With Firefox 3, Microsoft has reason to worry

In the chronology of Internet browsers, Netscape came out earlier, but Microsoft figured out a way to do most of the same things at least as well, if not better. It didn't hurt that the company violated the law as it mobilized to crush a nascent challenge to its desktop monopoly.

Still, it's an incorrect rewrite of history to explain the triumph of Internet Explorer solely in terms of antitrust violations. Fact is that by the time Microsoft got around to the third incarnation of its Web browser, IE was arguably as good--if not better--than Netscape. We all know how that story finished up.

Mozilla CEO John Lilly holds court.

(Credit: Charles Cooper/CNET News.com)

Nowadays, most PC users are on IE because, well, it's the path of least resistance. But I've long been a big fan of Firefox and so have some 160 million people who now use the product. That's a big enough number to get onto Microsoft's radar. The funny thing is that this relatively small organization of some 150 people puts out a more elegant Web browser than Microsoft with its legion of developers. (For instance, there's still no IE support of next-generation Java script.)

Coincidentally, next week marks 10 years since the release of the source code for Mozilla. Earlier Wednesday, I had an opportunity to hear more about what Mozilla's up to. CEO John Lilly invited a group of bloggers to the company's Mountain View, Calif., headquarters to talk tech. (Rafe Needleman from Webware has kept up a live blog of the product rollout. Check it out.)

I'd love to hear you chime in on this topic, but my biggest bugaboo about Web surfing remains security--and that's where these folks are doing very interesting work. Among other items, pay attention to the following bullet points:

•  In FireFox 2, they shipped the product's first anti-phishing features. Now Mozilla plans to include an anti-malware feature in the upcoming version of the browser.

•  With a click, you can get active information from a company's SSL certificate in the URL to get information about the site to determine whether it's kosher.

Mozilla also is tweaking the overall performance of the platform to extract better memory usage. The organization takes about a year between releases (though this newest version has taken a bit longer). Still, that's an eternity faster than the MO over at Microsoft.

Chalk that up to bureaucracy as well as poor decision making. In particular, Microsoft's 2001 decision to take its foot off the pedal after version 6.0 was a mistake I'm sure management wishes it could take back. Since then, the Web has gotten scarier and cooler, and Redmond has until recently been sitting on its laurels. That's why Firefox has come out of nowhere to take anywhere between 17 percent and 28 percent of the market, depending on which research organization you trust.

At this rate, Mozilla's got a great chance to add to those numbers. Until--if ever--Microsoft gets off its duff and comes up with better technology.

[`WarpKat]

Ummmmmmm...I'm not sure about the rest of the world, but were you under the influence of something when you put this out because I swear to whatever four-armed deity you pray to that the grammar on this piece puts you back a few grades - my niece writes better than this!

[chris_d]

Microsoft should worry.
Firefox 3 beta 4 has huge gains in rendering and Javascript engine performance. It's practically like getting a new computer. In addition, it uses MUCH less memory and seems to be missing the memory leaks of previous versions. It's so much better than IE7, that, given the choice, only a Microsoft lackey would choose IE.
Safari 3.1 is also tremendously faster on Javascript and still has good rendering performance thanks to improvements in webkit. Safari isn't the best browser feature-wise, but it has a great engine underneath.

[Jake_Turner]

Hey asshat- erm, WaprKat -, you dropped these:
?, and .

I love FireFox much more than IEx. I carry the portable edition with me on a cheap USB key, in case I find myself forced to use IE on someone's computer.

[MadeofChaos]

I have mixed feelings between FF and IE. I like both, and there are things I don't like about either of them. I will admit, I do tend to use IE far more the FF because a lot of sites still don't work well with FF (especially Microsoft's pages). I have a feeling I'll be stuck between the two even after the new releases of IE8 and FF3.

[PaulEdl]

What a waste of time. The truth of the matter is that IE works great, never crashes and I have yet to find a site that doesn't render properly. I'm all for the competition and having other companies offer up new browsers. However, let's not pretend that Firefox, Safari and Opera are "much better browsers" than IE. The truth is that websites haven't really evolved and that's why we need things like Adobe Flex, Silverlight and AJAX. We are trying to make browsers act like OS-agnostic fat clients. So now people complain when sites load slowly because we have bloated web apps.

BTW: Love the post about Javascript rendering so much faster. Javascript is a process hog and has never been performant. It's an oxymoron for Java and performance to be in the same sentence.

[jeromatron]

It's true that a lot of people don't mind IE. However the only reason why things render correctly in IE is because developers painstakingly code to IE *as well as* to standards. The other browsers support the standards while IE is in and of itself a standard. It's getting better, but Microsoft still has its little ivory tower.
Next, "much better" is very vague. I use Firefox because of the plugins. Adblocking and mouse gestures are simply not available in IE for example.
Next, performance/javascript. Clearly you don't know what javascript is because it has nothing to do with Java. javascript performance is extremely important because a large percentage of today's websites use lots of javascript. javascript is a scripting language and its performance is very much dependent on the engine that processes it. Try to load a website with even small amounts of javascript in IE for the mac (the dinosaur) and you'll see that the engine is very important.
Next, Java and performance being an oxymoron is a common misconception that just doesn't die. Sure it's getting older as a language, but I'm not sure you've looked at any language benchmarks in the last 10 years to justify your assumption.

[t8]

Java is not Javascript.

[Imalittleteapot]

Really it never crashes? Funny at work it crashes on me about once a day. Firefox and Opera do to. Regardless of if I'm using Windows or Linux. In fact IE crashed twice while I was trying to reply to your post.

Oh they crash. They all crash down here. When your down here with us, YOU'LL CRASH TOOOOO!

[Kat_B]

<q>I have yet to find a site that doesn't render properly [in IE]</q>
For IE 7 and below:
->http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/wrongWithIE/?chapter=XHTML&withHeader=1

So yes, they are better browsers, because they can cope better with standardised technologies (SVG, XHTML MIME types, CSS3, and the list goes on).

[Penguinisto]

I agree that IE is in some jeopardy, with its only saving grace now being the fact that it is default on Windows. Here's a short list of reasons why:

* Already, Safari and Opera's test builds can pass ACID3 with 100%, and Firefox' latest beta is very close to doing so itself.

* I can export and merge bookmarks between Firefox on my work Linux machine, Firefox on my home Mac, Firefox on a Windows machine (if I had one), and Firefox on... pretty much anything else. Cross-platform portability is very, very sweet...

* I can, right now, use the Firekeeper Extension on Firefox to warn me of malicious IFRAME and XSS attacks, then block them automatically (I've caught four attempts already - all of which pointed to common Windows exploits, but still...)

* I can block adverts, scripts, or any other unwanted web page element - with total granularity.

* Firefox has more downloads per month than Windows Vista has sales (at last count.) That alone should wake up some folks @ Microsoft.

* IE8 can brag on a lot of different upcoming features,but Firefox has them right now.

...given all of this, Methinks a better mousetrap has been made, and Microsoft will be hard-pressed to catch up to making anything resembling it.

/P

[dburr13]

I've been using FF for 4 years now...But if MS could come up with something better i'd switch in an instant...they havent...so i havent...Now all signs point to IE8 being too little too late...I think MS should warm to FF...At least on my PC's It makes their Windows better...and that's why i continue to use it.

[atish505]

I switched to Mozilla in 2003 and have not gone back to IE. We have been taken by its security (and ability to block pop ups without having to install additional plug ins), the cool tabs feature, integration with Google search (and eBay) plus the ability to run it on multiple platforms including Linux Servers.

Last three years we have successfully recommended more than a dozen business clients to use Firefox and they have never been happier.

Long Live Fire Fox.

I disagree with the assumption that FF is better than IE, I have been using FF for 4 years now and I think that they are outsmarting themselves. Agreed the security is way better than IE however with beta 4 it seems slower, renders way worse than IE as well as slower. IE now seems to me to be the cleaner and the faster of the two and what used to bother me a lot about IE was the slower download times of software. IE has the advantage on all of these points. I use Stumbleupon as a reference to see the difference between the two and I now find FF to be very irritating and slow. Pages although seemingly download are continuing to download well into the 20 and 30 second bracket while in IE it is all done at once and cleanly not choppy like FF. I will wait to test IE8 as I have been hearing horror stories there. But if FF continues in the vein they are in now I will switch back to IE permanently and I don't care how many add ons and special features that FF has, it has just plainly become an annoying browser to use. Bob

[TGlatt]

Agree on IE vs. Firefox. I am a recent purchaser of a Mac - which means no IE. While I run Windows XP in Parallels, launching XP just to browse a website is a royal pain. So, I run Firefox. It's simple and easy to use, and doesn't require the various tweaks to protect the OS from "bad" websites. After years of IE, I'm enjoying the ease of Firefox. The Mac itself may have something to do with my perception, but so far so good. I'm looking forward to the new release.

My only complaint is that some institutions seem to be beholden to ActiveX which is a big problem for Firefox. I think you can download and install some add-on from Taiwan that sets up an IE tab, but I'm a bit cautious when it comes to what I load on my computer.

[halsue2]

I way prefer FF over IE. On the Mac I tend to use Safari but FF is just as good. For most people the FF v IE debate must seem like much ado about nothing. As long as the content displays well, who really cares? But from a web developer perspective IE is a major pain and the reason I am biased against it. God knows how many hours I have wasted accommodating IE and all its CSS bugs. Having switched to FF I have also grown to love some of its extensions. I have two gripes with FF - slow to start up, and much more importantly, the totally naff FF icon. The same applies to Thunderbird and OpenOffice. The icons look like they were designed in the late 60's. Oh well, can't have it all, I guess.

[moupaless]

>> March 26, 2008 5:47 PM PDT
>> I don't care how many add ons and special features that FF has

Bob get a grip. You *like* ads? I remove them all - no sponcored links, no flashing gifs, no scrolling and/or flashing javascript, no dangerous javascript.

Adblock Plus, Adblock Plus Element Hiding helper, Remove it Permanently

Oh, and I hate being forced to use an account to leave comments.

Bugmenot

=-=-=

I could go on and on. But you can't explain the visual world to somebody who *choses* to be blind.

===========================

>> PaulEdl March 26, 2008 3:55 PM PDT
>> However, let's not pretend that Firefox, Safari
>> and Opera are "much better browsers" than IE.

Who's *pretending*?

[methecj]

Where have you been, try getting stuff to work in IE 6, that reminds me of the horror of getting anything to work in Netscape 6.x.

Wonder if the number 6 has something evil about it ;)

CJ

[mrlemarquis]

You forgot to mention that it's FREE (like all the other great Google products)!
My question is - When will Google bring out an Operating System?
If it's free too, then bye-bye Microsoft!
Even if it wasn't free, I would think more than seriously about buying it - with my next PC!

[GlennAllen]

My use of Firefox is all about ease of use and security--levels of security. Specifically, I use Firefox Portable Edition (PortableApps.com) with and without TrueCrypt, DropMyRights, NoScript (and other secure/blocking extensions). It's easy, it's more fun, and it's more reassuring. When I don't absolutely have to use IE, then Fx is the way to go. (Looks better, too, 'cause you can make it look any way you want it to; it's all about customization--anyone can do it.) Same with Thunderbird instead of any other email client.

[aerynblueyes]

PaulEdl, I respectfully disagree with you that IE 'works great' and 'never crashes'. I was forever plagued by browser crashes when I used IE, particularly when attempting to check my email. Not to mention that IE is a security nightmare. I have been using Firefox for nearly four and a half years now and have only one quibble with it - the update page for my WordPress blog does not render correctly in Firefox, and so I am forced to use IE in order to be able to effectively update my blog. Hopefully with Firefox 3 that problem will be corrected, and I'll never need to use IE again.

[BillSamuel]

How is the new version on stability? This has been the weak point of Firefox. It crashes all the time. Have they fixed that yet?