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Firefox as an IE replacement?

T

TechnoPro

Golden Member
After cleaning ~1,300 spyware objects from a system running Windows 98, IE6 is broken. And no attempts at fixing it have been succesful.

I'd like to throw in the towel at this point and reformat the bloody machine, but that is more time than I have invested in this project.

Is Firefox mature and stable enough at this point to serve as a viable IE replacement? I'm testing it out and find it incredible, but are there any caveats or quirks that I need to know in order to seamlessly implement it on a client's PC?
 
Firefox is very stable and very safe. It's very rare nowadays that you find a website that doesn't work with it, however many intranets are based on stuff like activeX and such and those will not work with firefox.

Things to watch out for is getting complacent with it. Once people use it the rate of infection from spyware and stuff will drop dramaticly. But you need to keep it up to date none-the-less.

The best thing to do is install firefox, educate the users and let them choose. Show them some extensions and stuff that they can change and write up a basic usage paper outlining how to use it and find the preferences and such so they don't have a period of confusion in the transition and aviod it altogether. Sometimes safe software is more dangerous then unsafe software because of this tendancy for complatency.

It will never be a full replacement for IE in a Windows enviroment because IE is a important part of what makes windows windows. (why also security flaws are so horrible). They can use Firefox, when they get to the odd site that won't work in Firefox they can then open it up in IE.

(the more users that switch the better. Firefox is standards complient and Internet Explorer is not. The widespread usage of IE is realy holding www development back by years.)
 
Originally posted by: drag
Firefox is very stable and very safe. It's very rare nowadays that you find a website that doesn't work with it, however many intranets are based on stuff like activeX and such and those will not work with firefox.

Things to watch out for is getting complacent with it. Once people use it the rate of infection from spyware and stuff will drop dramaticly. But you need to keep it up to date none-the-less.

The best thing to do is install firefox, educate the users and let them choose. Show them some extensions and stuff that they can change and write up a basic usage paper outlining how to use it and find the preferences and such so they don't have a period of confusion in the transition and aviod it altogether. Sometimes safe software is more dangerous then unsafe software because of this tendancy for complatency.

It will never be a full replacement for IE in a Windows enviroment because IE is a important part of what makes windows windows. (why also security flaws are so horrible). They can use Firefox, when they get to the odd site that won't work in Firefox they can then open it up in IE.

(the more users that switch the better. Firefox is standards complient and Internet Explorer is not. The widespread usage of IE is realy holding www development back by years.)
Click to expand...

And as the expression goes, complacency is the mother of all fvckups.

I was hoping for a complete replacement as IE has resisted my attempts to normalize it. Ever since cleaning the spyware, the CPU utilization goes into the high 90s when IE is launched and will crash the system from there. The internet connection works fine otherwise.
 
Is Firefox mature and stable enough at this point to serve as a viable IE replacement?
Click to expand...

Yes.

Some web sites are designed ONLY for IE, such as the MBNA credit card site... Other than that and maybe some plugins you may never use, it works great. 🙂
 
Is there any way that you could get XP or even 2000 running on the machine? '98 truly is nasty and insecure as anything. It's past it's support stage: it is officially classed as outdated and not reccommended for use even by Microsoft themselves! An upgrade/clean install of XP would surely fix explorer and make the machine better, but you need about 700MHz and 256Mb RAM really to run XP at any decent sort of rate...

I have used firefox for about 9 months now and have never looked back. I've only had trouble with one or two websites, but that was before the final version (1.) had been released. The problem I got was when ordering things over the net. Some websites don't respod at crucial times like when you've put in the card details and you click on 'submit'. Very annoying, but rare and possibly sorted by now.

-Loïc
 
Originally posted by: loic2003
Is there any way that you could get XP or even 2000 running on the machine? '98 truly is nasty and insecure as anything. It's past it's support stage: it is officially classed as outdated and not reccommended for use even by Microsoft themselves! An upgrade/clean install of XP would surely fix explorer and make the machine better, but you need about 700MHz and 256Mb RAM really to run XP at any decent sort of rate...

I have used firefox for about 9 months now and have never looked back. I've only had trouble with one or two websites, but that was before the final version (1.) had been released. The problem I got was when ordering things over the net. Some websites don't respod at crucial times like when you've put in the card details and you click on 'submit'. Very annoying, but rare and possibly sorted by now.

-Loïc
Click to expand...

I agree wholeheartedly that W98 is way past its prime. Plans are underway to retire that PC... However, in the meantime, the client would like it to be normalized, which at this point will require a reformat/reinstall sequence.

I cleaned this PC of the spyware and was running it and testing it for hours. Clean. Then, after the client used it for a bit, all the junk is back...
 
Yeah, I have Firefox 0.9.2 and I love it...I am not sure why I didn't move to the mozilla wave sooner. Too bad you can't completely remove IE (unless you're running Win 95)...
 
I thought you could remove IE through add/remove programs? (like add/remove windows components or something like that).

Anyways,

Firefox is awesome. Only beef is I can't update my windows with Firefox. But if you ever upgrade that machine from Win98, you can use Firefox as your default browser and download this cool puglin. It's a plugin that allows you to right click on any page and select "View in IE", which of course brings up the page your on in Internet Explorer. Cool eh? That way, surf easy with Firefox, and if you need to bring up a page that isn't working in Firefox with IE, right click and do so.

Good luck!
 
Originally posted by: colonel
I love Firefox, unfortunaly I can't intall it in my work machine....
Click to expand...

There are mobile versions you can use on a USB flash drive and stuff like that.
 
Before making my move to Windows XP (which is pretty recent actually like 3 months ago when i upgraded to my new much faster than before machine [i was runing on a 500mhz celeron]) windows 98 seemed very good to me. Actually i did not truly become bombarded with Spyware until i started using Windows XP and Internet Explorer... haha yeah maybe its because i hate updating and installing all those critical updates......... but once i started using Firefox on XP most if not all spyware does not affect me. I digress....my point being that when i was runing Windows 98 with IE i was not bombarded with as much spyware as i was when using Windows XP and IE. Windows 98 served me pretty well....
 
Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Personally i would get an Optimized Build of Firefox. They run much better from what i can see.

-Kevin
Click to expand...

Anyone care to explain what an optimized build is. Sounds cool, and I want one. lol
 
Originally posted by: Burrens78
Originally posted by: Gamingphreek
Personally i would get an Optimized Build of Firefox. They run much better from what i can see.

-Kevin
Click to expand...

Anyone care to explain what an optimized build is. Sounds cool, and I want one. lol
Click to expand...

They are optimized to use more acceleration instructions built into the processor. Either SSE or SSE2. They can have a goodly increase in rendering speed.
 
So what is so special about firefox? I used it and am not impressed at all. I am back to using IE.
 
Originally posted by: wiin
So what is so special about firefox? I used it and am not impressed at all. I am back to using IE.
Click to expand...

My reason for looking into it was as a means of reducing spyware on peoples machines who manage to get their systems highly infested. Firefox is known to be more resistant to these threats.
 
So what is so special about firefox? I used it and am not impressed at all. I am back to using IE.
Click to expand...

What is so special about IE? It's less impressive than any other browser out there.
 
Originally posted by: TechnoPro
Originally posted by: wiin
So what is so special about firefox? I used it and am not impressed at all. I am back to using IE.
Click to expand...

My reason for looking into it was as a means of reducing spyware on peoples machines who manage to get their systems highly infested. Firefox is known to be more resistant to these threats.
Click to expand...
Ensuring they do not have admin privilages is probably the best way of doing this. Also a good patch management system is a must have.

While it may be the most common there are plenty of other entry points for spyware than the browser.
 
I am one of those 1-in-a-million people who put firefox on my system and got hijacked within an hour.

I know we are a rarity. But I am one of them.

🙂
 
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