Oh joy. Yet another list that requires a thorough disassembly.
Let’s get started. The list is 9 reasons not to upgrade to Firefox 2.0
1. The new theme is too bulky, inconsistent on different platforms, and inferior to the highly refined and very user friendly theme of 1.5 (this is despite late efforts by Mozilla to spruce up the icon set and improve consistency)
It’s not “too bulky” at all. In fact, except for minor visual tweaks, it’s almost identical to 1.5. Now, as for the inconsistency and their efforts to improve consistency, that’s just flat-out wrong. In fact, it’s so patently false that the person who wrote this is evidencing in a profound way his serious lack of understanding about what the team was trying to accomplish in 2.0. Go listen to Inside the Net 38. In it, Amber MacArthur talks to Jay Goldman and Mike Glenn about the UI redesign that Radiant Core did for Mozilla. During the interview, they specifically addressed the “inconsistency” of the UI. The point of 2.0’s UI was to appear more integrated into the operating system it was running on. Whereas prior versions were just “Firefox” the point of 2.0 was tp make the application seem more at home on the platform it was running on, which they did an excellent job of. The Mac, Linux, and Windows versions all look much more like the platform they’re on and the desktop they’re running on than 1.5 did, which was just an across-the-board flat uniform interface. There were no “late efforts” to improve “consistency” because what he calls “inconsistency” was actually by design. Don’t believe me? Go listen to ITN for yourself.
Oh yeah, and there’s only about a billion themes out there for FF. I’m sure you can find one you could live with if the new one is that offensive to you.
2. Antiphishing technology is both weak (blacklist based) and a potential privacy problem. The privacy issues are raised because Firefox 2.0 Antiphishing Features employ an engine previously released by Google, which has been shown to potentially cause privacy risks.
Potentially is indeed the key word here. Here’s the relevant section of the O’Reilly article:
1) Every request is transmitted to Google over HTTP, i.e. in clear-text. This is not good. Here is why: Consider a web application that uses SSL to encrypt the session. If this web application were to submit private information about you via a GET request (i.e in the URL, such as a credit card number), this will now be transmitted to http://www.google.com/safebrowsing/lookup in clear-text, allowing someone on your network segment, or any router in between yourself and google.com to sniff the information off the wire.
2) The extension sends the entire GET request to Google. If a web application were to send private information via GET parameters, this will now be transmitted to Google.
Could, maybe, possibly, if. I understand blacklisting is not perfect, but it’s better than nothing. I’ve never seen a site submit your credit card in the URL. Ever. A privacy problem could also be created by sending your credit card number in an e-mail. People still do that too. No need to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
3. The new Options dialog box is confusing, poorly designed, and illogically hides important features
One example would be nice.
Except for the fact that not everything is on tabs anymore, the dialog is pretty much the same. Instead of 2000 tabs, everything is organized into a total of 7 sections, with the “advanced” tab having options most people will never change anyway. Not exactly a concerted effort to hide important features. In fact, I’d love to know what important feature is now hidden that was readily available in earlier versions.
4. There are many reported compatibility issues with the large existing libraries of extensions, themes, and plugins currently avaialble for earlier versions of Firefox. While this can, to some degree, be expected, the loss of this huge user contributed extension base is a non-trivial problem with Firefox 2.0, and could be a deal breaker for some people all by itself.
Except that the Firefox team does not develop those extensions, and if they’re not compatible, that’s the problem of the developer of the extension not Mozilla. You could easily flip this argument completely around and ask a question that logically follows. Is Mozilla not meant to update Firefox until they have every extension functional in every new version? Welcome to the world of IE because if that were to happen, we’d be using Firefox 2.0 for the next 5 years.
5. The well known memory leak issue, which causes the Firefox browser to consume ever increasing amounts of RAM, eventually leading to sluggish performance and crashes, has been carried over into yet another generation. This is despite an enormous amount of public commentary and user requests for resolution prior to release of a new version of Firefox
It’s not a leak, it’s just the way it works. Five bucks says if you took away IE’s hooks to the operating system and its dependence on system calls, it would hog just as much memory. As for the performance and crash issues, I’ve never seen them and I’ve run it on everything from 256 megs to 2 gigs and on 3 different platforms. This is more likely an issue of very squeaky wheels than a widespread problem.
6. There are reported problems with the CSS engine in Firefox 2.0, affecting various websites, and making certain features unavailable to surfers. Notable among these is a continued problem with certain aspects of Yahoo! mail
Yet again, another claim with no backing. While writing this, I jumped into my Yahoo! Mail account and saw no such bugs or issues. In fact, I’ve been using FF 2.0 since RC 3 and have yet to come across any sites that render any differently for 2.0 than they did for 1.5. An example, as usual, would buttress the point, but as is the case with most of the items on this list, we’re left to just “knowing” that the issue is there, somewhere, on something, and experienced by “people.”
7. Reports indicate that episodes of random freezing during use are worse with the 2.0 version, though a cause has not yet been isolated
Funny you should mention that, because, well, I had a random freezing issue. Know what I did? I disabled all my extensions, and then ran FF with each one enabled, one at a time. Then, slowly, I enabled another until all of them were running. Know what the problem was? Google Toolbar. Why do I bring this up? Because the list-writer cites “reports” and then gives a link to one post on one blog by a guy running Ubuntu on a laptop who posts blog entries from a web interface. That’s “reports?” Give me a break. Reports are that this list is bullshit. Oh sure it’s one blog entry by me, but so what? One blog entry = reports.
8. Numerous users have reported that the History bar is buggy, and that in some instances - for unknown reasons - will not display recent items when the history menu is opened as a side panel
Works perfectly for me on two platforms (haven’t tried it on my Ubuntu install yet). Again, one example for this guy = numerous users. Ironically, in the very link this guy posted, the first reply to the post was a guy saying he hasn’t had a problem. Woops.
9. RSS feed handling has taken a step backwards, and is inferior to that of IE7.
Again no example given. So let’s see how it’s taken a step backward. You can now pick the browser you subscribe in. On top of that, you can still add it to Live Bookmarks the old way. No example of how it’s inferior, just that “it is.” Problem is, just about everyone disagrees. Such is life, I guess. Oh, and I don’t have to back up everything, seeing as he never backs up anything he writes on here with more than some strange report by one blogger or something similar.
The fact is, Firefox 2.0 isn’t perfect, as no browser really is. It’s still a huge step forward from 1.5, and is still quite a bit ahead of IE 7 as far as performance and stability (I’ve used both quite a bit). As one of the commenters on this list’s home said:
Trivial concerns are no reason to avoid upgrading to superior security, memory management, and features. Have a nice day.
Indeed, amen, and hallelujah.
Technorati Tags: firefox, firefox 2.0, mozilla