Surprising analysts, the share of Microsoft’s Web browser dips again as Mozilla’s open-source Firefox browser gains momentum ahead of its launch.
How Low Will Firefox Let Internet Explorer Go?
About The Author
Eugenia Loli
Ex-programmer, ex-editor in chief at OSNews.com, now a visual artist/filmmaker.
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Yeah I agree with author. Its hard to tell if MS is actually taking IE seriously. Maybe MS really does not care about IE? Who knows. Maybe it just wants to keep IE around as a base webbrowser so that you can be guaranteed a webbrowser is installed for things like help files, basic browsing…and what not. Who knows…maybe IE will turn out like another wordpad. Not a full fledged MS word, but not a notepad either.
BTW…I know firefox has an activeX plugin(s). Anyone here actually use it? Does it prompt you each time or are there safelists…
Yamin
how log is MS really willing to let it go. They’re not doing anything! Mozilla.org is gonna run all over them. I guess Billy G just doesnt care. Its definately for the best.
If Mozilla is going to run all over IE, then you guys have to download FireFox and burn it because if Windows comes with no browser, where can you find a browser to download a browser?
I guess I will fetch one via FTP, like we all did a decade ago.
But IE is part of the OS now, I would not worry about that anytime soon. IE 7 is at our doorsteps anyway…
A web browser isn’t the only way to exchange data over the net.
Microsoft just sees the browser as a part of the OS (correctly – even if not “technically”) because most users will just use what comes with the Computer they buy. If their computer comes with Mozilla, then that’s what they will use, or Netscape 4.x – that’s what they will use.
To increase Mozilla’s browser share, alternative OSs have to increase in share as well.
BTW…I know firefox has an activeX plugin(s). Anyone here actually use it? Does it prompt you each time or are there safelists…
I wanted to try it, but from what I read on the Mozillazine forums, it doesn’t work on the latest version with Adblock installed – no thanks.
As for Mozilla, what’s going to happen to the plain ‘vanilla’ version .. are they going to kill it or continue developing it along with Firefox ?
It is also possible that Firefox gets bundled with Windows by some pc-makers…
Probably in a version modified to suite the needs of the pc-maker.
Well, its not likely but it could happen!
Perhaps someone that wants to offer Linux in the future, that would be a good step to break ground for that, to let the users get used to their future browser.
I don’t think Microsoft is too worried about letting their share of IE slip. They still have over 90% of the web browser market so it can slip until 2006 when Longhorn may be released. However, there’s more to the story than that. Microsoft wants to get rid of the browser and use services or applets. This might explain why they haven’t had a major update to IE.
MS is no longer doing stand alone browsers. The only OS with IE upgrades is for XP not 2000. Once Longhorn hits, IE and XP are no longer going to get upgrades.
MS relegated w2k to the scrap heap 2 years ago, only maintance releases, no browser improvement, nothing. This wont happen to XP yet. So a good chunk of users have time.
I prefer Mozilla over IE any day of the week. Hope the Mozilla branch hangs around for a while. Nothing wrong with Firefox, I just prefer the way Mozilla works.
“We think they’ll find the site compatibility with IE is better, the support from Microsoft is better and that the compatibility with business applications is better—all the things that drove them to use IE in the first place,” he said.”
Maybe because MS makes their own standard which does not correspond to the w3c standard. So basically that limits the web to MS users alone.
“Microsoft has not released a major version of Internet Explorer in three years, since it launched IE 6. The company increasingly has tied IE development to the development path for its Windows operating system.”
Yeah… o’sure, thats a real good thing… keeping the same browser around at 5 year streaches… When people realize that the development pace of OSS and having new features added every few months or semi-annualy… I think that users will wake up and use a different product…
To summarize:
1) Intergrating a browser and an OS is a bad thing.
2) Uprgading a browser with the release of an OS, is also a bad thing. When its 5 years apart.
3) Charging 300 USD for a new OS just to get a new browser, with some precieved enhancements? Not a good thing either.
4) Pot of coffee for Bill G. STAT!!!!!
Read http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/APIWar.html
Joel. Especially the Web Part
1. Mozilla Foundation reversed their stance on killing off the Mozilla Suite a while back; too many corporate users were digging it, apparently.
2. MS doesn’t need to worry much about the home browser market. It’s the corporate market where browser-independence would be one step closer to ditching windows. But, from things like Exchange Server webmail to legacy Visual Basic scripts, they’ve got a solid position for the forseeable future. I would imagine.
3. I don’t think Firefox will see near 10% of the market in 2005. Much web activity happens at work (see point 2), but beyond that, the Web is far beyond the point where the majority of people are early adpoters. “Back in the day,” it was easy to propogate new standards. These days, the uninformed rule. Stupid inertia.
The reason for no radical changes to IE/OE are simple, the rendering and scripting performance is radically better than the others, there’s no need. The next big thing will be DRM and authentication built into the OS and browser with accounts handling and online payments for content or services. The features will be compelling enough for web developers to stay with Win, they won’t have a choice anyway. OTOH, prison guards have to surf the web too, and they really do need a *highly* usable and secure browser. This is where most of the OSS/FS stuff will eventually end-up, high security envirornments.
Maybe Microsoft wants Firefox to gain a significant hold in the marketplace. Microsoft probably realizes the need to switch to a more standards-based browser, but they didn’t want to be the ones to fork it on people first, because they didn’t want web developers getting upset with them for breaking the old proprietary code. So they’re letting Firefox get a hold in the market to the point where web developers can no longer ignore it. By the time Longhorn comes out, Microsoft will have come up with a totally revamped, standards-compliant IE, and by that time everyone will be happy about it.
Microsoft seems to realize the futility of trying to create a browser lock-in strategy. It makes web developers’ lives harder, and has ceased creating much revenue for them (the only licensee of IE I can think of is AOL, and I can’t remember the last time I heard of someone developing with MS FrontPage). For the future, they seem to be banking on .NET extensions for corporate applications and consumer “web services”, rather than on a direct stranglehold of the browsing experience. This is good, because perhaps web developing will finally be truly write-once, run anywhere. On the other hand, I expect IE to gain back most of the market share it lost, as people find it once again meets their needs on new computers.
The portion it will never win back, though, is in the alternative OS sector, which will continue growing. In addition to some Mozilla variant being the browser of choice on Linux, there has been talk of integrating the Gecko engine into a future version of Mac OS. Ultimately, the browser wars will not be an issue anymore; rather, the OS wars will take center stage. This will be a long, drawn-out process, probably to end in another corporate domination of some sort, but I would not be surprised if Microsoft ended up as a niche player, still making money, but not as visible. In fact, I would argue that Microsoft’s current all-encompassing pursuit of every market under the sun is a strategy to brace themselves for the impending doom of a paradigm shift that they can feel looming ahead.
IE is no longer applicable, unless your running XP. And if your are running XP their wont be any more upgrades to the browser until Longhorn. Its that simple. Now The Boston Globe is asking people why they use Firefox / Mozilla. Lets do a survey?
Why do you use IE?
Why do you use Firefox? Here are my responses to why I use Mozilla / Firefox:
Why I use Mozilla/Firefox:
1) Speed up your internet connection:
a) Pipelining: When you browser connects to a web page, it goes through several steps. Steps kind of look like this:
aa) Browser says, send me text
ab) Broswer says get me all you pic
ac) Browser says get me what ever else is on the web page.
Now, pipelining says: Get me all of that. Yes it takes care of all those request at once so it doesnt piece meal it together. Now your connection is more efficient and the end result = faster browser experience.
b) Blocking those ads: Well other than turning the web into one giant commercial, those pop-ups, banners and so one do one thing (other than annoy), it takes away your bandwidth. You only have so much bandwidth to look at the web pages or doing your downloads. If you block all those commercials, what happens, you have more bandwidth for what you want to do.
2) Annoyances:
a) POP UP FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No pop up adds. People pay some good money for software to block pop ups. Yes, its built right into Firefox and Mozilla (for years).
b) Want to disable blinking text? You know the all obnoxious adds on web pages. How about banner ads? Only one simple change and you can make the web less annoying.
c) Get a simple plug-in and make the Web Ad free. No commercials. Yes you can make the web the way it was back 10 years ago. No commercials, no ad’s, just pure browsing bliss.
d) 100 and 100’s of plug-in’s to extend the capabilities of your browser and make your browser your own. Its not prepackage, one size fits all. You can customize it to your own tastes. And for the record, have you ever gone to a store and bought something that said “one-size fits all”? Guess what, one-size does not fit all.
3) Privacy!!!
a) Only accept cookies for the current session and they are flushed when the browser gets shuts down. Cookies are a security risk, some web sites will read your cookies to see were you have been and determine what you have been doing (like shopping).
b) Cache, your stored web pages on your hard drive. Yep, those also get flushed when I shut down my browswer. And yes, some web sites will try to read your cache. Were would my privacy be with out mozilla.
c) Disable refer. Basically when you click on a link to connect to the next web site, it states where you just came from. Now, why must I be a tool for their marketing purposes.
4) Security:
a) No Active X in Firefox or Mozilla. Its virus/trojan magnet for commercial browsers. No, thanks, I like being in control of my PC and not letting other people be in charge of it.
5) Tab browsing (What is it?):
a) Imagine open 10 browser windows. Your tool bar gets really crowded, not to pretty. How about if you could open up all 10 browser up in one window. Now you have space for your other applications on your tool bar. Great way to organize space when you have multiple windows open. Trust me, its way better than it sounds.
6) FONTS!!!!:
a) All those lovely fonts, yes, the words on your screen. Every have a web site that uses fonts that are just too small to read. You actually need a magnifing glass to read them. Not in Firefox/Mozilla. One quick mouse click or one key board command and your text goes up in size. IE: 100%, 120%, 150%, 200%, 300% more. You can have it with the next generation of browsers.
These are just a few reasons that I use Mozilla / Firefox. The value that has been added to my browsing experience cannot even be measured. I actually feel quite disturbed by not having any of these features in commercial browsers. The innovation, speed, privacy, security all that and a bag of chips. Well, ok, you have me, I had to buy the chips. But Mozilla and Firefox are FREE.
How can this be FREE, it sounds too good to be true. Well, the people that make the browser are users too. It appears that they must have gotten tired of what the commercial world had to offer, so they created their own. Here is an analogy: Have you ever made something for yourself? Ever cook yourself something special, just because you deserve it? Its it better than what you find in the stores? Guess what, THIS IS FIREFOX / MOZILLA!!!
Come along for the ride, all are welcome to join in the fun!!!!
>If Mozilla is going to run all over IE, then you guys have
>to download FireFox and burn it because if Windows comes
>with no browser, where can you find a browser to download
>a browser?
I almost hate coming here because of myopic statements like the one above. I think it is obvious FTP and Bittorrent do a fine job of distributing software. I have not had Internet Explorer on ANY personal PC in years, and still have managed to download Mozilla and Opera just fine. Of course, I am not chained to the Windows environment, so no OS I have used even has IE available for it. My suggestion is to throw Windows out of yout computer, not your computer out the Window.
“2. MS doesn’t need to worry much about the home browser market. It’s the corporate market where browser-independence would be one step closer to ditching windows. But, from things like Exchange Server webmail to legacy Visual Basic scripts, they’ve got a solid position for the forseeable future. I would imagine. ”
Speaking from personal experience, we are an all Windows shop. Our websites backend, a lot of our application, microsoft.com, windows update, etc. all require Internet Explorer. Thus, chances are that if you were to take a peak on my desktop, you will see Internet Explorer open. However, for the vast majority of my websurfing habits, I use Firefox. It is just so fast and stable. It is extremely clean. And I just can’t imagine surfing the web without tabs and without pop up blocking. For me, Internet Explorer has become the equivalent to an application for work and Firefox has become my web browser.
Popup blocking is mentioned as one of Firefox’s strengths. Even the new version of IE included with XP SP2 has it.
Well, popup blocking isn’t going to do any good. I’m already running into all sorts of DHTML / CSS popups. They are not opening in separate windows, that is true. But they still appear on top of the page that I want to read, so they achieve the same effect.
The particularly annoying ones use CSS in such a way that if Javascript is disabled, the popup ad covers the text and doesn’t go away.
So you see, popup blocking may have been nice, but is already obsolete.
MS doesn’t see a future in IE. They have passed off on HTML/X-HTML/XML/CSS/etc as being the thing. They got their market and are just holding on.
They will release a new “version” of IE with Longhorn which will simply tie into Avalon. The idea will be to use Avalon’s XML to develop web applications. This will remove the need for HTML/CSS/etc.
They are hoping to keep enough market share to have instant domination by this.
Just my thought on it, but its very plausible.
Popup blocking is mentioned as one of Firefox’s strengths. Even the new version of IE included with XP SP2 has it.
However, marketing scum have already found ways around the IE6 SP2 blocker, so maybe if they continue to exploit that, we’ll see less of the annoying CSS layered ones.
The main reasons i use firefox are
1) Tabs
2) its lightweight
As soon as IE had Tabs firefox is history.
I’m going to have to disagree on that one…
“… the rendering and scripting performance is radically better than the others…”
Rendering: No. Gecko is the most standards-compliant (==best) rendering engine. Scripting: Firefox does Javascript fine. IE has proprietary extensions that no-one should be using anyway. And things like ActiveX, also known as “gaping security holes”.
“The next big thing will be DRM and authentication built into the OS and browser…”
I certainly hope digital restriction management will not be built in. With Windows it probably will – I shall not be partaking though. I don’t believe it will be the ‘next big thing’; I can rip CD’s just fine now. Why do I need my OS telling me when I can or can’t rip them?
We already have online payment; go to amazon.com or any online retailer. Amazon is a totally Linux setup, and the site works fine in any browser. Why compromise that?
“prison guards have to surf the web too, and they really do need a *highly* usable and secure browser”
I don’t see that one at all. Why? Yes, there are lots of criminals, but they’re all in cells – this is why it’s called a prison. Surely they don’t generally surf the internet at all, let alone on the guard’s computers?
People have been conditioned to think the web IS the net and that is sad! I recently hooked up my SE/30 to the internet for fun. I used good old fashioned FTP to find a browser! ftp to http://ftp.netscape.net. Not ftp://ftp.netscape.net. I used an ftp client, imagine that!
why people are mad on microsoft that it builds ie in os? in kde for example, we have built konqueror in. it is set as default browser. the same is with music and video players. you say, in linux i can change default browser. in windows you can too.
I have no konqueror in kde. try removing IE from windows. heck even media player or windows messenger in xp is forced installed. you have NO option. You can use any browser but IE is still there
Use AdBlock (adblock.mozdev.org), it blocks css/dhtml/other-shit layers too …
its a shame so many people have to surf the web in total fear of being taken over, try using a os with security built in and am not speaking of windows and IE.
“…>If Mozilla is going to run all over IE, then you guys have
>to download FireFox and burn it because if Windows comes
>with no browser, where can you find a browser to download
>a browser…? ”
Q: Why was Netscape 2 & 3 so popular back in the day even though IE came preinstalled on Windows 3.x & 95?
A: Because EVERY Internet Service Provider (ISP) distributed their ‘Internet’ software with Netscape, and Netscape was installed automatically with a nice little icon on the desktop.
Therefore, if FireFox ever wants to see more than 5-6% of the market then it will require a major ISP (or multiple smaller ISPs) to distribute their ‘Internet’ software with FireFox, and a pretty icon on the desktop. Sadly, AOL had this chance with Netscape, but BLEW IT! If their ‘New Browser’ were to be based off Netscape or FireFox it would have taken a BIG chunk out of the IE market, but they decided to base it off IE. ***sigh***
As a web developer, IE drives me NUTS! While CSS support in Mozilla and Safari isn’t perfect, Internet Explorer is just terrible. I’m glad to see Firefox doing so well. Hopefully, it will get MS to improve their browser – or enough people will use Firefox that Internet Explorer will become what Netscape is now.
Q: Why was Netscape 2 & 3 so popular back in the day even though IE came preinstalled on Windows 3.x & 95?
A: Because EVERY Internet Service Provider (ISP) distributed their ‘Internet’ software with Netscape, and Netscape was installed automatically with a nice little icon on the desktop.
Firstly, IE was never distributed with Windows 3.x and was only part of Windows 95 after the OSR2 version in mid 1996, which was OEM only.
Secondly, Netscape was so popular because until each browser hit their 3.x version, Navigator was clearly superior (the 3.x versions were a wash and with IE4, IE became the better browser). Certainly, ISP distribution had something to do with it, but ISPs were distributing IE as well.
Therefore, if FireFox ever wants to see more than 5-6% of the market then it will require a major ISP (or multiple smaller ISPs) to distribute their ‘Internet’ software with FireFox, and a pretty icon on the desktop.
No, it just has to be better and known about – as is happening now. Don’t be in such a rush – it took Microsoft *years* to knock off Navigator, even with the dual advantages of being a better product *and* integrated into the OS.
Sadly, AOL had this chance with Netscape, but BLEW IT! If their ‘New Browser’ were to be based off Netscape or FireFox it would have taken a BIG chunk out of the IE market, but they decided to base it off IE. ***sigh***
Or perhaps IE was a better product for their needs at the time? at
Now The Boston Globe is asking people why they use Firefox / Mozilla. Lets do a survey? Why do you use IE?
Sure!
Why I use Mozilla/Firefox:
1) Speed up your internet connection:
a) Pipelining: Now your connection is more efficient and the end result = faster browser experience.
It is oversimplification. Persistent connection is what improved browsing performance a lot when HTTP 1.1 was introduced. Persistent conenction is supported by all browsers for ages.
Meaning: IE had it before FireFox.
Pipelining is not that much of improvement, comparing to gains given by persistent connection.
If you block all those commercials, what happens, you have more bandwidth for what you want to do.
Not sure what is it. Pop-up blocking? IP address blocking of sites feeding commercials. I will pass on it.
a) POP UP FREE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! No pop up adds. People pay some good money for software to block pop ups.
SP2 has pop-up blocker. Google offers pop-up blocker. MSN offers pop-up blocker. Other vendors offer pop-up blockers for IE- many of them free. Just use their plug-in’s to extend the capabilities of your browser and make your browser your own. Its not prepackage, one size fits all.
IE can do that as well as FireFox does, and you have many more choices of blockers: it is freedom of end user, after all- to choose optional components.
b) Want to disable blinking text?
Haven’t seen that one for years. You mean, infamous Mozilla innovated BLINK tag in HTML?
IE beats FireFox.
You know the all obnoxious adds on web pages. How about banner ads? Only one simple change and you can make the web less annoying.
Can do it with IE and Windows. In fact, there are manuals on the Web listing ways to block banners regardless of the browser you use.
IE is same as FireFox if I understood what you are talking here.
100 and 100’s of plug-in’s to extend the capabilities of your browser and make your browser your own. Its not prepackage, one size fits all.
ActiveX controls, plug-ins, browser helpers. IE was extendable before FireFox even existed. The fact that bad people abused flexibility and extendability of IE is not relevant here. Just watch when they offer their spyware ‘helpers’ to FireFox users.
IE is as extendable as FireFox is, and more.
a) Only accept cookies for the current session and they are flushed when the browser gets shuts down.
You can configure IE to do that. Don’t remember when this happened in IE, so I’ll say that both IE and FireFox have it now.
b) Cache, your stored web pages on your hard drive. Yep, those also get flushed when I shut down my browswer.
That feature had been in IE for ages.
IE had it before FireFox.
c) Disable refer. Basically when you click on a link to connect to the next web site, it states where you just came from.
Not sure if IE has it, because that is only relevant for most paranoid folks.
But to be fair, I can even say that FireFox beats IE in that feature. Score one for a new guy!
a) No Active X in Firefox or Mozilla.
You can disable ActiveX in IE. So, you are more free with IE than with FireFox: IE has feature yuo can disable, FireFox does not have feature at all.
IE beats FireFox.
5) Tab browsing (What is it?):
a) Imagine open 10 browser windows. Your tool bar gets really crowded, not to pretty.
No, it does not. Try IE on XP (original, SP1, SP2). Open over 5 browsers- tool bar makes tabs out of them. Hard to explain- cool to use. Had been before FireFox.
I can credit IE with that because IE is Windows integrated.
IE had this feature (in different representation, true) before FireFox.
By the way, tabbed browsing the way it is done in FireFox and Opera is hacker magnet for phishing. Quoting TheRegister: “within the last few weeks we received even worse news: many of our favorite (and some not-so-favorite) web browsers were vulnerable to phishing using a particularly clever attack vector: the tabs that many of us have come to know, love, and depend upon.”
You actually need a magnifing glass to read them. Not in Firefox/Mozilla. One quick mouse click or one key board command and your text goes up in size.
I can change size of the text in Web page in IE, too.
IE and FireFox both offer that feature.
But Mozilla and Firefox are FREE.
IE is free, too.
So, IE is on par with FireFox in every feature discussed, except one irrelevant ‘referrer.’
Why should people dump IE, again? Perhaps, because they don’t know how to disable ActiveX in it?
You should, of course, RTFM if you want to use IE to its fullest, like any other software package.
I know how to use IE, why should I use Mozilla / Firefox?
By Russian Guy (IP: —.cpe.net.cable.rogers.com) – Posted on 2004-11-03 00:45:28
Don’t like it? Don’t use it.
Don’t use it? Don’t bitch about it.
lets see
IE is windows only. firefox is cross platform.
IE has a bad security history than any other browser. Active X is just one of the reasons
“IE is as extendable as FireFox is, and more. ”
No. its not. tell me the equivalent of web developer or adblock extensins amoung hundreds offered in updates.mozilla.org
“Meaning: IE had it before FireFox. ”
almost every one of these features were in mozilla before IE
”
No, it does not. Try IE on XP (original, SP1, SP2). Open over 5 browsers- tool bar makes tabs out of them. Hard to explain- cool to use. Had been before FireFox”
you mean window grouping is better than tabs and everyone should be using XP for this. tell that to fluxbox. tabs are completely different usage pattern from tabs. please revise your logic.
“You mean, infamous Mozilla innovated BLINK tag in HTML?”
it was done by netscape and not supported by mozilla trunk. everyone isnt using windows sp2 and hence popup blocking shouldnt be a seperate software. it should be built in. tying a browser forcefully into the OS is just plain wrong anyway
IE is free? How do you get IE without buying Windows?
Sure I run Linux on my computer and have IE on it for web development purposes. I loathe IE but I understand people use it. But according to the agreements as I understand it (and I may be wrong) I must have a viable Windows license to operate IE on my computer. I do, I bought the computer with Windows on it. I don’t call that free…
There’s no changes to ie for thesome reason there’ll be no more of directx. Microsofts current focus goes to (attempting) fixing xp and developeing longhorn where i bet the web browser will be completely different. And because of the changes they will make to it, they dont want to waste time on porting it to older windows. Besides, i’ll bet they’ll use the features to put a spin on the product. Would the features be new if they were available in xp?
First of all, you obviously don’t understand what the guy is talking about regarding advertising. He’s referring to the adblock extension – http://adblock.mozdev.org. Basically it’s a very advanced content filter; you create a list of regular expressions to which server names are matched, and you can *completely block* content from servers that match the regexps – the content is never even downloaded, it’s not simply hidden. The page is automatically reformatted to take advantage of the space freed up by the omitted advertising. This is by far the most flexible and powerful content filter available for any browser, and much more powerful than any filtering you can do on IE. A fairly small list of regexp’s, thanks to the great expressive power of the regexp system, can cover practically all the major advertising servers.
Not all pop-up blockers are created equal; Firefox’s is one of the best I’ve used, along with Galeon’s. SP2’s is also very good, but not quite as good. There are a lot of different ways to create unwanted pop-ups which you have to block, and no less important it’s a very bad thing to block *desired* pop-ups.
Are you sure you can flush IE’s cache on exit? I don’t see any such option in its preferences.
Tab browsing is an absolute essential for any browser. The XP feature which combines lots of windows spawned by a single browser into one taskbar entry and then lets you choose from a menu when you click on it is kludgey and braindead and extremely, extremely annoying – I turn it off immediately on any Windows machine I use. A tabbed interface within the browser is miles, miles better.
Wish Bush would go this easily. I have been using Mozilla and now firefox as my primary browser for 4 years now. Last week one of my clients switched to it on his own. A police-officer not a geek. I think the spyware problems of IE are what is driving it.
But according to the agreements as I understand it (and I may be wrong) I must have a viable Windows license to operate IE on my computer. I do, I bought the computer with Windows on it. I don’t call that free…
Then you’ll agree Linux isn’t free because you need to buy a computer to use it ?
“Why should people dump IE, again? Perhaps, because they don’t know how to disable ActiveX in it?”
Honestly, it’s not as simple as that. You need to hack shcdocl.dll if you want to get rid of the endless dialog “ActiveX is not enabled” if on 2k or lower (i run 98 along with linux), and it gets rid of useful things. Trusted zone would be nice, but many sites use servers other than the one in the address bar so it doesn’t work in practice, and you’re left scartching your head “why not”? (e.,g yahoo.com). Active Scripting is still a vuln.
I’ve personally switched to Opera, thank god it’s multiplatform cuz I’m sick of Windows spyware too >:/
Then you’ll agree Linux isn’t free because you need to buy a computer to use it ?
I think you missed his point.IE is installed wether you want it or not.So IE isn’t free chosen but forced upon you.
in fact, his point is that if you buy a PC with Windows on it, you’re paying for a Windows license, and thus for IE.
Anonymous: I have no konqueror in kde. try removing IE from windows. heck even media player or windows messenger in xp is forced installed. you have NO option. You can use any browser but IE is still there.
are you using filemanager from kde? i’m asking because konqueror is integrated with it. kde in default installation (from sources and in many distros) has built konqueror in. it is, if I remember, in kde-base package.
“you can *completely block* content from servers that match the regexps – the content is never even downloaded, it’s not simply hidden. The page is automatically reformatted to take advantage of the space freed up by the omitted advertising.”
There is an option in adblock that allows you make the content downloaded but hidden (not the default, thank God). Apparently some people want this.
If you don’t like Konqueror, you have many options within Linux.
a) If you use Debian, simply remove it.
b) Use Gnome or XFCE or Rox, … , combined with Firefox, Mozilla, Dillo, …
c) Use the console with lynx, links, elinks, links-gui, w3m, …
However, if you don’t like Internet Explorer, within Windows the only option is:
a) Use Windows-xx-Lite, but that isn’t really intended by Microsoft.
So there is a big difference between the integration of Konqueror in KDE and IE in Windows.
Guys and gals,
I am using Firefox RC1 which is slick and nice. I used Opera for years, and still do on mobile devices. I was using Mozilla 1.7 but moved to Firefox because I do not use the mail, newsreader etc. But here is some more info for you all;
You can get tabbed browsing in IE by installing MaxThon from http://www.myie2.com/html_en/home.htm – I used this for a while on Win2K and it really does enhance IE quite substantially.
You can get rid of ads from any browser by using an add blocking proxy service. The one I use is free and available at sourceforge – https://sourceforge.net/projects/adextinguisher/ – it comes equipped with a comprehensive blocking list (format similar to the AdBlocker extension). It has the added advantage that it works for any browser – just point at the proxy service and away you go. The AdBlocker extension for Firefox has had some problems screwing up things, and personally, I was never able to load a blocking list at all.
Has anyone measure rendering performance IE v. FF/Mozilla ???
Yeah, I thought I what I wrote implied that, but I guess not
. Thanks for clarifying.
I used MyIE2 for a few days on a friend’s computer, and my impression was that it has the same problem as every other IE bolt-on; because it’s not really a new product it feels clunky and awkward, really like a big lump of extra stuff stuck onto IE with superglue. It does have the essential functionality, but I’d massively prefer to use Firefox. Yes, ad blocking proxies work, but it’s a rather more complex solution. At least, I never could be arsed to set up a proxy, but I got adblock running in five minutes.
Oh, and I completely forgot to mention the other must-have Firefox feature – RSS bookmarking. I have the RSS feeds for OSNews, Linux Today, BBC News, Neil Gaiman’s journal and The Register on my bookmark toolbar. Invaluable.
I rather liked Maxthon, especially compared to IE6. Yes, its an add-on, but that means IE compatibility, which is sadly a requirement for many sites. I liked it, YMMV, and I think I will put it back on my machine for my “IE required” browsing.
Well, ad extinguisher has an installer and it installs/runs as a Service. I think the installer sets up the browser for you as well. “Set and forget” I think less than 2 minutes does the trick.
As far as I could see, there was no list of Ad sites to block with the AdBlocker extension.
Are you sure you can flush IE’s cache on exit? I don’t see any such option in its preferences.
Open Tools/Internet Options/Advanced
Select Empty Temporary Internet Files folder when browser is closed
aha, thanks. I guess my eyes glazed over before I got that far down the list when I tried to find it myself
. Sheesh, that’s a lot of options.
@dweeb – you can find some very good suggested filter lists on the adblock forums, there’s a sticky thread with some known-good sets. I use one of those with some extras to suit my particularly favourite sites. That proxy installation does sound very easy, though – the last tutorial I read used a much more complex setup
“I have no konqueror in kde. try removing IE from windows. heck even media player or windows messenger in xp is forced installed. you have NO option. You can use any browser but IE is still there”
So dont use IE then! Or are you just looking for ways to complain about Microsoft and IE? Seriously, if you are concerned over the amount of space needed for those few applications, then you probably need a new hard drive. Linux may be run on super small hard drive, but the last time I did an install with the same level of usability as Windows, I needed about the same amount of space that Windows needs.
All that Internet Explorer is good for is for downloading Firefox a little easier then using FTP.