verdyp is none other than Philippe Verdy from Paris, France, a man who’s been highly active in LimeWire’s internationalization efforts.
“He set up a lot of the structure for our international versions and he provided the French translation of LimeWire,” says the site. “Philippe also experimented with the ability to dynamically change languages. He has provided numerous helpful ideas, code samples and bug fixes.”
In a LimeWire post Verdy says on IE7 vs Firefox, “In that artcile I was defending FireFox face to the malicious attacks that CNet’s journalist made against FireFox simply because Adobe Reader failed to create a decent plugin that would work correctly in FireFox, and so wanted users to keep on using Internet Explorer, notably because there would be a IE7 release," he says.
“I still defend users that have already trusted Bill when he announced that Windows Me would be a revolution for their security and bought an upgrade from Windows 98 or 98SE, with absolutely no benefit. See it, and comment it on the site if you want. I trust open-source development as the alternative, and FireFox is a prooof that things can be better, and that it won’t kill commerce (yes there are commercial distributions of FireFox, Thunderbird and Linux).
“As I defend true open standards (and I have just signed the petition against OASIS new patenting tactics for XML processing). So I have stopped trusting Bill and its ‘Trusted Computer Initiative’.”
Read on >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
verdyp defends Firefox
Even if there’s a newer IE 7 coming before the next Windows release, I won’t trust what [its company] says. Nothing says that Microsoft will really secure its browser against silent and malicious ActiveX installations, and nothing says that IE 7 will support the many users who still have Windows 98 and 98 SE (and the few users still using Me who bought a "new" OS, which was really so deceptive that they won’t even try to upgrade to XP…).
What is consistently frightening is that Bill tries to convince everybody that the only way to browse the Internet is to use the latest version of Windows, in order to be allowed to get security updates on a free browser. Just think about it: IE 6 is no more secure on Windows 98, and Bill decided to stop all developments for Windows 98. Those who didn’t want IE on Windows 98 have long since chosen another browser. And IE 7 will not work on Windows 98.
So it’s time to really think about what Bill has wanted: to create a captive market where users are constantly required to update their OS every three years, just to be allowed to get decent updates for the tools they need every day, like a browser.
And despite all the justice actions, IE is still integrated into Windows XP, and it will remain bundled in Longhorn, without helping users opt out of installing IE when they already use another browser.
The Microsoft tactic is that if there are more and more Web sites using nonstandard IE "features" (or most often bugs), Microsoft is tweaking the whole Internet.
I really hope that, whatever IE 7 will contain, Firefox will continue to lead the support of true standards, and that Web site designers will stop creating Web sites that only work best with IE and Windows.
OK, Netscape 4 was so bad that IE has made significant steps. But now don’t forget that Firefox and the Mozilla community have many years of facing IE. This advance will allow Firefox to support even the smallest features IE 7 will add, while keeping on the standard tracks that Microsoft failed so often to follow (decent PNG support, standard CSS behavior, full support of XML/XHTML standards).
When will site designers forget to tweak their sites for IE? My opinion is that Web sites should first focus on offering the best experience for the latest XHTML and CSS standards, then offer a degraded mode for supporting a decreasing community of IE users who don’t have these features. It’s time to forget about Netscape 4 compatibility and think instead about freedom of choice for Web site visitors: consider Safari on Mac OS, Opera, and Firefox, then you’ll understand there’s no reason why users shouldn’t be allowed to visit Web sites with the best design using more-standard browsers.
I really don’t trust Bill when he says that IE 7 will fix all problems. This is not proven and just a commercial tactic.
Please, ZDNet and W3C: make an effective test about standards compliance and effective features that work as documented. You’ll see that Firefox is still far ahead of IE.
Firefox will continue to improve long before IE 7 becomes stable. When the Longhorn beta is released, be prepared for lots of incompatibility problems between IE 6 and IE 7. This will be a nightmare for Web site designers, unless Microsoft finally chooses to follow a strict compliance policy to open standards. In that case, Firefox still has a wide lead over IE.
Another note: Firefox is definitely not slow to load on any version of Windows. Experience proves that it loads faster, and navigation is also much faster than with IE.
If there are bugs when loading PDFs, blame Adobe, because it has tweaked too much its development for the PDF plug-in in favor of IE. It’s time for Adobe to think about writing a separate plug-in for Firefox/Mozilla. Firefox can’t be blamed because of Adobe’s failure to adopt a more friendly open development strategy, where IE would not be the only supported platform. Same thing for Adobe Reader on Mac OS: create a true Safari plug-in, instead of just a small untested wrapper.
Final note: Don’t comment about IE 7 against Firefox. IE 7 still does not exist except in the mouth of Bill Gates, and it has no technical description. By the time Microsoft will document the standard features it will effectively support and provide accurate support in a release, Bill Gates will be dead. Microsoft has never implemented what it announced, and customers have been abused so many times (think about what happened with Windows Me, and Windows XP Service Pack 2, think about the deceptive support of international languages in Windows 98 SE/Me which never implemented correctly the Unicode standard 3.2, and about Windows XP, which was issued without a decent support for Unicode 4, forcing users to wait for a hypothetic update that will only come in a later, paid update of Windows).
(Thanks, stief)
Something you think we should know? tips[at]p2pnet..net
February 25th, 2005 at 12:48 am
There are quite a few sites that still insist on IE, but their numbers are dwindling. For years I have had to put up with my needs as auser being ignored because I use a different operating system. Now Microsoft get to see how it feels
February 25th, 2005 at 8:58 am
this really bothers me:
coz the fight seemed to hav been turned into microsoft vs open source and the issue is all abt security.
wake up ppl , forget the blasted security thing. look for a better browsing experience, or if u r still using IE then change your brwser and ’start browsing’ .
February 25th, 2005 at 4:00 pm
I lived through the browser wars, back in the end of the last decade, between Netscape and IE.Then there was four years of browser peace
and IE took all over the world. Suddenly the son of Netscape came back for Revenge. Another Browser war is taking place.
February 25th, 2005 at 6:21 pm
It’s not about which browser is best (tip: Firefox rocks!)
It’s about accepting to follow standards that define the best experience (tip: CSS3, XHTML), with the least risks (tip: which browser will use any ActiveX that has full system access without any warning?)
February 25th, 2005 at 11:48 pm
It’s not quite that Netscape 4 was so bad. It’s peer at the time, IE 3 was much worse. It’s just that that’s when Microsoft killed the browser market, so there was never a decent Netscape 5.
Whatever you think of NS bloat, etc. It worked remarkably well at the time. There just was no (profit-based) rationale to build a better Netscape browser as long as the writing was on the wall that Microsoft was going to bundle to it’s heart’s content.
But the Mozilla folks kept plugging away and built something great. Much more portable than the original Netscape, and much more stable on non-windows platforms (the Windows NS4 was pretty solid).
Now, the XUL decision threw a big wrench into the timeline, but with all of the illegal IE bundling contracts, etc., who knows if a quicker, less portable Netscape 5 would have made much difference. Hell, who knows if Firefox’ll make that much difference. I sure hope so.
February 26th, 2005 at 1:21 am
“wake up ppl , forget the blasted security thing.”
This whole thing is about “security”. How about YOU wake up and realize the fact that 99% of the vulnerabilities out there are specifically written FOR IE, NOT for Mozilla, or some other product.
Microsoft has THE worst security record known to man. Trusting IE for browsing? Not exactly the smartest idea, unless you LIKE spyware, scumware and the like. Wake up and smell the coffee here. Microsoft is just trying to make the competition look bad, and they’ll resort to anything to do that, from lies (TCO of Windows cheaper than linux? Yeah right) to whatever it takes just to get the job done. They’ve done it in the past (DrDos, anyone?) and they’ll do it again.
I haven’t even touched standards here. Web standards have changed so many times over the years, but has IE changed to implement them? No, not at all. They’ve implemented bug fixes (after months of “testing”), but nothing to address standards changes and implementations.
My bet? Firefox will grow stronger over the years. There is no question that IE may (may) improve, but it’ll never take the place of Firefox or Mozilla.
February 26th, 2005 at 2:09 am
FireFox, The browser which burns Spyware Corporations like wildfire. They deserve a medal of honor for this.
Robert M. Stockmann
stock@stokkie.net
February 26th, 2005 at 2:53 am
It’s about time the lame users at C|Net learned a few things about Firefox before comparing it to a mental exaggeration of a browser that doesn’t yet exist. They can favor Microsoft all they want, the battle is slowly tipping in the right direction as time goes by still..
Compliments to Phillippe Verdy for the excellent response.
February 26th, 2005 at 8:56 am
Just like trusted computing.
Microsoft has dragged out yet another old play from the 90’s playbook that got them in so much trouble with the anti-trust people.
Announce a product way before you actually do any work on it. This causes people to possibly hold back on making a change to Firefox because “Bills says IE7 coming real soon now”.
Just another method to stem the defection of disillusioned users plagued by violations, invasions and infections.
If you have believed Bill in the past, you know what I am talking about.
Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
Bar
cdbaric@yahoo.com
February 26th, 2005 at 9:09 am
Back in -94 – -95, we talked about MSIE extensions and Netscape extensions. We didn’t really want to use either, so allready then there was much awareness of the standards as such.
An other problem has come. Now MSIE (that after all is the most used browser) doesn’t even show the standards correctly.
I do program for the net (PHP, mostly) and I hate that I have to write several versions of some of the actions I want the app to preform, asking for the browser version to find out which version to run.
That should not be neccesary.
I don’t think IE7 will adress that problem at all, this being a version made for security, not for better functionallity.
A little note to Microsoft:
I do not think you’ll earn less money if you follow the standards and drop your lock-in-methods. There is no real reason why you should be the company that everybody loves to hate.
February 26th, 2005 at 9:09 am
Back in -94 – -95, we talked about MSIE extensions and Netscape extensions. We didn’t really want to use either, so allready then there was much awareness of the standards as such.
An other problem has come. Now MSIE (that after all is the most used browser) doesn’t even show the standards correctly.
I do program for the net (PHP, mostly) and I hate that I have to write several versions of some of the actions I want the app to preform, asking for the browser version to find out which version to run.
That should not be neccesary.
I don’t think IE7 will adress that problem at all, this being a version made for security, not for better functionallity.
A little note to Microsoft:
I do not think you’ll earn less money if you follow the standards and drop your lock-in-methods. There is no real reason why you should be the company that everybody loves to hate.
February 26th, 2005 at 1:55 pm
It’s time the open-source worked at MARKETING of easy WYSIWYG website development software that produces fully W3C compliant code.
Without this there are too many website companies that only work with IE
February 26th, 2005 at 2:14 pm
But who, in their right mind, could possibly believe Bill?
February 26th, 2005 at 2:42 pm
If she answers this question truthfully and honestly we can discern how unbiased the article is.
How many TV/VCR combo she ahs bought and why is it the most popular thing in your view?
February 28th, 2005 at 3:24 pm
IE7 will relace ActiveX with another proprietary non standard compliant clientside scripting engine. It will be specifically designed to break Firefox and Opera. Open source advocates can cry till they are blue in their face, but MS will claim that it is improving security and firefox incompatibility is just collateral “unintentional” damage. The FUD of Microsoft will saturate the media and IE7 will regain the marketshare. Open source community will be back at square one.
The real victim of MS’s vendor lock policies are the big corps who spend billions of $s in PCs. They dont seem to care about vendor lock and the cost to the bottom line. If you sell a product and your clients are willing to pay any amount you charge and will not defect to the competitor, will you behave any differently than MS?
Dont blame MS. Blame its docile apathetic dumbed down consumers.
March 5th, 2005 at 12:36 am
IE7 doesn’t even exist, period.
Wait until IE7 is actually in the market, and then we will talk.
I guess it will be like IE7 vs Firefox 3.2
How long do we have wait for that? 3 years?