Author Topic: Ie Vs Firefox  (Read 5395 times)

Offline Hooman

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Ie Vs Firefox
« on: December 24, 2009, 10:14:43 AM »
Why is it that Firefox users are so vocal about their web browser? In the shoutbox, yet again, is one user questioning why another uses IE, when Firefox is apparently so much better. This is not an uncommon occurance. Further, if you ever find yourself browsing the web to figure out how to adjust some behavior in IE, which you know can be fairly easily done if you just knew what the option was named, the thread invariable contains a "helpful" post, just switch to Firefox and all your problem will be solved. (Yes, all). When the thread is specifically targetted at finding the name of "that" option in IE, which it certainly has, I find that to be a rather annoying and time wasting response.


Now people generally quote security when it comes to Firefox, but if you do even a little digging, you can find a number of security flaws that Firefox seems to have to patch on a continual basis. Is this a question of severity of those errors then? Or the number of errors? Or just how long it takes before they are fixed? Often too little info is provided about the flaws to be sure. Regardless, it makes me question their security claims somewhat.


So why then do people believe Firefox is a better, and more secure browser? Why are so many non-security experts convinced of it's security? They obviously didn't audit it themselves. Here's what I think:


Advertising


Yeah, you heard me. If Firefox didn't promote themselves so shamelessly, in a manner akin to US political campaign ads (What? IE? Our main competitor? Staby Staby!), would people be such mindless supporters? Would they constantly quote how "secure" it is without ever doing any independent verification? Or perhaps they simply read what was off the Firefox site and considered that to be good enough. After all, they provide lots of technical info to support the security of their browser. Wait..., no..., it's all marketing bulls***? Hmm... "It’s like having your neighborhood watch led by a group of highly trained ninjas"? Wow, I love ninjas!  :ph34r:  ... but I suppose that's the point. Who doesn't love ninjas. Ok, so at least we know their marketing department is quite apt, but I still feel in the dark about their technical people.


Now I'm not saying Firefox is bad, or insecure. Actually, after using both for quite a while, I find that from an end user perspective they're pretty close in usability. I also haven't run into any obvious security issues either. I'm just saying there isn't much in the way of technical info that clearly illustrates the issues, at least not from the browser vendors themselves. I doubt most user's go beyond the website they are downloading from. How do they know anything about security then? If someone tells you to trust them, should you? This is more about the attitude of FireFox users, then about FireFox itself. Why do FireFox users feel so strongly that FireFox is a far superior browser?


Discuss.
 

Offline Sirbomber

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« Reply #1 on: December 24, 2009, 11:15:29 AM »
I'm just trying to use less MS stuff.  I couldn't care less what other people use.
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Offline Hidiot

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« Reply #2 on: December 24, 2009, 11:33:56 AM »
I like Firefox more mostly because it feels more user-friendly.
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Offline AmIMeYet

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« Reply #3 on: December 24, 2009, 12:28:35 PM »
  • It's Open Source!
  • More updates (=less vulnerability)
  • More extensible
  • Popular, so, well supported (yes, loopback :P)
  • Hell, maybe it's mixed with a bit of elitism..
You know what.. I don't even want to list anymore. Just use lynx, saves a lot of hazards already :P.

Offline CK9

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« Reply #4 on: December 24, 2009, 01:47:37 PM »
your first two points contradict themselves...if something is open-source, it is easier to hack it because you already know the coding for it.  Therefore, it is less secure.
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Offline AmIMeYet

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« Reply #5 on: December 24, 2009, 02:29:33 PM »
I don't quite agree. Note that I said "more updates" instead of more secure.
Being open source also means that more people can look at the code and say "hey, that's bad, let's fix it".

Say someone found a hackable glitch in both firefox and IE.
IE will put it's dev's to work a few days later and will put it on their update queue.
Dev's of firefox, will notice it through one way or another and get to work, and put it on their update queue.
The difference here is, that FF's queue is issued much more frequent than IE's queue. Therefore, *profit*.

Queue.. ueue.. ue ue .. weird word :S
« Last Edit: December 24, 2009, 02:29:56 PM by AmIMeYet »

Offline Simpsonboy77

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« Reply #6 on: December 24, 2009, 04:11:34 PM »
Since I was the one who brought it up, I should respond.

I use Firefox because I also like tweaking stuff. In firefox there is a utility called about:config which lets you change some of the internals. One of the best speed improvements is called network.http.pipelining. It lets send multiple http requests without a response. In high latency networks, this can be a quick speed boost. There are a few more that I changed, but I see no need to list them.

Firefox also is quite customizable. I have many addons for my firefox most of which I use quite often. Adblock filters out ads based on rules, such as domain. If it is trying to load an image from images.adsforcash.com (just made up) I dont want to waste my bandwidth loading it. I also use meebo which lets me login to several chat messaging programs. This way I am not exposing myself to the vulnerable AIM application. The addon is less used, so its less likely a black hat hacker would try and make a virus to target it.

Now as far as security, firefox has a faster turnaround on bug fixes. All applications will have bugs in them, some will not be reported. I also like open source, because I can actually see what it is doing. I don't know if IE is secretly reporting back to Microsoft about anything.

There are some times where I use IE, mostly for windows updates. IE recently changed, but I liked the idea of tabbed browsing. If I'm doing research on a topic, I can have it in a window, and then several tabs in that window pertaining to it. Then I can have another window for personal things, such as email and messengers. Its just more organized. This is a moot point now because IE has adopted tabbed browsing, but I was used to FF at that point.

 I use my web browser as a program, to do nearly everything. If my firefox is open, I don't need anything else connected to the internet, unless I'm playing a game.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2009, 04:13:04 PM by Simpsonboy77 »
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Offline Sirbomber

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« Reply #7 on: December 24, 2009, 05:11:01 PM »
Quote
I liked the idea of tabbed browsing.
By that logic, why aren't you using Netscape Navigator?  They had tabs first...
« Last Edit: December 24, 2009, 05:11:10 PM by Sirbomber »
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Offline CK9

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« Reply #8 on: December 24, 2009, 06:39:25 PM »
"more updated" = less secure to begin with

people are more likely to abuse a code error they find than to help others fix it.

and all those addons, you can find them for just about any browser.

security updates for IE seem to pop up just about every day to me, any more frequently than that and you get bandwidth taken up by constant updates.

So far, I have seen claims that aren't as stable as the people using them think they are.



So my thought:  drop the browser discussion.  It doesn't help anyone, it only causes problems as people squabble over things that don't matter.
« Last Edit: December 24, 2009, 06:39:55 PM by CK9 »
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Offline Simpsonboy77

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« Reply #9 on: December 24, 2009, 06:57:31 PM »
Quote
and all those addons, you can find them for just about any browser.

So my thought:  drop the browser discussion.  It doesn't help anyone, it only causes problems as people squabble over things that don't matter.
Actually 2 of my addons are only for firefox, Torbutton and the meebo addon. I could configure the proxy settings in IE so it would work on Tor, but this is easier. I could use the meebo website, but I like the sidebar of the addon. It lets me look on the web and without changing the tab/window see what the latest message is.

Agreed, if people dislike their browser they would change. You haven't found anything wrong with IE, so why change? (rhetorical question)
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Offline CK9

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« Reply #10 on: December 24, 2009, 07:04:28 PM »
Actually, I was saying you get the same effect, not the exact same addon
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Offline Kayedon

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« Reply #11 on: December 24, 2009, 10:43:53 PM »
I actually did quite the extensive bit of research on the various leading browsers a few months back when I switched to Chrome from IE (even though the board image says Safari crap).

Anyways, not counting add-on's, IE caught 63% of the malware thrown at it, whereas Firefox caught like 30% or something (I cbf to remember). No browser caught everything, there was a lot of stuff missed by all the browsers, and very few were caught by more than one browser.

Now, about my personal browser wars:
I had been an avid (not blood-thirsty. AVID.) user of IE for....well, life. I'd used Firefox, Safari, Netscape, and a gimped Macintrash version of Opera before, both on Macs and PC's, and liked none of them.

Then one day, I headed to Filehippo and downloaded all their browsers, and hand-tested them - did the Acid's, tested load/startup times, etc.

Personally, I use Chrome.

Now, in the IE vs. FF, I've NEVER liked FF. I don't know why, I've just never agreed with it. Maybe it was the decade old refurb Mac's my schools had, who knows. Regardless, I like IE more. But in a pinch, any browser works.

It's all personal opinion. Think of it as religion or politics. Everyone has a stance, and they'll fight for it.
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Offline Hooman

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« Reply #12 on: December 24, 2009, 11:43:57 PM »
Hmm interesting responses.


Lynx, yes, we should all switch to lynx. Especially for a forum such as this. :P
Why not, the forum is all text based anyway?

I'm not so sure about open source being easier to hack. Sure, it takes less skill to read a high level language, but to understand the security implications of coding flaws usually requires low level knowledge. In that case, you might find reading assembly to be quite easy, such as that given by a disassembler/debugger. In some cases it may even be easier to spot certain flaws from assembly. Of course, having high level source may help you quickly find a point of interest, and knowing how it translate down to assembly may help you spot many of those flaws from the high level source. So does it make it easier for hackers? Perhaps a little. But then, there are more people who can spot a flaw than there are people able to exploit such a flaw. Combine that with my belief that for the most part people are basically good (or at least usually too lazy to cause trouble), and you have enough people either submitting quick fixes, or at least pointing out things they don't want to fix themselves. Possibly. In short it could go either way. Most vocal people like to claim open source can help security.


Tabbed browsing is nice. That was the only noticable feature difference I saw that I cared about back in the day of IE6. Not really enough to switch over though, and IE7 added tabbed browsing.


CK9, I challenge your suggestion that more updates means something is more insecure to being with! You could have two equally insecure pieces of software, and only update one. That does not mean the non-updated one was or is now more secure. But yes, if something needs to be constantly updated for security reasons, that could potentially mean something negative. Like say, the developers didn't know what they were doing.


I think it's mostly just an arbitrary preference which browser someone uses. I mostly stuck with IE because it was installed by default, and hence the lazy option. :P I didn't really bother much with FF until I had to do some web development. The error console was occasionally a little handy there, but not particularly critical.


On an interesting side note, I've found IE takes substantially less memory that FF. I used to prefer IE for performance reasons before I got a new computer, just because that memory difference meant IE fit into available memory, whereas FF didn't and the trashing caused the whole system to slow down noticably. On a more modern machine with adequate memory, I haven't run into this issue with FF.
 

Offline Freeza-CII

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« Reply #13 on: December 25, 2009, 02:29:14 AM »
IE and firefox view the same damn s***. IE more the Firefox. Which leads up to why people get viruses the first place. Changing your browser wont change the fact that if you click on some thing that has a trojan/virus/nasty cookie thinger. Your going to get it.

You cant eliminate the human error.  ALL IN ALL is what you want to believe in when it comes to these broswers. security blah blah blah compatibility blah blah blah. I still use IE and will always use IE. I have used firefox when IE didnt have tabs IE has tab so I could care less about firefox. As for viruses I never got any which either browser because I never went looking in places that could possibly have them.

Offline AmIMeYet

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« Reply #14 on: December 25, 2009, 07:07:07 AM »
I always though FF was better than IE performance wise.
When I load firefox, I get a workable window instantly.
When I load IE, I get a window, and I can change the url it loads, but then after a few seconds it goes and loads the first url anyway!

There's also more dev addons for FF than there are for IE (just comparing those 2 here, not chrome or opera or netscape or whatever).
Sure, there's Firebug Lite now, but in it's heart it's still for firefox.
And I'm a dev, so I use FF.

I've given up on chrome because flash seems to be slower than usual because of chrome's subprocessing.

Just tried lynx on this forum, pretty good actually! Why don't we do a 'lynx only day'?  ;)  

Offline CK9

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« Reply #15 on: December 25, 2009, 02:23:29 PM »
Quote
CK9, I challenge your suggestion that more updates means something is more insecure to being with! You could have two equally insecure pieces of software, and only update one. That does not mean the non-updated one was or is now more secure. But yes, if something needs to be constantly updated for security reasons, that could potentially mean something negative. Like say, the developers didn't know what they were doing

hooman, I was not inferring that the other was more secure, only that if one is updated more often, it is incorrect to say that it is more secure.
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Offline Hooman

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« Reply #16 on: December 25, 2009, 05:17:51 PM »
Ahh yes, there is that spin on it. Still the way you said it sounded like a much different implication.


I find FF and IE to load up at about the same rate on a modern computer, while IE loads up much faster on an older computer. Also keep in mind that the first time you load it up will be different from a second time, since some things, like the exe file, will be cached in memory. Hence, if you're browsing this with one browser, and then try to compare by loading up each, you'll find the one you were previously using will load up faster. So yeah, either check by loading each just after boot, or pre-load each first, close them, and then try again.


There are occasionally security flaws where you don't have to download something or do something stupid to get infected. But these are usually the exception. Most virus are spread through social engineering rather than by exploits. Convince someone to do something unsafe, rather than find a small hole in a locked down system. So yeah, not going to seedy sites, and being careful about what you download will go a long way to keeping you safe.
 

Offline Arklon

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« Reply #17 on: December 31, 2009, 03:52:49 PM »
Personally I think IE is (still) a fairly medicore bundled program. It has also encouraged people to be sloppier when it comes to writing HTML. As a browser, it works, but it definitely needs improvement in a number of areas, although it isn't as horrible now as it once was. Mac OS X comes with Safari, which is actually a very nice browser (well, the Windows version isn't so much); I don't really see any need to download Mac Firefox.
« Last Edit: December 31, 2009, 03:53:22 PM by Arklon »

Offline Eddy-B

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« Reply #18 on: December 31, 2009, 09:30:34 PM »
In the past i have used (in this order):
IE (i think it was 2.0), Netscape 2, Gecko, IE 5.0, IE5.5 (for a long time), FF 2.0

I started using netscape because IE wasn't really keeping up with technology. IE 5 always worked fine for me, until i was asked (by ppl on this forum) to try FF. At first it didn't catch on, but i grew to like it.
Now i hardly EVER start up my IE 5.5.

I hardly ever upgrade programs like this, because for me the functionality of the program is more important then how it looks. I know FF3 has some fancy new features and a pimped-up look, but i dont need those, and don't like them even!


Upgrades are NOT always better!
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Offline Sirbomber

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« Reply #19 on: January 01, 2010, 12:45:37 AM »
But if you don't upgrade the garden gnomes will eat you to death.
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Offline CK9

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« Reply #20 on: January 01, 2010, 01:52:04 AM »
IE 6 and 7 are far better than 5 was.  I still refuse to use IE 8 if I can avoid it.
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Offline Spikerocks101

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« Reply #21 on: January 01, 2010, 04:25:15 AM »
I used I.E. on 95 and 98 (what ever version that was), then I used Netscape for a bit, then when I got XP, I used I.E. again, and about 3 years ago, I switched to Firefox, and I now use both Firefox and I.E.
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