Firefox went ton up in bugs in 2008

[DaBees-Knees]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/03/05/secunia_security_stats/

Firefox had more vulnerabilities than Internet Explorer last year, but zero-day threats to the Mozilla browser were fixed more quickly than those affecting IE. An annual scorecard report from security notification firm Secunia found that Firefox was hit by 115 security flaws in 2008, more than the combined number of its three main competitors: Internet Explorer (31), Opera (30), and Safari (32). But Mozilla was far more adept at dealing with the appearance of zero-day vulnerabilities than Microsoft, according to Secunia. It reports that Mozilla took an average of 43 days to deal with three such incidents last year, not all of which covered critical flaws. Meanwhile, Microsoft took an average of 100 days to deal with three zero-day flaws, the worst of which Secunia describes as "high risk." Three other less serious IE flaws that emerged last year remain unpatched. In 2008, the security notification firm handed out its highest "extremely critical" with 11 advisories - a sharp increase from just two in 2007. On a more positive note, the number of zero-day vulnerabilities across all software packages decreased from 20 in 2007 to 12 in 2008. Secunia's report includes stats from its patching assessment tool, Secunia PSI, which is free for consumers. These show Firefox 2.0 is unpatched one in three time (34 per cent). That's poor, but figures for Macromedia Flash Player 6.x (unpatched 83 per cent of the time) and Sun Java JRE 1.5.x/5.x (96 per cent) are far worse. "Too many users give up patching software when it is not straightforward," Secunia reports. "Many choose to handle the applications that are easy-to-patch, whereas the applications that take longer or are difficult to patch are simply ignored." Secunia also looked at the number of security bugs last year affecting browser plugs. Duff ActiveX controls accounted for 366 flaws last year, far dwarfing bugs particular to Java (54), Flash (19), and QuickTime plugins (30).

Which only goes to prove that, when it comes to software, you need to realise nothing is perfect.

[Cobra]

Which is exactly why I get sick and tired of software fanboys telling me what I should use instead of just making suggestions and letting me make my own decision. Falling ion love with a piece of software does not make it "better" or "perfect".

In fact, it probably just makes you biased, and then when something like this is reported, it gets argued that the facts are what are flawed instead of the program.

[White Stripes]

i just plain like the 'open source' aspect of firefox...

but ironiclly prefer to use opera...

[Daniel]

If another web browser had add-ons, like ABP and spell check, and used less resources, I would switch.

[Forested665]

as im writing this reply. with no other tabs open firefox is using 106mb of ram.
thunderbird uses 24mb (i WILL NOT switch to outlook or ekiga even if it means using a gig)
wich i find really sad because the system thread is using 62 mb and explorer.exe only uses 22
even the buggy alpha stage torrent client i use only takes up 34mb at full blast.

but @daniel
seamonkey mozilla's lightweight browser has support for about 60% of FF add ons
gui is sorta modeled after the Dillo browser

[White Stripes]

theres also k-meleon for windows (not sure if i spelled that right) that uses gecko and is even lighter than seamonkey...

FF 3.1 is going to fix a lot of the bloat issues (ive tested minefield versions and found it to start and run as fast as one would expect firefox to... memory munching was also less of an issue)

note:3.1 isnt 'out' yet tho... so dont use it mainstream...

www.floppymoose.com for adblock (this works for opera... but it doesnt say how to do it) .... 'aspell' for adding spellcheck to opera and possibly others...

[Forested665]

since thats a CSS file. it says you just place it in the chrome directory. this would work with opera if it has one (i havent looked) but i didnt see any mention of opera on that page unless mozilla is being used to reffer to the opera suite.

[White Stripes]

you put it in a directory of your choosing then edit site preferences to use it as a user .css file alongside the sites .css...


tools > preferences > content > style options > then choose it as 'my stylesheet'

[Daniel]

@daniel
seamonkey mozilla's lightweight browser has support for about 60% of FF add ons
gui is sorta modeled after the Dillo browser

I'm trying it out, but I don't know if I like it. It seems old. For example, clicking the search button opens up a box on the left side of the screen, the lack of a Home icon next to Back, Forward, Reload, and Stop, and the old GUI, which I updated by installing a new theme.

[Forested665]

there is a trend in technology.
the more it does and the newer it is the more is requires to use.
to make it efficient and small its modelled after the old.