Microsoft enthusiasts (yes, they do exist, and I have actually spoken with a few of them) have been on my case lately about why I’m always bashing Windows, Internet Explorer, Office, etc. They tell me how great Microsoft is, how much it’s changing as a company, and why everyone should start trusting them because of the new “Trustworthy Computing initiative” that Father Gates introduced to the world in 2002 – seventeen years after introducing the first version of Windows, but better late than never.
While surfing the net today I came across a website that reminded me why, no matter what Microsoft does, Firefox will always be better than Internet Explorer (click to enlarge):
I won’t hate too hard though. After all, the confusion is totally understandable. I’d probably need a fancy-shmancy online service to figure out that this .cn (that means it’s Chinese) website is not the real Myspace too. But since most of us are not Microsoft and do not have access to this luxury (which they have obviously taken offline so they can use it all for themselves), we are oh so lucky to have the power of Firefox:
’nuff said.
UPDATE: As of 1/24/2008, Internet Explorer still displays the same error message on obvious phishing attempts. Where is Microsoft and why aren’t they doing anything about this?
Christian
October 2, 2009 at 11:35 am
Hey you numb nuts bashing Microsoft, You should know better!
Just don't mention other browser names if you are going to bash Microsoft IE.
Bill Gates will buy all the other browsers and disolve them!
Then we would have no alternative but to go back to Dos! On the other hand maybe that isn't a bad idea!
Greg
April 27, 2009 at 10:17 am
Listen…Da Fox is SMASHING IE and there is nothing you or anyone can do about it. IE is garbage! I run Windows and LOVE it!! My kid came over and hooked me up w/ Firefox and I for one will never turn back-ev’a!
Weep and morn…but it is all over for IE.
Anonymous
September 5, 2008 at 1:28 pm
8 out of 10 times Internet Explorer always crashes right after I log into MySpace. WTF?!?!?! Gay….
firestorm9693
February 8, 2008 at 2:01 am
I’m a fan of Firefox and have been for a couple years now. That’s also about the time I started trying the different Linux flavors too, and I’ve never had any problems with either Firefox or Linux. Unfortunately, I still need Windows XP for a few select programs, so I need to dual boot, but for everything else, it’s open source for me!! (btw, I put Vista on my PC three times, and wiped it off three times).
Craigory
February 2, 2008 at 12:27 pm
As of now, with FF 2.0.0.11, I’ve had quite a few locks on FF, I’ve had those profile problems… months ago, I haven’t had them since. I’ve never experienced those weird cached images on other sites either.
Apparently FF3 fixes over 800 memory leaks (wow!), and a ton of other problems. Hopefully this version will bash out the argument “FF crashes all the time!”, and a few more.
clarjon1
January 23, 2008 at 9:37 am
Blogger chiron613 said…
I use Linux, so IE isn’t even an option. Firefox is great, but it has its problems, too. It crashes or misbehaves on many sites (seems it may choke on shockwave files? I don’t know). It also has some kind of serious caching problem – images from one Website often appear on another. Finally, it doesn’t seem to handle .PDF files properly.
IE 7 crashes when I try to view .PDF files, so it’s not all firefox’s fault…
Anyway, given a choice, I’ll still stick with firefox. It’s not perfect, but it’s so much better that IE.
———
Yeah, on the school computers, which I use firefox on, both users have trouble w/ pdf files. No matter what browser, it’s the plugin from Adobe that is causing problems. Since I switched to Linux, I told FF to use the kpdf app to read the files, instead of Adobe’s solution. THe files load faster, and view perfectly.
Andy
January 22, 2008 at 10:36 pm
“Tweak the source code” what a idiot, all you do it manually have access to a config file,, the very same config file that windows allows you to edit via a GUI, Gee’s is everyone on here up their own ar*es?, Why are you all anti microsoft, why shouldnt the guy make as much money as he can, Gees, he was clever enough to market windows when it first came out, even when his now much disgruntled ex partner couldnt see the potential. He worked his butt off getting it out there to a world, why shouldnt he reap the rewards, all this comtempt towards him having so much money is just jealously. If you invented something and brought it to market and everyone in the world said, sorry you’ve earnt too much money off your product now, we want it to be able to work with Bobs product and you dont have a choice, so you think you would do as much as Bill has,, I know I sure as hell wouldnt I’d say get stuffed, if bob want a OS to make his product work, Write ur own fri**in OS. I wish you Firefox/IE comnplianers would F off back to Hicksville. Signed Andrew Hughes, Filemakers@hotmail.com and not scared to put my NAME !!!!
The Knitter
January 22, 2008 at 2:27 pm
Simple Safe Secure Fun. My description of Firefox.
Brigander
January 22, 2008 at 1:09 pm
the reason i find FF a lot better to use is the ability to tweak the source code easily and in IE that is very hard to do… something it being intertwined in the registry and all that… but many of the memory leaks and other problems with FF can be cleared up with a few changes in the code (these can be found on google, search for firefox tweaks)
robert
January 10, 2008 at 10:10 pm
Dear Anonymous,
You are referring to my comment. We have FF on many machines at our business. It locks, freezes and consumes huge amounts of resources on XP SP2 systems that have little problems with anything else.
Additionally FF has a HUGE issue with profiles crashing and losing bookmarks. Fixed the issue 101 times.
FF is not w/o flaw. Between the Ubuntu, MAC and FF nuts I don’t know who doesn’t think their sh*t stinks less!
Anonymous
January 10, 2008 at 9:45 pm
I am a self taught pc person with a couple of years of software engineering. I have been using FF for 3 years and despite the addons, FF has crashed twice and strictly due to spyware. The CNN problem is definately an MS issue. I worry about anyone who watches CNN to begin with. CNN is the largest propaganda machine going. Back to FF, don’t blame FF for user screw-ups. The person who claimed multiple FF crashes on their multi pc network should look at the obvious.
Vinas
January 9, 2008 at 8:21 am
Swiftfox is 1000x faster than IE. Also, to anonymous CNN crasher: your computer crashes on CNN because IE INSTALLED SPYWARE FOR YOU. Take back the web!
Anonymous
January 8, 2008 at 10:28 pm
you are using a plugin. ff does not do that own its own. there are similar plugins for ie.
Therealjoe
January 7, 2008 at 5:06 am
“Windows on the other hand requires you to have a degree in computers or a techie friend if you want to keep it up and running”
Orly?
I dont have degree in computers or a techie friend but i find windows easy to use.
robert
January 6, 2008 at 11:06 am
opera? not…
at least on windows OS it is not. lack of useful extensions makes it 2nd place at best.
Anonymous
January 5, 2008 at 10:54 pm
One word: Opera
…now both are pwnt
Anonymous
January 5, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Firefox is great, and if you use it inside Sandboxie it’s even safer.
Nathan Henkel
January 4, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Regarding the mac vs. windows thing.
Please, oh please learn to keep your mouth shut if you don’t know what you’re talking about.
“you can do a lot more on a PC than you ever could on a mac (I’ve used both)”
Baaah! Wrong.
Assuming you are referring to a _PC running Windows_ vs. a _Mac running Mac OS X_, BOTH operating systems run compilers for several Turing-complete languages. Thus, the set of “things you can do” is the same, which is “everything that can be computed”.
That said, how EASY a particular thing is is a different matter. Windows is the dominant desktop platform. Thus, there are a lot of applications written only for Windows. Many architects MUST use Windows because they are required by their clients to use Autocad, and writing an Autocad clone for Mac isn’t exactly an option for them.
On the other hand, as a developer working on Windows (with a Mac at home), I can tell you that I sorely missed all the little utilities you get with Unix until we finally convinced our IT department to allow us to have Cygwin. I still miss a lot of programs I use on the Mac, both from the “Mac world” and the “*nix/XWindows” world.
However, MOST tasks have pretty equivalent utilities on BOTH platforms, often the SAME utilities (like Firefox, MS Office, etc.).
Depending on what you are doing, certain things are easier or harder to do on a particular system. For most of what I do, a Mac would suit me better (especially since a lot of the features I like are built in and our IT department is very restrictive about installing software). However, I’m adult enough to realize that my needs are not the same as everyone else’s, and, without knowing how someone else is using their computer, I can’t really say which OS is “better”. The answer to that question will depend on what the computer is being used for.
Anonymous
January 3, 2008 at 3:55 pm
I am a big computer junkie and I have used IE for sites and all, the spy ware and all the junk I got, well I switch between opera and firefox and they both work great, especialy fire fox, never had a problem with popup’s or spyware or viruses, IE always loaded slower and crashed more often then not, never had a problem with PDF files, never crashed, never slowed down my computer, it works great
Anonymous
January 3, 2008 at 10:33 am
My main complaint about FF are the memory leaks and CPU hogging. This may be a result of poorly written add-ins.
NJAZ
December 29, 2007 at 12:55 pm
I’ve been using Firefox for a couple of years. I only check sites I build with IE 7. I love my FF plug-ins and can’t complain about its basic features. I have noticed that IE7 isn’t as much of a RAM hog as FF but I don’t really care … excited for FF 3.0 …
robert
December 28, 2007 at 12:11 pm
I just cannot believe many state that FF never crashes! I just did it to me an hour ago on my work laptop. Memory starts climbing up at times (I’ve seen 200meg) used of RAM and it just freezes. I’ve walked away for 20 minutes before just to test if it needed time to work it’s way through a timeout or bad code.
IT DOES LOCK UP WAY MORE THEN IE…
…but it’s still cooler…
Joseph
December 28, 2007 at 7:27 am
by all means, I do not support IE outside of writing sites that will work in both that and other browsers.
Here is the issue, one of my co-workers swears up and down that no matter what, you should write websites for IE and then the other sites. Stating that IE follows all the W3C Standards. Granted, FF does crash on certain extensions, but can you place blame solely on FF? While working in IE with a CMS/EMG Program (at work), I have seen IE crash once a week. I have to restart IE everytime I switch from one major CMS Project to another. (These projects are 2 hour projects) In CMS, I am using Microsoft Word and Browser. I have never had to restart, clear cache, close out/re-enter FF.
Oh, and I never had problems with CNN and FF. if someone has a problem with the two, please explain what you were doing prior to CNN and as you were getting into CNN.
Anonymous
December 26, 2007 at 1:34 am
“How come FF crashes on the CNN website,and IE doesn’t!”
Because whoever designed the CNN site probably tested it in internet explorer which would be fine except IE is terrible when it comes to following online standards.
robert
December 25, 2007 at 7:19 pm
I commented already but I have to again. Of the 4 systems in my house FF needs restarted twice as my as IE. Yes I love FF for the extensions and special features but it needs restarted often on our XP SP2 systems way to often. The browser locks up and I cannot get out. I believe the other posters comments about shockwave, flash, ect and other imbedded functionality causes these issues.
Anonymous
December 25, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Firefox is great, open source software is designed by people who care about making good programs, not about making software for a profit.
Firefox rocks, beats all competitors including IE
Steve Parker
December 25, 2007 at 5:42 pm
To be fair, this is a simple comparison of two equivalent (both rather flawed) features; at the time you tested it, the MS server was down, and the FF server was up.
It is not a comparison of the browsers themselves.
A statistical report of the uptimes of the relevant servers would be interesting, if you plan to depend upon this feature (which would, in the general case, be unwise, for either implementation).
chiron613
December 25, 2007 at 11:54 am
I use Linux, so IE isn’t even an option. Firefox is great, but it has its problems, too. It crashes or misbehaves on many sites (seems it may choke on shockwave files? I don’t know). It also has some kind of serious caching problem – images from one Website often appear on another. Finally, it doesn’t seem to handle .PDF files properly.
IE 7 crashes when I try to view .PDF files, so it’s not all firefox’s fault…
Anyway, given a choice, I’ll still stick with firefox. It’s not perfect, but it’s so much better that IE.
Anonymous
December 24, 2007 at 11:22 pm
Yeah Firefox didn’t crash on CNN for me either… and it blocked three or four pop-up ads while it was busy not crashing.
Anonymous
December 24, 2007 at 2:05 pm
Linux+Firefox=The Only Way (For Me)
Sefus
December 23, 2007 at 9:46 pm
This exact thing happened to me tonight. I got a link to some myspace page that FF said was bogus.
Indeed. IE has been pwnt since FF was released.
robert
December 23, 2007 at 7:29 pm
It (FF) has more then it’s issues too! Yes extensions rock but I have FF on 30 machines in my office and about once a month we lose all bookmarkes on a client and go into the dreadful default user mode. What a PIA to fix…
FF crashes, locks, freaks and eats resources. I’m sure it’s still more secure until it replaced IE.
Painter
December 23, 2007 at 5:48 pm
@ canuck4
“Windows on the other hand requires you to have a degree in computers or a techie friend if you want to keep it up and running.”
Really? I might agree with Vista, but not XP. XP works fine (I use it mainly for Maya, AfterEffects, Premier, Photoshop and Illustrator) and I don’t remember the last time I need a tech to help me with something or set something up.
Whine and bitch and complain. Windows doesn’t 100% suck. Arrogant users of Macs suck. And arrogant Windows users also suck. Stop bitching and complaining if the OS isn’t for you.
By the way, I own a laptop with XP and I’m buying an iMac as soon as I graduate. And I will use IE7 and Firefox on both. I discriminate against and love both equally.
Anonymous
December 23, 2007 at 2:40 pm
“Is it just me, or are all of the pro-IE people afraid of identifying themselves?”
The people who still use IE don’t know how to use a keyboard so they can’t comment.
canuck4
December 23, 2007 at 9:57 am
So Macs are for non-technical people, sorta like a TV or microwave, you turn it on and it works..out of the box.
Windows on the other hand requires you to have a degree in computers or a techie friend if you want to keep it up and running.
A Windows computer does have some advantages though, it teaches patience, proficiency through repeating the same thing over and over and over and over until it works, can be used as an anchor when you don’t have enough patience. drive people to insanity, when IT decides not to work one minute and behaves the next…
Anonymous
December 23, 2007 at 8:31 am
yeah, i have windows and firefox. firefox is much better than IE. but i don’t see why people bash windows. I don’t want to start a flame war or anything, but you can do a lot more on a PC than you ever could on a mac (I’ve used both). Macs can be more user friendly (and they look sexier), but you can do a lot more a on PC, as long as you know what you’re doing. Macs are built for people who don’t know about computers.
Wil
December 23, 2007 at 6:59 am
“How come FF crashes on the CNN website,and IE doesn’t!”
Becuause FF also wants you to get access to real news.
Check out http://www.bbc.com
Anonymous
December 23, 2007 at 3:50 am
Is it just me, or are all of the pro-IE people afraid of identifying themselves?
Anonymous
December 23, 2007 at 12:51 am
Firefox is highly customizable and the fact that Firefox is not integrated into your OS is the advantage as it sits in an insulated sandbox unlike IE which is inside winXp…this guys from security companies have told is a security flaw by design
Gigantor!
December 23, 2007 at 12:17 am
I actually think IE is slower than firefox when loading. In any case, look at it this way. Firefox basically stayed the same when it comes to speed when it changed from vs. 1 to vs. 2. IE on the other hand, is a big fat, slow hunk of a thing compared to its original, sleek, no-frills predecessors.
Oh, yeah, it looks pretty. It’s the same with Vista, they sacrificed speed for looks. Sad (Mac-posers).
At least i like Office ^.^ (tho some old features are missing, or very hard to get to).
asdf
December 22, 2007 at 11:55 pm
“takes a few seconds more to load.“
Quoted from anonymous
That is only because IE is built into windows. If firefox was built in, it would take just as long to start up.
Anonymous
December 22, 2007 at 11:26 pm
not every aspect, fire fox has higher performance issues and takes a few seconds more to load. however, once it does load its faster to nearly every site. its also standards compliant, and with IE tab, neigh every site is accessible.
RyanTheCreature
December 22, 2007 at 11:06 pm
I gotta agree that Firefox does stomp Internet Explorer. In pretty much every aspect, it blocks pop ups much better, better security, faster, better design and you have to love Firefox Addons Stumble FTW am I right?
Anonymous
December 22, 2007 at 10:51 pm
oh my god wanna hear something weird?
I am making a site for school on why firefox is better and i noticed this same thing on myspace and planed to use it lol. glade someone else noticed this chain letter thingy
Steven
December 22, 2007 at 10:48 pm
I’ve never had Firefox crash on CNN.
Anonymous
December 22, 2007 at 10:44 pm
How come FF crashes on the CNN website,and IE doesn’t!
Anonymous
December 22, 2007 at 7:28 pm
pwnt