News Mozilla Feeds on Rival's Woes

The big red Dino has been chomping on "Bills Browser" during the latest scare, according to this Wired Article:

Hackers have long insisted that steering clear of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser is one of the easiest ways to protect computers from many of the security threats that lurk on the Internet.

That suggestion is often greeted with apathy or angry accusations that the geek in question was indulging in Microsoft-bashing -- admittedly a not-uncommon activity in hacker circles.

But last Friday, in response to the latest security exploit involving Microsoft products, the usually staid U.S. government's Computer Emergency Readiness Team, or US-CERT, published a warning strongly suggesting that users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer should switch to another Web browser, due to "significant vulnerabilities" in technologies included in IE.

Gary Schare, director of the Windows Client Division at Microsoft, said that CERT's advice had been misrepresented in much of the press coverage.

"Microsoft certainly respects the work CERT does to help protect the Internet and users. Regarding the consideration that users switch browsers, it is unfortunate that the published articles have misrepresented CERT's suggestions, and we are working with CERT to clarify their advice," Schare said.

But many evidently took CERT's warning to heart and downloaded Mozilla or Mozilla's Firefox, free, open-source Web browsers developed and distributed by the Mozilla Organization, who resurrected the remnants of Netscape after it was purchased by AOL in 1999.

Downloads of Mozilla and Firefox -- an advanced version of Mozilla -- spiked the day CERT's warning was released, and demand has continued to grow. According to Chris Hofmann, engineering director at the Mozilla Foundation, formed last July to promote the development, distribution and adoption of Mozilla Web applications, downloads of the browsers hit an all-time high on Thursday, from the usual 100,000 or so downloads on a normal day to more than 200,000.

More here

It'd be interesting to see how many people who downloaded Mozilla or Firefox stick with it, now that the flap is over...

 

beat you to it http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=62607

 

<pedantic_mode>

firefox is not an advanced version of moz, it's a browser only version.

</pedantic_mode>


hey... i hear nits are in season, pick them while you can!

 

Well, here's one convert.

 

Well done. Good boy. Have a cookie.

 

Can someone tell me the difference between Mozilla (normal) and Firefox? No-one will tell me, especially Mr Google.com. I generally use Opera, but it doesn't work for some sites (Eg GMail). I wasn't that impressed with normal Mozilla (Well, it doesn't beat Opera anyway in my eyes), but if Firefox is better/different, I may d/l it.

 

http://texturizer.net/firefox/faq.html#q1.3

Try it out

 

The only reason I didn't convert years ago is because it takes longer to load the program and I don't know how to slipstream it with the "My Computer" address bar thing. Because the my comp program just loads so much faster... if anyone can tell me how to set that to work I'll give you an e-high-five and be switching over any time now.

 

Wow, not only has that site answered my question, but it's also provided a plugin so I can use the opera mouse gestures in Firefox. Best of every world. Thanks

 

LOL

It looks like the word is finally getting out to the masses that Firefox is, simply, more secure than IE no matter what MS tries to tell everyone.

 

This is just the first step to outright banning IE.... hopefully that should be done within a matter of months....

 

Am I the only one that just doesn't like firefox?? Ive been using for a week and I've gone back to IE. The main thing I HATE about it is how images load. I really don't like the placeholders and the way images download. (something which is easily changed in IE incidentally ) thats not the only reason though. lol

Its staying on for testing purposes and its taught me a lot about cross browser compatibilities, but I don't like it.
I have never had a problem with IE so why change what i'm used to?!!

 

Because Mozilla doesn't virtually invite spyware and other programs to install themselves all over your nice shiny OS? Because it suppresses popups and assumes that the end user might actually have a clue instead of blatantly following the instructions on the page, regardless of what those instructions are?

Sorry, but I've had too many installations trashed by IE to use it unless I really want to view a page written in MS compliant code, instead of HTML.

 

IE doesn't interpret HTML the right way, it's its own freaking language it seems.... I hate the way it does tables etc....

The placeholder for FireFox doesn't bother, I don't care for it alot, but as long as the writer of the page was decent and set each images dimentions, there's really no problem....