Shoutbox

In the last month there have been many changes in the browser-world.
After the red alert of MSIE about all security holes and bugs in it and the respawn of the old good browse-war, in which other browsers have been re-discovered and like mystified, sometimes.
Facts are facts: IE has losed average 5% of presence after many years of a predominantly stable 95%, even when IE was cause of trials in which it was reckoned as a monopolizing activity.
In the meanwhile a new Gecko based browser (like Netscape and Mozilla) appeared as the new face of the Mozilla tech front-end: Firefox. With the alerts its version 0.8 increased its presence a 20% in a couple of months.

But...

In 5 weeks there have been 4 updates of Firefox where many security-related bugs (some even fosilized old Gecko-kernel ones) have been discovered and fixed: 0.9, 0.9.1, 0.9.2, 0.9.3...

Doesn't it look like as in Microsoft where any security bug is being patched?

Should we understand this since it is a (late) beta version?



PS: I would not like to turn this into a BrowseWars-Thread. This is completely about Firefox. Do not try to advertise other browsers with better features, less bugs or whatever. Just post what you think about Firefox' evolution and future

Sadly I can't vote in your poll as none of the answers really suit how I feel about Firefox. I shall endeavour to elaborate

I think as Firefox gains popularity, more and more bugs will be discovered. Many of these will be small, and some like recently will be quite critical and require immediate fixes.

The latest bug fixes were made before any code was written to exploit it. And such bugs are fixed fairly rapidly and distributed accordingly. The question is, should we worry that the Firefox developers are keeping us safe, albeit by releasing new versions within a relatively small space of time? I am happy to download new versions when they are released. People on slow connections might not be so willing to do so however.

Your point about Firefox being a beta (or preview as Mozilla like to call it) is quite an interesting one. On the one hand you could argue that since Firefox hasn't yet reached version 1, update and bugs are to be expected. On the other hand, you will find people that will argue that major flaws should be less frequent as we get closer to a final release version.

People will always compare Firefox to IE, which is not surprising considering IE is what most people are "switching" from. IE is currently in its sixth revision, so there has been far more time to refine it and fix bugs and security flaws. Does Firefox benefit from security from obscurity? Is it less popular and thus less subject to attacks? Will we see a vast number of new bugs as Firefox grows in popularity? To be honest I think not. In any large piece of software, you will get bugs, and things people are not happy with. A web browser is a huge piece of technology, even though it can seem simple to some people. I think the Firefox developers are doing a great job.

Firefox is doing what Opera, Netscape and even Mozilla haven't done. And that is to seriously start to threaten IE's dominance on the global stage. The amount of press that Firefox gets is untrue for something yet to hit version 1.0

We can have all the ifs and buts, but lets look at the now. Currently I would say Firefox is more secure than IE. Currently. Currently Firefox outstrips IE for features that I find genuinely useful. Anyone who uses Firefox as their main browser does not like going back to IE. I sure don't! In short, at this current point in time, Firefox is easily the best browser currently available for me personally.

Finally I would say not to worry. Bug will be found, bugs will be fixed. Its that simple. If in future things change, then things change, lets not get over excited about it. Heck, just over 18 months ago, I had never even heard of Firefox (probably because it was called Firebird back then )

* bach_m is on the .9 branch

its got better features.

I think that Firefox is on its way to maturity, and as this is "crunch time," the developers are becoming more concerned with making the most-bug free version.
As well, these arn't major updates to warrant a major version number increase. they have bugfixes mostly. no new features make it into these new releases. It is an effort to make people upgrade. most people wouldn't download a new nightly everyday, so they make it a "security release"

Add a vote option "I think that Firefox is buggy" so i can vote...

i love firfox and i did not know it was in beta stages but i am very happy with it just the features are great for me and i love the themes i am very happy with firefox and will use it forever and no i do not think it is buggy

I'm part of the .9 group...As soon as I updated I felt the browser somehow felt smoother and haven't had any bugs...I like the new free animated image display, whatever the framerate it looks very smooth, this may sound small but when you look at all the animated .gifs out there and then we can see them looking nice for once. The decision I made to upgrade to 0.9 was one of the best...I can't wait for the final release of Firefox...

(I just added one option and made the "buggy" option clearer)

Btw, I'm 90% with Jeronimo, although I don't have much time now to explain (it takes a whole while more for me to express myself in English properly ).

Only 90% ?



Now you added that option I could finally vote. This is a good topic Keystorm, and one you can see that I am quite interested it

People will use the Beta argument to cover up flaws in the program.  It's just too easy in my opinion.  IE has such popularity that many bugs are found AND FIXED.  Mozilla is still crappy & unknown to the majority of Internet Users so fewer people to find bugs in the code.

Not voting as all the options are Pro-Mozilla or Anti-IE in some form.  Not neutral or just Anti-Mozilla.

quote:

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Originally posted by KeyStom
Doesn't it look like as in Microsoft where any security bug is being patched?

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Well, it isn't the same...
Internet Explorer has security bugs which takes them over a month to fix (donload.ject for example), FireFox has serious security bugs fixed in several hours.

Every program has bugs and security issues, and the more popular a program gets the more people will try to find security holes. I'm sure a lot of new security bugs will be found during the next years in both IE and FF, but as long as they are fixed properly and fast this doesn't have to be a problem.

What i still miss about Firefox at this moment is a simple way of upgrading. It's not really a problem for me, but inexperienced users coming from IE sometimes have problems upgrading. At this moment it is still recommended to un-install your old Firefox first and then install the new one.
What i would like to see is an automatic update system that checks to see if there is a new version, if there is one it should notify the user and ask if he/she wants to update now. If the user clicks yes it should just install the update full-automatic without having to un-install the old one first or anything. And the same goes for the updating of extensions, i know it is already possible to check automatically for updates in the current Firefox, but a lot of extensions don't support the update checking because it costs them to much bandwith, if Mozilla could host the automatic updates theirselves that would be sweet.

quote:

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Originally posted by Garndell
People will use the Beta argument to cover up flaws in the program.  It's just too easy in my opinion.  IE has such popularity that many bugs are found AND FIXED.  Mozilla is still crappy & unknown to the majority of Internet Users so fewer people to find bugs in the code.

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Firefox doesn't use their beta stage as an excuse, some of their users may do that. But the development team is very much concerned about stability.
As you can read in their roadmap ( http://www.mozilla.org/projects/firefox/roadmap.html ), almost everything they will do is fixing bugs and making sure everything is stable before the 1.0 final release.
You might ask why all those bugs are there in the first place? Firefox is as they call it a "Technology Preview" or beta as most say, it is just a completely diffrent strategy then IE which you compare it to. Internet Exploer doesn't do public beta's, so they would have waited with releasing their browser until they have a stable production release, ofcourse they expect to have bugs in their, but those should be minor and way less then in a beta. Firefox on the other hand chooses to have public beta testing, and in this way they actually hope that people will find and report bugs (Just like when Messenger Plus! would be beta tested). Every bug that is found in Firefox and gets reported in the proper way will be checked seriously by the developers. Ofcourse they can't fix everything at once, that is bugs are divided in category's, major critical bugs will be fixed inmidiatly, minor bugs will have less priority. But is saying "this product is still beta, so yes it has bugs in it" used to cover up flaws? I don't think it is, a public beta is just an oppertunity to test and use a program before it's first production release. If they didn't do a public beta you would have still not known about Firefox know. Consider it a bonus, installing is at your own risk, if you don't want to face problems... wait untill the final release, this release is basicly only ment for testing.

quote:

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Originally posted by Garndell
fewer people to find bugs in the code

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Well, if you compare it to Internet Explorer i have to disagree. Intenet Explorer is closed source which means only the Internet Explorer team itself, certain other Microsoft employees and certain people who take part at the Microsoft Shared Source can actually access the source code and find and fix bugs in it. Firefox is open source which means anybody on the whole world can access the code and find/fix bugs. And when you'll take a look at their buglist ( http://bugzilla.mozilla.org/buglist.cgi?product=Firefox ) you'll see that a lot of bugs actually do get reported and fixed.