Re: OT: Mozilla/Firefox (was:Re: Windoze ends year with a major cert ...)

Bill Gunshannon wrote: 
In article <seKdnZwmQP1shiXeRVn-jQ@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
	Bill Todd <billtodd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> writes:

Bill Gunshannon wrote:

...


"God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot
change, the courage to change the things I can, and the
wisdom to know the difference. " - Reinhold Niebuhr

The final phrase being the crux of the matter in this case. Especially with a Web-based issue like this one, it's surprising how many people still feel that individuals can't come together and actually affect events 


How many Linux users are there worldwide?  Heck, they even have a
marketing branch (which is more than VMS has, but that's another
story).  Who is winning the desktop?  Linux or Windows?

What part of the fact that Linux *still* doesn't directly compete with Windows as a desktop OS (though it's coming closer and closer to becoming a competitor) has managed to escape you? And what relevance does Linux have to a specifically Web-based issue like this one in the first place?

Linux is still basically a 'techie' OS with a small (though growing) cadre of early non-techie adopters which some distributions are catering to. By contrast, Firefox is definitely mainstream: fully competitive with IE and often superior, but without IE's glass jaws (and even if Firefox has some of its own, until the hacking community actually attacks them with the ferocity it demonstrates toward IE Firefox will remain a significantly safer option to use).



(the perception of an unstoppable Itanic juggernaut of a few years ago comes to mind: that perception didn't just fade away on its own, nor was the fade pushed by corporate interests - even IBM was on board at the time, and Sun was only temporizing rather than in its current full-attack mode).


Bad example. Itanic was a mistake from the beginning.

And IE wasn't? Perhaps you need to study browser history a bit more closely.

The main difference between IE and Itanic was Microsoft's ability to leverage its OS dominance (plus its 'integration' of IE with the OS) to get IE into virtually every PC user's system.

Let's consider ourselves fortunate that it was not feasible to bundle Itanic into every IA32 chip.

....

Web browsing is a situation where 1) a large percentage of individuals have a free choice in what to use,


No, they don't.

I guess you have difficulty appreciating the difference between 'a large percentage' and 'a vast majority' - though of course you haven't even managed to refute that latter and much stronger statement.

Over 10% of Web accesses *already* come from Firefox, plus a few percent more from other non-IE alternatives. And that's only an absolute lower bound on the percentage of people with the option to dump IE: given human ignorance and laziness, suggesting that the actual percentage is not far higher (even if which side of 50% is not clear) is silly.

What they use (outside of their house) is dictated by
corporate policy on the part of both the browser and the content side.

Even in cases where this is true (and of course not all businesses have any such policy), some businesses have already opted for alternatives to IE.

....

If the sites you have to access (we're not talking about google, ebay
or yahoo) only work with IE, then you have to use IE.

You have yet to demonstrate that any significant percentage of sites that any major percentage of users 'have to access' 'only work with IE'. And since in my own experience that assertion is complete rubbish, at least *some* kind of substantiation would seem to be required.

Most people will 
not want to have to jump back and forth between different browsers
depending on which site they visit.  And we won;t even go into the
potential problems one can create by installing one of these other
browsers.

Why not? Because you can't document them? I have encountered no side-effects whatsoever from my Firefox installation.

I used to be a big supporter of Opera. Until it broke 
MS updates :-( leaving me with a vulnerable machine that couldn't
be fixed without a reinstall because no matter what I did I could not
make IE my default browser again in order for MS updates to work again.

I've certainly had no problem updating without making IE my default browser (with Firefox as the default), but given my trust in Microsoft I update by manually firing up IE to visit the update site rather than automatically so I suppose that could make a difference. That, in fact, is the *only* situation is which I ever use IE any more.

....

IE isn't likely to disappear, of course. But its days as a de facto standard may well already be fading or gone, with what we're currently seeing just reflecting the fact that updating *existing* sites to meet the real standards isn't that high a priority (given that other browsers don't seem to be having that much difficulty dealing with them anyway). 


It has never been BG's desire to abide by standards.  I see  no reason why
that would change as long as he is on top.  And I see no likelihood of his
being toppled anytime soon.

So what? BG isn't the one making decisions on how to structure sites around the Web: the most he can do is try to entice those who are to use non-standard techniques, and that practice is fading fast.

He may have had a chance to smother Java back in its infancy, in which case ActiveX might have held a firmer grip on the industry. But that opportunity is long gone - and now no Web site designer *needs* anything non-standard that IE has to offer.

- bill
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Getting Fox News to work with Firefox
    ... to do with firefox, fedora, linux or anything at all related to them. ... Windows part of the problem is with firefox on Linux. ... standards will not load on browsers that adhere to the standards. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: Getting Fox News to work with Firefox
    ... to do with firefox, fedora, linux or anything at all related to them. ... Windows part of the problem is with firefox on Linux. ... standards will not load on browsers that adhere to the standards. ...
    (Fedora)
  • Re: OT--should I upgrade to IE 7.0
    ... stretch of the imagination to say that it is standards based. ... serious stretch of the imagination to say that it is secure... ... Sorry Mel can't say because I use Firefox:(. ... web browsers, and have always preferred browsers based on the Mozilla/Gecko ...
    (alt.sys.pc-clone.dell)
  • Re: field validation (was Re: COBOL/DB2 Date edit question)
    ... I don't think people who don't build web sites realise how REALLY hard it is to make everything work across Browsers. ... IE5 it was more like restless sleep, and on Firefox it was a nightmare :-). ... I foresee better support for W3 standards coming in future versions of browsers, not worse; developing to a given standard can help alleviate surprises. ...
    (comp.lang.cobol)
  • OT: Microsoft free houselhold [Was: Re: OT PING ROSE and SYLVIA]
    ... stinkin' IE browsers, that IMO it now looks "Ok" in IE, Safari, ... Firefox, and Konqueror, but GOOD in NONE of them, ... "My" system is running Ubuntu Linux, ... into Windows. ...
    (alt.support.mult-sclerosis)