[editor’s note, this post was done by a reader and considered interesting enough to post. That said we still recommend Firefox over Explorer.]
Myth (Definition) – A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology. While Firefox is a decent Web Browser, there are numerous Myths floating around the Internet regarding it. Hopefully this site will debunk some of these.
We have all seen these banners before or heard people say “Firefox is Faster, Firefox has Lower Requirements, Firefox is Secure, Firefox defends me from all Spyware, etc.” How misleading is it? Read on.
Before jumping to conclusions, please read and reference the sources. They debunk each Myth. Too many of these have been floating around the Internet misleading people into switching to Firefox without being honest.
I am not going to speak against the myths. He might be right I have not looked to far into it, but he does seam to have a bit of an agenda with his page. I use firefox because of 1) tabbed browsing, and a firefox plug-in for del.icio.us, this way I can have one set of bookmarks that will propagate to all my computers with out me having to move them myself. But I am going to look further into the sources, to find out how to secure my firefox on my linux box at home, and the firefox on my windows box at work.
Most of those Firefox myths are false or misleading in some way. Not to get caught up on this, but 2 examples are the system requirements and the security.
1. Internet Explorer updates require Windows XP. At least, the security patches released to fix the serious flaws. Windows 95/98/2000 can only run the seriously flawed pre-2004 IE with all the background install exploits.
2. The Firefox “security flaws” typically involve bizarre or awkward operations like drag-dropping of links or require novel and complicated (=unlikely) user initiated actions.
Firefox isn’t faster at loading pages than Opera. That’s old news. And Firefox wasn’t the first browser to support tabs. Opera runs a lot faster on old machines than any other browser.
I use FireFox and I don’t see a reason to compare it Internet Explorer on a feature basis. The last non-security related IE upgrade was Internet Explorer 6 in 2002.
I don’t feel that is market leadership or — what’s the word Gates like to use — I don’t think that is “innovation”.
While the Firefox Myths argument is worthwhile, as a blog hoster John, you might want to check out the source.
Google on SupportCD or mywebpages comcast net SupportCD. IMHO, “SupportCD” is either a copius blog artiste, or a blog spammer.
Yeah, that’s been around for a while. It’s accurate, but also a little misleading in its tone and content.
Most of the myths are only half-myths (or aren’t actually myths, as no-one really says them) and the “truths” are rather poorly written.
Then again, much of the same treatment has happened to IE which, despite its faults, isn’t as bad as some people would say…
Firefox rules. a year after I’ve installed it and 30 plus extensions later, its fine tweaked for just about everything I do.
The most annoying thing in the world on internet explorer was having toolbars automatically installed and homepage changed to http://www.somestupidsearchwebsite.com.
Especially with the worldwide roaming I do — US to Europe to Asia — Firefox and its derivatives perform closer to standards than any crappy version of IE, including so-called IE standards.
I’ve used a few versions of the OS X flavors, Deer Park, etc., and currently use Camino — since Firefox 1.5 seems to have acquired a couple of keyboard bugs, at least with my Logitech cordless. But, all in all, I take the time each month to check all the sites where I post — and Firefox [in all its versions] is the best performing browser.
It’s funny that at the bottom of his page named “Firefox Myths” he refers to the page entitled “IE is dangerous” as propaganda. Hello, pot.
But we already know that IE CAN be secure — Steve Gibson said on Security Now! #3 (http://www.grc.com/sn/SN-003.htm) that he uses IE, but with zones turned on and with scripting turned off.
I’m really offended that this page didn’t say anything about Lynx though. Lynx is the truly secure browser.
One has to start with the truth (okay, the U.S. is exempted). I love firefox, it’s my main browser, but it is not without its exploits, weaknesses, and hangs. Nothing this side of Heaven is going to be perfect, and the firefox myths website simply points that out.
However, give me tabs, greasemonkey, noscript, bugmenot, and the filterset.g updater and I find I have a vastly superior browsing experience.
Here’s the rebuttle to this authors firefox myth scuttlebuttery:
http://robert.accettura.com/archives/2005/12/19/firefox-myths/
And here’s the link to Asa Dotzlers post about it:
http://weblogs.mozillazine.org/asa/archives/2005/12/accettura_tears.html
Essentially.. this guy is just pouring on the hate. Just misleading crap… making the assumptions that his myths are ones not concocted just to thicken this article.
You know, I’m sure on paper firefox is less safe; however the majority of security issues I have while surfing the web involve dangerous scripts that IE wants to run automagically for my convenience.
I use firefox because _in my own experience_, I have personally suffered far less spyware. Firefox at least tries to block that kind of crap out.
I’ll leave the other rebuttle to the security experts, but I’ll put myself in the standards arena. Firefox’s support is incomplete, as the rest of the browsers are (Safari has advanced in other areas that some lack, though it lacks in other areas that firefox… etc.), as I can gaurantee no one will ever be 100%. We are human. However, to have the only arguement under standards support be:
“While Internet Explorer has very good support (87%) for the most important web standard, HTML 4.01.”
Well then, I’m glad it has 87% support… for one. And I’m guessing he means HTML transitional, not strict. Aside from most of us complaining about IE’s support of the Object tag (using it for active x rather than it’s intended purposes — I’m looking at netscape of old for screwing that one with the image tag as well), HTML has not really been an issue. XHTML and XML has been a large issue, CSS has been a HUGE issue.
IE is no better than firefox in standards support, and as of recently, they’re very vocal admitting that.
So is Firefox better than IE supporting standards? Absolutely. Firefox lately has had better CSS support than Opera, though a close tie with Safari (caught safari on javascript, though).
…and his final bashing, IE web page rendering is no more a fault of any other browser so much as it a fault or poor development, and web applications that need to interact with the OS directly… which only IE does. I would argue that the majority of failing webpages aren’t because of Active X at all anymore — it is because of dated, aged developer who code with dated, aged methods. Throw out frontpage, read any one of the web development tutorials online for modern practices.
Speaking of, maybe that’ll help you developers make this site work with safari? I’m still waiting for you guys to ask for help… since you haven’t figured out your ‘hint’ overflow bug yet. Maybe I can redesign it to look less like a 97′ website:)
Cheap shot, I’ll admit it…
I just love how id10t5 like this one use MS FUD to help “dispell” the myths around FireFox.
FACT: I have not had ONE, virus, trojan, worm or ANY SUCH MALWARE since swithcing EVERY PC on my home network to FireFox and Thunderbird.
Most of the time I don’t need to RUSH to get fixes for things like the WMF Exploit because I don’t use IE or Outlook(s).
MYTH: IE is improving
FACT: Microsoft continues to play catchup (feature theft) with FireFox and other browsers
NOTE: Most problems with IE are fundamental problems with MS’ operating system(s) which IMHO is even worse then browser problems.
Speaking of theft. I noticed he uses the FireFox Brand in his button. I’m wondering if the folks at Mozilla or more importantly, their lawyers will have something to say about that.
I really don’t think these “myths” are accurate. For example… “Myth: Firefox is secure” – well, that’s not the statement. I’ve never heard anyone say that absolutely it’s secure. What I hear and IS true is that Firefox is MORE secure than IE when browsing the internet. There are several other myths similarly worded and they’re not actually the claims that anyone is putting out there. If he debunked those claims then that’d be more interesting.
I’ve been using firefox since it was in .9x (basically for the last year and a half or so). I’d always wanted to try Opera as I’d read nothing but good reviews about it, but I was also under the impression that you had to pay for it. As you can tell, I’m not too quick on the uptake. When I came across the link on your blog to that page, then saw that it was free, I quickly went to the Opera page, downloaded Opera 8.5x and gave it a shot. I’ve now uninstalled Firefox and Thunderbird. As much as I liked Firefox for its tabbed browsing and plugins (I used very few of them btw), it was buggy and, as others have already noted, had serious memory problems. Opera is downright elegant in comparison to Firefox and IE. Why don’t you pimp Opera more often, John?
I used Firefox for a while until I found Maxthon. Maxthon’s RSS feeder blows away Firefox and it’s handling of tabs is substantially better than Firefox. In addition, I used to have issues with sites rendering poorly or incompletely with Firefox that I no longer have with Maxthon. I *hated* the way Firefox handled favorites/bookmarks. I find the separate files approach in IE to be much easier to add and remove favorites than Firefox’s and synching favorites to a PDA with Firefox required yet another third-party program to handle.
Fable (Definition) – A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology, usually widely believed but possibly just pulled out of one person’s butt. While Firefox is a decent Web Browser, there are numerous Fables I spread around the Internet regarding it just so I can debunk them. Hopefully if I advertise this on every technology-related message board on the Internet under a dozen or so different names, enough people will click on my ads to make me filthy rich.
http://nanobox.chipx86.com/FirefoxFables/