[PCWorld]

Post your comments for Browser Wars Heat Up, Again here

[mheere]

If you search the NIST database of software vulnerabilities for the past 3 years you get:
332 hits for IE
337 hits for Firefox

It's simply a myth that Firefox is much more secure than IE, and that's with IE being the big target. What happens if Firefox gets to 50-60% market share and becomes the big hacker prize?

For me it's mostly a matter of convenience. Every site I go to works flawlessly in IE. Only 90% work correctly in Firefox.

To get me to switch, the new browser would need to:
- Render every site 100% correctly
- Be noticably better performing than IE (Firefox is only a little better - sometimes)
- Have a feature that IE was missing and I wanted (tabs were it until IE7)
- Be noticably more secure that IE. Given the NIST database entries and the fact that IE and my security software play so well together I don't believe Firefox fits this bill either.

Ironically though, Firefox has still helped me - it's made MS make IE better.

[hopfrog]

I like Firefox as a development platform but not as a browser. I used to use it on PC, Mac and Linux. Now I use it only on Linux. Safari and IE7 are better -- faster, smaller memory footprint, and they don't crash. On my Linux box (CentOS 5.x), I run Firefox and Thunderbird. Each of them crashes about twice a week. On my Mac, when I used to run Firefox, it would build up to a huge memory usage after being open for several days. Then there was a bug where cut/paste would stop working, and (IIRC) this could only be cured by a reboot, or maybe by logging out and in. I do miss Foxmarks. I used to miss Adblocker, but I now run Pith Helmet on Safari, which is at least as good. As for IE, well, I don't use the PC that often, so I'm not sure what plugins are available. But the biggest attraction of Firefox to me has been the plugins, and it's clear that Safari, at least, is catching up. I find Mozilla to be a very poor effort, and am happy that there are now good alternatives.

[RRRGroup]

We used Firefox early on, but stopped when we discovered that the browser inserted intrusive cookies on our computers; cookies that were hard to eliminate. We'll stick with IE for now, and use security add-ons to protect our information/data.

[intelman]

I switched over to Firefox some time ago and I really like it. I had major problems with IE like it would crash most of the time I used it and it made my computer run slowly. I am looking forward to Firefox 3.

[nmcallister]

I'm actually quite surprised to see the anti-Firefox sentiment mentioned here. Raw figures from NIST are deceptive; they don't take into account the severity of the security flaws in question. The reason Firefox doesn't work properly with many Web sites (especially corporate apps) is because it does not support ActiveX. That fact alone makes Firefox MUCH more secure than Internet Explorer, as well as the fact that Firefox is not integrated deep into the Windows OS, the way IE is. And cookies? Those are set by the server side, not the browser, and Firefox offers fine-grained control of cookies if you wish it. It's true that Firefox has had some memory-leak problems, but those have been much improved in Firefox 3. I encourage people to give it a try.

[Douglas]

The two things that disappoint me about Firefox are cosmetic: (1) tables with borders look dismal and boring in Firefox and much nicer in IE7 and (2) the way the scroll bar changes the width of the window depending on the depth of the screen is absurd - it makes sites with the same menu at the top jerk dementedly when navigating between pages. When there is no scroll bar the width should still be allowed for it. I have mentioned this last to Firefox over the years as have other people, but they take no notice. I now make every webpage deeper than the deepest screen I know of just to accommodate their whim. Perhaps they have fixed it in version 3, but I very much doubt it.

My disappointment with IE7 is the way that in a screen with many images some of them randomly do not appear until one uses "show picture". I have asked often enough how to fix this and never had an answer.

[4doggy]

I agree with nmcallister regarding the cookies in Firefox. I control what cookies are allowed to start with and use Cookie Culler for further management which is far better than any cookie control that IE offers. Extensions like NoScript and AdBlock Plus add further security and control as well as removing many annoyances. With these extensions, Firefox always looks cleaner and has less distractions than IE.
The IE lovers owe a great debt of gratitude to Firefox for any improvements in IE, since we all know that Microsoft wouldn't have bothered unless their dominance was threatened.

[ivorycruncher]

Wow, it never ceases to amaze me how blog posts reveal just how uninformed people are. As nmcallister points out, cookies are set by the websites you visit, REGARDLESS of what web browser you're using. And it's not difficult at all to remove them (easier than with IE, actually). And yes, Firefox won't work for sites that use ActiveX controls, which are one of the biggest causes of IE's security problems because they allow too much direct interaction with the OS. Also, Firefox and Safari are FAR more standards-compliant than IE is. If sites render fine in IE but not in Firefox or Safari, it's most likely because the website was designed using sloppy or non-standard coding that IE has been taught how to interpret. In that case, it's the website and the developers behind it, not the browser, that are at fault. The ever increasing market share of browsers other than IE should (hopefully) start a movement towards better standards-compliant coding.

[Rndmacts]

To get back to the article, I also don't like Apples tactics, the updater should inform me of updates for my software with the box checked and if they want to push their other software it should not be checked if not installed already on my system. I get a kick out of the anything but Microsoft fanboys. Firefox has never been more secure than IE, but using the argument that IE is more prevalent security firms were more likely to call out IE's flaws. But sites like Bugtraxx easily dispell this myth. Several bugs attributed to IE were really Firefox bugs, if you didn't have Firefox installed you were exempt. And as far as cookies go, IE will let you surf and delete all cookies at the end of the session, Firefox does not let you do this yet.

Safari may look good on a MAC but in Windows its as ugly as Firefox. I'll keep my IE thank you and know that when I visit a secure banking site or a brokerage it is not going to reject my browser.

[RRRGroup]

Like Hillary Clinton, I misspoke...

It wasn't a cookie per se that FireFox inserted on our computers, but spyware, benign spyware certainly, but difficult to expunge.

We had to delete FF in order to get rid of the thing, because other spyware trappers couldn't get rid of it.

Rich Reynolds
RRRGroup

[mphenterprises]

Hi RRRGroup and welcome to the PCWorld Communities. :D




Before anyone tries to contradict you, I would like to state that it is not Firefox that installs spyware into your computer. No browser does. Spyware enters your computer from several places, including:

- websites

- applications (.exe files)

- files downloaded from applications such as P2P (Limewire, BitTorrent, etc.)




Firefox is just a vessel that allows you to view an internet page, nothing more, and nothing less. Some people prefer Firefox over any other browser, myself included. Some people can care less what browser he or she uses. Please make sure you have your information straight before posting. Believe me, people will scrutinize everything that is not accurate. Tis the nature of a forum.

[RRRGroup]

For those who remind us that spyware and cookies are inserted from sites and the browser isn't responsible, let me assure them that only Firefox allowed the data-gathering insert that was identified by Ad-Aware and other spyware catchers we use. IE didn't contain the "spyware" -- it only showed up in FF when we scanned for spyware, and we couldn't rid our computers of the detritus except by some extensive machinations. Our IT guys here said that it was an adjunct of FF, and only FF. That's all I know.

[nmcallister]

Hmm. I think what RRRGroup might be experiencing is what Ad-Aware, Spybot S&D etc. refer to as a "tracking cookie." These are pretty common -- sites like Amazon install them sometimes, for example. They are usually fairly benign, but the spyware programs classify them as spyware and make as big a stink about them as they do keyloggers or more serious problems. As mphenterprises says, if you had visited the same site in IE, then IE would have accepted that cookie. It's not actually a security flaw in Firefox that you're talking about -- believe it or not, it's standard behavior. You can rest easy in that having them on your computer probably isn't giving up much information, and it certainly won't affect performance in any way. By the same token, it does no harm to remove them.