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: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)
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I stand corrected.
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That's not all.
http://www.frontmotion.com/FMFirefoxCE/ [frontmotion.com]
was found almost immediately. Note: AD friendly.
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Not an official Mozilla build, though, and that's bad from a trust standpoint.
I've wished Mozilla would do FF and TB .MSI builds for ages now, and I just don't understand why they haven't gotten around to it after all these years.
I wouldn't be so quick to make that assumption. (Score:3)
Driven by vendor lock-in (Score:5, Insightful)
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Like all other browsers, they want you to default to Bing Search.
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Microsoft gives IE away for free. The only reason they want to "win back your business" is to take advantage of vendor lock-in.
Unlike, say, Chrome?
At least Firefox and Safari have less manipulative motivations.
I'm not seeing where this is good for the business, especially considering that the security fix for Firefox 4 is well-known and free (upgrade to Firefox 5).
Didn't you just put down MS for making IE free?
MS wants to steer you towards Bing and Windows Live. Google wants to steer you towards their ads.
Firefox wants you to use non-proprietary software (except for Flash, for some reason) and Apple wants WebKit in wide use so that OS X and iOS users don't get left out of the web.
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What about Opera, man! I want the analysis of the 5th big browser!
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.
Support doesn't have to come from Mozilla. (Score:2)
It's Free Software. Mr. Kaply has everything he needs to start supporting it himself. Think of it as a business opportunity.
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.
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https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/nightly-tester-tools/ [mozilla.org] will get around that problem.
It's pretty much an essential addon these days, which is sad, though in my case I run the latest Seamonkey nightlies so its use is at least justified there.
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Oh I agree entirely, but it's still an extremely useful tool to have until they do.
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: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.
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I use five extensions, all quite mainstream. One was even produced by mozilla. ALL FIVE of them were incompatible with 5.0 and needed to be updated. What you're saying just isn't true about "poorly programmed extensions". The model is broken.
-molo
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Extensions that fail to work solely because they didn't set the max compatitibility setting to 5+ are by definition poorly programmed. Take a look at the release notes, they didn't screw with anything really major that should take down extensions. I'd understand if they just gutted the whole thing and replaced all sorts of things under the hood but this was the equivalent of a minor bug fix.
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They are currently competing with:
apple / google working together on webkit / chrome / safari
microsoft
They need to decide on a niche. The "heavy" browser for web designers, power users.... may be that niche.
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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: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]
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5 is just 4.1 (or maybe 4.0.2) (Score:3)
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So for a minor upgrade you probably only need minimal testing then you can deploy.
Now, how do you tell when a version upgrade contains some major change? Perhaps the could increase the version in increments of ten for big changes.
Version numbers are meaningless (Score:5, Interesting)
Each company and such has a bizarre meaning to version numbers.
FF 5 IS the security update to FF4.
Much like Chrome goes up by major numbers.
Then you look at open source where things often start in the 0.01 range and every digit could be a new feature release.
A number of companies use major.minor.build however it really isn't as standard as you think.
Cisco ASA devices look like major.minor.build however new features regularly appear in the "Builds"
Juniper security gear has gone to a year.quarter. release numbering system
take your pick.
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.
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thank you! mozilla has been adding irrelevant features instead of fixing major problems. they're becomming rhe radioshack of internet browsers slowly widdling away the only reason for their existence just to be like chrome.
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"Juniper security gear has gone to a year.quarter. release numbering system"
Well at least even if the company stops improving the code we will still get updates, because apparently all that is required is that time has elapsed.
Re:Version numbers are meaningless (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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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.
use lynx then, it doesn't have rapid updates.
and it will be secure enough for you.
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Stupidity comes in different forms. Stupidity is sticking with IE6 even when told it is insecure. However stupidity is also refusing to fix major security holes in IE6. Sure after some period of time you can't fault Microsoft for moving on to much later versions and it would be stupid for Microsoft to keep trying to patch such an ancient product.
Also stupidity is declaring that a 6 week old product is end of life and requiring customers to have a continual upgrade process and telling them that their opin
Pot meet kettle. (Score:3)
That being said, I find the decision by Mozilla to be equally stupid. 4 versions in seven years, and suddenly we jump to a new version every month? It's just odd.
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Well Windows 7 is NT Kernel version 6.1.
If Mozilla hadn't randomly re-versioned Gecko to match the Firefox version with 5.0 then this would be more apt, but Firefox 4.0 was using Gecko 2.0 so it still kind of applies.
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.
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That sounds like a pretty good idea, but then you bring Chrome in. Chrome doesn't have anything like "stability" WRT to version numbers, there's just the release version that gets a version increment every couple months or so.
Harsh Realities (Score:5, Interesting)
I use Firefox, and have for quite a while. I've gone from a strong supporter and proselytizer to... less enthusiastic. It's still my first choice of browser, but just barely.
It was the Awesomebar debacle, and their refusal to include an option to turn it off, that first made me suspect they were headed in the wrong direction. Removing the status bar was a bad idea, and then this ridiculous botchup with versioning... sigh.
They have positives. They have the best plug-in architecture, and they aren't including patented/copyrighted codecs in the browser, which is good (although they should allow a direct interface to the underlying OS codecs, not simply forbid them from playing). Still, I was contemplating shifting over to Opera. Now, today, we learn that Opera is probably going to go to hell in the next few months.
At this point, I'm hoping that somebody will fork Firefox back at the 3.6 version, and take it from there. It needs to go in a direction the users want, and stop trying to force the users into a direction the designers want. If you stop listening to your users, they will leave. It's beginning to happen with Firefox.
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Well said, sir. You summarized well my gripes and the overall Firefox situation.
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Firefox is still the most customizable browser (from the popular ones). If you're trying to use it's UI as a means to discredit it that means you don't really know Firefox. It will take one direction for default users (appeal to the majority) but the power users will be able to tweak it to a great extent.
Pretending that it suits your specific tastes is just unrealistic.
Something else I don't understand is why "geeks" can't simply use more than one browser. You DON'T have to set on one for the rest of ete
FF Major releases every 3 months.. (Score:2)
Seems like the singularity is closer than I thought.
I won't install IE on user systems (Score:2)
Awesomebar Debacle? (Score:3)
The Awesomebar is a debacle? Wow. Gee. For me, it's the only thing that keeps me using Firefox. I love the Awesomebar.
now every version is russian roulette (Score:3)
Changing version numbers were a way for me to avoid updates until I had a chance to see if they completely ruined the UI with major changes. Now instead of just updating I have to research to see if it's "just a security update" or an "oh my god WTF" change that has me fighting the UI configuration to get it back to what I want it to be.
Same thing goes for releasing websites as a developer. Now that I can't rely on version numbers, how am I going to break down support and compatibility?
What are they thinking? Do they WANT to piss everyone off, or do they have their heads up their asses? If they keep this up, MS will be perfectly right to point out that they have kept a sane versioning system, and that it is kind of a big deal.
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Over 10% of corporations in the US according to this report [thoughts.com], use Firefox, and they aren't quick to update....
Do not click link! It is to goatse, luckily I am using FF5 + NoScript and it was blocked
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So, a company currently on Firefox 3 may have been testing Firefox 4 for the past couple of months, with an eye toward deploying at some point a quarter or two down the line. Suddenly they get news that they won't even
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If Microsoft had made it easy to support multiple versions of IE on a single Windows install, they might never have lost any corporate market share.
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Can you install IE9 alongside IE6 yet? If not, that probably makes IE a no-go for a lot of companies that rely on IE6 for shitty internal apps.
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 :)
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Notepad has been working flawlessly for me, I can say that much.
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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 t
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AFAIK IE7's rendering engine do feels like a hack of the IE6 rendering engine. IE8 feels more like a rewrite, at least in terms of CSS. I can tell by similarities of bugs.
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I have nothing but problems with IE8. I get the "Internet Explorer Has Stopped Working" several times per day . . . mostly when working in SharePoint!
http://support.microsoft.com/gp/pc_ie_intro [microsoft.com]
I have been through each option and none of them have solved the problem. I have had to switch between FF and Chrome to accomplish various tasks in SharePoint. Each have their own unique compatibility issues with SharePoint, but I can manage having to use differents tool for various tasks. I cannot manage rando
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When the alternative is a browser that is EOL'ed after 4 months on the market? You bet your shiny metal ass it does. Maybe Chrome becomes the official IT alternative to IE.... I don't know. But I can guarantee you that this epically moronic decision just handed IE and Chrome the corporate market.
Actually... (Score:2)
So there has been significant bitching and moaning among general audience web developers about Chrome and now Firefox going down the hole of throwing bugfixes and features and general overhauls all together and ensuring a very high risk for their web applications not working right after an update.
In large IT departments with internal web sites, this is magnified many times over. Generally internal web sites are constructed by people who are frequently not that good at it in the first place, and only part-t
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How many enterprises with substantial Linux desktop usage have standards non compliant internal websites? Can you name any?
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IE was actually the default browser for OS X for a while, people didn't care for it.
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IE was actually the default browser for OS X for a while, people didn't care for it.
Actually, when it was the default in Mac OS it was quite good. It was even better than IE on Windows (not that that was a terribly high bar).
The problem was Microsoft pretty much let it stagnate during the transition to OS X (like they did with IE 6 on Windows, except that there was no OS transition at the time to amplify the stagnation). This led to Firefox's rise (especially on Windows) and Apple's decision to fork khtml into WebKit. Had MS not let IE languish like they did, the rise of Firefox and WebKit
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Now MS wants its customers back. IE 9 is pretty good, and will most likely win a few people back, but the horse is out of the barn,
Personally, I'm not a big fan of "going back". If MS screwed up so bad before, why should anyone want to go back to them, despite their claims that "we've learned our lesson!"?
It's like going back to a bad relationship or marriage. If you were married to someone and it was a terrible relationship (cheating, lying, whatever), and you break up/get a divorce, then 5 years later t
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Now MS wants its customers back. IE 9 is pretty good, and will most likely win a few people back, but the horse is out of the barn,
Personally, I'm not a big fan of "going back". If MS screwed up so bad before, why should anyone want to go back to them, despite their claims that "we've learned our lesson!"?
Then they won't win *you* back, but they will (and have) won *some* people back. For most people, this isn't some sort of "relationship". They'll use whatever browser is best for them at the time. There's little hassle in switching between IE and Firefox for most people.
It's like going back to a bad relationship or marriage. If you were married to someone and it was a terrible relationship (cheating, lying, whatever), and you break up/get a divorce, then 5 years later that person calls you up and says "I've learned my lesson! I got some counseling, and I really want to get back together with you!", would you go for it? Of course not. When a relationship goes bad past a certain threshold, you need to move on and do something different in your life.
Oh, give me a break. Software is different from personal relationships! You don't get beat up buy software, it doesn't break your heart, it doesn't cheat on you.
Companies aren't people.
Of course, someone will probably say "companies aren't people", but maybe if we treated them more like people, and stopped putting up with their BS and going back to them, they'd behave less sociopathically.
BUT THEY AREN'T PEOPLE. You can't just say, "don't say t
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Agreed. I might bitch at Firefox but just because they're mental doesn't make IE all the sudden attractive.
In terms of missing features, not working at all under Linux is a pretty important one. Besides Firefox + retardation still trumps IE under windows.
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).
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I was a 5 mb update
I was a 12 MB update to my family, although I've always been a pretty big kid.
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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But yes, there are some basic novelties like 'about:memory' in FF5.0.
About Fedora's 6 months release cycle, maybe you missed Fedora is the cutting-edge development version of and for Red Hat?
Re:Do they have an IT dept? (Score:5, Interesting)
No, the change is NOT only a number. Mozilla has stated that every major version change breaks ABI compatibility.
That probably doesn't matter to you (it certainly doesn't to me) but if a company distributes Firefox extensions for their employees, they're going to have an upgrade headache on their hands.
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Yes, I'm sure any IT'er worth his salt will confirm that, however many company policies handle things differently between dot updates and number changes. Vendor did something similar with a program we use at my work. If they had left it a dot update (as it originally was), we could have installed it without issue, but because they decided to also make it a new version number instead, company policy demanded that it had to go
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.
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How that's different from an update from the last version of FF 3.6 to FF 4.0? If they've been testing that one for 3 months they were ready to install it when FF 4.0.1 obsoleted it. What should they do? Install 4.0 and start testing 4.0.1. If the IT department guys know what they are doing, they know that the update from 4.0.1 to 5.0 is more like the update to 4.0.2. If they don't know what they're doing, they should be fired.
Anyway you can't test for 3 months every single update of a web browser. Even IE
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.
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Fedora is meant to be non stable, its meant to be the test bed for RedHat. The stable product is RHEL. Why would Fedora want customers that are interested in stability, so they can undercut RHEL?
But yes, FF if they are going to retire support this aggressively then its unsuitable for the enterprise. The business issues are not comparable.
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.
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I've never understood that mentality in the IT world. Speaking as a web developer, if your personnel and timecard webapps don't work in a newer version of your browser, then your developers aren't coding them right.
Mozilla isn't gutting gecko with every release. They're fixing bugs, adding new markup, CSS, and JS features, and tweaking the UI. Unless you define "needless" as "useful things that people like" then I wouldn't exactly call those needless changes.
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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.
Take a guess which one Mozilla cares about.
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.
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Please tell me what "technological advances" Firefox 5 actually brought us. I am curious.
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Just to name a few...
- Almost 1000 bug fixes including fixes related to security and performance
- Improved performance of HTTP connection logic, canvas tag, JS engine, memory management, and networking
- More support for HTML5, XHR, MathML, SMIL, and canvas standards
- CSS animations
- Increased discoverability of Do-Not-Track header preference
- Better spell checking for some languages
- Better Linux desktop support
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that's a bug fix not a major version. in any case, right now I'm sitting here in firefox with the browser using 340 megs of ram with one tab open. that's an operating system worth of ram being used while just sitting here. the other day after the update was out, java crashed firefox and took the OS with it somehow. there are huge gaping problems that are not being dealt with.
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http://www.mozilla.com/en-US/firefox/5.0/releasenotes/ [mozilla.com]
What’s New in Firefox
The latest version of Firefox has the following changes:
* Added support for CSS animations
* The Do-Not-Track header preference has been moved to increase discoverability
* Tuned HTTP idle connection logic for increased performance
* Improved canvas, JavaScript, memory, and networking performance
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that is of absolutely no use to me when firefox is using 300 megs of ram with one tab open and still crashes whenever the Java plugin activates. those are big problems that are just being compeltely ignored.
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No, they aren't:
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/06/10/2125227/Mozilla-MemShrink-Set-To-Fix-Firefox-Memory [slashdot.org]
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Sounds like the extensions you like were written poorly to me. All the ones I use still work fine.
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maybe maybe not. firefox's new release schedule basically renamed minor bug fixes as major releases. they are not working any faster, they just changed how they name things more or less.
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3.6 is a previous major release, that is used by many, and a part of 3.x releases.
4.0 and 5.0 are essentially 4.0 and 4.1 if mozilla went by the numbering scheme of 3.x releases. A minor update.
Therefore it's pretty SMART to continue to support 3.6.
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Correct, but by their new nomenclature 3.x is an exception, as it's a part of old one.
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Then why version it like that in the first place?
Either there are big differences, or there aren't. Big differences means issues when upgrading, and suggest a new version number. Little differences mean easier upgrading, and suggest an incremental version number.
If it's just a small update, why did Mozilla version it like they did? If it was for marketing purposes, to make it look like a bigger jump that it really is, then they can't be surprised when people treat it like a bigger jump than it really is.
If,
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Because when you're Mozilla and an increasing number of your design/policy decisions are based on whatever Google does with Chrome, you want to accelerate your version numbering for no logical reason.
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Well, like I said, if they want to choose a marketing-based versioning plan in order to manipulate people's perceptions, they'll have to accept the fact that it will manipulate people's perceptions.
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Then Number it that way.
Just because Google puts out a major revision number every 2 months doesn't mean everyone should. In fact I'm getting really sick of every browser on earth copying Google Chrome. Minimalistic doesn't always mean Functional.
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This isn't about version numbers. This is about end-of-life for "old" versions.
What's relevant isn't that Firefox's version numbers are going up so fast per se, it's that no version gets more than six weeks worth of security updates. They're coupled, and I think that's a poor choice because it means you can only choose two of the following three options:
1. Secure
2. Stable
3. Firefox
But that's their choice to make.
Asa himself suggested IE to enterprises. This Asa: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asa_Dotzl [wikipedia.org]
EoL decision (Score:3)
That looks like a good description of Mozilla's current position. Personally, I think it's mad.
The very small IT department for whom I work for part time is not IBM, yet share some of the same issues. Like IBM we have users on Windows Mac and Linux. Like IBM we were not ready to update our users to Firefox4 before it was out of support. We have internal apps which have been developed by people who have left, and by contractors. Dotzler's answer of use IE, is impossible across our OS mix.
IBM's 500000 us