Paul Thurrott calls for ie boycott


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I started with Notepad before CSS was even around if I remember right, so I didn't even know about that stuff. 

When it started to get all complicated, I just said "Meh" and figured it's much easier to control exact positioning with an image map on a fixed graphic, when possible, and it works in both IE and Mozilla.

Kinda like how I still use Acrobat 4 to make PDF files.  I know everybody with the 4.x reader and newer can read 'em.

I'm such a dweeb.  I need simple to keep my simple mind happy. :p

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Image maps are good stuff, always prefer to photochop things myself, purely out of habit. :) My friend uses alot of image maps and stuff, but he works in Dreamweaver and uses alot of PHP.

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After reading this topic, it reminded me of a picture Ive seen before.

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So rather than contributing to the thread you decided to just +1 your post count and make fun of children with special needs? As immature as some of the other posts are you just took the biscuit.

Back on topic - I find it strange that people are stating as fact that Firefox is as insecure as IE, effectively saying that security is 100% dependent upon usage. Microsoft is a company known to leave flaws in their software because they don't consider them important enough to fix, whereas with Firefox they have tried to fix every problem as it occurs and offer rewards to people that can find bugs. It just baffles me how anyone can claim that Firefox would be as insecure... more insecure/exploited than it currently is, of course, but as insecure as IE? Please.

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I'm sticking to my IE. For starters, I've never experienced any problems with it (no rendering problems, or problems due to security holes). And second of all, IE loads pages faster than FF for me. BTW, FF has it's own share of security holes.. Most of the holes discovered are for IE, and that for one reason: a lot more people are using it, therefore a better target for hackers. If the majority of the Internet users were to use FF, you'd see that more holes would be discovered. So, why would I change to FF? I can see no reason.

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So rather than contributing to the thread you decided to just +1 your post count and make fun of children with special needs? As immature as some of the other posts are you just took the biscuit.

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No, my point wasn't to make fun of special needs children, it was to point out that this topic will never end and that no one will ever see some one else's view.

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No, my point wasn't to make fun of special needs children, it was to point out that this topic will never end and that no one will ever see some one else's view.

I guess some of us didn't get it.

When I think of the Special Olympics, it seems really great because it's so inclusive and positive.

I'm not quite sure how that relatest to the point you were trying to make.

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No, my point wasn't to make fun of special needs children, it was to point out that this topic will never end and that no one will ever see some one else's view.

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Why couldn't you have just posted THAT then, instead of unnecessarily adding an old, unfunny image that is highly offensive to some people here. Anyway, the problem is largely due to some people not accepting reasonable arguements and blindly believing their viewpoint is correct, which will always happen - at the same time there are plenty of people here that accept the flaws in both Firefox and IE but can debate points reasonably.

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I hate IE too, but this is a joke.

As a web developer, IE is a pain to get stuff to work in it. But you know what, FF is almost as bad sometimes. A friend of mine who is a huge firefox advocate disagreed until I started teaching him html/css/js, and he started having things work in ie and opera but not ff, or opera only. He still loves firefox, as it's a good browser, but it has it's own issues. But that doesn't mean someone should boycott it.

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Anyway, the problem is largely due to some people not accepting reasonable arguements and blindly believing their viewpoint is correct

That's the sad case with fanboyism. :(

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I've seen several people say now that Firefox and IE are equal as far as exploits.  That is totally wrong.  Keep your eye on a 0-day exploit site for a month.  What will you see?  I'll tell you the highlights of last month.  I seen eight exploits that worked for IE6 patched up to date.  I tested them all to verify they worked.  I seen three exploits for Firefox.  The catch is, the Firefox ones were all for 1.0.4, and they were all released AFTER 1.0.5 was released.

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What is the URL?

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To the: "oh Firefox has security holes too" - yes, I am not denying that, that would be naive. However, what would also be naive is to say that they have been patched a whole lot quicker than various IE bugs have been (most of which have). Take the infamous 1.0.3 artibtrary code execution ( http://www.frsirt.com/exploits/20050507.firefox0day.php ).

A blocker was put into place the day afterwards, then a patch a day later (or was it two? Anyone remember?) That has been the case in multiple FF vulnerabilities, patches have been out a day or two later. Whereas MS seem to insist on releasing them on a strict timetable the same time each month, so it pays to release a new IE hole the day after the latest patches - since then there's a whole month of patch-free goodness.

Now, standards compliance. IE is a cancer. It has halted a large portion of the web (CSS mostly, although there are fixes in place, IE is still a hinderance when designing a page), through it's inability to abide to standards.

Seriously, Microsoft are the biggest software company in the world ... and they still refuse to make their browser, use by the majority of the interenet compliant to the web's standards. Just because you're popular, doesn't mean you can break the rules.

If IE was brought up to scratch, the quality of the web would be higher, imo.

If IE's holes were patched (and patched faster/when the occaision arises) a lot less vulnerabilties would be taken advantage off, for example, the viewtopic.php phpbb 2.0.15 exploit - which allows you to get anyones cookies just from viewing a topic wouldn't have worked. Many people wouldn't get their account hacked. A lot of XSS vulnerabilties only work through IE.

If there was a world without IE, the web would be a more secure, more standard compliant (probably resulting in nicer sites overall) place. Plus it would make designers jobs a whole lot easier.

As long as this topic stays open (most likely not long), I will try to reply to any anti-Firefox questions without resorting to zealotry, although I might.

I support Mr. Thurrott

Edit: Yes, there have been lots of Firefox exploits - but as someone said earlier, they're for previous versions. The buffer overflows in .gif's is for 1.0.1, congrats- we're up to 1.0.6 now, a fat lot of good a overflow for 1.0.1 is going to be! : D

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Not sure if you guys saw this on the main page or not.

The Mozilla Foundation said it was committed to "full support" of Acid2 in its Firefox browser but did not say when it expected to pass the test.

So all those Firefox zealots cheer how secure and wonderful it is... but it doesn't actually pass the test at all, and they have no idea when it will, but they "support the idea and it will pass... someday". I may have drank the Kool-Aid, but whatever they're on, I WANT IT!

http://www.longhornblogs.com/robert/archiv...8/02/14342.aspx

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Are you afraid of change? Are you afraid that you might actually like it? Does your life depend on using only MSFT sanctioned products?

Credible reasons to not use IE:

- Poor Standards support

- Poor CSS support

- Poor PNG support

- many potential exploits.

You still have not given any credible reasons not to at least "try" firefox.

It works, is cross platform compatible and a quick download and install.

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are you trying to attack my character? oh, you.

I have tried firefox, in fact I have it installed on my system right now.

Firefox 1.0.6

I don't hate it, but I would rather use IE. there is not reason for me to use firefox, so I would appreciate it if you got off of my back about it. I think it is slow (takes 7+ seconds to start), when the memory leaks start occuring its a dog, and the whole concept of tabs in a web browser just doesnt fit with me (id rather have my open pages in the taskbar). also, the gecko engine seems to be a bit slow.

STV

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Mozilla Firefox's security track record is taking the wrong path.

http://secunia.com/product/4227/

Currently, 3 out of 21 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.

2 of those have been out since August and September. The other has been out since March. Another vulnerability with a PARTIAL fix has been out since May.

Why are there 3 1/2 unpatched vulnerabilities?

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Just because you're popular, doesn't mean you can break the rules.

But that's the nature of the Microsoft Monopoly, isn't it? And they got away with it too. They always seem to get away with it.

That said, I use Windows and IE 6 and OE 6 and Office and Freecell all the time, so maybe I'm part of the problem.

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Mozilla Firefox's security track record is taking the wrong path.

http://secunia.com/product/4227/

Currently, 3 out of 21 Secunia advisories, is marked as "Unpatched" in the Secunia database.

2 of those have been out since August and September.  The other has been out since March.  Another vulnerability with a PARTIAL fix has been out since May.

Why are there 3 1/2 unpatched vulnerabilities?

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Those are kind of obscure vulnerabilties, however they are valid, yes.

http://secunia.com/product/11/

I think I'll take the lesser of the two evils.

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Security:

Both browsers are equally bad (Firefox & IE 1,2,3,4,5,6 & 7). IE 6 was pretty solid when it was first released, then hackers got their way with it over time. Firefox, back in the beta days - also pretty damn solid. Nowadays, it is more popular so hackers spend more time on it to find exploits. So, Firefox is suffering the same fate as IE 6 (And soon to be IE7) in that respect. MS release security patches quicker than Mozilla - I'll let you finish that sentance because it seems pretty obvious where I'm going with that.

Web standards:

Web standards are there so that web devs should just be able to code by the book and EVERY browser SHOULD understand it and render the page correctly. Most browsers do. IE - the most popular browser, doesn't. See the problem there? Web devs have to bend over backwards to compensate for IE's lack of intelligence as far as technologies such as CSS go. That is why many people don't see examples of it: Web devs realise that Joe Public probably uses IE - seeing as it comes built into the Windows operating system. If their sites didn't work in IE - they are throwing away potential customers.

Web devs would be much happier if IE would just understand the damn standards set by the W3C (the Gods if you will of defining web coding standards). Many IE users couldn't give a rats ass about web-devs bending over backwards for websites to work in the rubbish browser - simply because they aren't aware.

Many people were expecting IE7 to be the change for IE's lack of intelligence. But from Beta 1, we can tell that it's not. MS are still going off on their own little journey, annoying web-devs. Sure, it's only a beta. But do you really thing MS are going to rewrite IE's rendering engine in the time between Beta and Final? Of course they aren't! They're too focused on security. Which will no doubt flop horribly. Making something secure and claiming it as secure will only motivate hackers into finding exploits for it.

Basically, if web-devs decided "screw IE - I want to code by the book. I'll just show a messege to IE users that says "Get a decent browser" then that would be it. People will start getting annoyed at MS because the browser they supplied them simply doesn't work - it won't allow users to browse the internet (properly) and it'll be nobodies fault but MS's.

Edit:

Just as sum up of browsers really:

IE = as good security as the next browser - but doesn't follow the web standards which is disapointing

Firefox = as good security as the next browser, slightly better than IE because it hasn't been exploited as much yet - does follow web standards, so there is nothing wrong there - does fail the Acid test though.

Konqueror = the only browser I've heard of that actually passes the Acid test. Bare in mind the Acid test isn't actually written in valid CSS though. It's slightly different to see how well browsers compensate.

Safari = I don't know enough about it to comment.

Opera = same as Safari.

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holy jeez...thanks so much for that

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wow. ive tried IE7, and notice no real difference. looks like the ver 6.0 just with tabs? and a LOT slower. meh

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are you trying to attack my character? oh, you.

I have tried firefox, in fact I have it installed on my system right now.

Firefox 1.0.6

I don't hate it, but I would rather use IE.  there is not reason for me to use firefox, so I would appreciate it if you got off of my back about it.  I think it is slow (takes 7+ seconds to start), when the memory leaks start occuring its a dog, and the whole concept of tabs in a web browser just doesnt fit with me (id rather have my open pages in the taskbar).  also, the gecko engine seems to be a bit slow.

STV

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Hmm, on my system the Gecko engine renders 100-250% faster than the Trident engine does.

---------------------------------

But anyways, Paul is entitled to his opinion, and I am sort of sick of people flaming him for his honest opinion. In the comments for the news article, I saw this:

Let’s get into standards now. Guess what, Paul? Your site, winsupersite.com currently has 124 validation errors, according to the W3C’s Markup Validation Service. Even worse, the page which contains your “Boycott IE” story currently has 207 validation errors.

First thing, It is very very sad for whomever said that, to have time to look that up. His page could possibly be coded to work in IE, and with that, he had to sacrifice valid w3c complience. I see people who have to target someone to make a point, the dumbest person in the room.

I went from IE->Maxthon(at the time it was MyIE2)->Firefox->Opera (Just recently.). I still have all of them on my computer, testing out my coding across browsers. People say that an all CSS design is not standard, but it really is supposed to be. With the exception of tabular data(things you would enter in something like MS Excel), tables should not be used, so far I have found it impossible to make a complex all CSS design that looks perfect in Presto, Gecko, Trident, KHTML, and Gecko at the same time. (Although I have gotton it in everything except the trident engine). Now, I do not care that IE dominates, because even if they rule the market, they should still follow the world's standards, not their own. People that like IE, good for you, but the Web designers of the population have to spend time debugging, sometimes hours, maybe longer, to get everything to work in IE. For people saying we should only develop for IE, that would be such an easy solution, but professionals go the best way, not the easiest. :)

Everyone is entitled to their opinions, not best to challenge them, or you will get people like me intrude, and let me tell you, I never make any sense. :p

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Why not the lesser of the 3? Opera. ;)

Cause it ain't free? (adware)

Who would have thought Microsoft's bitch would say such a thing :whistle:

That's funny. I heard him called that before too on other sites. Reminded me of when Kyle Bennet went all ape-crazy on Nvidia over that Futuremark thing. Sometimes ya gotta cut them apron springs when things get bad, I guess. lol...

But anyways, Paul is entitled to his opinion, and I am sort of sick of people flaming him for his honest opinion.

The part I have the problem with is calling for a boycott. I think that's just silly. But as far as his feelings against Microsoft, I can certainly understand that.

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I've always boycotted IE for too many reasons to post here and when possible, installed Firefox or another alternative on every computer I use or repair! This monopoly has lasted too long and needs to be brought down so Microsoft will be forced to clean up their act! Good call, Thurrot! ;)

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