A taste of Internet Explorer v7?

June 5, 2005 4:43 AM

Maxthon websiteInternet Explorer has not been updated for some time and competing browsers have improved on its ageing feature-set. But there's no need to ditch IE. Maxthon provides tabbed functionality and a lots more besides to give you a taste of what is likely to be included in IE7.
posted by bobbyelliott (60 comments total)

why is this better than just installing firefox? slapping an app on top of a bloated, bug-ridden and highly insecure browser isn't going to be that much better is it?

maxthon: 4.86MB
firefox: 4.7MB
posted by quarsan at 5:03 AM on June 5, 2005

slapping an app on top of a bloated, bug-ridden and highly insecure browser isn't going to be that much better is it?

Yes, yes, all reasonable people hate Microsoft ("M$ SUX!"). I'm a long-time Mozilla user, but two of your adjectives are inaccurate-- IE runs light (on my system, anyway) and it's very stable.

But your "highly insecure" adjective is the largest reason why Maxthon isn't even remotely tempting.

(And the size of the installer has nothing to do with the system resources a program will use.)

maxthon: 4.86MB
firefox: 4.7MB
posted by Mayor Curley at 5:24 AM on June 5, 2005

But your "highly insecure" adjective is the largest reason why Maxthon isn't even remotely tempting.

it seems to me that IE is insecure because there are legions of microsoft hating geeks writing viruses and trying to undermine microsoft's products.

frankly if redmond's engineers spent as much time trying to breech firefox, then it too would be "highly insecure." of course, if this happened, the open source community would be screaming about how unfair it is.

the open source community should act more responsibly and spend its time making its own "products" better instead of trying to make microsoft's products worse.

as a software novice who simply wants to use software, i am sick of being used a pawn in these silly little power struggles.
posted by three blind mice at 5:49 AM on June 5, 2005

three blind mice: please don't associate OS developers with virus writers and spyware writers. Most viruses coming out now are more likely to be written by people who are simply malicious, attempting to profit from ignorance or in rare instances, organized crime.

Open Source developers aren't likely to write a virus because they're afraid of the very sentiment you express. They'd rather have people switch to their software because of feature equivalence rather, not because you're afraid of them.
posted by boo_radley at 6:00 AM on June 5, 2005

I've been using Maxthon (myIE2) for a while now, and there are several features I can't give up.

-Point at a link, click-drag it sideways, and it opens in a new tab. This feature, called Super Drag&Drop, is worth the price of admission.
-Groups of sites can be opened with one click, with multiple groups available.
-It runs full screen with only a one-line dragable tab list at the bottom (or top), but the full menu unhides on mouseover.
-Great pop-up and ad blocking, skinning, mouse gestures, auto form filling, plugins, RSS reader and notifier, and highly customizable. And free.

"Maxthon uses very few resources, resulting in an average of 65% less RAM usage compares to IE when having the same large number of pages open." And they fix some security issues quickly that takes M$ forever to even notice.

IF I can do all this in Firefox, somebody tell me how. Check the Maxthon feature list before you write it off.
posted by Enron Hubbard at 6:12 AM on June 5, 2005

speaking as someone who isn't a "software novice" I can assure you that IE really is actually *riddled* with bugs. So much so that when I designed our website I estimate I spent around 40% of the effort trying to work around bugs and non standard rendering problems in internet explorer.

I'm not exactly sure how you think that the open source community "makes Microsoft's products worse". Actually Microsoft quite often deliberately make their own products worse - it's a favourite tactic of theirs. IE, for instance, has had several widely known rendering bugs for years and years which have never been fixed by MS - these bugs force website authors to either write their web pages to fit with the quirks of IE (in which case they will look odd in every other browser that isn't broken), or else spend twice as long putting awful hacks into their pages to change how they work depending on whether they're being looked at with IE or any other browser. The upshot of this, of course, is that most people simply write pages which only work in Internet explorer - thus breaking the whole idea of the standards on which the web is based and effectively shutting out any competing browsers.

I'm intrigued to know exactly how you think the open source community is using you as a pawn, except by making a browser which actually implements web standards properly and giving it to you for free ? What else do you think the open source community does except make their own products better ? Re-reading your post it seems as if you think that somehow the OS community is responsible for writing all the various viruses, trojans and worms that infect IE and Windows in general, which is rather a strange idea.

You don't seem to understand how Open Source works - frankly if "Redmond's engineers spent time trying to breech firefox" the open source community would be astonished and full of gratitude. Finding security holes is a GOOD THING, that means people can fix them. The open source community spends a lot of time trying to breech it's own software (and they can be more thorough in their attempts because they have access to the source code) - that's why it tends to work better.
posted by silence at 6:16 AM on June 5, 2005

The Mozilla Foundation have a bug bounty program to encourage the discovery, and therefore repair, of software flaws.

To be quite honest with you, I can't for the life of me remember if Microsoft have an equivalent or not.
posted by NinjaPirate at 6:28 AM on June 5, 2005

I've used the freeware Avant Browser for quite a while, similar to Maxthon in that it is built on IE code. Just a few days ago I tried moving to Firefox and, man, it's a frickin' hassle having to find and install all these extensions just to get to the same feature set that came with Avant (and Maxthon) by default years ago. And it still doesn't even do as good a job. Then there's all the little bugs with this or that extension in Firefox and having to read forums to get things working properly. Bleh, I think I'm just going to go back to Avant Browser in the end!
posted by Onanist at 6:33 AM on June 5, 2005

How is this news, at all? IE wrappers have been around for years, literally. These days, what's the point? Throw a Yugo engine in a Ferrari and it's just a very pretty shell with crap functionality. Same thing here. All the gloss around the edges can't make up for the crap at the core.

IE wrappers were handy two years ago; since Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox hit the scene, however, they seem more than a bit pointless.

Reporting on years-old software (as MyIE is) doesn't make for a very good post.
posted by Floach at 6:33 AM on June 5, 2005

I use Firefix every chance I can, but for me, the simple fact remains that there are certain sites that just don't work well or at all under FF. Sometimes it's page layout, sometimes it's pop-up handling, or click-handling, or any number of (usually scripting-related issues), but I still need to use IE on a daily basis. (QT also runs much more erratically for me under FF than it does in IE. I've given up trying to view QT in FF.) The answer is _not_ that I should just stop visiting those sites, or stop watching MOV files. Protesting that the sites are not standards-compliant are also useless...I'm supposed to tell a client that I won't work with them until they make their site FF-compliant? Right.

When I do need to use the IE browser engine, then Maxthon's a great way to do it. You get to keep all your IE windows in a tabbed environment, and if you use the "ieview" FF extension, you can designate Maxthon as your IE alternative, and also specify sites that always jump into Maxthon/IE when you click on them from FF.
posted by LairBob at 6:39 AM on June 5, 2005

_{"Firefix"..heh. My bias must be showing.}
posted by LairBob at 6:39 AM on June 5, 2005

I switched to Maxthon from Firefox due to memory issues. On a default install, Maxthon runs at max 20mb on my laptop with twenty tabs open.

Security hasn't really been a problem (popup blocking/activex blocking etc) and most web developers develop to the IE "standard"..

Everything integrates much better - the only reason I use firefox now is to check how web pages render in it and use the web developer toolbar.
posted by Mossy at 8:31 AM on June 5, 2005

They are only web-browsers folks. Relax. Step away from the computer. Get some sun...
posted by punkrockrat at 8:32 AM on June 5, 2005

They are only web-browsers rock and roll records deadlines pocket change lying politicians school marks, folks. Relax.

There are a million arbitrary things in life to care about, this is no more and no less intrisically valuable as any other. Some people like web-browsers enough to argue about them; some people don't. C'est la vie.
posted by dflemingdotorg at 8:39 AM on June 5, 2005

Point at a link, click-drag it sideways, and it opens in a new tab.

Hey, check it out! I can do this in Firefox! I never even thought to try it before. Thanks, Enron Hubbard!
posted by SPrintF at 8:55 AM on June 5, 2005

My main problem with Firefox is its lousy performance - it runs like a dog compared to IE6 on a 1999/2000-era PC...
posted by runkelfinker at 8:59 AM on June 5, 2005

Protesting that the sites are not standards-compliant are also useless...I'm supposed to tell a client that I won't work with them until they make their site FF-compliant?

Just, ah... a nit-picking little thing I'd like to point out. Your sentence started out really good, but then at the end you took it for a loop and made up something called "FF-compliant."

Standards are implemented in Firefox, and if you write to standards, you're compliant with every standards-compliant browser out there... not just firefox. There's no such thing as "firefox compliant," since firefox doesn't make unique demands of web developers.
posted by odinsdream at 9:03 AM on June 5, 2005

As soon as I saw the FPP I knew it wouldn't take long for the Firefox Fundamentalists to show up.

I find Maxthon's mouse gestures easier to use on a tablet than any of the half-dozen plug-ins for Firefox which provide mouse gestures (yes, I've tried them).

And what LairBob said about pages that don't work right in Firefox. Yeah, it's all well and good to say, "it's the fault of the site designer for not following standards, not the fault of the browser," and that's absolutely right, but that doesn't help me use the site.

Also, I like Maxthon's highly customizable search bar: by editing SearchBar.ini you can include a search option for any website which passes the search terms in the URL.

That said, this is kind of a weak post.
posted by DevilsAdvocate at 9:08 AM on June 5, 2005

Also, speaking as a software developer, three blind mice's comments are extremely offensive. Open-source developers don't sabotage competing products, they seek to make their own product better.

it seems to me that IE is insecure because there are legions of microsoft hating geeks writing viruses and trying to undermine microsoft's products.

Not true. Microsoft's bugs are real. So are Firefox's bugs, but they are more carefully tracked and fixed more quickly. Most viruses are written for-hire and come out of countries like Russia, where organized crime is rampant.

frankly if redmond's engineers spent as much time trying to breech firefox, then it too would be "highly insecure." of course, if this happened, the open source community would be screaming about how unfair it is.

See above - this is how open-source works. People purposefully try to find bugs and report them. Microsoft's efforts would be greatly appreciated.

the open source community should act more responsibly and spend its time making its own "products" better instead of trying to make microsoft's products worse.

That's literally the only thing that open-source developers do with their software; try and make it better. Profit is a secondary or non-existent motive to most open-source projects. They truly exist to provide reliable, secure code for the community as a whole to inspect and further improve upon.

as a software novice who simply wants to use software, i am sick of being used a pawn in these silly little power struggles.

Or you're just paranoid.
posted by odinsdream at 9:11 AM on June 5, 2005

Wow, you people are very passionate about your browsers.
posted by iwouldificould at 9:23 AM on June 5, 2005

Because no one else will, but they really should
posted by NinjaPirate at 9:24 AM on June 5, 2005

well, I did that rather impressively, didn't I?
Opera web browser
posted by NinjaPirate at 9:25 AM on June 5, 2005

By the way, StrokeIt allows you to have customisable mouse gestures in any application.
posted by NinjaPirate at 9:31 AM on June 5, 2005

Most people don't use Opera and Firefox because they hate IE. If IE provided a truly superior experience, people would chose it. Unfortunately for IE, a tweaked to how-you-like-it Opera or FF is much more usable than IE. IE has the advantage of being integrated with the OS, which provides some inherent strengths, most notably fast first load times (on the browser, not sites), imho.

Now if FF has the speed of Opera's back button I'd be set...
posted by jikel_morten at 9:44 AM on June 5, 2005

IE is insecure because there are legions of microsoft hating geeks writing viruses and trying to undermine microsoft's products.

IE is insecure because MS noticed that a good and helpful samaritan could walk by the house and be much more helpful if he didn't need to putz about with locks, doorknobs or even doors. so, they removed the doors and touted ActiveSamaritan™ as a feature. now because uninvited passersby, curious busybodies, and all manner of perverts and thieves are raiding the fridge, pestering you to buy stuff, and sniffing about in your daughter's underwear drawer, MS gets blamed simply because it is the largest provider of door-free homes! this is soooooo unfair!

(they did the same thing in all the office apps. how handy than an autoexecuting spreadsheet macro could access a file system with full privs! what a brilliant feature!)
posted by quonsar at 10:21 AM on June 5, 2005

three blind mice writes "it seems to me that IE is insecure because there are legions of microsoft hating geeks writing viruses and trying to undermine microsoft's products."

I'm no partisan of any particular browser, but I am a professional software writer. Internet Explorer was written (and given away free) by Microsoft for a reason: to get businesses to buy MS's server-side technologies. To facilitate this, MS purposely gave ActiveX plug-ins too much latitude in what they could do, while at the same time ignoring both security and end-user convenience.

(And given that Firefox keeps dropping my Mefi cookies on when it runs on an Apple, I'd surely recommend Safari for that platform!)
posted by orthogonality at 10:36 AM on June 5, 2005

boo_radley, odinsdream, silence perhaps i am painting with broad strokes, but all of this "we're so pure because we don't do it for money" doesn't really make it.

it is not paranoia, but hard earned experience. why is my mac rarely infected, but my XP machine under constant assualt? OS X is a lot more "buggy" than XP - and i assume easier to exploited - but few people seem to be interested in invading it.

if OS were truely interested in producing better code then why not work with MS to make MS products better as well? why promote firefox over IE? as a computer user i could give a rat's ass if the source is open or not, it makes no difference to me. all i want is a stable machine that does not require a CS degree to operate.
posted by three blind mice at 10:37 AM on June 5, 2005

OS X is a lot more "buggy" than XP - and i assume easier to exploited - but few people seem to be interested in invading it.

I see you have no real experience with OS X. This is one of the most fallacious (and laughable) statements I've seen in quite awhile.
posted by Floach at 10:52 AM on June 5, 2005

three blind mice I know next to niente about computers but I do know that Firefox is more stable to use, doesn't get infected with crap nearly so much as when I used IE. Coolwebsearch and a whole other crapola confection of crapware ruined many hours of my life as I tried (often in vain) to get the puter fixed.

You made a few contentious statements and when people challenge you rather than raise your hands and say 'I said a few dumb things' you seem to be digging further.
posted by ClanvidHorse at 11:06 AM on June 5, 2005

This whole post and thread is one big dumb troll.
posted by Josh Zhixel at 11:13 AM on June 5, 2005

it is not paranoia, but hard earned experience. why is my mac rarely infected, but my XP machine under constant assualt? OS X is a lot more "buggy" than XP - and i assume easier to exploited - but few people seem to be interested in invading it.

Not sure where your impression of OS X being buggier comes from. Further, there are some design characteristics of OS X that make it harder to exploit in the same way as Windows.

Among them, the default web browser (Safari) does not have a flawed technology (ActiveX) at the core. Additionally, Windows users generally run as administrator, and have free rein to destroy their machines. OS X makes it quite a bit harder to infect the entire operating system.

While no operating system is perfectly secure, OS X's Unix security model is time-tested, and appears to be harder to exploit than Windows.

if OS were truely interested in producing better code then why not work with MS to make MS products better as well?

You are aware that this sentence makes no sense, right? By "OS" do you mean Apple Computer?
posted by ladd at 11:21 AM on June 5, 2005

it is not paranoia, but hard earned experience. why is my mac rarely infected, but my XP machine under constant assualt? OS X is a lot more "buggy" than XP - and i assume easier to exploited - but few people seem to be interested in invading it.

The easy answer to this question is that you have no comprehension of how computers work, what an operating system is, and how it works, much less how or why one operating system can be more secure at a fundemental level than another one. You admit this yourself, and that's fine. Nobody expects you to know the answers to these questions in day-to-day situations, but when you try and say something that requires you to understand these issues, you better damn well understand them. You don't, stop pretending you do.
posted by odinsdream at 11:26 AM on June 5, 2005

There is another reason to avoid using Internet Explorer whenever possible: ideology.

There are perfectly valid reasons to dislike Microsoft and their business practices. Forget "M$ sux," "FF is l33t," or which browser the cool kids are using. Those are invalid reasons brought out by either ignorant Microsoft haters, or clever Microsoft supporters to discredit the opposition.

Microsoft software used to be extremely buggy and riddled with holes, but in the last several years they've improved their offerings a lot. So why not use their software? To put it simply: Microsoft will take away your freedom of choice. They will break compatibility, use patented or copyrighted protocols, and do whatever they can to make it as difficult as they can to run software that isn't theirs. If a company like Apple, with 3 or 4% share of the desktop market makes their products incompatible, they will suffer. But if a company with over 90% of the market does this, they can effectively lock out the minority users.

Why should I (Loudmax, a Linux user) care what browser people run on their Windows desktops? Because it has a direct effect on which websites I can browse. If the majority is overwhelming enough, they will ignore alternatives. As a result, some websites simply do not work on my computer. Sites that I've had this kind of problem with include banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies, and travel agencies. This isn't just bad for me, this is bad for the marketplace. If Microsoft can lock out competition, everyone will suffer.

If you use Firefox, Opera, or Safari, you weaken the monopoly and force Microsoft to improve their browser. If you use IE, or software based on it, you reduce pressure on web site developers (and their employers) to design compatible web sites. If you like the idea of being able to chose a product based on it's own merit, avoid using software that uses proprietary protocols. To be clear: if you believe in the free market, avoid Microsoft.
posted by Loudmax at 11:31 AM on June 5, 2005

man, after waking up hung-over, I needed a good laugh. thanks three blind mice.
posted by puke & cry at 11:41 AM on June 5, 2005

"if OS were truely interested in producing better code then why not work with MS to make MS products better as well?"

Why should open source developers work for Microsoft for free on products that they charge money for? (None of MS's software is free - even the "free" stuff like IE requires you to buy Windows to run it).
posted by simonw at 11:48 AM on June 5, 2005

IE is more insecure than Mozilla/Firefox for one simple reason, it is integrated into the OS. This is also why it loads faster and seems to be less memory intensive, a lot of IE's capabilities are embeded within the NT kernel. Unluckily, this also means IE has a lot more power over the computer than mozilla does, and therefore the system is more succeptable to back door attacks through IE than any other browser.

About IE's rendering engine, it hasn't been udpated since the netscape wars. Its CSS1 compliency is barely there, the CSS2 is more than spotty, and the entire thing has major problems such as the 3-pixel error, lack of alpha transparency rendering (without having to using shotty code or javascript to make it render correctly), and even a poor understanding of commenting out fields (which is how a lot of hacks work. Also note that though IE for Mac doesn't have a 3 pixel error and it does alpha transparencies, it's CSS support is even worse.

This does not mean that Mozilla or Safari don't have problems. Mozilla and Firefox are disgustingly memory intensive, and as a user this is very frustrating (though not that frustrating when you have over a gig of ram). As a stickler for standards, both of them are still lacking in some css2 support, but each major release increases it's rendering capabilities. That said, I'm still a Mozilla user (not firefox, I like more command over preferences than firefox allows). Put together native tabbed browsing, and all the extensions that are available and it's ability to render pages correctly. Most importantly because Mozilla isn't embedded into the operating system, it is naturally more restrictive and therefore more secure.
Satyagraha
posted by thebestsophist at 11:55 AM on June 5, 2005

Enron Hubbard: IF I can do all this in Firefox, somebody tell me how.

OK:

-Point at a link, click-drag it sideways, and it opens in a new tab. This feature, called Super Drag&Drop, is worth the price of admission.
Stock, you can right-click and just hit "Open in New Tab". I'm a big fan of the "Radial Context" plugin, which gives you not only this, but almost every other browser operation just by click/dragging in different directions. Highly recommended.

-Groups of sites can be opened with one click, with multiple groups available.

Just open the sites you like in tabs as normal, hit "Save Bookmark", and select "Bookmark all sites" to save the Tab set. There's plugins to do more, but this is Stock.

-It runs full screen with only a one-line dragable tab list at the bottom (or top), but the full menu unhides on mouseover.

That does sound nice. You can get pretty close to this just by arranging the configurable toobars - I hate the fat interface most browsers have by default. But I don't know of a way to make the Firefox menu/toolbars disappear when not in use.

-Great pop-up and ad blocking, skinning, mouse gestures, auto form filling, plugins, RSS reader and notifier, and highly customizable. And free.

The blocking, skinning, auto forms and RSS come stock in Firefox. Improved versions of these, gestures, and a host of super neat new stuff like Greasemonkey that (I think) have no IE equivalent, are available as free plugins. And the open structure means the user can do a lot of nest stuff just by twiddling - I get Google, Dictionary, or Wikipedia searches just by typing in my address bar with something tricky where the 'http://' would go in a URL. And so on and so on.
posted by freebird at 11:57 AM on June 5, 2005

As a note on viruses and attacks on Microsoft products: most viruses aren't created because of someone's vendetta on the biggest kid on the block, it's because the biggest kid on the block has the most users and therefore by infesting their computers you can get their information, which in turn means money. Viruses, spyware, adware is all created for one reason, money. That's why the most virulent viruses aren't the big ones that you hear about, but the small ones that just sit there and record information to report back to their creators. Contrary to popular belief, knowing how to code doesn't mean you know how write a virus. Open source developers spend too much of their working time on their own products and even more of their free time bitching about their bosses and the stupidity of microsoft products to write virii, IE has enough problems, Personally, I spend so much time making my work compadable with IE that I don't want to spend any more time thinking about any aspect of it.

On preview: In the preferences of mozilla you can set middle-click to open new tabs in the background, and with mouse gestures you can set right-left to go back, and left-right to go foward. Nothing in Maxthon's list of features haven't been done in mozilla for years already. (Links for Mozilla extensions and Firefox extensions)
Satyagraha
posted by thebestsophist at 12:12 PM on June 5, 2005

Another reason to use Firefox: you, the user, can add extensions to it.

Microsoft isn't about to write specific code for MetaFilter, and neither is Firefox -- but if I use Firefox, I can get extensions written specifically for the sites I browse, to make browsing those sites better.
posted by orthogonality at 12:24 PM on June 5, 2005

three blind mice - if [Open Source] were truely interested in producing better code then why not work with MS to make MS products better as well?

Um... maybe because Microsoft doesn't disclose their source code for people to muck with? Not to mention that anyone doing the kinds of things with MS code that Open Source typically allows would be seen as criminal reverse-engineering of proprietary, copyright-protected code, and the MS legal department does not fuck around. MS doesn't want anyone to see their program source, so Open Source efforts to improve it do not exist. That's MS's deal, not the fault of the software community.

Anyone who wants the Firefox or Linux source can download it, play with it, modify it, compile it, test it, break it, fix the broken parts, improve it in any way they see fit, and redistribute it. That's the core of Open Source efforts (full explanation here). The whole idea would maybe be acceptable to Microsoft except for the little part that stipulates any products derived from open source code must be offered at no charge. So, if Microsoft wanted to, they could grab up Firefox, re-skin it, call it IE7, and nobody could complain - as long as they stll offered it for free, with full disclosure of the source code (some caveats there), and anyone else would need to be allowed to take this IE7 and re-distribute it as their own product.

MS does not want anyone to have any insight into the way that their programs are built. Period. End of story. Even MS-certified partners are only given access to portions of source code on a need-to-know basis, and only after what I imagine would be a massively thorough screening and a very solidly binding nondisclosure agreement.

When you lock out those willing to improve your software for free because they feel that better software is better for everyone, you lose.

Enron Hubbard - to add to what freebird said above:

-Point at a link, click-drag it sideways, and it opens in a new tab. This feature, called Super Drag&Drop, is worth the price of admission.

Sure, I use control-click (stock option in FF). Binding a spare mouse key on my 5-button mouse to [ctrl] makes this much easier. Heck, I find myself control-clicking in IE occasionally and being momentarily baffled by the lack of new tab.

-Groups of sites can be opened with one click, with multiple groups available.

After you bookmark a group of tabs, you can open them individually or select "Open in tabs" to auto-open the entire folder of links at once. Again, stock option. You can even set a group of tabs as your home page(s).

-It runs full screen with only a one-line dragable tab list at the bottom (or top), but the full menu unhides on mouseover.

F11 to go full-screen. (Incidentally, IE does this too.) On full-screen view, you get tabs and a smaller version of the toolbar. Menus are hidden though.

-Great pop-up and ad blocking, skinning, mouse gestures, auto form filling, plugins, RSS reader and notifier, and highly customizable. And free.

What freebird said. The plethora of extensions for FF is amazing. My favorite "can't live without it" extensions are FlashBlock (No more flash animations unless I tell them to exist! Whitelist for favorite websites!) and the Web Developer Toolbar (edit the CSS of the page you are looking at, live! Save changes to a local file! Validate code and more!). The basic thing here is that since the code is open, anyone can implement their own favorite add-on. You like feature X from program Y? Odds are someone else does too, and they're probably made an FF extension for it.

Plus, Firefox and its friends can run from any read/write removable media, like a USB key. When I go somewhere, I take my browser, my bookmarks, and my preferences with me. I can check my email or browse MeFi from your computer, without leaving any tracks or changing your settings. Perfect for those who travel, those who have no control over their browser or email program settings at work, etc. ... If you get Maxthon to do that, you let me know.
posted by caution live frogs at 12:30 PM on June 5, 2005

Firefox's equivalent to Super Drag&Drop is Super Drag&Go.
posted by lorbus at 12:41 PM on June 5, 2005

Or you can just middle-click (wheel-click) to open a link in a new tab. Even easier.
posted by dmd at 1:23 PM on June 5, 2005

I'd like to second how essential Flashblock is. My main computer is about as fast as your average computer from 98-99. Having several IE windows open on any of the major videogame-related websites brings my computer to a halt. These days, they average at least 2 flash ads per page. With Flashblock and Firefox, I can have dozens of tabs (I try to keep it under 25... ugh...) open at Gamespot or Gamespy or whatever without any trouble.
posted by Ptrin at 1:45 PM on June 5, 2005

caution live frogs,

You are allowed to charge for open source software. Apple charges for the BSD foundation of OS X, and the KHTML foundation of Safari. Redhat comes to mind as well.

Many, as a practical matter, choose to provide the software for free, but charge for support or additional features.

You know the old RHS mantra, Free as in free speech, not free beer.

What's important is that the user be allowed to modify the source and redistribute it.

It's all more complicated, as there are a myriad of different open source licenses.

Most follow either the GPL, which says that while you can use GLP software in your product and charge for it, you have to provide the credit, and the source including your modifications.

Others, such as the BSD, say that you can used the BSD software and charge for it, but you only need to provide the credit for the work and the source your product was based on, but not your modifications.

The open source license wars are a constant source of entertaining righteous indignation.
posted by cytherea at 2:28 PM on June 5, 2005

it seems to me that IE is insecure because there are legions of microsoft hating geeks writing viruses and trying to undermine microsoft's products.

Viruses and worms are mostly written to help criminals engage in their activities, usually by providing them with thousands of computers which they can run through. Also, they're not a Windows only phenomena as much as slashdot would like you to believe. An unpatched Linux box on the net will get rooted in about as much time as an unpatched Windows box.

frankly if redmond's engineers spent as much time trying to breech firefox, then it too would be "highly insecure." of course, if this happened, the open source community would be screaming about how unfair it is.

Actually, they'd probably just take down the bug reports and try to close them as quickly as is possible. There's no shame in fixing a bug... the problem most serious computer users have with Microsoft is that they routinely ignore known threats, leaving users with no way to fully secure their machines.

the open source community should act more responsibly and spend its time making its own "products" better instead of trying to make microsoft's products worse.

This is what they do. I guess you could say I'm a member of the open-source community in that I and my former employers have contributed large amounts of time and energy into improving Open Source Software.

as a software novice who simply wants to use software, i am sick of being used a pawn in these silly little power struggles.

Those Microsoft viruses you're getting aren't written by angry Linux weenies. Your machine is being exploited by people who want to sell your usage data, expose you to ads, make your machine send spam, and more... but it's not because somebody hates Microsoft.

boo_radley, odinsdream, silence perhaps i am painting with broad strokes, but all of this "we're so pure because we don't do it for money" doesn't really make it.

Open-Source is all about the money. It's about the ability to leverage existing work and save a fortune. This is why a majority of modern open-source development comes from people who work as professional developers. They're simply looking around and realizing that with open-source, they can save development costs, and they're not beholden to any particular vendor.

it is not paranoia, but hard earned experience. why is my mac rarely infected, but my XP machine under constant assault? OS X is a lot more "buggy" than XP - and i assume easier to exploited - but few people seem to be interested in invading it.

You are clearly out of your depth when you talk about "buggy". Mac OS X ships by default in a very secure configuration. There's not a dearth of network services turned on, there's a firewall to prevent other issues, most code runs as an unprivileged user and there's an easy to use built-in update mechanism.

All this, combined with the relatively small market share, means that OS X is not an attractive target to people whose goal is the total control of large numbers of computers.

if OS were truly interested in producing better code then why not work with MS to make MS products better as well?

Security researchers do work with MS. Standard procedure is to report the exploitable problem to the vendor and give a reasonable period of time for them to provide a fix, before revealing the problem publicly.

There's not a lot you can do to improve MS software though. It's closed source, so we have no way to fix problems, other than to report them to MS and hope they choose to care.

why promote firefox over IE?

Competition is good. Vendor independence is good.

as a computer user i could give a rat's ass if the source is open or not, it makes no difference to me. all i want is a stable machine that does not require a CS degree to operate.

As a businessman, I feel the same way. The real question is how do we meet our requirements at the lowest cost. This answer is often open source, especially if there are concerns about the ability/willingness of the commercial vendor to provide a stable product (think JRun).
posted by mosch at 2:46 PM on June 5, 2005

IE is more insecure than Mozilla/Firefox for one simple reason, it is integrated into the OS. This is also why it loads faster and seems to be less memory intensive, a lot of IE's capabilities are embeded within the NT kernel. Unluckily, this also means IE has a lot more power over the computer than mozilla does, and therefore the system is more succeptable to back door attacks through IE than any other browser.

Almost everything you state in this paragraph is incorrect. First, there is not a single line of IE-specific code in the NT kernel. Second, VM is charged to a process. Unless you think IE goes through a bunch of hackery to have another process allocate the memory and then use some form of IPC to "use" it, then your assertion about why IE is ostensibly less memory intensive doesn't make sense. Finally, IE is just a regular user-mode process. It is not inherently more "succeptable" (sic) than any other.
posted by JasonSch at 3:07 PM on June 5, 2005

Another reason to use Firefox: you, the user, can add extensions to it.

Oh, snap!. Just like with IE!

Or you can use Trixie.
posted by Ayn Marx at 3:08 PM on June 5, 2005

"boo_radley, odinsdream, silence perhaps i am painting with broad strokes, but all of this "we're so pure because we don't do it for money" doesn't really make it."

"Open-Source is all about the money."

Bollocks to you both, it's about geek pride and the knowledge that if you spent a couple of hours you could easily write something better, even if it actually takes a few days. Do you know nerds? Do you live with, work with and love them? These bastards are the most arrogant, selfish and lazy people you ever meet, and they're wonderful for it.
Anything to save a few clock cycles and they produce as close to the A-grade as they can - it's their reputation on the line.

OS is built around the idea that The Man is wasting a lot of wage slave time on crappy products, and "I" can do better.
posted by NinjaPirate at 3:11 PM on June 5, 2005

from Ayn Marx's Trixie link -
"due to differences between Firefox and Internet Explorer, not all Greasemonkey scripts can be executed within IE": yup, that'll be the standards kicking in again. Sorry about that.
posted by NinjaPirate at 3:15 PM on June 5, 2005

Ugh. I remember using IE. It wasn't the security or whatever that got to me ultimately. It was IE's annoying habbit of locking up solid while trying to open a popup window. They didn't multithread that part, so if I had a slow loading popup I couldn't even scroll the fucking page!



I'll never go back!
posted by delmoi at 3:33 PM on June 5, 2005

First, there is not a single line of IE-specific code in the NT kernel.

I take it you have access to the NT kernel source code, and have read it all?
posted by odinsdream at 4:24 PM on June 5, 2005

Almost everything you state in this paragraph is incorrect. First, there is not a single line of IE-specific code in the NT kernel.

Sorry, I wasn't clear, it's not that IE code is in the NT kernel, it's that IE is able to take advantage of a lot NT's processes (and that's why activex works) while no other browser can. And it should, integration allows for a better product, that's the best reason to use IE over any other browser, it's nice to have a cohesive system that runs together smoothly, it's the same reason Debian stable is, well, stable, everything works together in the most efficient way possible.
Satyagraha
posted by thebestsophist at 5:28 PM on June 5, 2005

Yes, I have access to the source. No, I haven't read it all. Do you believe there's IE-specific code in the kernel?
posted by JasonSch at 7:54 PM on June 5, 2005

Thanks to everybody with the suggestions about tweaking Firefox to mimic the features I like in Maxthon. I will try it again with these add-ons, especially since I would like to experiment with the GREASEMONKEY extensions.

Lighten up, folks, these are software tools, not religious relics. I use what works best for me.
posted by Enron Hubbard at 8:19 PM on June 5, 2005

Point at a link, click-drag it sideways, and it opens in a new tab.

Oh duuuuude! You're right, I can do that in Firefox! Holy shit, no more mouse with a scroll wheel for me, I can go commando with my laptop.

Okay, that little genuine moment of new-feature ecstacy I just had? That's what I get every time I download a new plugin. Every time I have to use IE on a schoolmate's computer to download SpyBot for her, I end up trying to open links in new tabs, type "g spybot" to google from my address bar, and use mouse gestures to go back. IE users don't automatically get Maxthon, but all my Firefox friends instantly find a few favorite plugins.
posted by NickDouglas at 9:14 PM on June 5, 2005

But Enron, do watch out, Greasemonkey's the coolest but least reliable plugin. I had to uninstall it after a month; it just crashed me too often.
posted by NickDouglas at 9:15 PM on June 5, 2005

Actually greasemonkey is a framework for creating javascript-based scripts that are used as plugins.

Personally I found that if you have more than 4 or 5 scripts installed the load times for any web page quickly become unbearable since most of the scripts are run on every page, and Javascript isn't the swiftest of languages, especially when it comes to running several scripts at the same time.
posted by clevershark at 9:41 PM on June 5, 2005

Yes, I have access to the source. No, I haven't read it all. Do you believe there's IE-specific code in the kernel?

After hearing about your hard-hitting investigative skills and evidence? No way!!
posted by odinsdream at 10:11 PM on June 5, 2005

The basic problem with Firefox is that, as a whole, the interface feels far clunkier than Maxthon (or IE). It takes more time to start up. Every little UI widget seems to work at least a touch slower. There are lots of things that work slightly differently than normal Windows applications, or that was impression last time I tested Firefox out critically. Granted, I only have the 1.0 preview...perhaps things have changed in the newest version. But I'm skeptical.

And that's another thing: Maxthon has an internal updater. No need to reinstall... the new executable is simply smoothly transitioned in. With Firefox the prospect of installing a new version is somehow very unappealing.
posted by shivohum at 12:38 AM on June 6, 2005

Maxthon is love. I have Firefox installed, but if I absolutely HAVE to use an IE browser, I use Maxthon. Outside of a couple of minor gripes (occasional font sizing issue on certain pages and PNG display problems on certain pages), it R0XX0RZ. I'll probably continue to use it even after IE7 comes out (particularly because you know they're gonna have a bunch of loopholes in it).
posted by deusdiabolus at 12:54 AM on June 6, 2005