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Firefox myths

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toadlife:

--- Quote from: Mastertech ---The average person doesn't care nor should they.

--- End quote ---

Nor should you, but you seem to be obsessed.

Why?

Dark_Me:

--- Quote ---Here is another good one. See how Firefox has 129 vulnerabilities with a relative danger of 381? Why then does Opera with only 56 vulnerabilities have a relative danger of 359? Shouldn't Opera's danger be more like 150? At least I don't play with figures like that. I simply count and report exact numbers.
--- End quote ---

You sir are a fool. But since I, unlike you do not like ad honem attacks I shall debunk your misconception.
You are talking about the "Security vulnerabilities" table in about the middle of the web page yes? Well your figures are completly incorrect. I suggest you read the table again.
Even if your figures are correct you did not meantion how many where critical vulnerabilities. Perhaps nearly all of Operas vulnerabilities where/are of a "critical" type.

piratePenguin:

--- Quote from: Mastertech ---David Hammond made his page AFTER I refused to add excuses to mine.
--- End quote ---
OH - FF needs an excuse for not being 100% standards compliant?

I wouldn't call them excuses. I'd call them extra facts that are very useful because they bring things back into perspective.

The only people who will give a crap that "FF isn't standards compliant" are the people uninterested in computers and how the web works etc. You tell them "FF doesn't support either of XHTML, CSS, or SVG fully" they'll begin to think FF sucks bollox, when in fact it does not. Standards compliance is one of FF's strong-points. These people are getting a very false impression from your page. If you explained "no web-browser is 100% standards compliant" etc, they would get more of a positive impression because of a better understanding of the reality (the reality that FF is one of the top web-brosers when it comes to standards compliance).

--- Quote ---That is not an excuse it is a fact. The page is called FIREFOX MYTHS!
--- End quote ---
Which is very convenient.

piratePenguin:
http://www.techspot.com/vb/topic44405.html

Greatest loser I've come into contact with ever, without a shadow of a doubt.

Dark_Me:
The following was taken from an email to the site creator. The header has been removed, otherwise this is the letter in its eternity. It may also be found here.

--- Quote ---
Your own stated definition of myth is "A fiction or half-truth,
especially one that forms part of an ideology."  I feel compelled to
point out that most of the "myths" listed on the site are themselves
myths according to your definition.


System Requirements:

True, stated Firefox system requirements are higher on Windows.  First,
have you ever tried running IE on a 486 66 with 32 MB RAM?  Sometimes
meeting the "minimum" requirements is not sufficient for a positive
experience in using the software.  I don't know for sure they're not in
this case, but I'm just pointing out the possibility.

Have you tested performance of IE on a system barely meeting its minimum
requirements, and compared that with the performance of FF on a system
barely meeting its minimum requirements?  Until you do, the point about
system requirements is meaningless.


Performance:

All references for this section link to a page for a single study
conducted by an individual.  This far from proves anything about
performance between browsers in general, under all situations for all
users.  And that's exactly the point.  In his specific case according to
his metrics on his machine IE was faster than FF on Windows.

In my own experience (back when I still used Windows regularly), a clean
install of Firefox with a minimal set of extensions was slightly faster
when navigating between pages than a fresh copy of IE (read: a clean
Windows install).  Does this mean that FF is always faster than IE?  No,
but it does show that IE is *not* always faster than FF.

I will concede your point that a "cold" startup of a sterile copy of IE
is usually faster than FF (for me, the difference was a few seconds,
which I suspect the majority of FF users are more than willing to
tolerate).  However, keep in mind that in the real world, few users have
the luxury of our lab conditions.  Many Windows machines on which IE is
the primary browser are infected with malware targeted toward IE, thus
significantly degrading its performance (including startup times and
responsiveness).


Security:

Clicking on the link to Secunia shows that the most severe *unpatched*
vulnerability is "Less Critical".  The "Highly Critical" and "Extremely
Critical" vulnerabilities have all been patched.

The wording of this section also begs the question whether the number of
vulnerabilities is even a meaningful measure of security.  First, the
number of known vulnerabilities does not translate directly to the
number of actual vulnerabilities.  Second, traditionally Mozilla has
patched discovered vulnerabilities (particularly severe ones) quickly.
Thus, the sooner one is discovered, the sooner it is fixed.  If Firefox
flaws are being discovered at a faster rate, they are consequently being
fixed at a faster rate.  This seems to suggest that more discovered
vulnerabilities actually leads to better security.  Also note that no
comparison to the number of vulnerabilities for IE can be made, since it
is a closed-source product.  Any programmer can tell you it's easier to
find bugs in a program when the source code is available.

As for the claim about "most secure web browser", I've never heard
anyone make this claim so I checked your "source", which appears to be
from a forum post by a member of spreadfirefox.com.  Whether a statement
by a individual about a product counts as a "myth" about that product if
proven to be false is questionable.

On the issue of OS integration you link to a Microsoft Employee's blog.
This is, needless to say, hardly an objective source of information on
the matter.  Even so, the claim I hear on this topic is usually made in
the context of the following: "a flaw found in Internet Explorer will
affect more applications than a flaw found in Firefox."  Strictly
speaking, this is true, since IE is a "critical component" of Windows by
Microsoft's own legal admission and is used by a wide variety of other
applications (including Windows Explorer, MSN Explorer, Steam, and many
others; you can find a full list through searching).  This means that a
vulnerability in IE is much more far-reaching than a flaw in Firefox.

With regard to ActiveX, the page you link to is again an article by one
person.  And many who commented on that very article disagreed with it.
The most important point about ActiveX vs. Extensions (FF's closest
equivalent), is that in order to install a malicious ActiveX control,
the user has only to click a bunch of "yes" buttons.  From my
experience, many users do this without bothering to read the text in the
dialog box, let alone understand its implications.  To install a
malicious Extension, a Firefox user must first add the source site to
the list of trusted sites, then click the extension file *again*, then
wait for a few seconds before the "OK" button becomes available, then
click OK.  This makes "casual click" installing much much less likely.
So in a narrow sense the argument I just made does not show that ActiveX
is insecure.  But its implementation on Windows IE (which is just as
important) is insecure and leads to unintended consequences.

Spyware is much more of a Windows issue than a browser issue, as you
hinted at in your "Solution to Spyware" issue.  The point here is an
astronomically low percentage of users even know enough to realize they
need to secure their system before using IE.  An even lower percentage
know how to do this, and even fewer users actually go through all the
steps (the most important of which is running under a restricted user
whenever possible).

That said, let's look at your example of Firefox infecting the user with
spyware.  The vulnerability you link to relies on a flaw in the Java
runtime, not any particular browser.  You may argue that Mozilla's
confidence in Sun JRE is misplaced and constitutes a vulnerability, but
you cannot argue this infection is the fault of Firefox.


Features

You state the myth that "Firefox is Bug Free."  What is your source for
this?  It's a single post from a member of the "PetLovers.com" forums.
This cannot reasonably be construed as a "Firefox myth".

Looking at the supposed "memory leak", keep in mind IE6 (without
extensions) does not even offer tabbed browsing (yet).  Thus to make a
valid comparison of memory usage, we would have to open as many IE
windows as Firefox tabs pointing to the same pages.  From my experience,
the difference in memory usage between the two processes when this
exercise is carried out is insignificant and varies.  This does not seem
to indicate that Firefox "leaks memory".  Most individuals who make this
argument are also using the incorrect term.  What they really mean to
say is that Firefox memory usage is excessive.  (True memory leaks are
completely different).

With extensions, the question is not about whether or not IE supports
extensions, but the actual extensions available for both browsers.  In
this sense, there are many more useful Firefox extensions available than
IE extensions.  If one only carries out the exercise of examining some
of the top rated and top downloaded FF extensions, and attempts to find
IE equivalents, one will see the evidence of this.

In the "Integrated Search" section, I find no mention of the supposed
claim in the linked blog post.

I do not agree with your interpretation of the sentence "Firefox has
been widely praised for its stability, trustworthiness and innovative
features including tabbed browsing, live bookmarks, built-in pop-up
blocking, and hundreds of available extensions." amounting to a claim
that Firefox was the first browser to offer pop-up blocking.  But I can
see where your interpretation comes from, so I will not argue that.
However, I posit this is a very minor point.

The link cited in "Pop-up Blocking All" makes no claim that Firefox
blocks all pop-ups.  The relevant section from the referenced page is
"Some web pages open endless pop-up advertisement windows. Firefox *can*
stop these annoying windows from opening." (emphasis mine).

The RSS icon issue is again a very minor and basically irrelevant one.
Nobody familiar with the situation claims that "Microsoft stole the
icon."

Again with the "Tabbed Browsing" issue you cite a book where the author
supposedly makes the mistaken claim.  This is fine, but again whether or
not Firefox was the *first* to introduce feature X is not terribly
relevant.


Standards

The W3C standards section links to a page which 404ed for me.  In any
case, to my knowledge neither Mozilla nor any Firefox developers have
ever stated that Firefox is "100% standards compliant."

The next two points on the site ("W3C Standards Development" and "W3C
Standards define a Webpage") refer to philosophical debate over web
standards and have nothing to do with Firefox myths.  As such, I fail to
see their relevance to the site.

The points about the Acid 2 test are complete misinformation.  The first
claim you have listed is "Firefox fully supports the most important W3C
Standards".  The link (a rather tongue-in-cheek method of using the
Greasemonkey extension to ostensibly make Firefox pass the test) makes
no such claim, and in fact humorously points out the truth - that
Firefox doesn't pass the test.

The next point regarding the Acid 2 test is also completely absurd.
"Firefox passes the Acid2 Test".  In the reality section you quite
correctly state "No official public release of Firefox passes the Acid2
Browser Test."  The linked article makes it clear the screenshot is from
a version of Firefox in the "reflow branch", which is not released to
the public.  In the context of "Firefox" being "publicly released
versions of Firefox", the given myth from the given source is utterly
intractable.

Your claim of "Firefox is completely compatible with every Web Site"
comes from, again, a forum post from applegeeks.com.  And again, nobody
from Mozilla or the Firefox community makes this claim.  Quite the
contrary, many go to great pains to point out the sites that *don't*
work with Firefox.  In many cases these sites only work with IE by using
ActiveX controls or relying on IE "quirks" rendering modes to display
correctly, making them innavigable in other browsers.


General:

You state "Yet this page is clearly about Myths relating to Firefox
running on Windows."  In that case, it would seem prudent to title the
page "Windows Firefox Myths" or something similar.

The introduction states that "All Myths relate to running the default
install of Firefox in Windows with no extensions. Please read carefully
and look at the sources."  Given that many of your "sources" are posts
on web forums taken out of context, how can you make this claim?  Have
you personally contacted each of the posts' authors to garner their true
meaning and verify they were using "the default install of Firefox in
Windows with no extensions"?  Perhaps they were using a few of the slew
of Firefox-enhancing extensions, creating a condition in which their
statements were true?

You also seem most concerned about open and uncensored debate.  In the
spirit of this, why not have an official, unmoderated (excepting spam,
vandalism, etc.) FirefoxMyths.com comments section or forum in addition
to the "Testimonials" section?  If all your rebuttals have indeed been
"merely filled with opinions, rhetoric and conjecture", why not post
them and allow your readers to see that for themselves?  Show that you
are confident in your position by allowing full transparency of
responses (positive and negative).

Finally, allow me to paraphrase what seems to be the crux of your
argument: "Some person made statement X (whose context cannot be
determined) about Firefox.  X is false.  Therefore, X is a Firefox
myth."  I suggest you change your definition of myth given at the top of
the page to one that reconciles with the actual "myths" you have listed.
--- End quote ---

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