comment on journal entry: the fundamental security flaw in Mozilla browsers
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Zealotry
This sounds like zealotry.
I switched to FireFox after the Scob scare, and see no reason at all to go back. Both as a user and as a developer FireFox makes my online life much more fun and easy. I've seen the new IE6 release, and there's little there to draw me back in. I live for the tabs (they really make web browsing much easier to my mind), don't skin, and have about 20 extensions loaded and have never had any problems at all. It's a slick piece of work, and I have no problem using polished "Beta" code for a production app. If FireFox's popup-blocker is too stringent then I say great! If there are sites that I need to see the pop-ups in (and those are few, for me) then I load up IE for 3-5 minutes and close it right back down when I'm done.
All of that said, I'm sure there are other known security holes in FireFox, and many more that haven't poked up yet. IE gets a bad security rap precisely because it is what most people use, so most of the shadier developers target it. If FireFox ever got to be the 95% gorilla then I'm sure all kinds of holes would pop up. DOes that make it less worthy to use? Not if it doesn't make IE less worthy to use. This particular security hole has a really simple solution; don't allow web sites to install software. Simple as that, and no worse a solution than the oft suggested "Turn of JavaScript" idea. I only allow wites to load soaftware when I'm particularly looking for something (like when I'm installing an extension).
When it comes right down to it, though, I'll switch back to IE if/when it shows that it's a better browser. I don't care, I'm not religious about it. But that have to convince me first....
kinrowan [kinrowan] [reply]
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