Firefox Myths

[Metallixs Girl]

http://mywebpages.comcast.net/Suppor...efoxMyths.html

Interesting read. I personally love Opera, and I can't look back...

[Chris]

To be fair, every myth on that page was invented by overzealous Firefox fanboys who don't really understand Firefox's strengths and weaknesses. The number of times I've heard "oh, it's okay, I have Firefox so there's no need to protect myself against _______" is beyond belief. This was particularly true during that image vulnerability crisis in January - I silently chuckled to myself whenever I heard someone say "haha, you should all be using Firefox then you wouldn't have to worry!", because it was only a matter of hours before they got infected themselves.

Here's a quick rundown of some of the stupid, and even downright retarded, statements that are made on that page:

Reality - Opera (now 100% free) is the fastest Graphical Web Browser in Windows. - Source

Oh, come on. It even says right below the "source" table that the "fastest browser" depends on what you use it for and what operating system you're using (because everyone uses Windows, right? ). And of course Opera 6 is going to be the fastest in that list, it's one of the oldest browsers present in the test - but who uses Opera 6 these days? It was released in 2001, and there had better be a good reason for using an old, unmaintained browser...

Notes - The argument that components of Internet Explorer may load during Windows Startup is nullified by Opera's start times. Which means there is no excuse for this except poor coding on Firefox's part.

There's no "poor coding" involved. The author of that paragraph really has no idea what he's talking about. Firefox uses XUL, which isn't native to Windows, so it will always take longer to load the individual XUL elements.

Reality - Ironically Mozilla is faster than Firefox 1.x overall. - Source

There's nothing ironic about it. Mozilla and Firefox are forked from the same engine (Gecko). Mozilla uses a newer version of Gecko (1.8 ), and Firefox uses an older one (1.7). Wow, who'd have thought that older engines give worse performance?

Myth - "Firefox Achieved 150 million downloads (2-2006)"

Reality - "Oops. We recently introduced a bug into the counter and it's being fixed. We're not quite there yet. Sorry for the confusion. We accidentally counted the 20 million people who updated from Firefox 1.5 to Firefox 1.5.0.1 this week."

Oh right, so people who upgrade don't count either? It's not like they have to, y'know, download the browser in order to upgrade it...

I got to the "Security" section and I just couldn't stand analysing the alarmingly inaccurate and biased statements any more. Seriously, that page is just a really bad attempt at slagging off Firefox and promoting Opera (they even go as far as to link to Opera's home page whenever they mention it). Browser wars are stupid, and that page simply encourages the idiots on both sides to start ripping into each other again.

[Chris]

Oh, and this one deserves an entirely separate post because of its spectacular stupidity and lack of any proper reasoning whatsoever:

Notes - Internet Explorer has very good support (86%) for the most important web standard, HTML 4.01. In most educational systems an 86% would equal a "B" grade and without HTML the World Wide Web would not exist as we know it.

[Andrew]

I would LOL if I understood this.

[andyizcool]

This makes me want to keep using Firefox more and never use Opera.

[Sceptile_Master]

Oh, and this one deserves an entirely separate post because of its spectacular stupidity and lack of any proper reasoning whatsoever:

Notes - Internet Explorer has very good support (86%) for the most important web standard, HTML 4.01. In most educational systems an 86% would equal a "B" grade and without HTML the World Wide Web would not exist as we know it.

LMAO, the wording is making you believe Firefox is bad and Explorer is better. Sounds like my web design teacher. FF actually has something like 11% higher (of the total 100%) HTML 4 support than Explorer. Plus Explorers CSS support is in tatters and Internet Explorer 7 is still crap. By using a safer browser it by no means makes you invincible, proper precautions are a must. But the most effective thing believe it or not is common sense. I mean you don't want to know what some people are like. For example my friends dad just bought a new computer and was on the internet and one of those 'Your computer is running slow" banner ads. And he was all like "OMG I just bought this, it shouldn't have any problems", luckily my friend stopped him.

But anyhoo andy, why does it make you want to use opera even less. Opera is every bit as good as firefox. It's a great browser. It's lightweight, pretty feature packed, the presto rendering engine is good too (not as good as gecko or kthtml but it's good). Opera 9 is looking real sweet too. It's definetely an under appreciated browser.

[Jeff]

For anyone who doesn't want to read through it, I can sum it all up for you...

Myth: Firefox is really good.
Reality: Firefox sucks! Opera and IE are better!

First of all, most of the "myths" on there are really just overconfident statements about Firefox. Most people realize that no browser can block all threats, and I, an avid Firefox user, will be the first to admit that other browsers probably do certain things better than it. Firefox is a decent browser and it seems to me that that site is there just to make it look bad. Especially looking at the number of times it mentions Opera.

[homeofmew]

was it me or did no one understand what chris really ment.


Mozilla= Company Firefox=Item I think

[Lady Vulpix]

There is also a Mozilla browser, Tina. It's the one I'm using, actually.

Anyway, I agreewith Chris here, though I've always laughed at the people who said they weren't afraid of hackers, viruses, spyware, and a long list of etceteras, just because they used Firefox.