Later this year, the CBC’s I.T. department plans to assess whether it should switch the corporate web browser standard to Firefox 3.
Firefox is a free, open-source web browser which has gained a solid following in the past few years, notably for its stronger security and better ability to render web pages accurately. It also has “tabs” which make it easier to keep multiple web pages open.
CBC standardized on Internet Explorer 6 more than two years ago (it came pre-installed with Windows XP). Windows 2000 users were upgraded about a year ago. Still, says Dean Mannella, CBC’s senior manager of workstation services, “We still have a portion of the population using Netscape and a growing footprint for Firefox.”
“From a security perspective, Firefox has gained much support in the industry and offers great flexibility through extensions,” Dean told me. “As such we will be considering this a possible standard, but we will be reviewing IE 7 and Firefox 3 equally.”
But it won’t be an easy decision.
Microsoft’s web sites don’t play nice with Firefox (or any other non-Microsoft browser for that matter). Some Microsoft sites, like those for updating Windows, simply won’t work at all on Firefox. Also, the CBC has a number of web applications that would most likely have to be re-coded to reduce their reliance on ActiveX, an IE-only technology.
Which web browser do you prefer?
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Comments below | See also: Workstations and Desktops |
| Email this | Posted at 11:14 am (08 Jan 2008) |
Firefox, hands down. IE can’t compare for extensibility though free add-ons, making the browser extremely customizable. Web developers need to develop their sites to w3c standards so they are accessible across as many platforms (and devices). There’s no good reason to build a site to one specific browser only. That’s like building a road to only suit one car manufacturer.
MIE will eventually go the way of Netscape. If the OS doesn’t play nice with firefox my suggestion would be to dump the OS, preferably for something open source. I don’t understand with all of the computers the CBC has why they don’t take more advantage of free and open source software. They extra money spend on support and coders (for customizations) wouldn’t come close to the total savings.
I’ve been a Mac user for several years, and a Firefox user for even longer. Firefox on the Mac seems to have been getting buggier and slower in every release, with the last update of v2 slowing to a crawl, eating system resources like mad, and crashing a couple of times each day.
I switched to Opera over the holidays and couldn’t be happier. It has an amazing list of great and useful features, works fine in 98% of sites (and successfully pretends to be IE on the rest).
While CBC is evaluating this question it’s important that they test on all common platforms - Mac, Linux, Windows - and that they rember that Internet Explorer is only available for Windows boxes, not for Mac, and certainly not for Linux.
Please, please, please make it so!
Firefox is like Neo - the One.
Firefox by far. Can’t stand IE 6. 7 is much better but still no Firefox.
I vote for Firefox. There’s no perfect choice, but at least Firefox is cross platform, unlike IE.
Switching to Firefox makes sense: not only are more PC users switching to alternate browsers, but Mac and Linux users check the CBC sites too.
[I’ve been on a Mac for 4 years, but before that I ran Firefox on my PC.]
Not an employee, but I’ll stand with the Firefox supporters on this one. You’ve already seen and written on much of the logic of the choice.
I’ve been using Firefox in a few flavours now for a few years. Currently I’m using the beta of Firefox 3 and I’m much impressed with how it can be customized with various themes and add-ons.
It also has the ability to use the IE6 or 7 rendering engine for those sites which are only friendly to IE, this is done with an extension.
Definately firefox. I was a reluctant convert. Now any computer I either have to fix or have control over has firefox. Never going back.
firefoxfirefoxfirefox
tabs and less pop ups…..no brainer
I prefer Firefox too, but it should be said that the latest Explorer offers tabs as well.
Here is a free advice: Migrate to Firefox (for security, stability, usability, etc) but keep IE for the standard stupid stuff (e.g OS update) that Microsoft engineered to only play nice with its own browser.
View IE as the loopy uncle/auntie that you can’t get rid of but have to deal with every Xmas (or OS update).
Vanilla users shouldn’t be (and aren’t AFAIK) applying their own Windows updates in a a large environment like the CBC anyway. It’s a waste of their time and a massive duplication of effort to have them doing desktop administration. That’s why you have corporate IT departments.
Personally I avoid IE but I don’t have any special warmth in my heart for Firefox. On any given day I’ll use telnet to port 80, lynx, FF, Opera on a Wii… browser advocacy is for people whose spirits haven’t been broken yet.
The fact that anything was written in activex for day to day business is terrible, and exactly why IE still exists as a corporate standard.
Last I checked there were a bunch of macs in the building. Developers - use open standards.
And add me for Firefox, or anything that supports W3C
Firefox is pretty well the standard for newspapers across North America because newspapers are almost all Mac based operations, so CBC would just be catching up with much of the rest of the media.
Kempton is right, we’ll all have to keep the IE around to talk to Redmond.
And please, please, please, pretty please, dump that piece of junk called Groupwise which IT made mandatory and let us use Thunderbird.
Why are we wasting millions in the Corp’s money storing all that stuff on servers until its purged by a desperate GW admin??? If we dumped Groupwise we would save money on 1)Novell licence fees 2) ever growing server demands and 3) GW staff which wouldn’t be needed. And then perhaps the money could be put to good use–like covering the news. (well in the last one I won’t hold my breath)
Firefox - definitely my browser of choice.
I love Firefox (PC) for the tabs, security and performance. I also like it because I occasionally have to use Linux and I find it quite seamless. Plus there are cool plug-ins. Unfortunately, I do a lot of work with information stored in XML so I’m forced to use IE to display formatted XML (ie, with forms and logic, etc.). My computer doesn’t really mind having a split personality: I’ve set it up so that HTML defaults to Firefox and XML defaults to IE.
(Not a CBC employee)
My comment will come as a Non CBC personality (though I’d love to be a CBC personality), as a personal user, and finally a professional IT consultant.
Personally speaking:
Firefox because it is what I use.
Professionally speaking:
Firefox for its support of standards, its cross platform support, ability to render pages faster, better security against malicious code, and add-on support to name a few.
However, I think the following two things are being confused for each other. Moving to Firefox 3, as the title suggests makes it sound more like a IT software deployment issue for internal computers. However, it really refers to a properly developed website. Basically, CBC is moving to W3C standards which are generally accepted as a set of standards that will work in all browsers.
To develop a website or web application to work only in IE is a development mistake. It panders to one community of internet users and excludes all others. Instead of using ActiveX, use java script or PHP. Which will run on any browser. ActiveX and IE focused development excludes the massive Mac marketplace of users, Linux, and non IE using Windows computers.
A general rule of thumb for all web developers is to write for Firefox/Mozilla based browsers first - that is to write W3C standard - and adjust for IE uniquenesses after. While IE may be the larger market share, it is also the only one that will render pages differently and thus special adjustments need to be made in CSS, PHP, and JavaScript code (which also do not allow file system access to surfers PCs unlike ActiveX does). IE displays the page as it thinks you want to see it. Firefox, et al, will display the page as it was written.
From a developmental aspect it may require more developmental time but opens your site to a larger audience. IE only development means you are shutting people out.
Firefox.
Switch to Firefox. I have. So have my family.
I think the only thing holding back the widespread adoption of Firefox at the CBC would be the proprietary internal websites that still require IE. For example, the pay stub ActiveX application on the HR site, and the pension website (which won’t even let you see the index page, never mind log in, if you don’t have IE). I believe that IE will have to be kept around until these applications are retrofitted to be cross-browser compliant.
Sorry, but this *is* purely about an internal deployment. The public website (at least the parts implemented by the dedicated and hard-working UI team, which is most of it) are written to be cross-browser compatible, and tested on all major browsers on Windows and OS X. (In fact, the original implementation of the network, news and sports home pages validated as XHTML 1.0 Transitional, though 7 months in the wild has taken its toll.)
and how about something other than windows media for the radio feeds. I get 5 or 10 minutes of feed, then it stops. Windows media is crap.
Firefox, hands down!
Firefox 4-eva!
Thank you Kev!
Its amazing how everybody thinks the ship is sinking and jumps to another ship, thinking the bad guys would not attack something people jumped to. Good luck on false hope.
so tell me exactly how long does Firefox take to when there is a Zero-Day exploit announced for it versus average month or 2 for IE. Ask all the guys in Russia getting your online banking information through known Firefox holes listed on Russian sites.
Its really great when FireFox leaks memory like Adobe
I know all those Firefox users are so leet and very knowdleable , cus you read the Wired magazine.
Mr Opera
I was very excited to read this (I work in the Mozilla office in Toronto), and hope that CBC will indeed find that Firefox 3 is a good fit for its use. I am surprised to hear that there are major Microsoft sites other than the Window Update one that don’t work with Firefox; if you want to send me some mail with the details, I’d love to contact them and see if we can get it fixed.