Author: Ed Bott

Tech journalist. Author of 25+ books. ZDNET Contributing Editor since 2006. Contact info: https://edbott.com/contact-me/

A Firefox versus IE7 smackdown

For the past few months I’ve been using Firefox 1.5 and a succession of Internet Explorer 7 betas side by side, in roughly equal percentages. Most of the time, I barely noticed the difference. That’s an enormous improvement over IE6, where Firefox is clearly the btter browser by just about any objective measure.

Last week Microsoft gave me an advance release of IE7 Beta 2 for Windows XP. It’s clearly Microsoft’s attempt to catch up after 18 months of getting seriously whupped by Firefox. Techweb asked for a follow-up to my IE7 preview piece from last February, so I took the opportunity to compare IE7 and Firefox as directly as possible.

You can read  IE 7 For XP Beta 2: Has Firefox Met Its Match? (it also includes a gallery of IE7 screen shots that starts here).

IE7B2019

If you’re too busy, here’s the conclusion:

On a straight, feature-for-feature comparison, IE7 stacks up well against Firefox. If its improved security model lives up to its design specs, malware distributors will find it much more difficult to make a dishonest living, and the tabbed browsing features in the new release should make it much easier to deal with multiple pages.

The biggest hurdle that Internet Explorer has to overcome, however, is one that doesn’t fit on any features chart. Its tattered reputation — especially when it comes to security — has created an indelible negative impression among the technically savvy users who’ve enthusiastically adopted Firefox so far. Even if the final release of IE7 improves mightily over the current beta, building that new and improved reputation will be an uphill climb.

The security features in IE7 look good on paper, but this week’s release marks the first time IE7 has been thrown into the crucible that is the Internet. The criminal gangs that control the malware racket are going to be gunning for IE7 and mercilessly probing for weaknesses. I’ll need to see a year’s worth of security bulletins before I’m ready to accept the idea that this time it really is different and IE7 is genuinely safe enough to recommend without reservation to friends and family members.

“Good enough” isn’t good enough for Microsoft in the case of IE7. On issues of security in particular, they’re going to have to earn back trust from a generation that’s been burned pretty badly by security flaws in Windows and IE. That will take time, and there’s no guarantee of success.

Meanwhile, Firefox has one pretty huge ally. Visit Google’s home page using Internet Explorer today and you’ll see the first ad to ever appear on that page – urging you to switch to Firefox.

Links

Feel free to leave comments here.

Just say no to Draft N

Glenn Fleishman says Don’t Buy Draft N:

I am going to make myself extremely unpopular this morning by suggesting that no one buy so-called Draft N Wi-Fi gear that is pouring into the market.

I have to agree. Computer networks are complex enough without adding the complication of a whole generation of equipment that sort of adheres to a standard. If you’re in the market for wireless networking gear, read Glenn’s piece first.

Vista versions: maybe not so confusing after all

Am I the only person who’s actually happy about the mix of Windows Vista versions that Microsoft plans to offer next year? If you’re considering buying a new Windows PC, I believe your decision-making process will actually be simpler when Windows Vista hits the street than it is today. And if you’re planning to upgrade a PC you already own, you’ll find way more flexibility than you have with Windows XP.

I realize that flies in the face of conventional wisdom. One comment I read over and over again is that somebody looking for a new PC or a Windows upgrade has it so simple today, and those marketing morons at Microsoft are going to go screw it up for everybody by introducing all these confusing new packages. That conventional wisdom starts to break down the moment you look at it for more than about, oh, five seconds.

Last week I published a series of posts at ZDNet that address the widely held idea that Microsoft is making the biggest marketing blunder since New Coke by introducing too many versions. (I put together a table that clearly shows what’s in each version as well as two columns that explain the consumer features and the business features you’ll find in each upgrade.)

The core of the “Vista is too confusing” argument is that Vista has seven versions and XP only has two. Windows buyers will be paralyzed with indecision as they contemplate which version of Windows should go on their new PC. Oh, really? Look more closely.

Continue reading “Vista versions: maybe not so confusing after all” →

A liquid-cooled video card?

I’m not sure I want something called the TOXIC X1900 XTX to even enter my front door, much less take up permanent residence in my PC. I suppose if I were a hardcore gamer, I’d feel differently about a display adapter that runs at 675 MHz, with 512MB of GDDR3 RAM and presumably needs its liquid-cooling system and pure copper water block to keep it from achieving critical mass.

It looks like something out of Alien.

Toxic_video_card

Something tells me Dwight would like this.

(via Daily Tech)

Firefox fanatics decide to make money by punishing users

Last night I spent an hour or two visiting unfamiliar websites while researching a topic for an upcoming column. In the process, I discovered a new and exceedingly obnoxious trend: Some members of the Firefox community have decided that you shouldn’t be allowed to view their sites correctly – or, in some cases, at all – unless you’re using the One True Browser.

On at least three sites I visited last night, the home page has been coded so that it looks different if you visit using Internet Explorer. Specifically, the top of the page – a region approximately 180 pixels deep, occupying the full width of the page – is taken over by a large banner that reads: “We see you’re using Internet Explorer. Try Firefox, you’ll like it better.” That’s followed by a bulleted list of the advantages of Firefox, and a big bold arrow pointing to a button where the hapless visitor can download Firefox with the Google toolbar.

This is bullshit.

I’ve already got Firefox installed on this computer, and I use it more than half the time. But for this project I’m using Internet Explorer. In this case, the web designer says he wants me to have a better browsing experience, so he has deliberately created a degraded and obnoxious browsing experience for me. What’s wrong with that picture?

And despite the altruistic language, let’s be clear – this is about money. If I click that button and download the software, the website owner gets paid by Google. In fact, this is worse than a pop-up ad, because I can’t get rid of it. Every time I visit that site, the obnoxious oversize banner appears, telling me how stupid I am and how smart the website designer is.

This campaign is being run by a site called Explorer Destroyer, which offers three versions of its punish-IE-users code. The one I ran into is the Gentle Encouragement version. There’s also a Semi-serious version, which forces the user to view a splash page before seeing the site, and a Dead Serious version, which completely blocks the site from viewing by any browser that uses the IE user agent. (You can see a demo here.)

I thought the open source movement was about giving people options and about adhering to standards. Hey, Asa, here’s a question for you: Does the Firefox community really advocate designing websites so that they’re deliberately broken if you view them in any browser other than Firefox? What would the community say if Microsoft did the same?

Spam of the week

The headline:

Eran Yuor Dreege Now

Hmmm. Either this is written in Gaelic or it’s a desperate attempt to get past spam filters by misspelling words. Sure enough, here’s the pitch inside:

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, with the following degrees, here’s how much you can expect to make in your lifetime:

High School Diploma:  $1,000,200
Bachelor’s Degree:    $2,800,200
Master’s Degree:      $2,000,400
Doctorate:            $4,300,500

I was thinking of getting me one of those master’s degrees (NO ONE is turned down!), but it would cost me $800,000. Whew, dodged a bullet there.

Dear PR agencies, please don’t be this clueless

Me, in e-mail to PR agent, after receiving two particularly irrelevant press releases this morning:

I am not the least bit interested in fuel cell technology. I write about Windows and digital media. Not about fuel cells. I also don’t write about Macs, except when those Macs run Windows. So the press release about the world’s largest online community for Mac users was also irrelevant.

Can you at least make an EFFORT to target your releases to appropriate press? If you can’t do that, then take me off your list completely.

The reply floored me:

You never told me what you write about, so how would I know?  I’ll just take you off the list if you’re that picky.

Wow. This particular flack has been in the business for as long as I have, which means we were working tradeshows together back in the Early Comdex era. She added my e-mail address to her mailing list without asking my permission, apparently without bothering to find out who I am or what I write about. And after all these years she hasn’t figured out how to use Google or Bacon’s to see which pitches might be appropriate for a particular journalist? Amazing.

Let’s see…

Unsolicited? Check.

Commercial? Yep.

E-mail? Indeed.

And I’m “picky” to ask her to stop spamming me? Heh.

In self-defense, I’ve set up a rule at my e-mail server to automatically delete any incoming messages from this domain.

Now, do you think this agency’s clients know that they’re being represented by someone so clueless? Do they know they’re basically pouring their PR dollars down a rathole? If you’re a marketing executive at a high-tech company, maybe you should check in with some editors to find out what they really think of the PR agency you’ve hired. You might be surprised.

Someone on the Office team has a sense of humor

I’ve been poking around in the Windows registry (don’t try this at home), looking at the keys that hold various settings for the Office 2007 beta. Now, I’m used to seeing globally unique identifiers, or GUIDs, used throughout the registry. In Windows, these consist of 32 characters, broken up into one group of 8 characters, followed by three groups of 4 characters, and a final group of 12 characters, surrounded by curly braces, and separated by hyphens. Like so:

{3F2504E0-4F89-11D3-9A0C-0305E82C3301}

The point of GUIDs is that they’re supposed to be pseudo-random, thus virtually eliminating the possibility that two software components will use the name number to define themselves.

So, look at these GUIDs that appear under the current user’s key for the current beta of Office 2007:

Office_registry

Not exactly random, is it? In fact, the six characters at the end of each GUID are practically L33t5p34k.

Although I can’t prove it, I suspect that the reason these settings are expressed as GUIDs is for obfuscation, to keep people like you and me from looking at them and possibly tweaking their settings to change the look, feel, and behavior of Office.

Anyone know what those keys are really for?