Posts Tagged ‘internet explorer’

IE Is The Only Secure Browser? Please

It’s no secret that Microsoft’s Internet Explorer has been taking a beating over the past week. After all, Google, the world’s most popular search engine company has blamed a vulnerability in IE for allowing attacks on its systems. After Microsoft admitted it was indeed a flaw in IE that made the attacks possible, the German government released a statement urging people to switch browsers and a similar statement from the government in France soon followed. Microsoft obviously came back with a statement urging users that those governments’ advise was far too strong of a reaction.

Part if Microsoft’s message was spot-on. Switching to a different browser due to a single flaw is a really over-dramatic reaction to the situation. If I immediately stopped using any product that had a vulnerability, I would communicate with no one. Even physical mail can be stolen and has been stolen in the past, therefore one would be forced to live in a hole in the ground, not communicating at all. I would recommend not using IE for far bigger reasons than this single vulnerability, but switching solely because of this is purely sensationalism.

On the other hand, the rest of Microsoft’s message was taken to the opposite extreme. They responded by informing users that switching to a different browser would lead them to an even greater threat. Quoting from Cliff Evans at Microsoft (via TechRadar.com):

The net effect of switching [from IE] is that you will end up on less secure browser

The risk [over this specific] exploit is minimal compared to Firefox or other competing browsers… you will be opening yourself up to security issues.

I’m not aware that the vulnerability exists in other products, but those products may have other vulnerabilities.

As much as I want to say that was intended as a joke, it’s not. Yup, instead of using products that might have vulnerabilities that Microsoft’s UK Security Chief “isn’t aware of”, users should feel comfortable using a browser that has known vulnerabilities used in a real life attack. No, I’m not switching up my stance that users should switch purely for this one incident, but to claim IE as the only secure browser in the world is absolutely ridiculous and laughable. IE’s history doesn’t help it much, but I’ll give them the benefit of the doubt on this one and let that part go.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Jan 19th, 2010

Is Microsoft Supporting Old Products Only When It Feels Like It?

It was barely a month ago that the web development community watched in horror as Microsoft told the world that dropping support for Internet Explorer 6 was not an option. I completely understand and would agree with the rationale here. They released Windows XP with IE6, so a freshly re-installed desktop would be unsupported if they had dropped support for IE6, which is certainly a bad plan. However, that doesn’t seem to be the same Microsoft that we saw this week when they told us that they won’t be patching the critical TCP/IP flaw found in all versions, but patched in Vista.

What really leaves me scratching my head about these two circumstances is that Windows XP is used by far more users than Internet Explorer 6. It’s commendable that they continue to support IE6 even after some very serious push from the community to try and force users out, but Windows XP market share is still extremely high while IE6 market share is waning. Perhaps the Windows team has been a bit busy lately with patching new vulnerabilities being discovered (though disclosure of the last one was pretty irresponsible assuming it really was released publicly first) as well as finishing off Windows 7.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Sep 16th, 2009

YouTube Dropping Support for IE6, But Will it Help Drop IE6 Usage?

News has broken out on the web today that support for IE6 on YouTube is going away. It seems that other sites will be soon to follow as well. A fairly certain one is digg.com. As Digg reports, a small chunk of their traffic is still IE6, but very few actual diggs are coming from IE6 users. While I’m certainly not going to suggest that dropping support for IE6 is a bad thing (let the poor thing die), but I am fairly certain that it won’t have the effect that people are wanting. Unless sites besides social networking sites are going to drop support for IE6, we won’t see a mass exodus from the browser.

Digg released the results of its survey a few days ago about why their users aren’t leaving IE6. Guess what? Most of the users are using IE6 because they have to. According to the results, 32% of IE6 users say that they haven’t upgraded because they are told they can’t and 37% haven’t because they don’t have administrative access to their PCs. That means that 69% of IE6 users are using it because they have to.

Why are these users being forced to use IE6? That’s a question that has several answers, but I will tell you this: I wouldn’t expect the lack of support for YouTube or Digg at work to do anything for IE6 users in their fight to get an upgraded browser in their workplace. I can see that conversation going horribly wrong for any employee requesting a browser upgrade so they can watch YouTube videos at work.

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Filed under Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Jul 14th, 2009

Internet Explorer Will Never Beat Firefox’s Community

With today’s release of Internet Explorer 8, there’s been a bit of chatter of how IE seems to have leap-frogged ahead of Firefox. By nature, the browser war will always be this leap-frog game of innovating while implementing other browsers’ innovations to get ahead. However, Microsoft simply doesn’t have the community to maintain a leadership in the feature department.

Even if Microsoft has added some killer new features in IE, within a few months, someone from the Firefox community will build an extension to allow Firefox users to have the same functionality. Of course, the functionality won’t come included with the browser ‘out of the box’, but the functionality exists and users will likely not give up other extensions to migrate to IE. In fact, all of the new features that Microsoft is touting in IE8 are already implemented. You can download an accelerator, web slice-type extension, and grouped tabs extensions for Firefox if those features attract you. An extension for privacy mode in Firefox has existed since 2006, but it just hasn’t been integrated into the Firefox package.

The other thing that Firefox (and any other open source browser) has against IE (or Safari for that matter) is the fact that the community is the driving force behind added features and improvements. Sure, Microsoft listens to their users and tries to accommodate new features, but they’re not end users. A strong bond between end users and developers is key to attracting and keeping users using a piece of software.

As this war wages on, the leap-frogging will continue with IE as it releases major versions adding loads of new features, but Mozilla’s community will continue to deliver those features and others slowly as time goes on. The tortoise usually beats the hare, but in this case there’s thousands of tortoises and a comparatively small number of hares. Time will only tell, but Microsoft still has a huge climb ahead if it wants to be rated as the ‘best’ browser (whatever that means) by any amount of users for very long.

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Filed under News, Tech Trends : Comments (0) : Mar 19th, 2009

The End of Internet Explorer?

Rumor has it that Internet Explorer 8 may be the end of the life for the most popular browser in the world. According to Infoworld, Microsoft will be ditching its Internet Explorer rendering engine after the next major release of their browser. The rumors have been conflicting thus far, ranging from saying that Microsoft will be taking on WebKit with their next browser or developing a new engine codenamed “Gazelle”. WebKit is the engine that Apple chose for Safari as well as Google for Chrome which has so far helped the two browsers be the fastest on the market.

Microsoft’s IE has struggled to adhere to web standards in the past, but has still been the most popular browser. Microsoft will have to offer some legacy support as a lot of applications are dependent upon IE, but I think the move would be a good one for Microsoft. They will, of course, need to somehow either keep the logo the same or similar in order to keep the investment they have made in the blue ‘e’ branding.

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Filed under News : Comments (0) : Mar 10th, 2009

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