Kapor on Firefox: Let's not get ahead of ourselves

In an interview with CNET News.com, Mozilla chair Mitch Kapor urged caution about issuing triumphal predictions for the future of the Internet browser landscape.

"The great thing that's happened of late," Kapor said, "is to see the early huge momentum of Firefox attracting millions of users and beginning to grow its market share appreciably....Nobody knows what's going to happen. It's certainly not inevitable that Firefox's market share will continue to increase. I think open-source advocates would do well to be relatively cautious and avoid making claims and predictions."

Click here to read full text of the interview with Mitch Kapor.

[frankz00]

Spyware has made PCs UNUSABLE

So much so that nowadays, I replace IE with FireFox on clients that I think are easily succeptible to viruses and spyware. I used to just set them up with Google Toolbar and teach them to practice "safe computing" but now I just avoid the headache altogether and put them on FireFox. For most, this has worked EXTREMELY well. So I think celebrations are very fair. I switched last February and have NEVER looked back!

[My-Self]

The same ... with a twist.

I often do the same, and even make it a condition to continue helping people who repeatedly get spywares.
For those afraid to change, I install the Mozilla suite, but to ease the transition, I also install the IE skin :
http://kodu.neti.ee/~tar/mozilla.html (Mozilla)
http://pages.prodigy.net/zzxc/ieskin/ (Firefox)

They usually like this new version of Internet Explorer much better than the old one ;-)

[Al Johnsons]

Google Toolbar

http://www.analogstereo.com/skoda_octavia_owners_manual.htm

[rpms]

Firefox: security at the expense of capability

What do you tell people to do when they need to run Windows Update to get operating system patches and driver updates? The "security" in Firefox is due to the lack of support for ActiveX and VBScript, two popular approaches to dynamic Web content. Firefox won't work with popular and important sites like Windows Update. Oh well!

Internet Explorer is a security concern.

People that don't know enough to get rid of spy/adware on their computers hardly ever update their computer. Firefox has cut down (dramatically) the number of calls my business receives about spyware, if it comes at the expense of a few updates once in a while I am more then willing to make that trade off. Internet explorer is cripple ware, if has so many flaws and security exploits already that anyone still using it is at risk, I switched 6 months ago and it would take a miracle for me to switch back. For the most part I like Microsofts products but Firefox beats I.E. hands down.

Re: Firefox: security at the expense of capability

"What do you tell people to do when they need to run Windows Update to get operating system patches and driver updates?" The same thing I tell all my customers: use I.E. for one thing and one thing only...updating the OS. For everything else, Firefox has I.E beaten hands down. I have found absolutely no other need for I.E than the updates.

Other way(s) to get updates

IE is not the only way to get Windows updates. They can turn on Automatic updates. Also, I'm quite sure they can use the help center.
I'm saying this to encourage Firefox adoption. Take back the web!

[frankz00]

ActiveX IS part of the problem!

It's ActiveX cabs that can get downloaded without asking for permission that are part of the spyware problem. YES even if you have it disabled in your Internet Options. I'm doing fine with Java and Macromedia plugins. For the rare site that MUST use Internet Explorer I have added the "View in IE" plugin so that they can use it but only for sites that I tell them its okay to use it on.

[Remo_Williams]

Huh? What?

Since when does VBScript have more installed usage than Javascript? I think Javascript alone is more prevalent than VBScript and ActiveX combined.

Which Mozilla has always supported. Had Microsoft stuck to the sandbox model of Java, we wouldn't even have this discussion.

However, you can't strip IE from a current Window OS release any way. So you get your updates from IE, big deal. A browser is just a file viewer any way.

[GGGlen]

Spy-what?

Spyware? I guess that I'll just have to read about it from my
windows using bretheren. Oh, and save the snide (and utterly
incorrect) comments about how "there's no software on the
Mac", or they're (sniffle) "too expensive". Those arguments are
sooo 1995... as is Microsoft's concept of "security".
Looking forward to hearing more stories when the (already
cracked) Longhorn hits the streets, and more profits for our
company when we're paid to fix it!
Cheers!

Follow your own advice

Looks like someone needs to follow their own advice when they speak of snide comments. As for Macs, any OS can be made secure with the right knowledge, even Windows.

[RobertBruce1975]

Uh oh

So i hope you plugged the holes that patched in OS X last august. Yes- even Safari was compromised.

It using more memory

Fire fox is using more memory comparing to opera and IE. I think this is one of the major disadvantages of Firefox. Usually im killing the firefox.. coz its hungs up always....

Unfortunately..

I experience the same thing, I think there is likely a memory leak occuring. However, there is lots of FireFox tuning you can do (search Google). Just do give you an idea of how much stuff you can tune in FireFox, type "about:config" in FireFox's location bar. However, I'm not sure if there is anything directly related to Memory Usage as I haven't done any deep research on FireFox Tuning.

[System Tyrant]

Firefox vs IE for memory

I just ran a test and sure enough Firefox take about 38mb and IE take about 25mb. However, remember one think the core of IE is seperate from IE front end whereas the core of Firefox and the front end are all built together. So IE in total could be using a lot more system memory than Firefox, but you just don't see it.

I think this would be a good test for one of the magazines or tech sites to dig into.