Microsoft Exploits Firefox 4 Uproar, Beats IE Drum 315
CWmike writes "A Microsoft executive late Thursday used the furor over Mozilla's decision to curtail support for Firefox 4 to plead the case for Internet Explorer in the enterprise. 'I think I speak for everyone on the IE team when I say we'd like the opportunity to win back your business,' Ari Bixhorn, director of IE at Microsoft, said in a post on his personal blog. 'We've got a great solution for corporate customers with both IE8 and IE9, and believe we could help you address the challenges you're currently facing.' Bixhorn addressed his open letter to the manager of workplace and mobility in the office of IBM's CIO, John Walicki, who, along with others, had voiced their displeasure with Mozilla's decision to retire Firefox 4 from security support. In a comment appended to a blog maintained by Michael Kaply, a consultant who specializes in customizing Firefox, Walicki called Mozilla's decision to end security support for Firefox 4 a 'kick in the stomach.'"
Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Hardly surprising; businesses like some stability in their apps. You don't want stagnation, but you don't want to have to test and deploy entirely new releases every 3 months just to maintain a supported environment either.
I'm not sure Microsoft need to be worried about that particular market anyway because, as much as I hate to say it, IE is really the only browser that's suitable for use in a large Windows environment. It has ludicrously granular control available via Group Policy and updates can be deployed via WSUS without needing any user interaction or elevated rights. Firefox doesn't even offer an MSI installer, let alone any practical way to manage settings or control updates across multiple machines (but then Chrome, Opera and Safari are similarly lacking so they're hardly alone in that regard).
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:4, Informative)
Firefox 5 is the security update to FF4. I don’t think anything was broken apart from the version number.
Its just really confusing to people not following this why they would do this way. I was a 5 mb update on windows for me.
The only change I have seen is maybe a new animation on the left of URL bar (and that might have been there anyway).
Re:Plugins needlessly broken by new version number (Score:5, Informative)
Many addons reach into the internals of Firefox... which can change frequently and without warning between versions. Mozilla will automatically update addons now to be marked compatible if it detects they don't make use of changed APIs I believe.
Chrome has the exact opposite system: Extensions are tightly sandboxed and a limited API is exposed. As long as that API continues working the same way all extensions coded for any version will work. Of course extensions can't hook into the browser all the ways that Firefox ones can.
Re:Duh (Score:5, Informative)
Chrome, Opera and Safari are similarly lacking
http://www.google.com/apps/intl/en/business/chromebrowser.html [google.com]
MSI installer with Group Policy support (in addition to the "Internet Properties" that Chrome already taps into for proxy configuration, etc)
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:5, Informative)
It's only a number and an IT'er worth his salt should be able to confirm that much.
Yes they can. The problem is that they aren't the ones that make the decision. Large corporations usually have stifling configuration management and strict rules about testing. It's usually non-technical managers that see the new version number as a major upgrade and insist on retesting before they risk rolling it and potentially breaking large number of computers. Yuo should be happy that you're ignorant of this fact.
About Fedora's 6 months release cycle, maybe you missed Fedora is the cutting-edge development version of and for Red Hat?
Wow, you were so close to getting my point. Maybe I needed to continue the train of thought just a tad more? Fedora is unsuitable for the corporate desktop for the exact same reason Firefox is. It's not version stable and changes to rapidly. Both products are targeted and marketed to the hobbyist, or environments where a near constantly changing platform isn't an issue.
Re:Plugins needlessly broken by new version number (Score:5, Informative)
If your addon is on addons.mozilla.org, then it got checked for compat with Firefox 5 and automatically version-bumped if it was compatible.
If your addon is not on AMO, you don't need to worry about AMO's policies.
Google Toolbar, for example, is not on AMO.
Re:Plugins needlessly broken by new version number (Score:5, Informative)
ORLY?
http://blog.mozilla.com/addons/2011/04/19/add-on-compatibility-rapid-releases/ [mozilla.com]