Tiggs

noticed a few folks dont use IE or outlook....any reason why you change? should i if i'm happy enough with what i have (or dod i not know what im miising???)

T

Thomas Wainwright

One good reason is that you can block the adverts from this site!

DJ Dunk

iTrader: (5)

Can't surf without Firefox tabbed browsing now.

bioforger

iTrader: (1)

IE n outlook are crap compared to ffox equivalents, nuff said.

Markus

I don't have any real issues with outlook, but IE can be a pain as there are a fair few exploits with it, though applying all the security updates MS pushes out could address that. Some can't be bothered with the hassle of doing that, and so they use Firefox instead.

IE 6 is also somewhat behind the times with regards to things such as tabbed browsing. IE 7 will have such features though.

Tiggs

tabed browsing is what?

Markus

In IE, if you want to view multiple sites you need to open multiple windows, which can clutter things up. With tabbed browsing you can open a new link in a "tab" rather than in a new window. Think of the "options" dialog in IE, where you have different panes/tabs for the different options, it's like that. You end up with a new tab, rather than a new window.

This will probably explain it far better than I can

JackClark

If you're happy stick with what you have, bugger having to get updates and dealing with security issues from all over the shop.

I only installed Firefox because certain sites wouldn't work with Safari on my Mac. It's no better or worse than any other IMHO.

Tiggs

ok - got firefox......seems good!

tabbed surfing, no adverts......easy to custumise the tool bar.

all good so far! may try mozzila next!

Iain Young

I wouldn't bother. Firefox uses is basiaclly the new Mozilla browser, and Thunderbird is their email client. So, if you've already got firefox, you've got their latest stuff.

I find firefox to be a bit buggy, and there have been some very large security holes discovered in it recently, but the tabbed browsing is nice. They've been fixed, but it make you wonder what else is lurking in there.
Note that there are Internet Explorer plugins / front ends out there which give you tabbed browsing, popup / ad blockers etc as well... (e.g. http://www.avantbrowser.com/)...

ozzy

Software bug free? is that actually possible?

They don't have the resources MS can throw at development, but it makes you wonder how a company as large as MS can't do a much better job in the first place.

I prefer Firefox at the moment, but it can consume huge amounts of memory for doing very little. Guess part of that problem is using lots of 3rd-party extensions.

Iain Young

Yes it is. None of my software has bugs in it

I know what you mean. However, you have to consider that ie is the most popular browser out there, and probably for that reason, is also the most hacked by the lowlife on the interweb.

Also, mozilla have more resources than you think. The project is basically open source (you can download it and build it, and contribute yourself). Any developer in the world can download the source and make contributions to the project, so in theory, it should have far greater resources than MS.

It's interesting to see that now Firefox is becoming more popular, the hackers are starting to concentrate on that browser as well, and some pretty serious security holes are being exposed. Firefox is not a "safe" browser. Certainly no safer than IE.

I agree. I like it a lot, but I find the bugs (even without extensions installed) very irritating...

ozzy

none that you 'know' of ... or your code is just too small to have that worry

don't think anything on the net could be considered 100% safe, but Firefox does seem to been considered safer than IE whereas in reality it may not be.

stevencotton

IE is part of the underlying OS, Firefox isn't. Having the OS exposed like that is quite worrying (and a terrible software design decision), and one reason I would never use IE on Windows. The same arguments apply to everything regarding not knowing what other problems might exist, but on past performance I'd be more worried about IE's hidden holes than Firefox's, especially since IE is tied in so closely with the OS.

Tiggs

i meant usung it instead of outlook

gregh

Tiggs,

you need a new hobby to keep you occupied, I have just the thing for you....



I use Avantbrowser, it's free, uses IE, blocks adverts etc etc.

regards,

Greg

Tiggs

hmmm...now wheres that "ignore poster" function

Iain Young

A recent expolit was exposed in Firefox which gave the hacker complete access to the operating system, (to the level where they could read / write files etc). Don't be fooled into thinking that a program must be safer because a it isn't part of the operating system

There's no logic to that argument. Internet explorer has been around longer and has a much larger user base, so it's much more likely that a larger number of bugs and exploits will have been found in that browser. Being part of the OS makes it no more or less secure (that's an urban myth).

Firefox on the other hand is a relatively new product, has only recently started attracting the attention of hackers, has the complete source code available to any would be hackers, and several large security problems have recently been exposed in it, including ones which have allowed low level access to the OS.

Personally, from a security point of view I feel more secure with IE, although no browser is completely safe...

stevencotton

Fair enough, but I disagree with you on a professional level completely

I'll add - I'm no fool. I don't think that "just" because this is so that "that" must be true, I base my opinions on my expert knowledge of system and application architecure design.

Iain Young

Why?

It's perfectly possible to write software which has very secure low-level intergation with the operating system. It's also equally possible to write software which doesn't. Whether the program is part of the operating system has no effect on this. It's purely down to the quality of the code.

The fact that firefox was recently demonstrated to allow low-level system access without being part of the operating system is a nice demonstration of this....

Iain Young

So do I

stevencotton

Because it makes the application that much more complicated when it doesn't need to be. There is _no_reason_ why IE must be part of Windows - it's a bad design choice. The fact that Firefox can be used just as well as IE to compromise a system is neither here nor there, other MS apps that aren't part of Windows have been exploited the same way. But the fact that a piece of software has been designed badly from the start (of Windows 98) doesn't encourage me, and when something is more complex than it needs to be then the potential for problems increases significantly. It's the lesser of two evils.

Milamber

iTrader: (2)

I use Firefox instead of IE and have to say that I prefer it for the same reasons as everyone else.

The tabbed browsing is the best bit, the pop up blocker is great and the fact it asks you before downloading any programs is excellent. You could find yourself, completely by accident on a webpage that automatically triedsto upload a virus/trojan etc to your pc. Firefox will stop that.

I also like the fact, and I'm probably kidding myself, that all of the kiddie virus writers are attacking microsoft and don't bother quite so much with Firefox.

I've tried Thunderbird and unless I'm missing something is EXACTLY THE SAME as outlook express therefore I've reverted back to OE (in complete contradiction to my statement about the kiddie virus writers )

Iain Young

Ah I see where you're coming from (I misunderstood what you were getting at). I completely agree that it's a pretty naff design. When I'm designing / writing code, or trying to formulate a solution for some problem, I always try and keep it as simple and structured as possible. Complicated code is a nightmare to maintain, (especially if you have to change something and you come back to the code 2 years after you wrote it ), and definitely prone to errors. The more complicated something is, the easier it is to break.

Possibly, but there's also a case for "better the devil you know". IE has been around so long now that (hopefully) most of the major problems will have been found, whereas Firefox is an unknown quantity, and there could be some pretty nasty stuff lurking in there. It's personal choice I suppose as to which you feel more comfortable with.

Of course when IE7 is released, it's back to square one again

Iain Young

They've already started...

stevencotton

I don't personally believe that unknown exploits are a problem (and I also believe that the longevity of a product doesn't negate the possibility of the same or more (or less) number of flaws). Unknown exploits are conjecture and only a problem when someone knows them. One could argue that IE has been around longer so "all or most of the flaws have been found", but since it's so much more complex than FF, I would say that there is far more potential for problems to arise in IE (in any version, current or in the future) than there is in FF, and the potential for those exploits to be catastrophic are, in general, greater.

Milamber

iTrader: (2)

But there's less of them doing the attacking, does that make sense?

Lets face it I'm not going to give up surfing the net therefore I have to use something.

I update my virus definitions daily, virus check daily, scan for adware/malware weekly, have a firewall thats regularly updated, what more can I do to reduce the risks?

Iain Young

It's all guesswork though.

Just do what I do. Don't trust any of it, and just use what you like using I just wish FF didn't have so many bugs...

stevencotton

I haven't had much of an issue with FF on OS X, it sure beats Safari too which seems way too slow and clunky to me, but the amount of times I need to make anything look pretty with CSS and cross-platform browsers is nil. I also use Camino, although for SN I use the text-based w3m for stealth and advertising-imperviousness

Iain Young

The rendering problems I had found in FF seem to have been sorted out in the latest version (win32 version), but I seem to be able to get it to hang quite regularly, even without any extensions installed. It usually happens if I've got multiple tabs open, or I am viewing complicated pages with lots of dhtml / javascript code on them. I can close the browser, but I have to use task manager and kill the process to get rid of it. I've reproduced it on 5 different machines now, so I know it's not my dev machine...