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.'"
Re:You had me at... (Score:4, Insightful)
Why wouldn't they? I mean, IE isn't my cup of tea and standards support is still a little behind the curve (though improving) but IE8 and certainly IE9 are solid browsers for your average corporate user.
I often get the impression that some people are rather stuck in the IE6/XP era when it comes to any product that Microsoft puts out; they're not *all* shit you know :)
Driven by vendor lock-in (Score:5, Insightful)
Plugins needlessly broken by new version number (Score:5, Insightful)
Part of the reason that I'm pissed off by this version a week crap is that plugins that should work no longer do, simply because they expect a version number. Google Toolbar doesn't work because of that. That's a serious WTF moment.
Good for Microsoft (Score:5, Insightful)
I hope FF loses some market share. Stupidity should be punished in the business world. I don't personally care if it's Microsoft with IE, Google with Chrome, or Apple with Safari, or any other browser. I don't care about rapid releases. I'm against them, actually. In a business environment, rapid releases only muck up the works and makes life harder for the IT staff.
Re:Version numbers are meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
At least Chrome has been consistent about it, Mozilla just seem to have lost it completely when it comes to Firefox, jumping all over the place chasing every new "feature" that one of the other browsers comes up with.
Seriously, stop trying to be Chrome, Chrome is already doing that pretty well.
Re:Slashdot community's constant hating on Firefox (Score:5, Insightful)
It's not change is bad, it's needless change is bad.
If Firefox wants to be a cutting edge testing environment for whizbangs great, make that clear. If it wants to be used in production environments where long term stability and available time for internal test cycles trump access to whizbangs then this is bad.
We use firefox for everything, random websites with new versions of dancing cat videos, personnel apps like timecards, purchasing etc and monitor and control for instrumentation.
Don't really care if the new dancing cat video works, don't even really care if the craptastic PeopleSoft works, do care that monitor and control stuff works.
Re:Slashdot community's constant hating on Firefox (Score:4, Insightful)
I think most people are just pissed that Mozilla appear to be rather pathetically trying to mimic Chrome of late rather than focusing on improving Firefox where it actually needs improving.
Re:Plugins needlessly broken by new version number (Score:5, Insightful)
poorly programmed extensions are not Mozilla's fault. The attitude that emulating browsers like Chrome's development cycle is a good idea is Mozilla's fault. They're working on features like having the tabs way up top rather than fixing trivial things like Java plugin incompatibility (which works fine in chrome but crashes firefox) or dealing with the massive memory leak problem that firefox has had for years and has yet to actually try to fix. they need to get their priorities straight or they're going to die.
LTS Release? (Score:5, Insightful)
Perhaps Firefox should take a page out of Ubuntu's playbook, and offer a special LTS (Long Term Support) release that will receive back-ported security fixes for the next two or three years. That will give the IT departments and embedded systems manufacturers the long term stability they want, while general users and browser enthusiasts can continue to update their browser every three months.
Or they can do nothing, and continue to lose marketshare to Internet Explorer and Google Chrome when IT departments start adding Firefox to their unapproved/unsupported software lists. Their call, I guess.
Re:Slashdot community's constant hating on Firefox (Score:2, Insightful)
Please tell me what "technological advances" Firefox 5 actually brought us. I am curious.
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:5, Insightful)
It really makes me wonder whether these large companies have an IT department.
Surely they can replace FF4.0 by FF5.0 without exposing their net to Chinese hackers.
Apparently you've never worked in big IT, where software must be thoroughly tested before being rolled out. Image you're the guy that convinced your company to roll out FF as a replacement for IE and them that it was fully compatible with all their corporate websites. Before you've even fully tested and started deploying it, Mozilla EOLs that version number. Kinda sets you back to square one and you look stupid for having suggested it in the first place.
Mozilla screwed themselves on this. FF5 is hardly different than FF4, yet yhey bumped the major rev number trying to convince people they are innovating and ended pissed off the corporate customers who want stability. Fedora still hasn't learned this lesson with their 6 month cycle and a hearty fuck you if you don't keep up because you can only safely upgrade from 1-2 versions behind. The corporate world wants stability and good manageability damn it. They don't want a constantly moving target with questionable long term support.
Re:Version numbers are meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Plugins needlessly broken by new version number (Score:3, Insightful)
Do not talk about shit you have no idea about.
Mozilla _forbits_ addons to be compatible with future versions. If somebody uploaded a addon during 5 beta that tells "I am fine with 5.0 final", it was rejected.
Thats why _every_ addon needs to be updated _after_ the release of the final version.
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:4, Insightful)
How that's different from an update from the last version of FF 3.6 to FF 4.0?
Mozilla _just_ EOLed 3.5.x. 3.6.x isn't EOL yet. People expected that the release of 5 would be concurrent with a security patch for 4, because that makes sense. Mozilla showed they lacked sense with the awesomebar debacle.
Re:You had me at... (Score:3, Insightful)
Uuum, dude: I had 3 years of psychotherapy after having designed a web app that was supposed to run in IE in fall 2005. This is not a joke. And I have to really pull myself together to not rage and say you should die or something. :/
I got to know IE extremely well over the years. Every tiny quirk. Even the race conditions depending on a dozen independent factors. Even that horribly illegal code (illegal according to MS too, that is) does not only often work, but in some rare cases even is necessary for it to "work" (this case is also a race condition on top of it all!). And yet I still haven't found the bottom of the pit of chaos, where some inner sense and logic is supposed to be.
The problem with IE is, that it must have the most advanced AI in human history inside, as it manages to simulate utter irrational and unpredictable behavior with sheer perfection.
Yes, you can say IE has "improved" since then. But the problem is, that it's still Trident. The engine that is named after a tool of the devil [2-clicks-swords.com] for a good reason. ;)
It's an utter mess. Calling it "spaghetti code" would insult even the worst spaghetti code any twice-outsourced enterprisey consultant called "The late Paula Bean" [thedailywtf.com] could ever write. It just doesn't fit it anymore.
So apart from a complete rewrite, there is no chance in hell (literally? ;) that it will ever be something even remotely acceptable.
If MS decides to throw away Trident, we may get a good IE. Until that, anyone who defends IE, just doesn't know shit and never has done some real coding for that monster. And so he should better keep quiet, as every time an IE loads a page, a thousand web developers shiver and shed a tear of past mental rape horror.
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Driven by vendor lock-in (Score:4, Insightful)
That's because you don't understand how a large corporation works, and have never worked for one. Large corporations have many THOUSANDS of custom written applications, as well as many 3rd party applications they buy that rely on a browser (typically IE). They need time to test all of these apps before upgrading the browser to make sure things don't break. For example, our company uses Remedy, a 3rd party client application, for IT change management/incident reporting. Unfortunately, though it is mostly a stand alone client app, Remedy uses the IE engine (via some IE.dlls) for display. An upgrade to IE 9 (at least on the version of Remedy we are on) instantly breaks it so that you can't read tickets. Similary, some SAP Netweaver components throw a "browser is not supported" message for IE 9. Some of our custom apps, especially the older ones written in early ASP .Net or Classic ASP, do not display correctly on the new version. Some 3rd party browser plugins don't work. Security testing needs to be done.
All of this takes time. Everything has to be tested, and all the problems like those mentioned above have to be ferreted out and mitigated before the new browser can be rolled out, or key productivity tools and processes will break. That is why a stable release cycle, as well as security support for older versions (rather than instant End of Life) is critically important to businesses. It has nothing to do with "vendor lock-in" as you suppose.