Why is Mozilla Firefox 1.0 better than IE ?

[ukb007]

Hi.

Doom9 informs us that he finds Mozilla Firefox 1.0 better than IE. An opinion from him counts. We'd like to make this paradigm shift in browsing (at least I do).

I'd appreciate (many others will, too, I'm sure) a list of reasons why Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is better than IE.

Regards.

[Sirber]

Hi

1) No ActiveX support :D
2) Tabbed browsing
3) Popup blocker
4) Lots of extensions (plugins)
5) Multi OS
6) Faster loading of web content than IE (dynamic table resizing)
7) hum... just not M$ :D

[Neo Neko]

It is indeed pretty great. I installed 1.0 early this morning. I hope it resolves the problem I was having with it locking up entirely and seemingly at random. If not I may have to submit a bug report. But other than that all is well. My extensions are all in place and working happily.

And I would add at number 8 Adblock. That extension alone is awesome enough to warrant a bullet point. No more punching the monkey er whatever. And I can't remeber where I found this :( but copy and paste the text below to a text file and then import it to adblock.

__________________________________
[Adblock]
/\D\d{2,3}x\d{2,3}\D/
googlesyndication
us.yimg.com/a/
/\/buy_assets\//
/[\W\d_](top|bottom|left|right|)?banner(s|id=|\d|_)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d](double|fast)click[\W\d]/
/[\W\d]click(stream|thrutraffic|thru|xchange)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d]value(stream|xchange|click)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d]dime(xchange|click)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d](onlineads?|ad(banner|click|-?flow|frame|ima?g(es?)?|_id|js|log|serv(er|e)?|stream|_string|s|trix|type|vertisements?|v|vert|xchange)?)[\W\d]/
__________________________________

Those few lines kill almost everything!

[six6]

Let's not forget:

9. Standards Compliant
10. Exploits fixed in a (more) timely manner

Visit them (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) if you want more reasons.

[Zarxrax]

11. Built-in Google search bar, makes searching a lot faster than having to go to www.google.com first!

12. "Live bookmarks". Subscribe to RSS feeds on sites that have them and get a list of headlines from all your sites right in your bookmarks sidebar, instead of having to visit each site seperately.

[Soulhunter]

Coz you control what happens... :D


Bye

[jernst]

13. support pngs properly (alpha transparency)
14. svg enabled builds exist (no need for plugin)

[stax76]

imho there are a couple of things that make FireFox look being implemented amateurishly in particuarly the resources it requires. I wonder how it runs on Linux assuming most devs using it. Example: the menu (context menu/main menu) is here ten times slower then Java swing was ten years ago. The devs should take a look at MS Office, Visual Studio or .NET 2.0 to see how to do this properly. Yet I still like FireFox much more then any other browser, I tried them all several times.

[Tuesday]

15. Many useful extensions, including:
15a: Mouse Gestures
15b: BugMeNot, for all those annoying sign-up only sites

16. Lots of pretty themes :)

[Doom9]

although Neo just showed us a major disadvantage: Mozilla can't linewrap properly, compare the rendering of this thread between Firefox/Mozilla and IE...

[Sirber]

#15 is like my #4 :devil:

Use search! ;) :D

[dragongodz]

because even the MS security chief uses Firefox. :D
http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18173

honestly, if you really want to know the difference then try it for awhile and see.

[neo75903]

@stax:
Slow context menus? not on mine :) and on other pcs at home neither, ranging from 366Mhz to 2gig.

I agree with soulhunter. Using extensions i can determine which functions i really need on which pc. On slower pcs i have no extensions installed, while on the faster one i have all the things i need described above.

FireFow may look like have a bigger memory useage, but you also forgot that IE is loaded with windows which in turn uses how much memory? Ok Windows is much more then a browser. On the otherhand if FireFox crashes it doesnt bring down my windows. ow that would be point 17 :)

[Soulhunter]

Hmm, no one mentioned...

#18 The download manager

#19 The password manager

#20 The edit/undo function


Bye

[castellanos]

I agree with all of you guys, I've been using Mozilla for a while and I found it much more reliable than IE, After using Mozilla, I dind't get more spyware in my computer. I have a question, may be it is not pertinent to do it here, but since you opened this thread...ok.
I've got the Mozilla 1.7.3, that's the same than Mozilla Firefox or is it something totally different?
Greetings! :)

[PiXuS]

Originally posted by stax
imho there are a couple of things that make FireFox look being implemented amateurishly in particuarly the resources it requires. I wonder how it runs on Linux assuming most devs using it. Example: the menu (context menu/main menu) is here ten times slower then Java swing was ten years ago. The devs should take a look at MS Office, Visual Studio or .NET 2.0 to see how to do this properly. Yet I still like FireFox much more then any other browser, I tried them all several times.

That's an old one. If you rely on the Task Manager to figure out how much resources a given app is using, you are being mislead. IE is using far more resources than the Task Manager let you believe.

Don't forget.. Microsoft makes Windows... Microsoft makes IE... Microsoft can modify Windows so that IE seem to be very conservative on resources.

Also, IE is pre-loaded.. you can configure Mozilla (don't know about Firefox) to be preloaded on startup.. the performance (start-up) become pretty much the same.

That being said.. just visit this page on mozilla.org (http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/) to understand why you should switch.

[PiXuS]

Originally posted by castellanos
I agree with all of you guys, I've been using Mozilla for a while and I found it much more reliable than IE, After using Mozilla, I dind't get more spyware in my computer. I have a question, may be it is not pertinent to do it here, but since you opened this thread...ok.
I've got the Mozilla 1.7.3, that's the same than Mozilla Firefox or is it something totally different?
Greetings! :)

See this (http://www.mozilla.org/products/choosing-products.html).

[KpeX]

#21. Don't like how a site looks? Edit the CSS on the fly (http://kpex.cjb.cc/img/editcss.png). (using the web developer extension)

[echooff]

I've been using it for quite a while. No way am I going back to IE.

[PiXuS]

...is the persistence of the tabs the way Opera does it. There are extensions that try to do the same as Opera, but they miserably fail. Opera is able to remember exactly where you were on any tab, and how you got there (the history of every tab). It must be harder than it appears to do, because Opera is still the only one to do it correctly.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Doom9
although Neo just showed us a major disadvantage: Mozilla can't linewrap properly, compare the rendering of this thread between Firefox/Mozilla and IE...

It's not a bug. It's a feature! ;) That line should not be splited. If it is the reg exp will no longer work and likely throw a bunch of errors once imported. May there be mercy on the souls of the IE users. For their view of the Internet is truly distorted! :p :D

Anyone who has ever tried to copy and paste code from IE has truly felt the pain. Debugging sometimes excessively all to fix bad line wrapping IE performed.

[neo75903]

@Soulhunter:
idd, i guess i already took those things for granted.
Maybe i should switch back to IE for a while to realize how good i had with FF :)

[stax76]

Slow context menus? not on mine and on other pcs at home neither, ranging from 366Mhz to 2gig.


maybe it's my system then, the main menu here is slow, I'm running here Swing, QT, Win32, MenuStrip of .NET 2.0 and probably more, all are fine except XUL used in Thunderbird and Firefox.

[dragongodz]

gee i didnt know we HAD to number them for the list. :D

22. because even the MS security chief uses Firefox.
link to the information about that can be found in my previous post. :)

[neo75903]

hehe, maybe we should send the mozilla team the list they can use it as an ad something like:
22 reasons the switch *wink to Apple* :)

[ukb007]

Firefox is so good!. Now someone (castellanos) comes along seemingly saying Opera is better. Maybe the clueless n00b (http://www.doom9.org/) will now do a Browser Shootout like his famous Codec Shootouts.

...Just kidding. I know this site is about video. Not Browsers. But, seriously, a Browser Shootout by someone will be welcome by many. But maybe somebody has done that somewhere already? If anyone knows...

And the funny bit of info that propped up by way of discussions in the thread. That should be one of the main (http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=18173) reasons to ditch IE. I mean, the M$ security chief using Firefox!

Regards.

[windtrader]

Do you still need to keep IE running while running Firefox?

Is there a reasonable method for shutting of IE or will that make other parts of Windows start crashing?

[sysKin]

Originally posted by windtrader
Do you still need to keep IE running while running Firefox?

Is there a reasonable method for shutting of IE or will that make other parts of Windows start crashing? You have to *have* IE on your disk because it's part of windows (explorer.exe and iexplore.exe are almost the same thing). However, you don't have to run it. Take the shortcut from your desktop and launch bar and you'll forget about it.

Radek

[Doobie]

When Microsoft killed Netscape, browser improvements came to a stop. Now that FireFox is far better than IE, Microsoft is going to have to improve IE. Competition is good. But, anticompetativeness is not (that's what stalled browser improvements).

[castellanos]

To ukb007:
Originally posted by castellanos
I agree with all of you guys, I've been using Mozilla for a while and I found it much more reliable than IE, After using Mozilla, I dind't get more spyware in my computer. I have a question, may be it is not pertinent to do it here, but since you opened this thread...ok.
I've got the Mozilla 1.7.3, that's the same than Mozilla Firefox or is it something totally different?
Greetings! :)

Did I say Opera is better?
Anyway thanks for the link PIXuS.

[windtrader]

well - you can stop ieexplorer.exe but not explorer.exe as it pretty well halts the system.

anyway - I loaded firefox and so far it runs fine; I have to explore it more to find a few wow features that make me need it bad.

[Doom9]

t's not a bug. It's a feature! That line should not be splited. If it is the reg exp will no longer work and likely throw a bunch of errors once imported. May there be mercy on the souls of the IE users. For their view of the Internet is truly distorted!

Anyone who has ever tried to copy and paste code from IE has truly felt the pain. Debugging sometimes excessively all to fix bad line wrapping IE performed.You know I love it if somebody calls a missing usability feature a bug.. just makes me wanna throw up. And it's the typical arrogance of open sourcers unwilling to admit that they could possibly be wrong. It's what going to keep most open source projects in the dark forever, letting the Microsoft's of this world rule for a long time to come.

Copy&paste isn't a problem as long as the line breaking is done without adding a line break but purely visual. Unfortunately that's not a standard trait of windows programs, whereas *nix programs do not seem to suffer from that problem. Or are you saying the improper way of handling copy&paste on the Windows platform requires Mozilla to not offer a feature, even though things would work just fine on any other platform? I doubt Windows's shortcomings would stop the programmers.. they're a bunch of Windows hating coders after all.

[communist]

Originally posted by PiXuS
...is the persistence of the tabs the way Opera does it. There are extensions that try to do the same as Opera, but they miserably fail. Opera is able to remember exactly where you were on any tab, and how you got there (the history of every tab). It must be harder than it appears to do, because Opera is still the only one to do it correctly.
Dont know about Firefox but Mozilla has this functionality - no problems here. All tabs have their own history and Moz remembers scrolled position / cursor position for each tab :)

[PiXuS]

Originally posted by communist
Dont know about Firefox but Mozilla has this functionality - no problems here. All tabs have their own history and Moz remembers scrolled position / cursor position for each tab :)

Hmmmmmm very interesting! I usually follow development of both Mozilla and Firefox, but never catched that!! I will have to download the latest of Mozilla and try it. Honestly, that feature is so useful, I don't understand why it hasn't been implemented in Firefox yet.

Thanks for the tip... me going @ mozilla.org right now! :)

Edit: Huh.. I just downloaded Mozilla 1.8a4 and I don't see it exhibit the behavior of Opera regarding the tabs. Even if I manually do a "save tab group" and reload them, the history and position are lost.

I think you installed an extension and forgot about it.......

[neo75903]

Originally posted by Doom9
although Neo just showed us a major disadvantage: Mozilla can't linewrap properly, compare the rendering of this thread between Firefox/Mozilla and IE...

erm dont get it, looks fine me in both browsers, can you gimme example?

[Doom9]

erm dont get it, looks fine me in both browsers, can you gimme example?Neo's first post.. page 1.. set your resolution to 1024x786.. then Neo's post blows the table so to speak.. all other posts fit on screen, but Neo's does not, extends beyond the right border of the screen and in the process creating an ugly horizontal scrollbar. But even at a higher resolution, you'll note that one table cell is a lot bigger than the rest because the content quoted isn't being wrapped.

Another example is SMD's post with the 4 screenshots here: http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?s=&threadid=85152. Or post a very long URL in the message editing box on this board in both browsers.. you'll see the difference.

[Dali Lama]

Well there are three reasons I don't use FireFox:

1. No significant advantages over other browsers (as evidenced from our list of advantages so far).

2. It is slightly slower than IE for reasons already mentioned (not integrated into Windows; whether this is fair or not is unfortunate).

3. It can't display all webpages. More importantly, it can't display a webpage that I NEED to access everyday (most likely due to our tech department's inadequate webpage scripting ability. Maybe they use some Microsoft only code?)

There's one reason I always reccomend it to people with difficulty preventing spyware on their computers:

1. It is a more secure browser (I think this is not opinion either) and there are probably fewer people trying to develop malware for it.

And there's one reason I really like FireFox:

1. Its great to have more competition and overall its pretty much as good IE, so why not mix it up and use it.

Sincerely,

Dali

[neo75903]

@doom9:
The simple reason for this is because FF wraps line when there is a space and Neo's String does not contain any spaces in which it treats it as one entity and therefor not to be wrapped.
I dont know where from IE wrappes the line, maybe at any non alfabetical character?
It depends how you look at it, one may prefer the FF approach other at IE. I prefer the FF as i can use it as one method to force my table width. Same as you would do with a large invisible width image, like 1px high and 200 in width to force a certain layout.

@Opera users:
Is Yahoo mail displaying properly for you guys? i did a quick trial for the browser and my 'move'(to other folder) button doesnt appear properply.

[communist]

Originally posted by PiXuS
Hmmmmmm very interesting! I usually follow development of both Mozilla and Firefox, but never catched that!! I will have to download the latest of Mozilla and try it. Honestly, that feature is so useful, I don't understand why it hasn't been implemented in Firefox yet.

Thanks for the tip... me going @ mozilla.org right now! :)

Edit: Huh.. I just downloaded Mozilla 1.8a4 and I don't see it exhibit the behavior of Opera regarding the tabs. Even if I manually do a "save tab group" and reload them, the history and position are lost.

I think you installed an extension and forgot about it.......
Do you mean saving a group of tabs to one bookmark and then later reopening it? Well I was talking about normal usage and not restoring saved groups of tabs. Not that much of big problem to me :)

Also I'm using Mozilla 1.7.3.

[Doom9]

It depends how you look at it, one may prefer the FF approach other at IE. I prefer the FF as i can use it as one method to force my table width. Same as you would do with a large invisible width image, like 1px high and 200 in width to force a certain layout.Eww.. even Neo is going to agree with me on that.. you should use CSS for that.. even IE's limited CSS support is enough to do it that way. Table layouting is so 20th century ;)

[PiXuS]

Originally posted by communist
Do you mean saving a group of tabs to one bookmark and then later reopening it? Well I was talking about normal usage and not restoring saved groups of tabs. Not that much of big problem to me :)

Also I'm using Mozilla 1.7.3.

I'm talking about the behavior of Opera regarding the tabs. With Opera, you don't have the specifically save a group of tabs. With Opera, you simply close the application and when you re-open it, it loads all the tabs you had open in the previous session exactly where you were (at the correct page, with the correct font size, with the correct history of each tab).

If Mozilla 1.8a4 cannot do it, I don't see how 1.7.3 could.

[communist]

I heard about extensions that try to do similar but no that functionality you're talking about is not in current Mozilla builds. I thought you meant tab behaviour during surfing. Anyway if you close Mozilla it will not remember anything about tabs position / history and load up just normal next time you open.

[neo75903]

wow just discovered the new search (CTRL+F). way much better then that floating window. this would be point 23? :)

edit:
@M7S: wow idd thx for the tip very handy.

[M7S]

If you choose "Begin finding when you begin typing" in options/advaned/accessibility you wont even need cltr+f. I don't remember anymore how I survived my dayly surfing before I found that option.

Ihmo definitely #23

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Doom9
You know I love it if somebody calls a missing usability feature a bug.. just makes me wanna throw up. And it's the typical arrogance of open sourcers unwilling to admit that they could possibly be wrong. It's what going to keep most open source projects in the dark forever, letting the Microsoft's of this world rule for a long time to come.

Copy&paste isn't a problem as long as the line breaking is done without adding a line break but purely visual. Unfortunately that's not a standard trait of windows programs, whereas *nix programs do not seem to suffer from that problem. Or are you saying the improper way of handling copy&paste on the Windows platform requires Mozilla to not offer a feature, even though things would work just fine on any other platform? I doubt Windows's shortcomings would stop the programmers.. they're a bunch of Windows hating coders after all.

Honestly I was joking. And don't think either way is completely better than the other. They both have their points. You know that. ;) We have after all gone over this at length before. But the way it is suits me just fine. And is likely because of the cross platform nature. I don't see a problem with someone adding the feature in the future. But I would preffer to call it a feature and not a bug. I mean is it a honest to goodness bug (as in something that is supposed to work but doesn't) or is it just a "feature" IE users would like added to ease the transition? It's not a bad feature if done right.

[dragongodz]

2. It is slightly slower than IE for reasons already mentioned (not integrated into Windows; whether this is fair or not is unfortunate).
hmm i find page rendering in general faster with FF.

3. It can't display all webpages. More importantly, it can't display a webpage that I NEED to access everyday (most likely due to our tech department's inadequate webpage scripting ability. Maybe they use some Microsoft only code?)
no maybe about it. its a well known fact that MS web page writing software doesnt make 100% compliant output. blame MS for this not browsers that follow the rules.

[PiXuS]

@Dali Lama

You could try this Firefox extension (http://ieview.mozdev.org/).

[sysKin]

Originally posted by Doom9
You know I love it if somebody calls a missing usability feature a bug.. just makes me wanna throw up. And it's the typical arrogance of open sourcers unwilling to admit that they could possibly be wrong. It's what going to keep most open source projects in the dark forever, letting the Microsoft's of this world rule for a long time to come.
Hah, I've done some reasearch on this subject. What I found is that as much as I agree about arrogance of OSS developers (trying hard to avoid it myself, it's not easy, believe me ;) ) this is not the case this time. There are filed bugs about it, most dating back to 1999 - and the current state is: the whole support for line breaking does not exist in Gecko.

In particular, bug 9101 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=9101) says that the whole text layout code is about 3 million lines big, and noone is able to understand it and add a support for ­ character (which could be a website-side solution for that problem).
Bug 95067 (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=95067) deals with the breaks after other characters, like IE does - at least there is a patch, although it seems noone can agree on the breaking logic, because everyone has some examples where other logic would suit them better.

The whole thing sucks, no doubt about it...

Radek

[Doom9]

@sysKin: I know that there are bugs filed on this.. I even gave my vote to some of them but obviously a single vote doesn't matter much.

@Neo: I did a little testing after my post and found that in Windows, copy&paste is highly inconsistent. For instance if you have a tabled layout, as long as you don't add a manual linewrap, text on multiple lines is rendered without linebreaks after copy&paste. On the other hand, copying something from the commandline is always broken - and apparently the way IE does the linebreaking of the code you posted is also broken... but since all browser can handle tables properly, it seems both IE and Mozilla are bugged.. the former adheres to the table width but wraps by adding a CRLF to the code, thus breaking proper copy&paste, the latter breaks the table width set but doesn't break the text it is rendering.

And yeah, the seach functionality is very new but definitely #23.. took me 5 seconds to get used to it and now I wished all programs had the same text search.

[nFury8]

Originally posted by Neo Neko


... And I can't remeber where I found this :( but copy and paste the text below to a text file and then import it to adblock.

__________________________________
[Adblock]
/\D\d{2,3}x\d{2,3}\D/
googlesyndication
us.yimg.com/a/
/\/buy_assets\//
/[\W\d_](top|bottom|left|right|)?banner(s|id=|\d|_)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d](double|fast)click[\W\d]/
/[\W\d]click(stream|thrutraffic|thru|xchange)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d]value(stream|xchange|click)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d]dime(xchange|click)[\W\d]/
/[\W\d](onlineads?|ad(banner|click|-?flow|frame|ima?g(es?)?|_id|js|log|serv(er|e)?|stream|_string|s|trix|type|vertisements?|v|vert|xchange)?)[\W\d]/
__________________________________

Those few lines kill almost everything!
Awesome. Damn straight. I added those lines and it absolutely nuked the pesky abominations from some of the most ad-whore sites. Im now a happy camper. Props to Neo Neko for sharing that.

[SeeMoreDigital]

When creating your own web site pages. Does anybody know how to make "icons" appear in the address bar?

http://img123.exs.cx/img123/8849/SMD_FireFox_and_IE6.gif

I'm sure I managed to get it to work in the previous versions of the FireFox browser... but can't remember how I did it!


Cheers

[sysKin]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
When creating your own web site pages. Does anybody know how to make "icons" appear in the address bar?
Good way:
<head>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://blahblahblah/favicon.ico" >

Very bad way that FF supports to mimic IE:
just save it under "/favicon.ico"

[SeeMoreDigital]

Thanks sysKin,

Both methods work well in FireFox... but not at all in IE6 ;)

Never mind eh!


Cheers

[neo75903]

maybe we should point neo geko out that his signature is not web compliant ;-)

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by neo75903
maybe we should point neo geko out that his signature is not web compliant ;-) It looks great in FireFox though :D


Cheers

[jernst]

Originally posted by neo75903
maybe we should point neo geko out that his signature is not web compliant ;-)

What signature ?
Do you mean his avatar ?

I never thought png was not web compliant. The fact that ie cannot render alpha transparency doesn't mean that it's not web compliant.

http://www.w3.org/Graphics/
http://www.w3.org/Graphics/PNG/ (you'll see that ie for windows is not in the list of "modern browsers" that support png alpha channel, even if the specifications were made back in 1996)

[SeeMoreDigital]

In an world dominated by IE users, here's what Neo Neko's avitar looks like!

http://img117.exs.cx/img117/4045/avatarIE.gif


Cheers

[Doom9]

what's an avitar ;)

though I consider that one the least of IE's problems. If it were only for PNG rendering, I wouldn't suggest switching over.

[jernst]

Originally posted by Doom9
though I consider that one the least of IE's problems. If it were only for PNG rendering, I wouldn't suggest switching over. [/B]

Because of this, pngs didn't replace the heavy patented gifs on the web although pngs are far superior than gifs. I remember the dark days when the patent holders of gif wanted web site owners to pay royalties for using it. I don't remember why they stopped to claim these royalties though.

[stephanV]

heh... my firefox is broken... i dont see his avatar at all :rolleyes:

[SeeMoreDigital]

Originally posted by Doom9
what's an avitar ;) Damn my one fingered typing ;)

Anyway... poor old Neo Neko has turned into a geko!

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by neo75903
maybe we should point neo geko out that his signature is not web compliant ;-)

My avatar is 100% standards compliant and is rendered by reference PNG decoders just fine. It is just a special type of PNG. Not only is it a transparent PNG which IE can't handle it is an 8 bit palated transparency PNG. Which IE absolutely flips out over. It is created by a program called PNGquant. Such images at this point are rare. But expect to see them become more common. As they offer better still quality over GIF etc with much better transparency in an even smaller size!

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by sysKin
Good way:
<head>
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="http://blahblahblah/favicon.ico" >

Very bad way that FF supports to mimic IE:
just save it under "/favicon.ico"

Actually I don't see anything bad about the way Mozilla does it. In fact I rather preffer it. Mozilla's way is easily doable on any platform. IE's way requiring an actual ICO file is hard to reproduce on non-windows systems if not dificult on Windows even. I have tried using things other than ICOs with their extension renamed. It just didn't work. Plus the mozilla way allows for animated favorites Icons!

[jernst]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
IE's way requiring an actual ICO file is hard to reproduce on non-windows systems if not dificult on Windows even. I have tried using things other than ICOs with their extension renamed. It just didn't work. Plus the mozilla way allows for animated favorites Icons!

The worst thing is that it fills your web server's error log with request for inexistant file as it tries blindly to load /favicon.ico.

[sysKin]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
It is created by a program called PNGquant. Such images at this point are rare. But expect to see them become more common. As they offer better still quality over GIF etc with much better transparency in an even smaller size! Hah, thanks Neo Neko, nice program :) I just squeezed my avatar down to 3608 bytes.

:)

Radek

[edit] LOL I just checked it with IE. Haha~~~~~

[geffroman]

In the old days we used to have to program a web page and then reprogram it to work on Netscape as WELL as I.E.... (I was a Netscape hold out for many years) Now that almost everyone (80%+) uses I.E. that means web programming is less frustrating.

Now when a client asks that RARE question... "How come my web page doesn't look right on MY computer?"
All we have to say is "what browser are you using?" If it's NOT the Big Blue e then we say "Open your real browser, the one God gave you and it will look fine!"

At the end of the day, if you want world wide compatibility it just doesn't benefit you to buck the system... Learn to work well within it... If you are just the rebellious type, then you just need to live with the consequences of being a Reb...

Huggz and kisses...

[sysKin]

Originally posted by geffroman
In the old days we used to have to program a web page and then reprogram it to work on Netscape as WELL as I.E.... (I was a Netscape hold out for many years) Now that almost everyone (80%+) uses I.E. that means web programming is less frustrating.

Now when a client asks that RARE question... "How come my web page doesn't look right on MY computer?"
All we have to say is "what browser are you using?" If it's NOT the Big Blue e then we say "Open your real browser, the one God gave you and it will look fine!"

At the end of the day, if you want world wide compatibility it just doesn't benefit you to buck the system... Learn to work well within it... If you are just the rebellious type, then you just need to live with the consequences of being a Reb...
I don't quite understand you ;) but my current expierience is that IE is just a big pain for any web developer.

I'm not a web designer but I am responsible for keeping & updating one website. Of course I want it to work for everyone, so being a rebel is not an option. Any development consists of two steps: 1) code it 2) make sure it at least doesn't break anything in IE. The website I'm talking about works in IE, but is not as good as it should be...

IE bugs in CSS1 are pretty bad, and almost no support for CSS2 is a pain too. And all this while Gecko is slowly adopting CSS3 (which is not even finalized yet).
Same goes for Javascript, good thing I don't use it.

Radek

[geffroman]

Originally posted by sysKin
I don't quite understand you ;) but my current expierience is that IE is just a big pain for any web developer. Well I guess they could build sites to suit Mozilla users and forget about IE compatibility... Although I suspect web site owners would quickly FIRE those developers...

IE is what it is... But as long as the entire planet uses it alternate browsers just are not much a consideration... and the compatibility issues they bring to the table are not worth anyone's time to work around... At the end of the day web site owners pay the bills... developers need that money to eat... and web site visitors use IE... It is simple math really...

Most people I talk to that use NON IE browsers do it cause they dislike MS... not because anything else is actually much better... IMHO

It's kinda like politics... Hate America because are strong... Vote for Kerry because he's not Bush... But the world still wants to vacation at Disneyland... :D

[sysKin]

Originally posted by geffroman
Well I guess they could build sites to suit Mozilla users and forget about IE compatibility... Although I suspect web site owners would quickly FIRE those developers...

IE is what it is... But as long as the entire planet uses it alternate browsers just are not much a consideration... and the compatibility issues they bring to the table are not worth anyone's time to work around... At the end of the day web site owners pay the bills... developers need that money to eat... and web site visitors use IE... It is simple math really...

Most people I talk to that use NON IE browsers do it cause they dislike MS... not because anything else is actually much better... IMHO

It's kinda like politics... Hate America because are strong... Vote for Kerry because he's not Bush... But the world still wants to vacation at Disneyland... :D Let me tell you that, IMHO, you are very very wrong.
1, people who use "alternative" browsers DON'T do it because it's not microsoft. There is a HUGE usability gap between them, and anyone who says otherwise simply hasn't tried.
2, Websies that are IE-only are rare on internet. I've been using Firefox since version 0.8 and Mozilla for months before that - and I found one (ONE) site that doesn't work with them.
3, Almost all IE-only code simply means "I poked the code until it started to work on IE". If you concider this kind of development good, well, I disagree. If a developer simply knows what he's doing, his code WILL work on all browsers.
This has nothing to do with who's paying the bills - good code is good code and sloppy code is bad, regardless of programming language, market dominance, expectations or anything else. Sloppy code can break ANYTIME, even after XP SP2 installation, so don't tell me it's what anyone expects.

IE is a pain not because it's not compatible with Mozilla, or W3C standards, but because its interpretation of code is illogical. If you want to make IE-only website it's simply much more difficult, because you never know what IE will do and will not do and why. This is what I meant.

[Mug Funky]

IE is what it is... But as long as the entire planet uses it alternate browsers just are not much a consideration... and the compatibility issues they bring to the table are not worth anyone's time to work around...

myopic to say the least.

if you were designing a public building, would you exclude wheelchair ramps because "the entire world" is able bodied? of course, Mozilla/FireFox are far more able than IE, but to alienate even a small section of your user base is to lose customers.

every major site that i've found incompatibilities with, i've emailed them promptly and told them to make their site Web Compliant. otherwise it's simply a broken website that i will not continue to visit.

as for being rebellious, well, guilty as charged. but i'm not a fool, either.

i come because it's not MS, but i stay because it's faster, prettier, safer and works better.

also, the term "alternative" browser throws MS's anticompetitive nature into sharp relief, don't you think? i'd prefer to call them "compliant" browsers :)

and i stopped wanting to holiday in disneyland when i was about 4 years old. i don't want to go to the US at all, unless i have to. there's hundreds of countries i'd go to first. sorry if that offends anybody's patriotism.

[geffroman]

I never suggested web sites should be built deliberatly to NOT work with NON IE browsers... I simply suggest that you need to be 100% compatible with IE to reach 80% to 90% of your audience... any extra time and money a business spends on supporting compatibility issues with alternative browsers is a business decision they have to make...

We offer 100% IE compatibility to our clients... If they have issues with non IE browsers and want to pay for us to spend time working those issues we will do it...

By the way I am in my 40s... and I still go to Disneyland... It's not just for kids... :D

[sysKin]

Originally posted by geffroman
We offer 100% IE compatibility to our clients... If they have issues with non IE browsers and want to pay for us to spend time working those issues we will do it...I just checked the website from your signature and I believe I finally understand you.

I won't actually comment on the code I see there - I mean, HTML 3 FRAMESET might be very absolete, but it's a valid standard and it should work, and it actually does work OK.

However, if you claim that the differences in rendering between IE and Gecko, as seen here, are Gecko's fault then you're really mistaken. The site's design is trying very hard to break all possible rules of interoperability with anything. The site not only breaks with browsers different than IE, but also - for example - works very hard to keep Google (or anything else) from indexing it. Even if someone would pay you, you won't be able to fix it, because the whole design is absolete and it's not possible to make it render any better.

I'm wondering, why are you doing this? Lazyness? No clue? As long as your clients know all this it's OK I guess - just make sure they DO know it's IE-site and not a website...

[PiXuS]

@geffroman

Sorry to be so rude, but your logic is somewhat flawed. You shouldn't say you first want your web site to work when viewed through IE, but instead say you build you web site according to the Microsoft ""standards"" of what the web should be.

If you were building your web site according to what the W3C had to say about it (and, ethically, you should (yeah, I know.. ethics don't pay ;) )), it would be correctly seen through a W3C standards compliant browser (i.e. Firefox, Mozilla, Opera I think) but not on a non-W3C standards compliant browser (i.e. IE!).

See.. it is that simple. You either follow the Microsoft path and alienate those who don't (and that is obviously what Microsoft consciously wants you to do!) or you be strong (or stupid? :D ) and code for the standards.

[neo75903]

It's kinda like politics... Hate America because are strong... Vote for Kerry because he's not Bush... But the world still wants to vacation at Disneyland...

Yes maybe, but we also say USA is like Disney, once you seen it you dont wanna go back anymore :)

[jernst]

Originally posted by geffroman
[B]I never suggested web sites should be built deliberatly to NOT work with NON IE browsers... I simply suggest that you need to be 100% compatible with IE to reach 80% to 90% of your audience... any extra time and money a business spends on supporting compatibility issues with alternative browsers is a business decision they have to make...

If you follow the standards not only your website will look nice in compliants web browsers but it will also work in IE. Maybe it'll look a little bit less nice in IE (missing CSS rules, etc.) but it'll be 100% usable (and you'll reach 100% of your audience).

If you start the other way round not only your website will not be usable in compliant browsers but you'll have to start your website over when (if ever it happens) Microsoft upgrade their browser/os.

I'm also designing websites and when my customer complain that their site doesn't look as nice as the screenshot we gave them I'm always happy to install firefox on their computers and tell them that IE is not able to render the special css effects/png alpha that are needed for the layout he choose.

[dragongodz]

i am surprised nobody picked this up.

"Open your real browser, the one God gave you and it will look fine!"
bill gates is god ?????????? :devil:

At the end of the day, if you want world wide compatibility it just doesn't benefit you to buck the system... Learn to work well within it... If you are just the rebellious type, then you just need to live with the consequences of being a Reb...
If they have issues with non IE browsers and want to pay for us to spend time working those issues we will do it...
its that sort of attitude that makes MS a monopoly in more areas than just OS.

Hate America because are strong
or maybe just dislike some americans "we are the best at everything"(when they are not) attitude. i know that even goes for some americans aswell since i have a freind who is over here for holidays(from the U.S.) and he and his wife both say the same. :D

[neo75903]

@jernst:
idd alpha rendering in IE is horrible hope they will fix that as well.

[geffroman]

Let me defend myself a little...

First off our POS site was built by my son with an old version of Frontpage (who is 12) because he wanted to learn and he got extra credit for it at school... I was impressed for a first time effort... I don't really use it professionally... It's mostly parking space for Free DVD Stuff...

As to my remarks about being I.E. compatible first... That was misspoken a little on my part... I believe you should be MS compliant... this gets you 99% of the way there with I.E. and 80 to 90% of the viewers using I.E....

As to Gates being GOD... No... Can't stand the geek... He was college dork that got lucky when IBM thought they didn't need to license the code for DOS... He stole every good piece of code he ever sold... It was a JOKE... :D

As to Mr. Gecko or some website named Gecko I have not read the thread deeply enough to know who he is or what website you guys are talking about or what is wrong with his code... My point has been about really one thing only... "Work with the known standards that satisfy 80 to 90% of the paying public and you won't have too much care about Mozilla, Godzilla or Yada Yada Zilla..."

As to America... well no point in arguing that... The world vacations here year after year... It is a lovely country with more visitable Geography than most any other place... and the most diverse section of people to laugh at that you have ever seen... I have friends I visit in Scotland, Ireland, the Free Stadt of Bavaria and Austria and they visit me when they can... I miss fruehschoppen in Hohenschwangau... There are good people everywhere... Don't let world politics convince you were are not all friends... Don't let corrupt world leaders and a PRESS with hidden agendas worldwide divide us... and go to Disneyland often... It will keep you young and fun...!

Huggz and Kisses... Jeff

[dragongodz]

with an old version of Frontpage
and theres the culprit. as already said MS make their products non compliant.

I believe you should be MS compliant... this gets you 99% of the way there with I.E. and 80 to 90% of the viewers using I.E....
but thats what we are saying is wrong. you should be W3C compliant as that IS the standard. web sites and the public etc should be trying to force MS to follow the rules, not segment it so you HAVE to use their programs. thats called a monopoly.

As to Gates being GOD... No... Can't stand the geek... He was college dork that got lucky when IBM thought they didn't need to license the code for DOS... He stole every good piece of code he ever sold... It was a JOKE... as was my reply. i was just being a little devilish. :D

As to Mr. Gecko or some website named Gecko I have not read the thread deeply enough to know who he is or what
Gecko is the page rendering engine used by mozilla/firefox.

My point has been about really one thing only... "Work with the known standards that satisfy 80 to 90% of the paying public and you won't have too much care about Mozilla, Godzilla or Yada Yada Zilla..."
thats the point. MS do NOT follow the standard so should NOT be supported.

There are good people everywhere
of course, good and bad in every country. the media(film, television, politics etc) however do push this "we are the best at everything and always right" attitude to the rest of the world. that DOES get up peoples noses as it simply is not true. :)

[geffroman]

Originally posted by dragongodz
the media(film, television, politics etc) however do push this "we are the best at everything and always right" attitude to the rest of the world. that DOES get up peoples noses as it simply is not true. :) American media speaking to Americans does not talk about our standing in the world except when 3 countries HIP deep in Oil for FOOD scandal get in our way in Iraq... We don't much think about France or Germany when we are talking about anything else... You have to keep in mind that the MEDIA as you know it is what you get fed locally by YOUR media companies... Since we don't much consider other countries when discussing much of anything here I find it hard to understand how what we think even affects them...

I do know that countries with government controlled media outlets like France top the list of US haters... It's easy to get a nose in a snit if you are only shown what your government wants you to see... If you watched US media you would find little of us talking down about others because we are little focused on them to begin with... We are too busy battling each other in the name of democracy... :D

Trust me on this...I live here... Basic perception around the US is this:

Germany: Home of Hitler. Killer of Jews. Not reflective of German People. Great Beer. Great people. Top Industrialized Nation. Lot's of Vacation time.

French: Champagne. Talk big. Avoid a fight no matter what. Rude to foreigners. Especially women. Home of the crescent and the Tower. Supports embargo on Iraq while selling arms illegally behind the world's back.

Australia: PARTY!! Kangaroos. Gooday. Shrimp on the BarB. That girlie man Crock Hunter.

Britain: Original World Terrorist. Pinkie finger up with Tea. Now best friend because we are the strongest. Pretentious. Boring. Foggy. Terrible Food. Sherlock Holmes. Own a lot of America.

Ireland: Great bands. Drunk. Stubborn as hell. (I Still don't understand how a nation surrounded by water was almost wiped out by lack of Potatoes... FISH MAN... FISH! Back bone of America.

Russia: Broke. Old. Decaying. Proved communism is wrong. Ugly accent for a woman. Supports embargo on Iraq while selling arms illegally behind the world's back.

China: Still proving Communism is wrong. Short. Supports embargo on Iraq while selling arms illegally behind the world's back.

Japan: We are still very sorry. But they kicked our ass with Stereos and Cars to get even. Smoke to much. Smart.

Mexico: Yuck.

Canada: Who cares. They can't even decide if they are French or not. :DThese are the stereo types we hear. Right or wrong. But all of these countries and many more are OUR HOMES... We came from there, not here! Less than 1% of our population is native. So when you think badly of us. You are talking about YOUR relatives!

Often the PERCEPTION of us thinking we are better than the rest is grown at HOME by those that feel discounted, not by anything we do or say... Yet you spend a few minutes here and you see most are pretty pleased to meet a foreigner... Being an American is NOT like being English or French or Russian... Being American is more like joining a Club... You still get to be English or French or whatever as a US citizen... You just get to join the Free society that TRYs to play by rules of self governance... I suspect it's not so different there... Australia is primarily a society of transients as well... You see even a boat load of criminals from England can build a great country... :D But no matter how much Madonna (opps excuse me now RUTH), who chooses to crap on her own country that made her a bazillionaire, wants to be British, she will NEVER be English... She's a wanna be... But anyone can be American... or NOT... It's not a place as much as it's an oath to a type of society...

Sorry for the derailing there guys... I'm off now... :D

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by geffroman
In the old days we used to have to program a web page and then reprogram it to work on Netscape as WELL as I.E.... (I was a Netscape hold out for many years) Now that almost everyone (80%+) uses I.E. that means web programming is less frustrating.

Unless you say to yourself surely there is a better/easier way to do "this" and happen to look at the standard. And then say "my god this is so easy and powerfull!" only then to implement it and find out that your browser does not support standards that make everyones life easier. Easier for designers to create pages. Simpler/easier/faster for your audience to load even over slow connections. And finally massively easier for content indexers to propperly parse and drive your audience to you. Not being able to do that is what is frustrating.

Originally posted by geffroman
Now when a client asks that RARE question... "How come my web page doesn't look right on MY computer?"
All we have to say is "what browser are you using?" If it's NOT the Big Blue e then we say "Open your real browser, the one God gave you and it will look fine!"

Oh I'm sorry but the answer we were looking for was C. Design a website that will degrade/break gracefully in IE. It's not hard to hide standards compliant bits of code from IE to keep it from freaking out. And you can go further and replace those bits with broken code IE likes if IE users are that important to you. There is not much that IE can do that Mozilla/Gecko can't do these days. Well unless you count getting infected by activex controlls that compromise the whole OS. Actually it is the other way round any more. There is alot that Mozilla/Gecko can do that IE can't. NS4 grew to be a dog sure. But NS is not MOZ. MOZ has replaced NS and has even recreated NS in it's own image. Designing for Mozilla is quite honestly mostly a joy. I can do things so simply and easily. Much easier than in IE in general.

Originally posted by geffroman
At the end of the day, if you want world wide compatibility it just doesn't benefit you to buck the system...

Yes and no. If you want world wide compatability go with the least functional lowest common denominator. But if we go with the lowest common denominator things never improve or get better. Microsoft in action. Personaly I am all for the betterment of mankind. If the requires bucking the system. So be it. Something is not right just because you can.

[geffroman]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
And you can go further and replace those bits with broken code IE likes if IE users are that important to you. If you are in business to make money then YES I would say IE users are pretty important... Check your web stats...

They make up 80 to 90% OR MORE of the visitors...

[virus]

Originally posted by geffroman
IE users are pretty important... They make up 80 to 90% OR MORE of the visitors...
Oh, well, if you keep on discriminating the alternative browsers' users that way you won't see many of them on your site, that's for sure.

BTW according to the stats (http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp) over at W3Schools the IE5/6 users right now are ~75% of the total, a neat 9% loss compared to the 84% in January. On a personal off-topic note (I'm a long time user of the big red O browser), the simple fact that almost 70% of the people out there use a piece of crap like IE6 and just 2% use a fast, small-sized, full-featured suite like Opera tells me that we live in a bad, bad, bad world.

virus

[dragongodz]

American media speaking to Americans does not talk about our standing in the world
i never said your standing in the world but attitude of "we are the best in the world". there is a difference. :)

You have to keep in mind that the MEDIA as you know it is what you get fed locally by YOUR media companies
sorry, wrong. we happen to get every major U.S made motion picture, we get all the major fiction tv shows(such as freinds, sopranos etc etc) and even news based shows(good morning america, meet the press etc). so i actually do know the attitude from U.S. media.

this as all so way off topic though that best we just leave it. :D

[geffroman]

Originally posted by dragongodz
but attitude of "we are the best in the world". sorry, wrong. we happen to get every major U.S made motion picture, we get all the major fiction tv shows(such as freinds, sopranos etc etc) and even news based shows(good morning america, meet the press etc). so i actually do know the attitude from U.S. media.

I did not realize Friends, Sopranos and Good Morning America spent time talking UP America at the expense of other countries...

You are actually MAKING my point... if you think you can determine US attitudes based on some crap TV shows and liberal NEWS Talk shows you really DON'T know what Americans think...

We just had an election that brought out record numbers of people REJECTING the liberal bias in this country... That means as a majority we REJECT Hollywood types and their views... which are reflected in the MEDIA you specify...

Fact is we are the richest country in the world because we are a melting pot of all the nations in the world... It is our diversity that makes us strong... We are nothing more than English, French, German, Irish, Australian, etc etc immigrants that built a free society... We have more... we GIVE more... and we are at times bashed for no more than that...

When someone needs money, aid, food, or military might we tend to be top on the list for handouts... And we as citizens keep paying half our income in taxes to pay for it all... Don't misinterpret US Pride and Patriotism as arrogance... And as much as I have been positive and friendly, I am getting tired of some of the bitterness and envy I sense in these posts, so I'll sign off this thread and wish you all the best and urge you all to come visit...

[dragongodz]

I did not realize Friends, Sopranos and Good Morning America spent time talking UP America at the expense of other countries...
you should try watching them more closly then. most U.S. tv shows will at some point say "the U.S. is the greatest country" or "we are the best at" blah blah blah. as i already said its that attitude that can irritate people.

if you think you can determine US attitudes based on some crap TV shows and liberal NEWS Talk shows you really DON'T know what Americans think
try actually reading my posts. i happen to have some american freinds here on holiday right now and they agree that attitude is portrayed in the media. i never said its true of the man in the street.

We have more... we GIVE more... and we are at times bashed for no more than that
oh excuse me while i cry a f*cking river why dont you. i guess you DO have that attitude afterall.

Don't misinterpret US Pride and Patriotism as arrogance
saying your the greatest, the best, do the most is pride ? no its B.S. because its not true. yes some great things have been done and come from america but the same can be said of MANY other countries.

And as much as I have been positive and friendly, I am getting tired of some of the bitterness and envy I sense in these posts
HAHAHA excuse me while i pick myself back up. thats rich. listen try actually reading what people type. there is absolutly NO envy in my posts. silly me i just tried to explain WHY sometimes people have bad feelings towards the U.S. but hey you want to think everyones envious of you and your country. thats your problem.

maybe it goes hand in hand with your attitude of MS not following standards. is that right ? do you think people are envious of MS and thats why they complain ? i really pity you if you think thats the case.

i WONT bother to reply to any more of this rubbish from you.

[Mug Funky]

hmm... i think i agree with DragonGodz here.

as far as having more and giving more, that's probably true. but it's the strings attached that cheapen the whole thing.

argh... i've got a lot of points to make, but all of them would involve me (deservingly) getting a strike from the doom9 mods.

i'll say this though - immensely powerful countries should take the time to look honestly at themselves. introspection is a rare thing these days, and it's needed more than ever. i yearn for governments to do this - look at themselves and ask if they're really doing the right thing, or if they're just in it for the next election, rather than being in it for their grandchildren.

...man, this is way OT.

anyway, i haven't tried firefox yet, but mozilla is serving me well. kicks the bollocks off IE.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by geffroman
If you are in business to make money then YES I would say IE users are pretty important... Check your web stats...

They make up 80 to 90% OR MORE of the visitors...

Actually they only make up 20-30% on several of mine. But I am not going to try and claim that is any more normal a claim than your 80-90% claim. It varries widely from site to site and browser UA strings are not any way to tell what software is visiting you. Let me go to some of your sites and I will leave you with a whole host of unusual and unique UA strings. :D Just because something says it is IE does not make it so. I would hazard a guess that on sites with 80% or more visitors claiming to be IE that 10 to 20% of those are opera or Mozilla masquarading as IE to get around blocks in poorly written pages. Determining real browser usage requires testing something more active than a UA string. Like the core rendering/javascript engines for specific differences.

[jorel]

Originally posted by SeeMoreDigital
In an world dominated by IE users, here's what Neo Neko's avitar looks like!

http://img117.exs.cx/img117/4045/avatarIE.gif


Cheers

really strange and a big surprise.
see how Neo Neko's avatar show in my IE 6.0.2800 1106

http://img5.exs.cx/img5/167/avatar198.jpg

what's the reason?
:confused:

[jernst]

Originally posted by jorel
really strange and a big surprise.
see how Neo Neko's avatar show in my IE 6.0.2800 1106

http://img5.exs.cx/img5/167/avatar198.jpg

what's the reason?
:confused:
I don't know how SMD saw the Neo Neko's avatar this way on Internet Explorer, but the way you see it is the way Internet Explorer is rendering it because of it's buggy png support. If you want more informations about the lack of png alpha transparency support in IE, read: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngstatus.html#browsers

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by jernst
I don't know how SMD saw the Neo Neko's avatar this way on Internet Explorer, but the way you see it is the way Internet Explorer is rendering it because of it's buggy png support. If you want more informations about the lack of png alpha transparency support in IE, read: http://www.libpng.org/pub/png/pngstatus.html#browsers

It looks as if SMD saved the image and converted it to a GIF. Causing the file to look worse and bloat in the process. :p Ack GIF! Anyhow in general IE totally ignores any transparency that is more than 1bit gif style as the link points out. Instead it will display the saved background color if there is one or use pure white as a background. Generally defeating the purpose of using PNG in the first place. And things get worse when you use 256 color indexed PNGs with more than 1bit transparency. As you can see not only does IE now render the transparency wrong but completely screws up the image. It is really rather interesting and I discovered it by accident. I can use the exact same settings on other images and the results are not always the same. A few images like my avatar completely screw IE up. But most others with the same settings only have the usual transparency rendering issues. It sure seems like Microsoft does not like me. :devil:

[jernst]

For those interested in alpha transparency for their website's images you can use mishoo's script to fix ie rendering while keeping your website standard compliant.

http://www.bazon.net/mishoo/articles.epl?art_id=430


If you don't want to use this lightweight javascript and you are satisfied with gif-like binary transparency use indexed color png's (but it won't look as nice as neo neko's avatar).

[ukb007]

Hi.

Maybe Neo Neko should tell us right now which of the two red pictures: the small mysterious one or the big definitive one, that he actually owns as his avatar. I've seen numerous posts by him, always with the small mysterious red symbol as his avatar. Now I find that I may have been in a Matrix where nothing is what it seems.

Only Neo Neko can relieve this agony. If he himself is real, that is.

Regards.

[sysKin]

Originally posted by ukb007
Only Neo Neko can relieve this agony. If he himself is real, that is.
Why do you need him for that :) just save the picture to your disk and view it in any working picture viewer. Same goes for my avatar.
Neither of the two posted pictures is his avatar, they were just two examples of how IE can (incorrectly) render them.

Alternatively, use a modern webrowser...

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by ukb007
Hi.

Maybe Neo Neko should tell us right now which of the two red pictures: the small mysterious one or the big definitive one, that he actually owns as his avatar. I've seen numerous posts by him, always with the small mysterious red symbol as his avatar. Now I find that I may have been in a Matrix where nothing is what it seems.

Only Neo Neko can relieve this agony. If he himself is real, that is.

Regards.

Well as stated you could download and view in anything other than IE for the most part. Anything will render it better than IE. It looks something like this.
http://neoneko.ath.cx.nyud.net:8090/tempfiles/demo2.png
That is however not a true representation of it as it no longer has any transparency so that your browser will render it correctly. The original image is much more versatile taking on subtle shades of any background it is placed over. Something more along the lines of....
http://neoneko.ath.cx.nyud.net:8090/tempfiles/demo.png
Only more versatile still! And teensy tiny. Smaller than even the closest less capable gif.

[jernst]

Originally posted by ukb007
Hi.

Maybe Neo Neko should tell us right now which of the two red pictures: the small mysterious one or the big definitive one, that he actually owns as his avatar. I've seen numerous posts by him, always with the small mysterious red symbol as his avatar. Now I find that I may have been in a Matrix where nothing is what it seems.

Only Neo Neko can relieve this agony. If he himself is real, that is.

Regards.

When Morpheus and Neo meet, Morpheus offers Neo two pills. The red pill will answer the question "what is the Matrix?" (by removing him from it) and the blue pill simply for life to carry on as before. As Neo reaches for the red pill Morpheus warns Neo "Remember, all I'm offering is the truth. Nothing more."

The question then is not about pills, but what they stand for in these circumstances. The question is asking us whether reality, truth, is worth pursuing. The blue pill will leave us as we are, in a life consisting of habit, of things we believe we know. We are comfortable, we do need truth to live. The blue pill symbolises commuting to work every day, or brushing your teeth.

The red pill is an unknown quantity. We are told that it can help us to find the truth. We don't know what that truth is, or even that the pill will help us to find it. The red pill symbolises risk, doubt and questioning. In order to answer the question, you can gamble your whole life and world on a reality you have never experienced.

http://img66.exs.cx/img66/3567/firefox_red_pill_2.png

excerpts taken from: http://www.arrod.co.uk/essays/matrix.php

[ukb007]

Many thanks for your literate and scintillating reply. The clear choises now are: Do I take the red pill or do I take the red one? (Like in Finding Nemo he said: "Did your man deliver, or did he deliver?")

Regards.

[jernst]

Originally posted by PiXuS
I'm talking about the behavior of Opera regarding the tabs. With Opera, you don't have the specifically save a group of tabs. With Opera, you simply close the application and when you re-open it, it loads all the tabs you had open in the previous session exactly where you were (at the correct page, with the correct font size, with the correct history of each tab).

If Mozilla 1.8a4 cannot do it, I don't see how 1.7.3 could.

I think that this extension for firefox does exactly what you are looking for:
http://www.extensionsmirror.nl/index.php?showtopic=166

Regards.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Doom9
You know I love it if somebody calls a missing usability feature a bug.. just makes me wanna throw up. And it's the typical arrogance of open sourcers unwilling to admit that they could possibly be wrong. It's what going to keep most open source projects in the dark forever, letting the Microsoft's of this world rule for a long time to come. While I don't know all of them, I interact with some Mozilla devs on almost a daily basis. They have always been friendly from the first time I asked a CSS question on irc.mozilla.org. Even when I have pointed out possible bugs, they have always (very nicely) encouraged me to search bugzilla for an existing bug, and make an example page to submit if there isn't one. As of yet I haven't had to submit anything, and I have had some doozies. (That may change soon)

That being said, it is important to point out that there is always a preference to doing thing 'technically correct' rather than in a way that is 'nice'. The W3C specs are the standard that they go against. So, you break a line where you are supposed to, and don't where you're not.

Also, the CSS2 spec is not fully implemented yet. I think all of CSS1 is. And small parts of CSS3 are. You won't run into much from CSS2 that isn't done yet though. So if your page doesn't look how you think it should in FF/Moz, the chances are you have done something wrong. First try to validate, then ask for advice on irc.mozilla.org.

Finally, if a page does not validate (http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http%3A//forum.doom9.org/showthread.php%3Fs%3D%26threadid%3D85163%26perpage%3D20%26pagenumber%3D4), then there is not technically a correct way to display it. It becomes best guess and no one has legitimate bragging rights.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by jernst
Because of this, pngs didn't replace the heavy patented gifs on the web although pngs are far superior than gifs. I remember the dark days when the patent holders of gif wanted web site owners to pay royalties for using it. I don't remember why they stopped to claim these royalties though. The patents that were used in GIFs ran out recently. You can now use them all you want. Although as I recall, it was only an issue for anyone creating a GIF, or programs that supported creation.

Also, the alpha thing really didn't have anything to do with PNG not replacing GIF. The reason is that 8-bit PNG with single bit transparency works fine in IE. In this mode it is almost identical to GIF, only smaller.

Why would people not use PNG if it can be a drop in replacement for all of their non-animated GIFs, but take less space? People are too lazy. Look at this forum. They could use IrfanView (http://www.irfanview.com/) to mass convert all of the GIFs to PNGs, and then run them through something like this (http://www.hydrogenaudio.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=16167) to make sure they are the smallest possible size. Total time <5 minutes. After that, do a find/replace in the code to have it load the .png instead. Instant bandwidth savings. Do this for all of the non-animated avatars to save even more bandwidth.

I'm not picking on Doom9, just making a point. Even self proclaimed "nerd" site Slashdot (http://slashdot.org/) uses GIFs instead of PNGs even though there is absolutely no reason and the bandwidth savings on such a major site would fairly significant.

The fact that 8-bit alpha transparency doesn't work right in IE without some nasty toying is simply a major irritation.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by jernst
If you follow the standards not only your website will look nice in compliants web browsers but it will also work in IE. Maybe it'll look a little bit less nice in IE (missing CSS rules, etc.) but it'll be 100% usable (and you'll reach 100% of your audience). Hardly. If you depend on anything more than the simplest of CSS rules, IE could render your page completely wrong. Anything from text being in the wrong places to text being covered up completely and unreadable from something else. Of course, some toying around will likely get you to something usable in IE. It just depends on the site methods being used.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Doom9
Eww.. even Neo is going to agree with me on that.. you should use CSS for that.. even IE's limited CSS support is enough to do it that way. Table layouting is so 20th century In many cases, this is very true. Most things don't require tables to look right, and would be much simpler HTML without it. This forum, for instance, would have a much smaller overhead if it were moved away from tables to something else. Heck, just leaving it with tables, but moving the formatting over to CSS would have a tremendous impact on layout overhead. Page five of this thread has 15KB of text, but 105KB of total HTML. Even a generous estimate would say you could drop the total HTML size to at least half that by using CSS. In fact, I think I will try right now just for fun.

OT, but I was going to post this page (http://commo.de/oe/oe.html) I had been working on recently. I will get around to finishing it one of these days, but it is implemented entirely in HTML+CSS, no javascript. Doesn't do anything in IE since IE doesn't support much.

[Atamido]

Keeping the tables in, I was able to get that page down to 90KB with a 2KB CSS file. That is only with simple changes that could be reasonably expected to be made in the board's engine. Also, that only included the message areas. A few more could have been gotten in that area too, but not much. I would estimate that with the minimal changes, you could get it down to ~85KB with the tables.

Replacing the tables with something else is of course not really practical as that would be an overhaul of everything.

One big benefit of using classes for the layout, and using FireFox, is FireFox allows you to set your own CSS settings to overide a sites settings. So, one could make Doom9 appear any way they wanted by using their own CSS file.

[neo75903]

themed doom9 interface or skinning :-)
The only way to make a site looks exactly on all browsers and platforms is to make use of flash. But that is shooting a fly with a canon in most cases. And updating the site frequently can be painful too.

[jernst]

Originally posted by neo75903
themed doom9 interface or skinning :-)
The only way to make a site looks exactly on all browsers and platforms is to make use of flash. But that is shooting a fly with a canon in most cases. And updating the site frequently can be painful too.

Flash is not a good choice when it comes to show text content IMHO. Many user agent won't be able to access the information (text browsers, search engine spiders, etc.). Not to mention the data overhead.

[neo75903]

idd, i am into java server pages, tried flash long time ago, it was a pain in the ass to get things done.

[neo75903]

Nice designed site, but notice the shadow drop on the tables. It looks very nice on FireFox, but it looks horrible on IE.
Looks like the world is turning around in favour of FireFox :)

http://www.internetvetsfortruth.org/

[zilog jones]

Meh, I'm not that bothered about Firefox. I've been using Opera for over 2 years now, and I'm not gonna change over because I like my web browser, Usenet *and* e-mail (POP3 and IMAP) clients all in one program. I know it's probably slower starting up than any other browser, but I've got used to that.

Anyway, what does Firefox have that Opera didn't have first (besides being faster)?

[Cyberman]

Originally posted by Pamel
Why would people not use PNG if it can be a drop in replacement for all of their non-animated GIFs, but take less space? People are too lazy.
Not necessarily. Maybe the GIF files simply turned out to be smaller, because the used application doesn´t really know how to create them. MS Photo Editor, for example, apparently can´t create good PNG files, thus GIF files seem to be smaller(at 256 colors).
That doesn´t mean PNG is bad, only that some people won´t know how good it CAN be.

1) No ActiveX support
I guess that can be counted as a pro. It might easily be a con as well.
2) Tabbed browsing
<ignore>So? I don´t really see the advantage of that - aside from a small space gain in the task bar. It makes surfing less clear, IMO, as one doesn´t really know which sites are open.</ignore>

Well, I stand corrected - partially. It IS an advantage, especially when browsing a forum - one simple opens the threads in different tabs without having to switch back to the original listing every time.

It still would not be of much use when browsing different sites, though - as you don´t see all the tabs in the task bar.
3) Popup blocker
Good point. How good does it work?
4) Lots of extensions (plugins)
Worth a thought.
5) Multi OS
So? That´s nice, but not really something I´d tie my decision of browser to.
6) Faster loading of web content than IE (dynamic table resizing)
Interesting.
7) hum... just not M$
True.
8) Adblock. That extension alone is awesome enough to warrant a bullet point.
I´m not sure if extensions should be counted as features of the browser itself. The ability to include them, but the extensions?
9) Standards Compliant
A very important point - one of the reasons I nearly switched.
10) Exploits fixed in a (more) timely manner
Good to know.
11) Built-in Google search bar, makes searching a lot faster than having to go to www.google.com first!
That any good? I use to have a "google" icon in the task bar(quickstart) - one click and I have google. Typing "www.google.com" doesn´t take that long either.
I think that search bar is rather irritating.
12) "Live bookmarks". Subscribe to RSS feeds on sites that have them and get a list of headlines from all your sites right in your bookmarks sidebar, instead of having to visit each site seperately.
I don´t understand that. ?
13) support pngs properly (alpha transparency)
Well, IE supports it partially, at least. But it´s a good point indeed.
14) svg enabled builds exist (no need for plugin)
?
15) Many useful extensions, including:
[quote]15a: Mouse Gestures
[quote]15b: BugMeNot, for all those annoying sign-up only sites
See #4 and #8
16) Lots of pretty themes
Hmm.
18) The download manager
19) The password manager
Interesting features.
20) The edit/undo function
edit/undo?
21) Don't like how a site looks? Edit the CSS on the fly. (using the web developer extension)
I´m not sure if I should think this is a good feature. But it´s interesting nonetheless.
22) because even the MS security chief uses Firefox.
So? That´s not really an argument, IMO.
23) If you choose "Begin finding when you begin typing" in options/advaned/accessibility you wont even need cltr+f.
Hmm. Sounds strange, but might be wort trying.

Here´s something against Firefox, I only read it on a forum, so I can´t say if true(though I see no reason why not):

I've found that it's waiting on the current page to fully load first before you can click to the next.

Doesn´t sound too attractive...

All in all, I still hesitate, though I´d like to switch. Is there a "theme" that emulates the look and feel of IE?
(I´m too used to it, I´m afraid.)

--

As for the HTML discussion: A website should be HTML compliant. Any browser must be able to render that. If not - who cares?

It´s us who create sites, be it professionally or as hobby who have the responsibility of using proper code. The average user can´t spell HTML, let alone understand it.

[communist]

Not sure how many times it has been said - but one of main advantages of tabbed browsing over several browser windows is hard to explain but here is one of the things that can give you a hint about how much cooler it is ;)
Originally posted by someone at some other forum
Additionally, if you select "Load links in background" Then the new tabs will stay in the background, letting you open up several at once from one page before viewing them.

This is something I always thought of one of the best things about tabbed browsing, viewing a page and just letting links load in the background by middle-clicking on them while keep keep viewing the first page. No need to constantly jump between several instances of your browser :)

Anyway when people really want to stick to IE - yeah stick to it .. sometimes people are just.. erm.. too comfy with it. I certainly dont have a reason to go back to IE :o


Here´s something against Firefox, I only read it on a forum, so I can´t say if true(though I see no reason why not):
I've found that it's waiting on the current page to fully load first before you can click to the next.
Doesn´t sound too attractive...

Huh? Mozilla loads the page/link I click on and doesnt wait for current page to be loaded completely :|

[jernst]

Originally posted by Cyberman

All in all, I still hesitate, though I´d like to switch. Is there a "theme" that emulates the look and feel of IE?
(I´m too used to it, I´m afraid.)


Look here that's exactly what you want: http://firefoxie.net/

After that you won't be able to recognise firefox from ie (except that you won't get those spyware and adds and will benefit from all the features discussed here).

[Wilbert]

... and you can import all bookmarks from IE (and other browsers) during install :)

[dragongodz]

22) because even the MS security chief uses Firefox.
So? That´s not really an argument, IMO.
so an MS employee, and i dont mean commen grunt, uses Firefox instead of IE and you dont think that may indicate Firefox is just maybe better than IE ? :confused:

Here´s something against Firefox, I only read it on a forum, so I can´t say if true(though I see no reason why not):
try it yourself and then you will know.

Meh, I'm not that bothered about Firefox. I've been using Opera for over 2 years now, and I'm not gonna change over because I like my web browser, Usenet *and* e-mail (POP3 and IMAP) clients all in one program.
meh, then why did you bother posting such a pointless post ? :devil:
Firefox is the browser component of Mozilla. if you want mail etc all in one the Mozilla is what you would get. if you already use a different mail program and just want a good browser then Firefox is a smaller package with no waste.

Anyway, what does Firefox have that Opera didn't have first (besides being faster)?
what version is opera up to again ? and Firefox's version is ? if you want some differences though... hmm how about Firefox being free with no adds - opera pay for no adds. actually i could go back all the way to netscapes early versions(Mozilla was started by netscape releasing the source to what was going to be netscape 5) and start picking things it had before opera, javascript for instance, but whats the point ? its what they can do now thats important.
lets not start some silly war of browsers please. if you want to compare how Firefox performs you need to actually try it out.

[virus]

Originally posted by dragongodz
if you already use a different mail program and just want a good browser then Firefox is a smaller package with no waste.
But you can have everything with an even smaller package... :)
The full installer package for Opera 7.54 (without Java) is 3.5 MB, Firefox 1.0 is 4.7 MB. But of course you're right, Opera is truly a competitor for Mozilla, while Firefox is a different (simpler) thing.

its what they can do now thats important.
lets not start some silly war of browsers please. if you want to compare how Firefox performs you need to actually try it out.
Done :)
I use FF as secondary browser. It has a very reliable rendering engine. But imho it can't stand a chance against Opera, sorry. Too much features that Opera has and FF not - and I'm only speaking of pure browsing. Just try to click on the various menus, watch the amount of options available, or see how deeply you can configure the GUI with a few clicks in Opera - without the need for extensions - to see what I mean.

[jernst]

Originally posted by virus
Done :)
I use FF as secondary browser. It has a very reliable rendering engine. But imho it can't stand a chance against Opera, sorry. Too much features that Opera has and FF not - and I'm only speaking of pure browsing. Just try to click on the various menus, watch the amount of options available, or see how deeply you can configure the GUI with a few clicks in Opera - without the need for extensions - to see what I mean.

The purpose of firefox is to don't be bloated with features that only a few will use. If you are one of these few users that need a particular feature just extend your browser the way you like. While, if you are a normal user you won't be confused with too many options and features.

Btw I have nothing against opera and having more compliant browsers on the market is always a good thing. I tend to think that gecko implements more css and is more compliant than opera though; but then again it's only my opinion.

Another advantage of firefox is its opensourceness; i tend to favour community driven projects.

[virus]

Originally posted by jernst
The purpose of firefox is to don't be bloated with features that only a few will use. If you are one of these few users that need a particular feature just extend your browser the way you like.
Both approaches have their pros and cons I guess. I like the way additional stuff is integrated in Opera. It usually doesn't create problems and it's not confusing - and you can easily remove buttons you don't need from the GUI. The next major revision (7.60) won't even load the built-in extensions (mail, irc, newsfeed/newsgroups reader, voice support etc.) unless you use them, trying to keep everything even smaller and faster.

Of course M$ would never do such things like keeping size and resource use small... can you imagine IE packed with all the features that Opera has? I guess the download size would be at least 100 MB :)

I tend to think that gecko implements more css and is more compliant than opera though; but then again it's only my opinion.
well, imho CSS support is the only point where Opera in on par with Gecko. While I have the impression that sites with Java and Javascript work better with FF - those have been the weakest points in Opera for years. Luckily enough Opera's engine has been improved enough to render OK so many pages that went rendered poorly just some versions ago. The proof is that now I can see a lot of webpages where both Opera and Firefox do exactly the same rendering... and where IE6 does a totally different thing :D

But, still, I feel Gecko is a bit superior. (and that makes FF a perfect emergency browser :))

[Cyberman]

Originally posted by jernst
Look here that's exactly what you want: http://firefoxie.net/
After that you won't be able to recognise firefox from ie (except that you won't get those spyware and adds and will benefit from all the features discussed here).

Hmm. Worth a try. Will check it. thx.

Originally posted by dragongodz
so an MS employee, and i dont mean commen grunt, uses Firefox instead of IE and you dont think that may indicate Firefox is just maybe better than IE ? :confused:
No. I think it´s an indication that this person likes Firefox more than IE. I´d be more convinced if the entire company uses Firefox instead of IE...

try it yourself and then you will know.
That´s what I intend to do.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Cyberman
I guess that can be counted as a pro. It might easily be a con as well.

Frankly I have yet to see what activeX is really good for over a regular plugin. Anything? Security holes sure. But does it have any important widely used features that could not be implemented in a plugin?

Originally posted by Cyberman
So? I don´t really see the advantage of that - aside from a small space gain in the task bar. It makes surfing less clear, IMO, as one doesn´t really know which sites are open.

Well lets put it this way. Do you surf with multiple windows?? Have you ever looked at how much resources such as RAM each window uses? More than just one window by alot. Instead of using multiple windows use multiple tabs. And guess what!? You still only have the one window running with only minimal extra resources.

Originally posted by Cyberman
Good point. How good does it work?

The popup blocker is excelent. It works as well as the best pay popup blockers only free.

Originally posted by Cyberman
Worth a thought.

Well here is another thought. Writing extensions etc for MOZILLA* is easier than IE by a long shot. Being easier means more people can and will write them. More people writing them means more variety. More variety means some rather unique and specialised extensions you would not have otherwise seen. Some extensions are so special that they only work for a single site. Using much the same skill set you can even rewrite the way the browser looks and behaves without having to rewrite the browser interface like IE as well.

Originally posted by Cyberman
So? That´s nice, but not really something I´d tie my decision of browser to.

Being multi-OS does not have to be something your decision is tied to. But it should be something that weighs on your decision. You like Windows today. But what if in the future a version of Windows comes out that you don't like. And Microsoft finds a way to make those using old Windows OS second class citizens at best. You decide you want to switch OS only to realise what a mess you have gotten into. Oh and by the way Longhorn is comming with Longhorn only technologies. Technologies that MS is going to leverage to make all old Windows installs second class citizens on the Web. And further make all non Windows OS excluded from the web. Or that is their plan anyway. You and I both know it will not go over well. But since we know it is coming we can at least plan for it. Going from Mozilla under Windows to Linux, OSX, BSD, Solaris, BeOS, or any other OS for that matter is quick and easy. Painless almost.

Originally posted by Cyberman
I´m not sure if extensions should be counted as features of the browser itself. The ability to include them, but the extensions?

As a feature of the browser no. But you should try it. Adblock is an awesome reason to use the browser. Sure similar functionality can be achieved by caching proxy servers and custom host files. But none of those solutions are as simple, powerfull, or configurable as adblock. There is nothing like it I have seen for any other browser anywhere else. Truly impressive and indespensable.

Originally posted by Cyberman
That any good? I use to have a "google" icon in the task bar(quickstart) - one click and I have google. Typing "www.google.com" doesn´t take that long either.
I think that search bar is rather irritating.

Actually the google search box on the URL is rather small and works excelent. Unobtrusive is the word. And if you don't like it just remove it quick and easy.

Originally posted by Cyberman
I don´t understand that. ?

Do you visit geek sites regularly to browse the headlines? Does it take a while to load all those sites? Imagine having toolbar buttons that activate dropdown lists of all the latest headlines without loading the respective sites. Then click on any headline and it loads it directly in a tab for you. That is what live bookmarks do for you. It works for the likes of slashdot, the register, and groklaw quite well. It also works for BBC news and alot of other general sites as well.

Originally posted by Cyberman
Interesting features.


Mozillas password manager is much better than IE's. And of course IE does not have it's own download manager. But Mozilla* does and it works quite well. Further no one mentioned the cookie manager. IE attempts a similar feature. But at best it does not work right and is nowhere near as usefull. You can set Mozilla to prompt you on how to handle all cookies. Further you can set up cookie rules quick and easy that will block all cookies from a specific site, allow, or allow just for the "session" and all permanently. Keeps alot of those tracking cookies off your PC. Also there is a software install manager. Though this has more to do with plugins, extensions, etc. But unlike IE which is the driveby download King. Firefox blocks all software installs by default. Getting your permission to allow a site to install before it does.

Originally posted by Cyberman
I´m not sure if I should think this is a good feature. But it´s interesting nonetheless.

It's a frigging magnificent feature! Grampy can't see anything without his coke bottle glasses and even then has trouble? You can create a simple style sheet that will apply itself to all pages making them generally easier to read and use. Have you ever run upon badly designed sites? Sites that are hard to read and awful color schemes? Ever wished there was anything you could do? Well now there is. :D

Originally posted by Cyberman
So? That´s not really an argument, IMO.

I think it rather is. He is the guy that Microsoft should be listening to more. If your security guy won't use your product for security reasons then perhaps there is a problem. Are you at all concerned with security?

Originally posted by Cyberman
As for the HTML discussion: A website should be HTML compliant. Any browser must be able to render that. If not - who cares?

If websites should be compliant, but no one cares if they are not then where is the incentive to make them compliant?

Originally posted by Cyberman
It´s us who create sites, be it professionally or as hobby who have the responsibility of using proper code. The average user can´t spell HTML, let alone understand it.

Incorect. Mentaly handicapped people can understand HTML. and so can the average joe. It is all rather simple and easy. Now that does not mean the average joe will be able to quickly and easily create complex pages. But as languages go HTML is one of the simplest in the world.

[sysKin]

Nearly all of firefox' features can be dismissed with "interesting, but I don't need it". However, think about it this way - if you had a browser with no history and no bookmarks/favorites, and someone said "there is a better browser" you'd probably say the same thing - "interesting, but I remember my favorite sites, and I use a piece of paper to remember all I need". And there we go again, is browser history useful or not, and many people would say "interesting, not good enough".

IE has some of features you appreciate, but it's unreasonable to assume that it has exactly the features you need, nothing more and nothing less. I can pretty much bet it's far from it - I agree, they are not essential, but is "back" button essential? Only after you got used to it, not before.

[Mug Funky]

a friend of mine can't live without mouse gestures... he'll install them on the sly when you're not looking :)

good point there, syskin

[Neo Neko]

I find myself doing mouse guestures in Windows Explorer, Open Office, and many other non supporting programs. They are like crack. I have to have them. What's worse is I have a 5 button Optical intellimouse. I just about can't function on anything less than a 3 button scroll mouse any more. Give me a 2 button mouse and I about want to break out the sticks so me can make fire.

[RadicalEd]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
I find myself doing mouse guestures in Windows Explorer, Open Office, and many other non supporting programs. They are like crack. I have to have them. What's worse is I have a 5 button Optical intellimouse. I just about can't function on anything less than a 3 button scroll mouse any more. Give me a 2 button mouse and I about want to break out the sticks so me can make fire.

DON'T GO ANYWHERE NEAR A MAC

[zilog jones]

Yeah, those new iMac mice are even worse - it's like style over logic! I was messing around with one in a shop, and for the first few seconds I was thinking "Where the hell's the button!?!?"

I'm too used to wheel mice now, too. Whenever I'm on one of the older PCs in my college with the old-skool Microsoft mice like this:
http://www2s.biglobe.ne.jp/~qwerty/mouse/mmouse1.jpg
I keep trying to push that stupid little groove in the middle!

@Mug Funky:
I do that too! Hee hee hee!

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by RadicalEd
DON'T GO ANYWHERE NEAR A MAC

Nothing wrong with Macs. My Intellimouse is USB. Mac had USB long before PC. And it infact supports it quite well.

[neo75903]

Windows users tend to compalin quicker on a mac then someone who is starting to use a pc. That is my observation. Guess Windows users are jsut used to some 'habits' which can be frustrating in a new environment.

[zilog jones]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Nothing wrong with Macs. My Intellimouse is USB. Mac had USB long before PC. And it infact supports it quite well.
It's the whole getting used to one-button mice that's the problem - especially if you're used to wheel mice!

[Mug Funky]

sure a Mac is fine when you plug a decent mouse into it.

my uni is full of macs with those awful "no-button" mice.

this is in the design labs! the mouse is the most used tool in design, that is if you don't have a tablet and stylus.

the RSI you get from these terrible armbusters has to be felt to be believed. you have to pinch down awkwardly on the sides with your thumb and little finger in order to achieve the simplest of mouse operations, the "click-and-drag" (no doubt the next on MS's patent applications list). after a marathon of clicking and dragging at submissions time, i was ready to destroy the damn thing, but my arm was simply too weak to do it. it took several days to be able to use a computer again.

in my opinion, Macs were fine at the g3 stage - pretty colourful computers, cute and non-threatening designs, contrasted with the beige of PCs. they could be force-quit and reset without pain when they crashed.

now it's all gone to shite - there's no reset button, which i find an extremely arrogant thing for a designer to do. it says "i don't need this button - This Computer Will Never Crash™". of course this isn't the case. thankfully these machines can't do without a power cord, which becomes the de-facto reset button. you wouldn't want a laptop to crash, or you'd be there all night.

[neo75903]

Originally posted by Mug Funky

now it's all gone to shite - there's no reset button, which i find an extremely arrogant thing for a designer to do. it says "i don't need this button - This Computer Will Never Crash™". of course this isn't the case. thankfully these machines can't do without a power cord, which becomes the de-facto reset button. you wouldn't want a laptop to crash, or you'd be there all night.

At least they are trying to make it crash free and the developers will work harder to accomplish this because users complain about missing the reset button :)
BUT i have also to admit that my windows is pretty solid and i am talking about win2k, forget XP, holding my haert for upcoming longhorn.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Cyberman
Not necessarily. Maybe the GIF files simply turned out to be smaller, because the used application doesn´t really know how to create them. MS Photo Editor, for example, apparently can´t create good PNG files, thus GIF files seem to be smaller(at 256 colors).
That doesn´t mean PNG is bad, only that some people won´t know how good it CAN be. That is no excuse for professional website developers. They have read that PNG is supposed to be better, if the don't investigate why they don't see the results, they are sloppy.

That is like someone deciding to test out an Apache/Linux web server solution to compare to their existing IIS/Windows solution and finding it to be slower and so not using it. A good worker would have investigated why this happens, and maybe discovered DMA wasn't being used on the harddrives, or any other number of performance reducing misconfigurations.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by dragongodz
actually i could go back all the way to netscapes early versions(Mozilla was started by netscape releasing the source to what was going to be netscape 5) According to this interview (http://arstechnica.com/columns/linux/collins-interview.ars/2) by one of the developers in charge, what was going to be Netscape 5 was never released due to some poor decisions in upper management. He never says what happenned to it, but it is obvious that Gecko (the HTML rendering engine in Mozilla/FF) is a completely different engine not being anywhere near release at the time that Netscape 5 was ready. I imagine that they probably used some of the code from Netscape 5, but there is nothing to indicate that.

It's a minor point, but just for the sake of correctness the quote would have been correct with a 6 instead of a 5.

[dragongodz]

what was going to be Netscape 5 was never released due to some poor decisions in upper management. He never says what happenned to it
I imagine that they probably used some of the code from Netscape 5, but there is nothing to indicate that.
It's a minor point, but just for the sake of correctness the quote would have been correct with a 6 instead of a 5
ummm no. sorry but you are wrong. go here
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Intro
and you will read
Netscape was the company that created the open-source Mozilla project by contributing pre-5.0 Netscape beta code. This code was eventually abandoned in favor of a ground-up rewrite of the browser, from which future Netscape releases were made.
the Netscape 5 early beta snapshot(to call it what it really was) source was used/added to for a release before it was decided to rewrite the layout engine etc. see my reply below.

it is obvious that Gecko (the HTML rendering engine in Mozilla/FF) is a completely different engine not being anywhere near release at the time that Netscape 5 was ready.
i never said Gecko came straight from Netscape 5 source code, it didnt. go here
http://www.mozilla.org/newlayout/faq.html
and you will find
Why are we building a new layout engine?
The original Mozilla browser, first released as Navigator 1.0, was developed rapidly by a small team that was passionate about creating the next killer app -- and they succeeded wildly. Now that the web has evolved, Netscape has assembed the finest team available to redesign and redevelop the next generation layout engine upon which it will build future products. Gecko enables a pioneering new class of dynamic content that is more interactive and offers greater presentation control to Web developers, using open and recommended Internet standards instead of proprietary APIs.
now being a rewrite, redesign, redevelop, whatever you want to call it means much/most of the original source was thrown out. to think that none of the basic functions etc were not just copied though would be silly. so Gecko may now contain 1% or more or less of the original code(who knows for sure after all thats been done), which may not impact the actual rendering at all, but that doesnt negate where the whole project started from. :)

so i stand by my statement - Mozilla was started with Netscape 5(beta) source code. :D

[Atamido]

Originally posted by dragongodz
ummm no. sorry but you are wrong. go here
http://kb.mozillazine.org/index.phtml?title=Intro
and you will read

<snip>

so i stand by my statement - Mozilla was started with Netscape 5(beta) source code. :D Those statements are at odds with the comments by Scott Collins, and for what it's worth, I think I believe Scott more. Some of the shell may have come from Netscape 5, but that is a pretty small part of the whole. The main part of it is Gecko, and that didn't come from anything else. For example, the Linux KDE browser Konqueror was able to be converted to use Gecko in only four days (http://developers.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/09/11/2119249&tid=154&tid=121&tid=8). So, it's less about the shell, and more about what's underneath. I would be curious though to know when XUL (Mozilla's shell system) was developed.

Anyway, that's all off topic. There are lots of benefits to using FF, but even assuming it had only the external features of IE, I would still use it simply for the excellent Gecko rendering engine.

[Atamido]

Here (http://commo.de/fourblocks2.html) is a small test page that I was making to test out a design. It renders fine in FF/Mozilla, but IE does some weird stuff. Ignoring the fact that it doesn't do the alpha in 32bit RGBA PNG correctly, it also positions it oddly, moving stragely when the page is resized smaller. It also doesn't resize the image. And at some window sizes, the rectangles of text will jumble up. Very weird. Yet another demo of how IE is b0rked.

[dragongodz]

Those statements are at odds with the comments by Scott Collins, and for what it's worth, I think I believe Scott more. Some of the shell may have come from Netscape 5, but that is a pretty small part of the whole. The main part of it is Gecko, and that didn't come from anything else
no actually it doesnt. try reading my whole reply. i already said Gecko never came from Netscape 5 source code, try reading that second link and what i quoted. but hey believe what you want.

[Cyberman]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Frankly I have yet to see what activeX is really good for
I have no idea. But I guess it´s got some use...

Well lets put it this way. Do you surf with multiple windows?? Have you ever looked at how much resources such as RAM each window uses? More than just one window by alot. Instead of using multiple windows use multiple tabs. And guess what!? You still only have the one window running with only minimal extra resources.
Ah - now that is a good argument. From this point of view, it seems to be a good feature indeed.

Being multi-OS does not have to be something your decision is tied to. But it should be something that weighs on your decision. You like Windows today. But what if in the future a version of Windows comes out that you don't like.
Hmm. I didn´t think of that. Good point.

It's a frigging magnificent feature! Grampy can't see anything without his coke bottle glasses and even then has trouble? You can create a simple style sheet that will apply itself to all pages making them generally easier to read and use. Have you ever run upon badly designed sites? Sites that are hard to read and awful color schemes? Ever wished there was anything you could do? Well now there is. :D
I saw that point. But I fear that dummy-users will apply bad stylesheets and blame the site designer.

I think it rather is. He is the guy that Microsoft should be listening to more. If your security guy won't use your product for security reasons then perhaps there is a problem. Are you at all concerned with security?
Maybe I should rethink my opinion on that.

If websites should be compliant, but no one cares if they are not then where is the incentive to make them compliant?
Well, someone has to start, right? Where is the incentive to do anything when there is no immediate gain?

Incorect. Mentaly handicapped people can understand HTML. and so can the average joe. It is all rather simple and easy. Now that does not mean the average joe will be able to quickly and easily create complex pages. But as languages go HTML is one of the simplest in the world.
You misunderstood me. Or maybe I should have been more clearly.
I meant that the average user doesn´t care WHY the site looks bad - if it´s the browsers fault or the designers - so he won´t check the sources to see wheter it´s OK or not.
Thus those who create sites should keep them as W3C compliant as possible, to force clean HTML browsers, by not using the marquee tag and such.

Originally posted by Pamel
That is no excuse for professional website developers. They have read that PNG is supposed to be better, if the don't investigate why they don't see the results, they are sloppy.

I wasn´t talking about professional developers. Anyone using Photoshop(for example) would create good pictures simply because the program(mers) think(s) in advance.

However, someone only doing it as a hobby, having only Ms Photo Editor, won´t realize that there are more ways to save pictures than simply saying SAVE.
(unless searching for ways to optimize)

Originally posted by Pamel
Here (http://commo.de/fourblocks2.html) is a small test page that I was making to test out a design. It renders fine in FF/Mozilla, but IE does some weird stuff. Ignoring the fact that it doesn't do the alpha in 32bit RGBA PNG correctly, it also positions it oddly, moving stragely when the page is resized smaller. It also doesn't resize the image. And at some window sizes, the rectangles of text will jumble up. Very weird. Yet another demo of how IE is b0rked.

Holy cow! I didn´t realize there´s a picture until I read about it. IE didn´t display it at all at first.

[M7S]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
now it's all gone to shite - there's no reset button, which i find an extremely arrogant thing for a designer to do. it says "i don't need this button - This Computer Will Never Crash™". of course this isn't the case. thankfully these machines can't do without a power cord, which becomes the de-facto reset button. you wouldn't want a laptop to crash, or you'd be there all night.
That actually happened to a freind of mine. The laptop she got from her school crashed when she tried to listen to a CD. She couldn't get it to restart until the batteries where empty.

I miss those old, cute, little macs with black and white screens. One of those where the first computer I ever touched. I tought that those Mac's where the coolest thing in the world. :D

I couldn't resist writing this even if it's complitely OT. Sorry

M7S

[Mug Funky]

If your security guy won't use your product for security reasons then perhaps there is a problem.

i don't recall reading that the security guy at MS used firefox exclusively. it's just good business to know your competition, and as far as i'm aware, the guy just said he had to download a security patch for firefox.

of course, if it were me, and i had a computer with both FF and IE sitting on it, i know which one i'd be using more. i just find it a bit simplistic to imply that the chief of MS security uses firefox and only firefox.

that said, IE is a big slow pain in the bottom, and i only use it when i come across a site that doesn't work in Mozilla. if it works in IE, i send off an email to the webmaster and tell them to fix their site so that it works on a real browser. we all should be doing this - the customer is always right, after all.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by dragongodz
no actually it doesnt. try reading my whole reply. i already said Gecko never came from Netscape 5 source code, try reading that second link and what i quoted. but hey believe what you want. It isn't clear from your post "what" doesn't, so I'll just continue. :confused: I didn't say that you said that she said that Gecko came from Netscape 5. I was restating a point as part of a logic train. Simply that there was a browser, with a different engine, that was never released that was Netscape 5. What is Mozilla never had enough code in it from the Netscape 5 project to ever be considered as an opensourced version of Netscape 5, despite what the mozillazine site says about it. And I believe this due to comments from a specific developer that was a key character at Netscape when all of that happenned. Just for kicks though I reread the second link that you provided. Still a good webpage for Gecko info.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by Cyberman
I wasn´t talking about professional developers. I was though. ;) There are a lot of huge websites with millions of page views each day using static, single frame, gifs for no reason. CNN.com has 58 gifs on it's main page totaling 44KB. Consider the amount of bandwidth saving a page like that with millions of views each day would have. Also think of the time that millions of dialup users would save waiting for that page to load. A page by Average Joe that uses GIFs, and gets 10 page views per month isn't as big a concern, and is certainly excusable. Holy cow! I didn´t realize there´s a picture until I read about it. IE didn´t display it at all at first. Strange, the image doesn't appear in IE until your window is resized... What an incredible browser.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by M7S
That actually happened to a freind of mine. The laptop she got from her school crashed when she tried to listen to a CD. She couldn't get it to restart until the batteries where empty. That happenned to a friend of mine yesterday, and she called me up to ask me what to do. She had a Dell though so I just told her to remove the battery and it was fine. Then later last night she totally gave me the cold shoulder at a party. I feel so used.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
i don't recall reading that the security guy at MS used firefox exclusively. it's just good business to know your competition, and as far as i'm aware, the guy just said he had to download a security patch for firefox.

I don't think anyone said he used it exclusively. Hell even I don't use FireFox exclusively. I also use konqueror a good bit and IE on a rare occasion. Even if he wanted to use FireFox exclusively I don't think it is possible for him. Because if ever there were a company widely deploying Microsoft Windows exclusive services it would be Microsoft after all. So it is basically a given that he would have to use IE and Outlook for the intranet. But my guess is that when he ventures out on the Internet it is with the full armor of Firefox and not the screen door mesh of IE. And that would speak volumes. I trust my intranet don't you? But random sites on the internet are a completely different deal.

[dragongodz]

It isn't clear from your post "what" doesn't, so I'll just continue.
his remarks do not conflict with what i said. is that so hard for you to understand ?

Simply that there was a browser, with a different engine, that was never released that was Netscape 5.
yes and this source code was used to START the Mozilla project.

What is Mozilla never had enough code in it from the Netscape 5 project to ever be considered as an opensourced version of Netscape 5, despite what the mozillazine site says about it.
what is Mozilla NOW probably has very little of the original Netscape 5 source true but thats got nothing to do with where or how it was started. i already said that too. infact there was a very quick release called Navigator 1.0(way back in 1998) that would have been a great deal of Netscape source. if i come across where to download it again i will post it. i never said Mozilla was an open source version of Netscape 5 for the record, i said(again) that Mozilla was started with the Netscape 5 source code. if you cant understand the difference then there is no point discussing it with you.

anyway i wont bother to argue it anymore because its there for anyone to read on Mozillas own web pages.
http://www.mozilla.org/docs/mozilla-faq.html
[B]1.1) What is Mozilla?[B]
Mozilla is a project to continue Netscape Communicator as an open project. The project is maintained by employees of Netscape (now a division of AOL), RedHat, some other companies, as well as contributors from the community.
[B]1.2) On what is Mozilla based?[B]
The Mozilla project started near the end of life of the 4.x line of Netscape Communicator. Originally, the plan was just to re-stabilize the code and release 5.0, but it was decided within the community that the more ambitious changes that were planned for later integration were close to being ready. The old layout engine, networking engine, and several of the older modules were gutted, and much later, the sources reached the point where Netscape was comfortable making a release, and so Netscape 6.0 was released.
there were of course builds of Mozilla well before Netscape 6 was released.

[virus]

since this site is full of people using FF, I'd like to ask a question about extensions. I've read some stuff all over the net and a point struck me: what if someone use a 3rd party extension to FF to spread a virus/trojan/malware/<insert whatever form of evil software you hate the most here>?

I mean, extensions are not skins (images, ini files, maybe some CSS stuff); they're full programs, which can provide every sort of functionality. I know that FF has an auto-update function that downloads from mozilla.org, and that extensions posted there are "checked" before being made available.

But what kind of check is performed (the code may not do evident things - or maybe contain a time bomb)? Are we sure it's performed before millions of users auto-update FF with a new version containing malicious code? Do the people at mozilla.org have the resources to keep on checking all the versions of all the extensions that get written as time goes by? (I won't speak about extensions not hosted on trusted sites - I guess most of you avoid them altogether)

Of course, I bet most of you will reply: "that didn't happen in the past". Right. But since FF is supposed to take over the world, how much time is going to pass before it becomes so widespread that evildoers start to regard at it as an opportunity to do damage, earn money, and similar things?

[Mug Funky]

good point there...

maybe an email to mozilla.org could answer that... i have no idea but i can think of a few simple measures. couldn't the browser run a new extension in a sort of "debug" mode and check if any nastiness resides within, then warn the user? whether it does this or not i don't know.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by virus
since this site is full of people using FF, I'd like to ask a question about extensions. I've read some stuff all over the net and a point struck me: what if someone use a 3rd party extension to FF to spread a virus/trojan/malware/<insert whatever form of evil software you hate the most here>?

Extensions are not so much programs as they are scripts and layouts that use the engine to add functionality to the engine. There are some exceptions. But as a rule they are generally bound by the sandbox the program creates. The sandbox being the browser as opposed to IE where the sandbox is your entire PC.

Originally posted by virus
I mean, extensions are not skins (images, ini files, maybe some CSS stuff); they're full programs, which can provide every sort of functionality. I know that FF has an auto-update function that downloads from mozilla.org, and that extensions posted there are "checked" before being made available.

But what kind of check is performed (the code may not do evident things - or maybe contain a time bomb)?

As to what kind of check the organization does I can't say. But since all the projects hosted there are opensource writing such a virus would probably require a truly skilled user indeed. Not only would they have to circumvent the program sandbox. But they would have to hide it in plain sight as well. Not an entirely easy task. At the slightest inkling of trouble anyone could look at all the code and find out exactly what is going on. So even if there was some sort of critical exploit chances of it reaching epidemic status are lessened. It isn't like Microsoft and their closed source philosiphy where a vulnerability does not exist untill they acknowledge it. Whether or not it is being massively exploited. Ask any network admin about security through obscurity and they will tell you that it is mostly oxymoron. Likewise security through trade secrets is a similar situation.

Originally posted by virus
Are we sure it's performed before millions of users auto-update FF with a new version containing malicious code?

Couldn't they just as easily auto-update with a clean or benign version at the first sign of trouble?

Originally posted by virus
Do the people at mozilla.org have the resources to keep on checking all the versions of all the extensions that get written as time goes by? (I won't speak about extensions not hosted on trusted sites - I guess most of you avoid them altogether)

No they don't have those kind of resources. No organization does. The good thing is that we don't have to rely on them like we would Microsoft. Because anyone else can do it for them. Unlike closed source programs.

Originally posted by virus
Of course, I bet most of you will reply: "that didn't happen in the past". Right. But since FF is supposed to take over the world, how much time is going to pass before it becomes so widespread that evildoers start to regard at it as an opportunity to do damage, earn money, and similar things?

Well even if it does it will not have the same impact as browsers like IE currently have. Being opensource ayone and everyone can fix it. No complex debugging only to have to hack a binary patch to mitigate it while waiting for the vendor to do something more permanent as has sometimes been seen in the case of IE. It is part and parcle of why opensource is so great and becoming infectious.

[virus]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
But as a rule they are generally bound by the sandbox the program creates. The sandbox being the browser as opposed to IE where the sandbox is your entire PC.
Well, FF has local file access. And aren't extensions allowed to write/access config files (and thus access your disk)? Can they connect to the net? I guess they can. Can you control what sites are accessed in a user-friendly way?

Couldn't they just as easily auto-update with a clean or benign version at the first sign of trouble?

I don't know. Does the auto-updater allow to revert to a previous version of an extension? Anyway there's still a problem: what if the "first sign of trouble" happens simply too late, when damage is already done?

Being opensource ayone and everyone can fix it. No complex debugging only to have to hack a binary patch to mitigate it while waiting for the vendor to do something more permanent as has sometimes been seen in the case of IE. It is part and parcle of why opensource is so great and becoming infectious.
Personally, I disagree - I think this is highly debatable. Security is the only field I can think of where opensource-ness may backfire. Remember when snippets of the IE5 code were published on the net? After a couple of days a flaw was found and a hack was made public. AFAIK nobody found it before the code was published. So, yes, malicious code may be spotted by simply looking at the source... but also security flaws.

It has been said on this thread that the code for formatting text in the engine was so complex that nobody could even understand it. What if a really skilled hacker actually goes through it, understands it and finds a flaw? We know that open-source code is usually high-quality... but even a world-class programmer can have a bad day and make a mistake. Having the source available makes things easier for everyone - including hackers. If they're faster (or smarter) than the good guys at discovering potential problems... well, you're cooked.

What I mean is that FF's security must come exclusively from high-quality programming. They don't have the "shield" of secret sourcecode that helps keeping the holes secret. Of course, you'll say that if they get public, they can be fixed... looks like a chicken-and-egg problem, I know, but this is the only point where I cannot honestly say that open-source code is superior. Both models have pros and cons.

[neo75903]

Originally posted by Viruso
Extensions are not so much programs as they are scripts and layouts that use the engine to add functionality to the engine. There are some exceptions. But as a rule they are generally bound by the sandbox the program creates. The sandbox being the browser as opposed to IE where the sandbox is your entire PC.


True, but Ff extansion installs cannot be invoked from a webpage which can be done with ActiveX. Most IE problems comes in this way. And an unattended user only have to click ok to make it work. Worse is that most users dont pay attention what they are clicking on.

Originally posted by Virus
... Remember when snippets of the IE5 code were published on the net? After a couple of days a flaw was found and a hack was made public.


I think this proves Open Source is far more reliable. How long do you think m$ has been hiding that flaw? Or even to publish it in public?
God knows how much of these hidden flaws are in IE and a clever programmer discovers it and use it for what reasons?

IMHO IE flaws woulnd have caused so much attention if it wasnt integrated with Windows that much. The idea a browser can affect your OS is far away in FF scenario.

[M7S]

You can only install extensions from sites that you aproved. Extensions from other sites get blocked.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by virus
Well, FF has local file access. And aren't extensions allowed to write/access config files (and thus access your disk)?

Web pages and plugins on web pages have no local file access other than previously known directories where configs are stored. I discovered this when messing around with the VLC plugin. Creating a web page that uses it on my HD and pointing it to an absolute link to the HD for the video sets off alarms. Mozilla greatly restricts how plugins may interact with the filesystem.

Originally posted by virus
I don't know. Does the auto-updater allow to revert to a previous version of an extension? Anyway there's still a problem: what if the "first sign of trouble" happens simply too late, when damage is already done?

I am quite sure the auto update feature allows for that. And as to it being to late. That is not a good argument. You are hypothesising that something would happen to an opensource project that has already and continues to happen to closed source projects like Microsft's. Which makes it hypothetically a null argument. Save for one fact. If someone sneaks something into IE only Microsoft, the attackers, and your God are likely to know. The attackers and god being the most likely to know with Microsoft only being slightly more likely to know than you the user.

Originally posted by virus
Personally, I disagree - I think this is highly debatable. Security is the only field I can think of where opensource-ness may backfire. Remember when snippets of the IE5 code were published on the net? After a couple of days a flaw was found and a hack was made public. AFAIK nobody found it before the code was published. So, yes, malicious code may be spotted by simply looking at the source... but also security flaws.

Yes but the question arises had the IE5 source been open in the first place would the flaw have existed as long and have made it to as many instalations as it did. No would be the word you are looking for. Something that basic and critical is usually one of the first things that would get taken care of. But Microsoft in their infinate wisdome since they knew no one could see the source that hopefully no one would find it and exploit it. And we all know that hope is the best security measure right? ;) Gee I hope I don't get robbed. Or I hope my house does not catch on fire. There is a difference between open and closed source. People can hide things in closed source better and longer than they can in open source. And with opensource anyone can contribute a full working fix if they so desire. You don't have to wait on one central group who may for whatever reason prioritise your needs as not that pressing.

Originally posted by virus
It has been said on this thread that the code for formatting text in the engine was so complex that nobody could even understand it. What if a really skilled hacker actually goes through it, understands it and finds a flaw? We know that open-source code is usually high-quality... but even a world-class programmer can have a bad day and make a mistake. Having the source available makes things easier for everyone - including hackers. If they're faster (or smarter) than the good guys at discovering potential problems... well, you're cooked.

Not at all. In finding and exploiting a flaw the skilled hacker would in escence point a big sign as to excatly where the flaw is likely to be located. Upon which likely even novice coders could scan and with enough patience find and fix the problem. Even if it takes a professional coder there are alot more professional coders that look at the Mozilla source than look at the IE source.

Originally posted by virus
What I mean is that FF's security must come exclusively from high-quality programming. They don't have the "shield" of secret sourcecode that helps keeping the holes secret.

Secrets are not security. If they were you would not need security to keep secrets.

Originally posted by virus
Of course, you'll say that if they get public, they can be fixed... looks like a chicken-and-egg problem, I know, but this is the only point where I cannot honestly say that open-source code is superior. Both models have pros and cons.

Yes. We are not arguing for the opening of all code. I would argue that there are plenty of aplications etc which would be fine with closed source. Thouse aplications not including OS core functionality or highly relied upon aplications. Such as the OS itself or the browser you rely to access the internet. Personally I don't absolutely need an opensource Mahjong or chess program. But when it comes to my documents and my data opensource and open standards are important to me.

[virus]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Mozilla greatly restricts how plugins may interact with the filesystem.
That's fine. What about malicious code stored in memory? Once you've gained access to the system, you may rely on other OS flaws to keep the fun going. I recognize that it's not FF's fault if the host OS is a piece of crap... but the same "limitation" applies for all software running under Windows - and most of it poses no serious security problems.

That is not a good argument. You are hypothesising that something would happen to an opensource project that has already and continues to happen to closed source projects like Microsft's.
Yes, I'm making this hypotesis. If it's very popular, it can be an easy target for people that want to exploit it. I see no reason for an opensource project to be immune and a closed source one no. All browser out there have bugs and some security flaws; they're discovered continuously. Thinking that FireFox is/will be perfect and invincible is naive at least.

More to the point of my remark: by "too late" I meant to say that reverting to a safer version after the malware has striked won't bring back your lost data.

If someone sneaks something into IE only Microsoft, the attackers, and your God are likely to know.
You're shifting from the main discussion point here. I'm talking about FF extensions written by some random guys over the net. Are we reasonably sure all of them can be stopped timely if they want to do damage?

I trust FF's core, and I'm not trying to say that the main developers will try to "sneak something" into the core. But controlling thousands of extensions that get uploaded/updated daily poses some problems. This has absolutely nothing to do with IE and M$'s faults. Saying "there's no problem because IE is even worse" won't solve security problems in FF (if they exist).

Secrets are not security. If they were you would not need security to keep secrets.

Fine. Why don't you post some of your passwords here? Keeping them secret won't improve your security ;)

More seriously. You can improve security by writing robust code. It is my opinion - but just my opinion - that writing robust code and keeping it secret can make security even higher, because it requires much more skill to find a flaw by reverse engineering than by staring at a C function.

Of course with opensource you've plenty of other advantages, but you're giving away your ability to "make things more difficult" for evildoers. Sure the burglars can enter your home even with a locked door if they're skilled enough... but then why you lock your door every night?

Personally I don't absolutely need an opensource Mahjong or chess program.
Too bad, Crafty is such an amazing opensource chess engine :)

[jernst]

Originally posted by virus
Fine. Why don't you post some of your passwords here? Keeping them secret won't improve your security ;)


If Neo Neko's passwords (=secrets) are week (=no security) there is no point using them to protect his data.

Hiding secrets in your closed-source code is week as well (reverse engineering, code-leeks) and thus doesn't provide security.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by virus
That's fine. What about malicious code stored in memory? Once you've gained access to the system, you may rely on other OS flaws to keep the fun going. I recognize that it's not FF's fault if the host OS is a piece of crap... but the same "limitation" applies for all software running under Windows - and most of it poses no serious security problems.

Actually most of what you just described covers most if not all of the worst vulnerabilities and security problems. And more or less leads us to this. Worst case scenario it is as insecure as IE but more featurefull and standards compliant. Best case scenario it is worlds more secure than IE but still more featurefull and standards compliant. So even if we loose we win. It is kind of a win win thing.

Originally posted by virus
Yes, I'm making this hypotesis. If it's very popular, it can be an easy target for people that want to exploit it.

Firefox is not aiming to dominate the market like Microsoft. Or in place of Microsoft. That would be practically impossible anyway. They don't have a monopoly to fund their browser product or get install base. Worst case scenario Firefox would fail and the mono-culture that makes such vulnerabilities a catastrophy will continue unhindered. Best case scenario firefox would gain a large portion of the market and re-introduce competition and innovation. Thereby reducing the mono-culture that makes these vulnerabilities a catastrophy. I guess what I am saying is that with Firefox or Moz you can't loose.

Originally posted by virus
I see no reason for an opensource project to be immune and a closed source one no.

No one is claiming immunity. You misunderstand. What is being said is that the impact of that which you are concerned about would be less than it is now. Hence better.

Originally posted by virus
All browser out there have bugs and some security flaws; they're discovered continuously. Thinking that FireFox is/will be perfect and invincible is naive at least.

That is why no one has claimed it. Firefox can be fixed faster. And typically it is fixed faster. And the more people who use it the faster it will get fixed. Unlike IE where no matter how many use it, will not get fixed any faster.

Originally posted by virus
More to the point of my remark: by "too late" I meant to say that reverting to a safer version after the malware has striked won't bring back your lost data.

Never does. What was the point? That will happen whether you use firefox or not. If firefox is worse than IE no one will use it. If IE continues to be worse then Firefox will be used more. Firefox is only about choice. And choice is good.

Originally posted by virus
You're shifting from the main discussion point here. I'm talking about FF extensions written by some random guys over the net. Are we reasonably sure all of them can be stopped timely if they want to do damage?

Oh all the previous discussion led me to believe we were discussing the plugins on the official firefox update page and mozdev. And not random stranger X hosting his own plugin/malware. Sorry. But that probably has something to do with the fact that I don't unquestioningly trust strangers. :p

Originally posted by virus
I trust FF's core, and I'm not trying to say that the main developers will try to "sneak something" into the core. But controlling thousands of extensions that get uploaded/updated daily poses some problems. This has absolutely nothing to do with IE and M$'s faults. Saying "there's no problem because IE is even worse" won't solve security problems in FF (if they exist).

What's the point again? Isn't IE just as vulnerable? Isn't it not a double standard not to hold them just as responsible for what other people do? It's your fault if you download and install a plugin on purpose from someone you don't know and your computer gets infected. However when your computer gets infected via a direveby download instigated by a vunerability at the core of the browser. Well then the browser manufacturer would bear some responsibility.

Originally posted by virus
Fine. Why don't you post some of your passwords here? Keeping them secret won't improve your security ;)

If my passwords were my security I would. But may passwords are not my security. They are keys to my security. Posting them would be insane. I can post the source to the cypher that portects me. That is my security. But that does you little good without the key!

Originally posted by virus
More seriously. You can improve security by writing robust code. It is my opinion - but just my opinion - that writing robust code and keeping it secret can make security even higher, because it requires much more skill to find a flaw by reverse engineering than by staring at a C function.

But here is a flaw in your logic. Keeping code secret leads to it being less robust. And less secure. Conversely having open code means more people can inspect it. Which also means people can find vulnerabilities faster. To exploit and fix. Which measn it will be more robustand secure.

Originally posted by virus
Of course with opensource you've plenty of other advantages, but you're giving away your ability to "make things more difficult" for evildoers. Sure the burglars can enter your home even with a locked door if they're skilled enough... but then why you lock your door every night?

Because locking your door is "security". Trusting that no burglar will ever find your door is stupidity. There is no such thing as absolute security. But there is such thing as no security. Further I would rather rely on tested security rather than security based on secrets. If you need security to protect secrets and secrets are security then why do we need security again?

Originally posted by virus
Too bad, Crafty is such an amazing opensource chess engine :)

That's fine. But it is not something that I need or would rely on even if I did need it. Not like my OS or my browser. BTW why are you not as worried about some unrelated stranger writing mallicious code (or plugins) for crafty? :p

[virus]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Firefox is not aiming to dominate the market like Microsoft.
And so? If people use it frequently, hackers may target it. I don't think hackers care too much at what Firefox is aiming to be. A potential door to several millions of PC always deserves a look.

Never does. What was the point?
The point was that the solution you suggested (reverting back to a previous plugin version) won't work if you apply it too late ;)

Oh all the previous discussion led me to believe we were discussing the plugins on the official firefox update page and mozdev.
And we are. But the official plugins are provided by random strangers. The bare fact that they're required to have a regular account doesn't make them so much less "strangers".

I can trust the official development team. I cannot trust random strangers, even if they upload on official sites (we agreed on the fact that mozilla.org is unable to check extensively every version of every extension, remember?). I fear that evildoers can find an easy way to get into this system.

What's the point again? Isn't IE just as vulnerable?
The point is that I'm willing to discuss the security of FF extensions. Instead you keep talking about M$. I think we can talk about FF extensions without even mentioning the word "Micro$oft", can't we?

But here is a flaw in your logic. Keeping code secret leads to it being less robust.
If you keep equating "closed-source = Micro$oft", then there's nothing that can be argued. Their code would be filled of holes in any case.

But there's life beyond M$. Not everyone write that shit. Not everyone invent their own incompatible and insecure standard every day. Not everyone fixes their buggy code every 2 years. Not everyone allow pieces of their code to leak on the net. M$ simply does not represent the "closed-source community" in any way. They're a pathologic case.

And you seem to ignore the bare fact that thousands of hackers can look at the source code as well as the thousands of people supposed to check and fix it. Unfortunately this is a point against opensource (maybe the only one, but it's there). All in all, weighting every factor, I'd say that, concerning security, opensource doesn't improve anything over closed-source; and may even be worse.

In that specific case (Firefox) there's another problem, given that the developers said that some portions of the code are so complex that they can't even fix/mantain them properly. Who's gonna "check and fix in a few days" as you said? We can only hope that hackers are not smarter than the development team.

why are you not as worried about some unrelated stranger writing mallicious code (or plugins) for crafty? :p
No need to. Crafty does not allow 3rd party plugins - no strangers knocking at the door :p

[Joe Fenton]

Originally posted by virus
But the official plugins are provided by random strangers. The bare fact that they're required to have a regular account doesn't make them so much less "strangers".

I can trust the official development team. I cannot trust random strangers, even if they upload on official sites (we agreed on the fact that mozilla.org is unable to check extensively every version of every extension, remember?). I fear that evildoers can find an easy way to get into this system.

This is a lame argument. Just because YOU don't know them doesn't mean they are "random strangers". Also, anything getting posted on the official Mozilla page will come under HEAVY scrutiny from thousands of coders. Even if some "random stranger" got an account and tried to slip a naughty extension into the system, it would be caught quickly - more than likely within hours.

You seem to be under the impression that ANYONE can post ANYTHING onto the official Mozilla site. That there are THOUSANDS of untested extensions being blindly run on FF. You have some very strange ideas - you are thinking of Microsoft, not Mozilla.

:)

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by virus
And so? If people use it frequently, hackers may target it. I don't think hackers care too much at what Firefox is aiming to be. A potential door to several millions of PC always deserves a look.

But you miss the point that Firefox being differnet to the core if it became popular would help to mitigate the effect of such attacks. Even if it should prove vulnerable itself. With IE having an average 90% market control. On average 90% of the market can be efected by a single exploit. Lets get super optimistic and say Mozilla/Firefox manages to snag 50% of the market. At any one point the most of the population any one exploit can expect to effect is 50% either way. That is an improvement. Every bit of reduction in IE usage is a benefit to security.


Originally posted by virus
The point was that the solution you suggested (reverting back to a previous plugin version) won't work if you apply it too late ;)

Nothing you can do to stop that. But due to the nature of the code those sort of things should be less likely to happen and will be fixed quicker in the event they do.

Originally posted by virus
And we are. But the official plugins are provided by random strangers. The bare fact that they're required to have a regular account doesn't make them so much less "strangers".

I can trust the official development team. I cannot trust random strangers, even if they upload on official sites (we agreed on the fact that mozilla.org is unable to check extensively every version of every extension, remember?). I fear that evildoers can find an easy way to get into this system.

What part of the official site being run and administered by the official team needs to be re-explained? Even if they themselves can't inspect everything. How hard would it be for them to suspend an account on their site and further push a package to remove the dangerous code over Firefox update at the first report of trouble? Further since all the plugins on the official sites have source code avalible such malicious code would have to be hidden in plain sight again.


Originally posted by virus
The point is that I'm willing to discuss the security of FF extensions. Instead you keep talking about M$. I think we can talk about FF extensions without even mentioning the word "Micro$oft", can't we?

First of all you make mention of such things as if they are rather new. And further you give the impression that firefox and most of it's plugins being opensource are for some reason more vulnerable. Why should any of this concern someone wanting to use firefox? When if they are not using firefox it most likely means they are using IE and thus already highly vulnerable to such attacks already? So switching to firefox as a worst case scenario means they are no worse off. And if we are going to talk about Firefox comparisons to IE and thus mentioning Microsoft are inevitable.


Originally posted by virus
If you keep equating "closed-source = Micro$oft", then there's nothing that can be argued. Their code would be filled of holes in any case.

You kind of miss the point though that they with their sloppy coding and product rushing to meet deadlines could benefit form the wide spread peer review avalible with opensource. Microsoft is arguably one of the biggest detractors of true opensource who would ironically greatly benefit from it. I would equate Opera with closed source. But since they have less market than Mozilla they are not such a good comparison.

Originally posted by virus
But there's life beyond M$. Not everyone write that shit. Not everyone invent their own incompatible and insecure standard every day. Not everyone fixes their buggy code every 2 years. Not everyone allow pieces of their code to leak on the net. M$ simply does not represent the "closed-source community" in any way. They're a pathologic case.

Name one influential company with no ties to Microsoft who so espouses closed source over opensource at all costs to be in the same league as Microsoft. If you can do that and name someone recognisable wo represents closed source in that manner I will be impressed.

Originally posted by virus
And you seem to ignore the bare fact that thousands of hackers can look at the source code as well as the thousands of people supposed to check and fix it.

First of all you perpetuate the myth that hackers are all bad people. Further more hackers work for mozilla than against it.

Originally posted by virus
Unfortunately this is a point against opensource (maybe the only one, but it's there). All in all, weighting every factor, I'd say that, concerning security, opensource doesn't improve anything over closed-source; and may even be worse.

Explain again how trying to hide bad code is more secure than openly publishing code so it can be fixed quicker and better? Even closed source code can be disassembled. Granted it will not reveal the original source. But you can still tell exactly what a program is doing and how to exploit it. Which largely negates your constant misconcieved claims that since something is opensource it is less secure. That is plain wrong. you make it sound like the only way to find vulnerabilities in closed source is by accident or shere luck. Which is wrong as well.

Originally posted by virus
In that specific case (Firefox) there's another problem, given that the developers said that some portions of the code are so complex that they can't even fix/mantain them properly. Who's gonna "check and fix in a few days" as you said? We can only hope that hackers are not smarter than the development team.

Hellooooooooo. Opensource anyone? The developers as you call them are not the only coders who contribute. The users contribute as well.


Originally posted by virus
No need to. Crafty does not allow 3rd party plugins - no strangers knocking at the door :p

But to use your argument it is opensource so surely it must be less secure than a closed source chess program. :p Further being opensource any nefarious character can sneak mallicious code in can't they?

If you are trying to play devils advocate it is not working. :D

[Tuesday]

Yet another reason why FF kicks IE ass

Portable FireFox, lets you take YOUR browser,config,extensions,bookmarks - the lot, anywhere. Especially nice on a Pen drive.

http://johnhaller.com/jh/mozilla/portable_firefox/

[virus]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
If you are trying to play devils advocate it is not working. :D
Yep. Especially if you keep grossly misrepresenting what I've written into previous posts and keep asking to explain things I've already explained at least a couple of times.

Also I can't answer if you keep adding 20 lines of comment to every 2 lines of my post. Either I'm forced to cut important things, or to post a reply 50000 lines long ;)

Anyway, I won't waste your time any more. You surely have other things to do, including joining the millions of people who spend the day downloading the source code from mozilla.org to put it "under HEAVY scrutiny" lol.

Personally, I'll just wait and see if the system is going to be exploited or not. Talk about Micro$oft doesn't bother me. I was mostly looking for technical details about how and how well FF blocks malicious attempts but you're mostly avoiding them or simply saying they are not needed because the hackers actually work for Mozilla. (!!!)

[jernst]

Originally posted by virus
simply saying they are not needed because the hackers actually work for Mozilla. (!!!)

The comment about "hackers" was meant to show the common misinterpretation of the word hacker.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hacker

[Mug Funky]

virus: it's already been said to some extent how malware extensions are blocked by firefox.

have you used this browser? have you tried to install an extension?

there's a big fat warning about only downloading from trusted sources, and there's a signature system (which, like in windows, doesn't seem ever to be used). that's 2 more things that IE does not do with activex, and that's not counting the fact that the user must install the extension themselves, rather than drive-by downloading.

the proof is in the pudding, and i'm getting bored from your circular arguments.

every system has bugs, and FF has already had a couple of security holes patched. note that as far as i'm aware, none of these were ever exploited, except by people testing firefox out.

now granted, as FF's market share increases (hopefully to a good number, but i fear it'll only be as high as the percentage of cyber-hippies out there) it is less likely that ALL holes will be found by testers, but with the rapid and enthusiastic development going on, i suspect by the time FF gets that widely used, there will be jack-all holes left. possibly none at all.

also note that the multi-platform nature of FF makes it a headache to exploit security holes, even if they exist. imagine how clever a hacker must be to be able to:

a) find a hole
b) find a way to code malware into an extension in such a way that nobody will have the slightest idea from reading the code what it actually does, and
c) make it work cross-platform.

i suppose that (c) is optional, but still (a) and (b) are tough enough for any coder. a hacker like that would most likely be getting paid work if they're that good. i suspect that if there are hackers like that out there, and they really want to get into your computer, they'll be in before firefox even loads, through some other back door.

please, the proof is in the pudding (i hate that expression...), and if you haven't used firefox yet, you're talking out of somewhere other than your mouth.

[edit]

i just thought of something... avisynth can run external programs, can't it? and it can write to text files. in theory you could use a malware plugin for avisynth and nuke your computer as soon as you load your avs file.

but is that any reason to settle for just virtualdub, or some expensive-as-F NLE application that crashes all the time and can't even do denoising or anything but the most basic of deinterlace functions?

of course not.

[virus]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
and i'm getting bored from your circular arguments

and if you haven't used firefox yet, you're talking out of somewhere other than your mouth.

...the usual, aggressive, useless "Spead Firefox"-style campaign... bash everyone that doesn't say that FF is pure gold. :rolleyes:

Go back a couple of pages where I wrote that I actually use FF (without extensions, of course).

I'm out of this thread. But remember that I didn't try to insult anyone. Unlike you.

[neo75903]

Nope, he coulnd handle the truth :)

Have to say thanks all guys who were defending FF with true facts unlike virus being super suspecious about the open community.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by virus
...the usual, aggressive, useless "Spead Firefox"-style campaign... bash everyone that doesn't say that FF is pure gold. :rolleyes:

No the agressiveness you are seeing is likely due to the forming conception that you are a bit thick on the plugins issue. And people are frustrated trying to figure out exactly what you are trying to get at. No one has said that firefos "is pure gold". It has it's own problems. Of whitch people being exploited by unrelated 3rd party plugins manually installed by the user is not on the list. Plugins could provide an entry point for malicious code in any program. Not just Firefox. It is an ever present risk that is basically always oughtweighed by the good it provides.

Originally posted by virus
Go back a couple of pages where I wrote that I actually use FF (without extensions, of course).

What is it with your plugin phobia? Do you not use plugins anywhere? In any program? It is your perogative. But it all sounds rather silly to me. If you are afraid of plugins then what are you doing on the net. It is at least as dangerous as unknown 3rd party plugins. And surely you have never installed software from someone you did not know personally. Right? I am all for being cautious. But being so rigid in paranoia that you can't take action or live comfortably in not a good position to be in.

Originally posted by virus
I'm out of this thread. But remember that I didn't try to insult anyone. Unlike you.

Name calling is not called for. No matter how frustrating you may be at times. ;)

[moon1234]

2, Websies that are IE-only are rare on internet. I've been using Firefox since version 0.8 and Mozilla for months before that - and I found one (ONE) site that doesn't work with them.


Then you must not live or work in a corporate world. Almost ALL, 100%, of corporate apps rely on IE in some way at this point. .NET and other technologies that many corporations rely on are the advances that have been made in IE. If you have Windows XP SP2 you have a built-in pop-up blocker, You can turn off ActiveX (Most good sysadmins have had it off for a long time), you can turn on or off all plugins that are installed on your system.

You also fail to see the manageablity side. IE can be managed via local policies, Group Policy, SMS, etc. If I need to lock down most of the office and restrict the sites they can vist, but let sales and marketing go anywhere, I can have this done and deployed in 15 minutes to several thousand PCs. This is not easily or quickly done with firefox.

This whole debate is centered around home users and fully neglects all of IE's benefits in a corporate environment. As for the security issues, If Firefox had 92% of the market, it would have the same problem. The fact that Microsoft can catch and fix the bugs quickly and distribute them automatically via Windows Update to my internal SUS machines and then out the to the desktop PC's all automatically means that Microsoft is commited to fixing the bugs.

IE on Windows XP SP2 is very usable, stable and most importantly it just works.

[akupenguin]

Originally posted by moon1234
IE can be managed via local policies, Group Policy, SMS, etc. If I need to lock down most of the office and restrict the sites they can vist, but let sales and marketing go anywhere, I can have this done and deployed in 15 minutes to several thousand PCs. This is not easily or quickly done with firefox.
Maybe I'm just not a corporate shill, but I fail to see how that would work. If you really want to restrict internet access, it _must_ be done at the firewall level. If you don't trust people to have real internet access, a client-side block won't stop them. After all, anyone who cared to bypass your restriction could simply run firefox ;).

[stephanV]

it is not uncommon though that employees cannot install software themselves on a PC (no admin rights)

but yeah, preventing this on a firewall level would be much better.

[akupenguin]

FireFox requires no "install". (Or at least, such mods of FF exist.) And I have yet to see a configuration of Windows (or any other OS) that prevents people from running any EXEs they can get their hands on.

[stephanV]

i stand corrected :)

[Cyberman]

Well, I tried FireFox.

Not bad, especially that it apparently adheres closer to HTML than IE. (I promptly found a few bugs in my site...)

There are a few things I find extremely annoying, though - so I´d like to ask if there´s a way around them:

*) When starting FF, it loads the starting page(which is fine), but when I hit the CANCEL button, it continues loading(or, at least, displaying) it.
Does it really load the file or is it loaded already and merely being displayed? IE usually cancelled everything and showed an error.

*) It is loading VERY slow. I understand that this is because it´s not integrated in the OS as IE is - is there a way to fasten the process?

Well, that´s it. Either I can´t remember anything else, or I found the solutions already.

I have to admit, though, that despite all it´s obvious features I am not sure if I do the switch entirely - I´m too used to IE...

--

About PNG: As I saw today, Photoshop can´t save anything below 8Bit PNG files - while it can save 1Bit GIF files.
I guess that´s a reason why PNG still isn´t too common...

[edit]Well, I´m wrong, as so often. Even though PNG is shown as PNG 8Bit, it apparently does save with less, as color reduction is just as possible.

[moon1234]

Originally posted by akupenguin
Maybe I'm just not a corporate shill, but I fail to see how that would work. If you really want to restrict internet access, it _must_ be done at the firewall level. If you don't trust people to have real internet access, a client-side block won't stop them. After all, anyone who cared to bypass your restriction could simply run firefox ;).

Almost all corporate environments restrict the ability for end users to install any programs. This prevents firefox or anything else for that matter from slipping onto the machine. In my environment end users are prevented from downloading any .exe files. They are also prevented from copying any downloaded file out of the temporary internet cache. IE is set to restrict the launch of any executable in any of the internet zones.

There is also no abilty for a user to copy files to the local drive. All CD-DVD drives are prevented from launching any executable. In 4 years I have never had a major system crash due to illeagle downloads.

I also run websense and filter all .exe files snoop all compressed files for .exe . If the compressed file is encrypted and cannot be scanned it is blocked.

Almost all larger institutions that are worth their salt operate in a similar fashion. Would you want to go to a hospital where you life was in the hands of the employee loading firefox on the machine that is used to lookup your medical records?

If the employee was caught modifying or running non-approved software they would be reprimanded and based on the severity, terminated as well.

[KpeX]

Originally posted by moon1234
If the employee was caught modifying or running non-approved software they would be reprimanded and based on the severity, terminated as well. No offense is intended, but it sounds like you have a really good policy for restricting employee creativity and productivity.

[sysKin]

Originally posted by moon1234
Would you want to go to a hospital where you life was in the hands of the employee loading firefox on the machine that is used to lookup your medical records? As for firefox, yes. I do however see your point, see this article (http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,65906,00.html?tw=rss.TOP)...

The fact remains, that even under this lockdown, you still were vulnerable to the latest iframe exploit, and there is not much you could do (unless you made all browsers useless).

Many things can be said about security, but I didn't switched to mozilla (and then firefox, when it was 0.7) because of security. It was just much better.

[jernst]

Originally posted by Cyberman
*) When starting FF, it loads the starting page(which is fine), but when I hit the CANCEL button, it continues loading(or, at least, displaying) it.
Does it really load the file or is it loaded already and merely being displayed? IE usually cancelled everything and showed an error.

Maybe it's because by default, Firefox doesn't try to render a web page for 250 milliseconds, because it's waiting for data. So maybe it has already all the data when you click your stop button.

If you have a fast computer you can speedup page rendering and maybe fix this problem by following these tips:

http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/tips

Follow the tip "Speed up page rendering" and "Enable Pipelining". Instead of editing user.js as requested, just type about:config in your address bar (without the space) and create modify the settings values.

On my computer I saw a big difference in page loading time. You can also use this plugin which tweaks the network settings for you (but doesn't do the 250ms trick):
https://update.mozilla.org/extensions/moreinfo.php?application=firefox&id=327


*) It is loading VERY slow. I understand that this is because it´s not integrated in the OS as IE is - is there a way to fasten the process?

See here: http://www.digitalmediaminute.com/article/1058

I have to admit, though, that despite all it´s obvious features I am not sure if I do the switch entirely - I´m too used to IE...
If you are too used to IE don't forget this page and you'll get an IE like browser with the power of firefox: http://www.firefoxie.net/

About PNG: As I saw today, Photoshop can´t save anything below 8Bit PNG files - while it can save 1Bit GIF files.
I guess that´s a reason why PNG still isn´t too common...
Yes photoshop has a very bad support for png. Use The Gimp http://www.gimp.org/ it's like photoshop but free, opensource and multiplatform. You can furthermore crush your png files to the maximum (lossless) using pngcrush : http://pmt.sourceforge.net/pngcrush/

[Mug Funky]

another thing on PNG... there's a photoshop i/o plugin called "superPNG" that is extremely nice (and free). the same company also do a jpeg2000 plugin.

http://www.fnordware.com/

it'll also save (and load) 16-bit-per-channel png files from apps such as 3dsmax. very useful feature, and photoshop's continual lack of support for it (in spite of it's support for several operations in 16 bit) always drove me mad, because 3dsmax never supported 16 bit tiff like photoshop does...

it will do 1-bit png as well, but it seems to load back in inverted (though the space saving compared to 1-bit LZW TIFF is worth the simple ctrl+i required).

the png's come out very small at defaults, too - pngcrush barely dents them (and only on exhaustive search mode, which takes minutes for a single image).

@ virus: sorry, no personal insult intended. i tell my best friend she's talking out her arse when it seems appropriate :) maybe it's an aussie thing?

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by moon1234
Then you must not live or work in a corporate world. Almost ALL, 100%, of corporate apps rely on IE in some way at this point. .NET and other technologies that many corporations rely on are the advances that have been made in IE. If you have Windows XP SP2 you have a built-in pop-up blocker, You can turn off ActiveX (Most good sysadmins have had it off for a long time), you can turn on or off all plugins that are installed on your system.

As to almost all corporate apps relying on IE that is a deficiency. It puts the company at the whim of another company. SP2 will break alot of said aplications. So it comes down to a choice between getting business done or being secure. And business wins every time. So all this SP2 fixes everything is a bit simplistic at best. Even if it did fix everything (and it doesn't) there are still problems. And all these so called "advances" made in IE are nothing special either. The exact same aplications could be written and wider deployed in Any browser and not just IE. Active-X, COM, COM+, and .Net are nothing special. They are simply proprietary, incompatable, platform dependant versions of tools that were already largely avalible before.

Oh and BTW there are as many or more bad or deficient sysadmins than there are good ones by the measure you set.

Originally posted by moon1234
You also fail to see the manageablity side. IE can be managed via local policies, Group Policy, SMS, etc. If I need to lock down most of the office and restrict the sites they can vist, but let sales and marketing go anywhere, I can have this done and deployed in 15 minutes to several thousand PCs. This is not easily or quickly done with firefox.

Actually it is not as bad as you paint it. I think you are factoring in the set up and switch time going from an existing system using proprietary Microsoft technologies. Frankly once you get switched and set up I can't see how it would take longer. Sure the switch will take more initial time and effort. Swithching almost always does. But frankly I think you can use all the non-Microsoft technologies the Microsoft tools you listed were derived from originally. And further you can use them on any OS including MS Windows. You can do local and group policy type restrictions just fine on non-Microsoft OS. Granted you can't use Microsoft tools. But then what would you expect from Microsoft.

Originally posted by moon1234
This whole debate is centered around home users and fully neglects all of IE's benefits in a corporate environment. As for the security issues, If Firefox had 92% of the market, it would have the same problem.

Benefits in the corporate environment? What benefits would those be other than the fact it is already what most of them are currently using?

Originally posted by moon1234
The fact that Microsoft can catch and fix the bugs quickly and distribute them automatically via Windows Update to my internal SUS machines and then out the to the desktop PC's all automatically means that Microsoft is commited to fixing the bugs.

Hardly. It just means you are more aware and more comfortable with their tools. Frankly Microsoft has more critical vulnerabilities that typically go unpatched longer than their copmpetitors. Further they rush products out the door all to meet artificial deadlines often without alot of regard towards testing and security. That to me does not sound like someone commited to fixing bugs or ensuring quality. Neither do the times they have been quoted in the press as claiming that no one exploits a vulnerability till they publish it. Frankly that is a bit naieve and not indicative of someone with a mind on security. Microsoft does an OK job. Not great. But ok.

Originally posted by moon1234
IE on Windows XP SP2 is very usable, stable and most importantly it just works.

Yes but the default options generally suck. And then there is the fact that it is not really any more usable or stable than it's competitors. Which cost alot less to license, often have better defaults, and generally allow the company access to the source to fix and modify to better fit their needs. Sure the Microsoft solution just works. It just does not work better in alot of ways.

[communist]

Originally posted by Cyberman
*) It is loading VERY slow. I understand that this is because it´s not integrated in the OS as IE is - is there a way to fasten the process?
If you mean page loading / rendering its because the sites you generally load in IE have most of their (unchanged) assets already loaded into IE' s cache folder. When you start FF for the first time it will really download the whole page from the internet AFAIK.

[stephanV]

i think he just means startup time... i notice that too...

but i also notice running Ad-Aware has become pointless since i use FF :)

[Cyberman]

Originally posted by jernst
If you are too used to IE don't forget this page and you'll get an IE like browser with the power of firefox: http://www.firefoxie.net/

I tried that, but either it didn´t work or simply didn´t do much beside hiding the google bar and showing text beneath the buttons.

Originally posted by communist
If you mean page loading / rendering its because the sites you generally load in IE have most of their (unchanged) assets already loaded into IE' s cache folder. When you start FF for the first time it will really download the whole page from the internet AFAIK.

No I mean at startup - page rendering seems fine, though it is different somehow...

[neo75903]

@moon1234:
From what i hear here you are better off with a dumb terminal and save your company a thousand of windows licenses to do your job.
Unless you are using things like activeX at client side.

I have seen our government instances running XP pcs just to run somekind of terminal program. What a waste of our taxes!

And some more modernised departments have a browser as their interface, then you really wonder why they are not running Linux.

edit: http://browsehappy.com/

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by neo75903
@moon1234:
From what i hear here you are better off with a dumb terminal and save your company a thousand of windows licenses to do your job.
Unless you are using things like activeX at client side.

That is true. But unfortunatly many companies like moon1234's have fallen for and become smitten by the Microsoft/Intel backed methodology of over priced hardware and software. Actually it is not that overpriced. Not when you have many of their resources. They can amoritize the cost out over a long period. And many don't actually buy the systems but rather lease them and then have them upgraded every few years as terms of the lease. So honestly the average company's switching to thin clients in the medium term would not save them that much. In the long run it would save them alot though. But not alot of companies considder the long term that much. Rather choosing to opperate in the moment. Further the very people who would propose or decide on such a switch are generally opposed. Imagine having to go from updating and maintaining 3000 computers to just 3. Why you could really drop a good portion of your IT staff. And if you IT staff really knows what's good for it, it will vote against such actions. The only downside to the thin client method is that you have a few central points of vulnerability for an attacker to hit in order to compromise the entire structure. But that is not as bad as it sounds. Especially when even with a spread out infrastructure all the systems are generally easily vulnerable as they are now. The thin client model presents an easier to mannage and fix solution.

Originally posted by neo75903
✇I have seen our government instances running XP pcs just to run somekind of terminal program. What a waste of our taxes!

And some more modernised departments have a browser as their interface, then you really wonder why they are not running Linux.

edit: http://browsehappy.com/

Microsot is canvasing the government sector. Huge burocracy is their best friend.

[Atamido]

Originally posted by dragongodz
i never said Mozilla was an open source version of Netscape 5 for the record, i said(again) that Mozilla was started with the Netscape 5 source code. if you cant understand the difference then there is no point discussing it with you. I know and understand what you said, it's that you do not understand me. There are conflicting sources of information and I'm am inclined to believe the one that opposes the one that you believe. Chill, it's not the end of the world.

[neo75903]

@neo neko:
You have made a nice picture for what is going on in ict and also described why the concept of a thin client never hit the coorporated market. Guess we need a bigger Wallstreet crash before companies will take such measures.
Until then we have to get used to a world is the dominating factor.

[Cyberman]

Originally posted by jernst
Yes photoshop has a very bad support for png. Use The Gimp http://www.gimp.org/ it's like photoshop but free, opensource and multiplatform.

I´m just visiting that site.

Am I the only one thinking it´s a bad omen if the graphics for the site are larger than necessary? One of the graphics is 10K in PNG, but only 5K in GIF(saved with MS Photo Editor).

I´m talking about this one here: http://www.gimp.org/images/thegimp.png

Still, I´ll give it a try.

[edit]OK, I tried. Quite frankly, I didn´t like this program from the beginning. The interface is terrible, and I don´t want to spend time learning it.

[Neo Neko]

Originally posted by Cyberman
I´m just visiting that site.

Am I the only one thinking it´s a bad omen if the graphics for the site are larger than necessary? One of the graphics is 10K in PNG, but only 5K in GIF(saved with MS Photo Editor).

I´m talking about this one here: http://www.gimp.org/images/thegimp.png

Still, I´ll give it a try.

Not a bad omen at all. Remember that unless one of the Gimp devs happens to be good at HTML and web page design and thus aware of such concerns how are they to know that people might be up in arms over 5Kb. I doubt that if some one went in and fine tuned their site, If it still looked and functioned the same in the end they would refuse the donation. Good aplication programmers don't necessarily make good web programmers.

I will say this. Gimp can't replace Photoshop. Not at this time. If you are used to photoshop then it will take some time to get used to Gimp. Further Gimp is missing some things photoshop has and vice versa. It also depends on what you are creating for. Gimp is awesome for web design. But for print Photoshop is still the widest used. Personally I use Gimp on all my systems and don't actually have photoshop installed at the moment.

[scharfis_brain]

if I downsample the thegimp.png from 977 to 256 colors using photoshoips save for web and resave it with irfanview (compression=9) its size is haved, too! like the size of the gif-file!

[KpeX]

I think everyone has that attitude at first about the gimp, especially when you're used to other tools like photoshop. I know I did, anyways. The interface improved dramatically in 2.x versions, however - if you think that interface is bad, don't go anywhere near GIMP 1.x.

After I got used to GIMP's interface, however, I find it to be faster, more intuitive, and far superior for what I do to photoshop or anything else. The variety of filters for image rendering is outstanding (just play with some of the effects in the 'Filters' menu, like supernova, flame, etc.) Also it seems to me that most of the tools are more configurable than in photoshop. But a photo editing program is greatly a matter of opinion - there are a lot of different uses for such a program.

[dragongodz]

since this has expanded a bit to include software used for making web pages(well PNG's anyway :) ) may i slip this in for those interested.

http://www.nvu.com/

multi-OS ,open source web authoring based on Mozilla's Composer. pre-release 1.0 beta is available to download.

[Mug Funky]

thanks for the link, dragongodz!

i love any opportunity to ditch proprietary software. it's just a shame cinelerra is linux only (although it's an extremely good reason to upgrade to linux) and i haven't had a chance to make the change yet - i'm not the only user of my machine, and it's hard to make big changes to the system without freaking anyone out.

[dragongodz]

i'm not the only user of my machine, and it's hard to make big changes to the system without freaking anyone out.
tell me about it. if i changed over to linux my wife would freak. as it is she knows ow to get online, read and send emails, browse a few sites that i have bookmarked for her. when i need to do something with linux i generally use a livecd such as knoppix. :)

[Cyberman]

Originally posted by Neo Neko
Not a bad omen at all. Remember that unless one of the Gimp devs happens to be good at HTML and web page design and thus aware of such concerns how are they to know that people might be up in arms over 5Kb.

It´s not a question of web design, rather a question of common sense. It´s not the 5K, it´s the 50%.

IMO, it should be no question that a website should try to use the smallest possible files - as long as there is no loss in quality, which isn´t.
Especially when it´s the website of a grahics progam, I´d expect them to know how to get small files.

[Mug Funky]

it's not really a big deal though...

you'd be surprised how many multimedia design graduates can't make an efficient web site to save themselves...

mostly due to the inefficiency of programs like photoshop and fireworks. it'll change, of course, but as bandwidth increases it becomes less important.

whenever i make a website (guh... i hate the things!), i make the pics as small as possible, but usually people are just worried about getting the site finished, pleasing their (usually bone-headed n00b) clients, and getting paid :)

[dragongodz]

if I downsample the thegimp.png from 977 to 256 colors using photoshoips save for web and resave it with irfanview (compression=9) its size is haved, too! like the size of the gif-file!
It´s not the 5K, it´s the 50%.
should try to use the smallest possible files - as long as there is no loss in quality, which isn´t.
hmm or maybe for them they could see a difference with nearly 400% more colours and decided a 50% size increase was ok. who know ?
it really is clutching at straws though to think their decisions on what pictures to use on the web page reflects on how well the program works. the 2 are not related.

OK, I tried. Quite frankly, I didn´t like this program from the beginning. The interface is terrible, and I don´t want to spend time learning it.
fair enough but also consider the cost of photoshop to the gimp. not everyone can afford, or even if they could wants, to buy photoshop for some occasional image processing etc.

[Cyberman]

Originally posted by Mug Funky
it's not really a big deal though...
Not this time, no.
It´s a matter of principle, though I guess I´m very biased in that respect, as the server my sites lies on is very slow, so I have to use the smallest possible files, or make loading the site inaceptable long.

mostly due to the inefficiency of programs like photoshop and fireworks.
Even these programs offer enough options to compare - photoshop even tells you the resulting filesize before you save - and shows you the colors used.

it'll change, of course, but as bandwidth increases it becomes less important.
I hear that quite often. Yet I fail to see it.
Of course bandwith increases - but so do the filesizes. With ever more bandwith, site owners tend to say "What the heck, there´s plenty bandwith" - resulting in ever more needless traffic.
Just like many programs think "512MB of RAM is standard by now, so I can use every bit of it", ignoring that there are other programs needing memory too...

but usually people are just worried about getting the site finished, pleasing their (usually bone-headed n00b) clients, and getting paid :)
I understand that - but someone has to make a start. The bone-headed n00bs wont, so the duty lies within the other side...

Originally posted by dragongodz
hmm or maybe for them they could see a difference with nearly 400% more colours and decided a 50% size increase was ok. who know ?
Now that I rechecked the pictures, I have to admit there is a slight color change. I had to upsize the picture and increase brightness and contrast of my monitor, though. Even then it´s merely two shades of blue.

fair enough but also consider the cost of photoshop to the gimp. not everyone can afford, or even if they could wants, to buy photoshop for some occasional image processing etc.

Good point.

[Atamido]

35) Ability to enable/disable very specific features.

Or whatever number we are up to. Just discovered that if you go to "about:config" in the address bar and filter for dom.disable_window_ you get some fun options that you can disable in javascript. move_resize will disable the ability for javascript to resize the window. open_feature.location will turn off javascript's ability to remove the address bar. You can also change lots of other things that it is annoying for javascript to make changes to on a page. But you can leave the rest of javascript on.

[sysKin]

Originally posted by Pamel
35) Ability to enable/disable very specific features.

Or whatever number we are up to. Just discovered that if you go to "about:config" in the address bar and filter for dom.disable_window_ you get some fun options that you can disable in javascript. move_resize will disable the ability for javascript to resize the window. open_feature.location will turn off javascript's ability to remove the address bar. You can also change lots of other things that it is annoying for javascript to make changes to on a page. But you can leave the rest of javascript on.
Six of them are also available in options->web features->javascript->advanced. I always disable all of them but the last one. I'm always wondering why they aren't disabled by default :) as the "take back the web" part of firefox mostly consists of them being off.

[ukb008]

Is that a full download or upgrade ? What I mean is, do I uninstall my 1.0 and then install that or what ?

Regards.

[sysKin]

Originally posted by ukb008
Is that a full download or upgrade ? What I mean is, do I uninstall my 1.0 and then install that or what ?

Regards. It's full download it if download it manually - it's probably better to uninstall first, but I don't think it's necessary.
It's an upgrade if you get it by program's automatic upgrades.

[cypher_soundz]

Originally posted by ukb007
Hi.

Doom9 informs us that he finds Mozilla Firefox 1.0 better than IE. An opinion from him counts. We'd like to make this paradigm shift in browsing (at least I do).

I'd appreciate (many others will, too, I'm sure) a list of reasons why Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is better than IE.

Regards.

http://people.zeelandnet.nl/marco/pimpzilla/

need i say more :D
Regards
cyph

[KpeX]

[OT] Getting back to the GIMP vs. PhotoShop interface problem, there is now a modified interface to the gimp made to look just like photoshop - GimpShop (http://plasticbugs.com/index.php?p=241) (another link (http://codemills.com/blog/?p=4)). Although I haven't seen a windows build yet that might be a good alternative if you're really that attached to the photoshop UI.

[shevegen]

pimpzilla is a funny idea :)

personally though, i like things simple and not distracting. but hopefully fancy ideas like that one revolve-bounce for long !

[leonvictor2012]

I wouldn’t depend on that. Generally, IE is faster than other browser. Firefox providing some anti-spyware protection and enough of a user base to be targeted. It’s still safer than any version of IE.

[leonvictor2012]

Mozilla is faster than IE and Mozilla provide large stock of Add ons than IE

[Groucho2004]

I wouldn’t depend on that. Generally, IE is faster than other browser.
Mozilla is faster than IE and Mozilla provide large stock of Add ons than IE
Make up your mind.
Also - just in case you are not aware - you replied to a 8 years old post about Firefox 1.0.

[Midzuki]

FWIW, in vBulletin it's possible to "Automatically Close Old Threads After X Days" since 2006 if I am not mistaken ---
--- it would be great if the Admins took the time to implement the feature :)

[leonvictor2012]

Firefox Provide more add-ons facility and antispyware protection batter than IE, so I prefer Mozilla Firefox for best web browsing experience.

[Wilbert]

Firefox Provide more add-ons facility and antispyware protection batter than IE, so I prefer Mozilla Firefox for best web browsing experience.
You are probably trolling around, but i prefer you stop posting these useless posts.

[CruNcher]

No other Browser lets you create your own Browser Workflow with 0 restrictions in what you want todo, if you don't agree with the UI Designer of Microsoft, Google, Opera or Mozilla feel free to bring in your own Interaction model and connect it to whatever you like (possibilities are almost endless) that's for me why i couldn't since day 1 leave Firefox (even in the times it's performance was really bad compared to others, which changed a lot now and gets better and better) it gave/gives me Maximum Efficiency that no other Browser can deliver because it adapts to me not i'm to it ;)
Optimize your daily tasks reduce click times reduce mouse moves make all kind of website interactions more efficient with combining the main ui in the equation, crazy flexibility :)

Ahh yeah and no other Browser has Aza Raskins Genius Panorama Interface :)

I think if you don't want to put it into so technical terms "Freedom" would be the right word to describe the reasons why Firefox ;)

[Nathan Willow]

Mozilla Firefox 1.0 is better than IE because in Mozilla you easily create toolbars, at 55MB for 25 windows, the browser uses fewer resources than IE.

[Asmodian]

Given that Firefox is now on version 13.0.1 maybe this thread should be locked? Firefox 1.0 probably has a pretty small user base at this point. ;)

[1t5m3]

:thumbup:

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