Allright, so I talked about my growing problems with FireFox recently. So now I was at the biggest webpage on the internet and found a hidden Firefox advertisement in there. The webpage says you should use Firefox, because: “It offers improved speed, security, and simplicity. It’s tabs feature alone makes it worth switching. It’s free.”
Okay, let me give my opinion about that:
- Internet Explorer starts about 3 times as fast as Firefox and in a recent test where someone tested the Javascript speeds of Firefox, Opera and Internet Explorer, they found that Firefox was the slowest! Opera was the fastest by far, even twice as fast as Internet Explorer (number two) on most tests.
- It’s true that Internet Explorer has had more security leaks then Firefox, but Firefox has them as well. And Firefox isn’t used nearly as long and nearly as much as Internet Explorer. It’s the same argument you hear from Apple fans: “Mac is more secure”. No it isn’t. It’s just that the bad guys aren’t interested in investing time on a system that about 1% of the computer users use, when they can attack a system that over 90% of the users use. Internet Explorer has way more marketshare and is therefore a more economical target for crackers. As Firefox gains more marketshare this will change and then we’ll see if it’s secure. It is absolutely true that Firefox responds more quickly to security problems then Microsoft. This is because Internet Explorer is so entangled in Windows and all kinds of applications and it’s available in a gazillion languages. So testing and making sure a security fix doesn’t break someone’s program are very difficult. Because if the fix breaks someone’s program then that’s probably because “Microsoft really wanted to break the program” (just read some of Raymond Chen’s articles and you’ll know that Microsoft takes compatibility very seriously). Ofcourse as an enduser I don’t really care. My browser is vulnerable, so it needs to be fixed, fast. Just keep the economics in mind. A very important thing that most people ignore.
- Why is Firefox more simple then Internet Explorer? I think their equally simple. Ofcourse, I’m, no average Joe when it comes to computers, so maybe I’m wrong, but I don’t see any fundamental differences in the two browsers from a usage perspective.
- Tabs? Internet Explorer 7 has tabs. And Internet Explorer 6 with the MSN toolbar has tabs. Maxthon has tabs. Avant browser has tabs. Opera has tabs. In fact, I think Opera was the first browser ever to have tabs.
- Internet Explorer is free. So are Maxthon, Avant browser and Opera.
I just see a bunch of bullshit arguments.
Extreme Tech has done a browser comparison between Firefox 2.0 beta 1, Internet Explorer 7 beta 3 and Opera 9.0. They have a nice table showing the differences between the browsers. Have a look.
Update:
WildEnte informed that Opera is also free. I hadn’t checked out Opera for a few years, so I was still under the impression it wasn’t.
[Now playing: Rob Zombie - Demon Speeding]
apart from the fact that I agree that firefox is not the best thing since bread came sliced I have two comments:
a) security holes are independent of market share. Users don’t find security holes, it’s security experts that do. And you’d probably guess right by thinking that they rather try to find a security hole in anything that may somehow make it to the press (= prestige) than to search in the ultrasecure software just because it has more market share than the other software.
b) opera is free. not open source, but free. they make money from the mobile and devices market and from the google searchbox (just like firefox does). Since the desktop browser and the mobile/devices one share the same code base, they can use the desktop browsers (where they have most users and a working community) to test the thing and make it stable and all.
It’s true that security holes are independent of market share. But like you said it’s the amount of effort people are willing to put in the find those holes.
It’s not just security experts that find security holes. It’s also the people that, for some reason, love to do bad things with peoples computers. Writing virusses or creating zombie networks for spam. Those are the people that try and find security holes in every application that is reachable throught the internet. They do care about market share and that’s the group I meant. I guess I wasn’t clear on that.
And you’re right about Opera being free. As far as I knew they were still giving away the ad-supported version for free and allowing you to register to remove those ads. I’ll update the article.