Friday, November 2, 2007

Firefox Myths

Myth

(Definition) - "A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part
of an ideology." While Firefox is a decent Web Browser, there are
numerous Myths floating around the Internet regarding it. Hopefully
this site will debunk some of these.








Firefox Faster, Safer, Better

We have all seen these banners before or heard people say "Firefox is Faster, Firefox has Lower Requirements, Firefox is Secure, Firefox defends me from all Spyware, etc." How misleading is it? Read on.




Disclaimer
- This page originally came out in 2005 and thus the relevance of any
Myth can change. This does not mean they will be removed from this
page. Frequently links, sources and the information on them can change
which is out of my control. This page is in no way affiliated with
Microsoft, Comcast or anyone else. This page does not claim the Mozilla
Foundation/Corporation is the originator of all of these Myths. This
page is not an endorsement for any web browser. This page is not a
review of Firefox. This page is not a comparison guide. All Myths relate to running the default install of
Firefox in Windows with no Extensions. Please read carefully and look
at the sources. The examples and sources are two different things, read
the Myths Origins sections for more information. Firefox Myths is
designed to debunk the most common Myths heard about Firefox - Period.




Bookmark: fffacts.blogspot.com









Legal
Notice - Reproduction of this page in whole or in part is fully at your will.


^ TOP

General Myths




Mozilla

Firefox and Mozilla



Myth - "Firefox and Mozilla are the same thing"
- Example




Reality - Firefox started as "Phoenix" in 2002, an experimental redesign of the Mozilla Suite
browser component. It officially became known as Mozilla Firefox in
2004. The name "Mozilla" in this case refers to the Mozilla
Foundation/Corporation which develops Firefox and developed the Mozilla
Suite. Official development of the Mozilla Suite ended in 2005 but
continues as a community-developed product known as SeaMonkey.
- Source







GNU

Free Software



Myth - "Firefox is Completely Free"
- Example




Reality - "The truth is, while Mozilla Firefox is open source, it is not entirely free. Several elements are restricted by the EULA, including the trademarked Firefox name, artwork, and the proprietary Talkback crash reporter."
- Source
- Source 2







Firefox Profit

Not for Profit



Myth - "Firefox and Mozilla are Not for Profit"
- Example




Reality
- "The Mozilla Corporation pays its employees from the revenues we
receive from our product. We are very fortunate in that the search
feature in Firefox is both appreciated by our users and generates
revenue in the tens of millions of dollars."
- Source




"Now, the Mozilla Foundation, the non-profit entity that develops and
distributes Firefox, is forming a for-profit subsidiary that will
eventually capitalize on the browser's popularity. The Mozilla
Foundation will announce today that it has formed a wholly-owned
subsidiary, Mozilla Corp." - Forbes




"Firefox, which is produced by the for-profit Mozilla Corporation, made $72 Million last year and is on target to have 120 employees this year."
- Source






FX


Firefox Grammar



Myth - "Firefox is spelled 'FireFox' and abbreviated FF"



Reality

- Firefox is spelled F-i-r-e-f-o-x - only the first letter capitalized
(i.e. not FireFox, not Foxfire, FoxFire or whatever else a number of
folk seem to think it to be called.) The preferred abbreviation is "Fx"
or "fx". - Source






Phoenix

Firefox Religion



Myth - "Firefox is not a Religion"




Religion (Definition) - "A cause, principle, or activity pursued with zeal or conscientious devotion."
- Source



Reality - To the Fanboys Firefox goes beyond an obsession.
- Explorer Destroyer
- Kill Bill's Browser

- Block IE
- IE is Evil!



God Chooses Firefox

Firefox Crop Circle

Firefox Sidewalk


Firefox Balloon

Firefox Bus



"Giving
people unadulterated access to the web became something of a religion,
and every wasted pixel, button or dialog that impeded it was a demon
that nagged at us." - Blake Ross Mozilla Firefox Founder

- The Firefox Religion



Notes - Type in about:mozilla into the Firefox address bar to get "The Book of Mozilla".




The Book of Mozilla


^ TOP

Requirement Myths



System Requirements

System Requirements



Myth - "Firefox has lower System Requirements than Internet Explorer"
- Example



Reality - Internet Explorer 6 has much lower minimum System Requirements than Firefox




Notes - This Myth originated in 2005 and is worded how it was found then. IE6 still has the largest market share of any browser and is still actively supported by Microsoft.







Internet Explorer

Internet Explorer
- Source



Minimum:

486/66 MHz CPU



16 MB of RAM

11.5 MB of hard drive space

Windows 98




Notes - Anyone who claims Internet Explorer 6 will not run on these requirements has never tested it.






Firefox

Firefox - Source




Minimum:

Pentium 233 MHz CPU

64 MB of RAM


52 MB of hard drive space

Windows 98



The Recommended Requirements for Firefox are much worse:



Recommended:


Pentium III 500 MHz CPU

128 MB of RAM

Windows XP




Notes - The minimum requirements for Opera are 20 MB of disk space and Windows 95.







Memory Usage

Memory Usage



Myth - "Firefox uses less memory than Internet Explorer"
- Example




Reality - Internet Explorer 7 uses much less memory than Firefox 2.x.
- Source
- Source 2
- Source 3


^ TOP

Reliability Myths




BugZilla

Bugs



Myth - "Firefox is Bug Free"
- Example




Reality - Firefox is like any other software application and has plenty of bugs and problems.
- Source






Firefox Stability

Stability




Myth - "Firefox is Stable"
- Example



Reality
- Firefox can be very unstable and suffer from problems relating to
Corrupt Preference Issues, Profile Issues, Plugin Issues, Theme Issues
and Extension Issues that sometimes requires a clean reinstall to
resolve. - Source

- Source 2



"Poorly designed or incompatible extensions can cause problems with
your browser, including make it crash, slow down page display, etc. If
you encounter strange problems relating to parts of the browser no
longer working, the browser not starting, windows with strange or
distorted appearance, degraded performance, ect, you may be suffering
from Extension or Theme trouble." - Source


^ TOP

Performance Myths





Performance

Fastest Web Browser



Myth - "Firefox is the Fastest Web Browser"
- Example




Reality - Opera (now 100% Ad free) is the fastest Graphical Web Browser in Windows.
- Source







Internet Explorer 6

Faster than Internet Explorer 6



Myth - "Firefox is Faster than Internet Explorer 6"
- Example




Reality
- Internet Explorer 6 is clearly faster than Firefox 1.x and 2.x in 5
out of 7 measures of performance and is significantly faster from a
cold start. - Source



Notes - The argument that components of Internet Explorer may load during Windows Startup is nullified by Opera's start times. Which means there is no excuse for this except poor coding on Firefox's part.







Internet Explorer 7

Faster than Internet Explorer 7



Myth - "Firefox is Faster than Internet Explorer 7"
- Example




Reality - Internet Explorer 7 is clearly faster than Firefox 1.x and 2.x in 4 out of 7 measures of performance.
- Source







Mozilla

Faster than Mozilla



Myth - "Firefox is Faster than Mozilla"
- Example




Reality - Ironically Mozilla 1.8 is faster than Firefox 1.x and 2.x in 5 out of 7 measures of performance..
- Source



Notes - Considering Firefox is supposed to be the lighter, leaner version of the Mozilla suite, this is very surprising.


^ TOP

Market Share Myths




Market Share

Market Share May 2007



Myth - "Firefox Gained 25% Market Share in May 2007"
- Example




Reality - "Firefox lost Market Share in May 2007, dropping below 15% while Internet Explorer and Safari gained."
- NetApplications



"Firefox's market share was only 12% in May 2007"
- The Counter



"Firefox's market share was still below 13% by June 2007"
- OneStat








Market Share

Market Share September 2006



Myth - "Firefox Gained Market Share in September 2006"
- Example




Reality
- "Internet Explorer has regained nearly 3 percentage points of the
browser market since July, while Firefox has dropped 1.4 points in the
same period, a Dutch Web metrics vendor said Monday." - Source
- Source 2
- OneStat







Market Share

Market Share January 2006 in Europe



Myth - "Firefox Achieved 20% Market Share in January 2006 in Europe"
- Example




Reality
- "As good as those numbers are, they need to be taken with a grain of
salt. XiTi performed its measurements on a weekend, which means it
captured a disproportionate number of home users and comparatively few
corporate desktops. Most large companies still use Internet Explorer,
so using weekend surfing activities as a baseline for market share
evaluations is going to miss out on a lot of IE use." - Source



"But XiTi's figures should probably be taken with a pinch of salt, as
Firefox usage tends to be highest over the weekend, according to
Tristan Nitot, the president of Mozilla Europe." - Source



"Firefox had only 9.92% market share in the UK and only 9.48% market share in the Netherlands in January 2006"
- OneStat




"Firefox was only at 10% market share between February and April 2006 in Europe"
- ADTECH






Market Share

Market Share Gained in 2005




Myth - "Firefox Achieved 10% Market Share in 2005"
- Example



Reality - "According to WebSideStory, a San Diego-based Web analytics provider, Mozilla's Firefox closed 2005 with 8.9 percent of the browser market, while Microsoft's Internet Explorer wrapped up the year with 87.6 percent."
- Source

- WebSideStory



"NetApplications said that Firefox owned 9.6 percent of the market, and IE accounted for 85 percent."
- Source
- NetApplications



"Firefox was only at 8% market share for 2005"
- The Counter







Firefox Downloads

Downloads



Myth - "Firefox Achieved 150 million downloads in January of 2006"
- Example




Reality
- "Oops. We recently introduced a bug into the counter and it's being
fixed. We're not quite there yet. Sorry for the confusion. We
accidentally counted the 20 million people who updated from Firefox 1.5
to Firefox 1.5.0.1 this week." - Source
- Source 2


^ TOP

Security Myths




Insecure

Security



Myth - "Firefox is Secure"
- Example




Reality
- Firefox is anything but Secure with multiple unpatched
vulnerabilities allowing exposure of sensitive data to local users. You
only need one vulnerability to be insecure. Since Firefox v1.x was
released, users have been exposed to over 295 security vulnerabilities and counting.



CVE
CVE

- lists over (295) security vulnerabilities in Firefox.
- Source



Mozilla Foundation
Mozilla
- lists over (190) security vulnerabilities in Firefox.
- Source




Secunia
Secunia
- lists (169) security vulnerabilities in Firefox, over (100) are rated Highly Critical.
- Source




Notes - The number of Secunia "advisories" (44) does not equal the actual amount of "vulnerabilities" (169). Over 10 advisories have multiple vulnerabilities, look carefully. SA19631 - Lists 24 Vulnerabilities Alone!



"In the excitement that surrounded its launch last year, Firefox was
unreasonably portrayed by some as having unbreakable security, but the
vulnerabilities that have been detected in recent months are injecting
a dose of reality into this myth, analysts say." - Source




"Firefox tops the list of applications that are well-known in the
consumer space and are frequently downloaded by employees, often
without the approval of IT departments - that contain critical,
code-execution vulnerabilities." - Source






Opera

Most Secure Web Browser




Myth - "Firefox is the Most Secure Web Browser"
- Example



Reality - Opera is currently the most Secure Graphical Web Browser in Windows.
- Source







Internet Explorer 6

More Secure than Internet Explorer 6



Myth - "Firefox 1.x is more Secure than Internet Explorer 6"
- Example




Reality - Internet Explorer 6 has been more secure than Firefox 1.x in 2006.
- Source
- Source 2



Firefox 1.x (2006) - 13 Advisories = 88 Vulnerabilities


Internet Explorer 6.x (2006) - 16 Advisories = 36 Vulnerabilities






Patch Time


Patch Time



Myth - "Firefox Vulnerabilities are Quickly Patched"
- Example



Reality - Multiple vulnerabilities have remained unpatched for a long time.
- Source




SA12403 - Unpatched since 08-30-2004

SA12580 - Unpatched since 09-18-2004

SA20442 - Unpatched since 06-06-2006


SA23046 - Unpatched since 11-22-2006






OS_Security

OS Integration Security




Myth - "Firefox is More Secure because it is not integrated into the OS"
- Example



Reality
- "The issue of not being part of the Operating System is an
interesting one though that is frequently the subject of
misunderstanding. IE is part of the Windows Operating System so that
parts of the OS and other applications can rely on the functionality
and APIs being present. IE in turn relies on Operating System
functionality to do it's job. To be clear there are no Operating System
APIs that IE uses that are not documented on MSDN as part of the
platform SDK and available to other browsers and any other software
that runs on Windows. The security of any browser is irrelevant to if it is part of the operating system.
If we are to debate security of browsers then let's bring in relevant
arguments and accurate details about different possible attacks rather
than rely on the irrational fear that because IE is part of the
operating system it must be exposing OS functionality to the web. This
is not the case as any software has access to the same set of OS APIs
and can therefore expose the same set of OS functionality as IE." - Source







ActiveX

ActiveX



Myth - "Firefox is More Secure because it does not use ActiveX"
- Example




Reality - "ActiveX gets a bad rap as the cause of all of Internet Explorer's security woes. But it's just not so. Old myths die hard!
There's no doubt that Internet Explorer has more than it's fair share
of security holes, but very few of them have to do with ActiveX.
ActiveX controls are packages of code that can run in the context of
the browser. They are installable through a link on a Web page. Exactly
how different is this from having a link to an executable file that you
have to explicitly run? Essentially not at all, except that the ActiveX
version is more convenient. Even with Firefox you can download and run
an executable file. Does this make Firefox unsafe? In fact, Mozilla and
Firefox's support for XPCOM, a plain text and platform-independent
software model, is very comparable to ActiveX once you get the user to
click "Yes." The complaint against ActiveX has always centered around
the ability to install native code from across the Internet, but this
is less unusual than it seems, and ActiveX arguably makes things more
secure. When you encounter an object tag referencing a control that you
do not have installed, you then have the opportunity to install it.
Under the default security settings, you will be warned before this
happens and given an opportunity to approve or reject the
installation." - Source
- Source 2







Extensions

Extensions



Myth - "Firefox Extensions are Safe"
- Example




Reality - Firefox Extensions can be very unsafe.



"Hackers can drop malicious code into systems running Mozilla's Firefox
when the browser is armed with any of several high-profile add-ons,
including Google Toolbar and Yahoo Toolbar." - Source




Spyware Extensions


Over 90 extensions have been found to collect data and uniquely identifying users without notifying them.
- Source




Firebug

A highly critical vulnerability in the Firebug extension allows remote exploitation that can lead to system compromise.
- Source





Fizzle

A vulnerability in the Fizzle extension can be exploited by malicious people to conduct script insertion attacks.
- Source




Greasemonkey

A vulnerability in older versions of the Greasemonkey extension can be
exploited by malicious people to disclose sensitive information by
disclosing the contents of arbitrary local files and list the contents
of arbitrary local directories. - Source





IETab

A vulnerability in older versions of the IE Tab extension allows remote
user-complicit attackers to cause a denial of service (application
crash). - Source




Sage Extension

Multiple vulnerabilities in the Sage extension can be exploited by malicious people to conduct cross-site scripting attacks.
- Source





Wizz RSS News Reader Extension

A highly critical vulnerability in the Wizz RSS News Reader extension
allows remote exploitation that can lead to system compromise. - Source






Spyware


Solution to Spyware



Myth - "Firefox is a Solution to Spyware"
- Example



Reality - This is very misleading and can lull users into a false sense of security. Use the free Secure XP Guide

to properly secure your system and get a REAL solution to Spyware.
Firefox is nothing more than a Web Browser. Installing Firefox does not
clean your system of existing Spyware infections or protect you from
manually installing anything in the future, including Spyware. These
can come from Downloads, Email Attachments, File Sharing and by other
means. You can still easily get infected with Spyware using Firefox as
these exploits demonstrate:


"Earlier this week, I blogged
about a site doing a bunch of different exploits, depending on what you
are running. One of the things the site will do is detect if you have
Firefox, and attempt to exploit it, using the
InstallVersion.compareTo() vulnerability. There are actually a number
of sites running this exploit, and one of our researchers, Adam Thomas,
was kind enough to take some pictures. Going to a site with an older
version of Firefox got him just a bucket-load of Spyware." - Source



"Visit the same page in Firefox and, with the JRE up and running, the
below happens. Being a curious soul, I agreed to the install - and
quickly wished I hadn't! In a flurry of remote downloads, numerous
changes to the registry took place and a sizeable amount of IE specific
installs began downloading. Amongst the assortment was DyFuCA, Internet
Optimizer, ISTsvc, Kapabout, sais (180 Solutions), SideFind, Avenue
Media and something called djtopr1150.exe lurking in the Temp folder."
- Source







Anti-Phishing

Anti-Phishing



Myth - "Firefox 2's Phishing Protection is better than Internet Explorer 7"
- Example




Reality
- "Internet Explorer 7's Phishing Filter finished at the top of
3Sharp's list as most accurate anti-phishing technology, catching
nearly 9 out of 10 phishing sites while generating no warning or block
errors on the 500 legitimate websites tested." - Source
- Source 2



"- They [Smartware, the company that authored the study for Mozilla]
didn't make any attempt to score false positives. This is a critical
omission, because a filter that produces significant numbers of false
positives will quickly train users to ignore its legitimate warnings.
(Interestingly, PhishTank's own FAQ agrees with me). IMHO any study
that doesn't include false positive data is meaningless.



- The Firefox report mentions that IE can warn or block, but it doesn't
credit IE with any actual warnings. This is a significant omission,
although we can't tell how significant because...




- The Firefox report doesn't include any information about the actual
URLs used. They promise to publish this data "soon", but without that
there's no way to gauge the quality of their data. (I understand that
they'll publish the data later today; it'll be interesting to see the
raw stuff.) Of course, we published all our URL data in our report.



- Speaking of data: the Firefox team used 1040 phish from Phishtank, a
community filtering system, gathered over a two-week period. That's a
good number of phish, but the study period was awfully short, and the
phish all came from one source. We used multiple sources, including
honey pots and user reports, to generate the phish list we used.



- Because they used a community-generated feed of phish, there's no way
to tell which of the phish had also (or already) been reported to other
systems that may have fed into the "Ask Google" or Microsoft data
feeds. By contrast, we took great pains to try to find phish that we
knew hadn't been submitted to Microsoft's URL reputation service." - Source



"The two 'live' sites I visited in each browser hardly constitute a
scientific sample, but it's still worth noting that IE7 flagged both
pages as confirmed phishing sites, while Firefox 2 missed them both" - Source



^ TOP

Feature Myths




BugZilla

Memory Leak




Myth - "Firefox's Memory Leak is a Bug"
- Example



Reality - The Firefox Memory Leak is not a bug. It's a Feature! The "Feature" is how the pages are cached in a tabbed environment.




"To improve performance when navigating (studies show that 39% of all
page navigations are renavigations to pages visited less than 10 pages
ago, usually using the back button), Firefox 1.5 implements a
Back-Forward cache that retains the rendered document for the last few
session history entries. This can be a lot of data. It's a trade-off.
What you get out of it is faster performance as you navigate the web."
- Source



Notes - Presto, the Opera
rendering engine puts the emphasis on getting the content of a page
(the text) to the user earlier than Firefox, and Opera's cache
(especially the back/forward performance) is simply faster than any
other browser. - Source







Extensions

Extensions



Myth - "Firefox supports Extensions and Internet Explorer does not"
- Example




Reality - "Internet Explorer has supported extensions since 1997 in Internet Explorer 4.0 known as Add-Ons.
- Source







Widgets

Extensions



Myth - "Firefox supports Extensions and Opera does not"
- Example




Reality - Opera supports Extensions in Opera 9 known as
Widgets.
- Source



Notes - Many popular Firefox Extensions are already supported in Opera by default.
- Source

- Source 2
- Source 3






IE7 Inline Search

Inline Search




Myth - "Firefox supports an Inline Search Feature and Internet Explorer does not"
- Example



Reality - Internet Explorer 7 supports Inline Search through the Inline Search Add-On. - Source







Integrated_Search

Integrated Search



Myth - "Firefox was the first Web Browser to include an Integrated Search feature"
- Example




Reality - Opera was the first browser to include an Integrated Search feature in Opera 5 in 2000. - Source
- Source 2




Innovative (Definition) - "The act of introducing something new."






Pop-up Blocking

Pop-up Blocking




Myth - "Firefox was the first Web Browser to include Pop-up Blocking"
- Example



Reality - Opera was the first browser to include Pop-up Blocking in Opera 5 in 2000. - Source

- Source 2






Pop-up Blocking

Pop-up Blocking IE




Myth - "Firefox had Pop-up Blocking before Internet Explorer"
- Example



Reality - Internet Explorer 6 had Pop-up Blocking with Windows XP SP2 on August 2, 2004 before Firefox 1.0 was released on November 9, 2004.
- Source







Pop-up Blocking

Blocks All Pop-ups



Myth - "Firefox Blocks all Pop-ups"
- Example




Reality - Firefox does not Block all Pop-ups. PopupTest shows the "Drop down Popup" and the "Sticky Popup" are not blocked. Other types of Pop-ups continue to get through. - Source







RSS

RSS



Myth - "The Firefox RSS icon was stolen by Microsoft for IE7"
- Example




Reality
- "I'm excited to announce that we're adopting the icon used in
Firefox. John Lilly and Chris Beard from Mozilla were very enthusiastic
about allowing us (and anyone in the community) to use their icon. This
isn't the first time that we've worked with the Mozilla team to
exchange ideas and encourage consistency between browsers, and we're
sure it won't be the last.." - Source






Tabbed Browsing

Tabbed Browsing




Myth - "Firefox was the first Web Browser to include Tabbed Browsing"
- Example



Reality - Tabbed Browsing has been around a long time. Opera invented Tabbed Browsing back in 1994. Netcaptor offered Tab Browsing in 1997 and other popular browsers such as Maxthon then known as "MYIE2" had this in 2002 way before Firefox officially arrived in 2004.
- Source

- Source 2



Innovative (Definition) - "The act of introducing something new."







MSN Toolbar

Tabbed Browsing IE



Myth - "Firefox supports Tabbed Browsing and Internet Explorer does not"
- Example




Reality - Internet Explorer 6 supports Tabbed Browsing when used with the MSN Toolbar extension in Windows XP.
- Source

MSN Toolbar



Reality - Internet Explorer 7 includes Tabbed Browsing by default.
- Source




IE7 Tabs






W3C Standards

W3C Standards




Myth - "Firefox fully supports W3C Standards"
- Example



Reality - Firefox has incomplete support of many W3C standards including HTML 4.01, XHTML 1.1, CSS 2.1, CSS 3 and DOM.
- Source




Update
- The link here has changed so you get a non-biased view of the Source.
The owner of this Source had tried to redirect visitors coming from
this site to specially created warning pages.



Warning - When viewing his websites in Internet Explorer you may receive deceptive
warnings
saying: "Warning: There is a problem with your web browser" which links
to his "IE is Dangerous" propaganda page. This is an attempt to use
scare tactics to try and get people to use an alternate web browser.
Please do not fall for these. He is also well aware some of his web
pages break in Internet Explorer but deliberately refuses to fix them
out of clear bias: "Do I dislike Internet Explorer? Yes. Do I wish Internet Explorer would just go away? Yes." - David Hammond.
It should be noted these guides here will always attempt to work with
all web browsers and never resort to these dishonest tactics.




Notes - Internet Explorer has very good support (81-86%)
for the most important web standard, HTML 4.01. In most educational
systems an 81-86% would equal a "B" grade and without HTML the World
Wide Web would not exist as we know it. The author is consistently
lowering this rating. When I first referenced the page it was at 86%
and has since dropped 1% every month or so. - Source






W3C Standards


W3C Standards Development



Myth - "The W3C Develops Recommendations not Standards"
- Example



Reality

- "W3C Develops Web Standards and Guidelines. W3C primarily pursues its
mission through the creation of Web standards and guidelines. Since
1994, W3C has published more than ninety such standards, called W3C
Recommendations." - Source






W3C Standards

W3C Standards define a Webpage



Myth - "A Site that doesn't conform to W3C Standards is not a Webpage"




Reality - W3C Standards have nothing to do with the definition of what a Webpage is.



Webpage
(Definition) - "A document on the World Wide Web, consisting of an HTML
file and any related files for scripts and graphics, and often
hyperlinked to other documents on the Web." - Source







Acid2

Acid 2 Browser Test



Myth - "Firefox fully supports the most important W3C Standards"
- Example




Reality
- The Acid 2 Browser Test released in April 13, 2005 is a test page,
written to help browser vendors ensure proper support for web standards
in their products. Although the Acid2 Browser Test does not test every
web standard, it tests the features considered most important for the
future of the web. This test clearly shows Firefox does not fully
support the most important web standards. - Source



Firefox v2.0 Acid2 Browser Test Results:



Firefox Acid2




Notes - Opera v9 passes the Acid2 Browser Test in Windows:



Opera Acid2







Acid2

Acid 2 Firefox



Myth - "Firefox passes the Acid2 Test"
- Example




Reality
- No official final release of Firefox passes the Acid2 Browser Test.
Neither Firefox 1.x or Firefox 2.0 pass the Acid2 Browser test. The
standards compliance test is now almost 2 years old.




Web Page Rendering

Web Page Rendering




Myth - "Firefox is completely compatible with every Web Site"
- Example



Reality
- 10-15% of web sites aren't completely compatible with Firefox.
Firefox is not 100% Internet Explorer and ActiveX compatible. Web sites
that depend on ActiveX or were only tested in Internet Explorer (which
there are many) will only render and work properly in Internet Explorer
based browsers. Web site features such as Menus, Web forms or other
content may not function or behave differently then intended. While
Internet Explorer is completely compatible with 99.99% of all Web
Sites. - Source




In a recent study by a UK based web testing firm SciVisum, 1 in 10 UK web sites failed to work properly with Firefox.
- Source



Notes - Opera has the same problems as Firefox in regard to web site compatibility.







Web Page Rendering IE7

Web Page Rendering IE7



Myth - "Firefox has the same web page compatibility issues as Internet Explorer 7"
- Example




Reality
- While Standards Compliance in IE7 has been greatly improved, this is
only in Strict Mode. IE7 is still fully backwards compatible with IE
Quirks Mode like IE6 and thus will continue to work fine with IE Quirks
Mode reliant pages while Firefox will break on these pages. - Source






Web Page Rendering

Web Page Rendering Differences




Myth - "Firefox supports Progressive Rendering and Internet Explorer does not"
- Example



Reality
- "Actually this is not true and you can see from going to many pages
that Internet Explorer does support progressive rendering of content as
it arrives. This is true however for table rendering. When Internet
Explorer encounters a table it measures all the content of the table
before rendering so that it knows what the widths of the columns are to
render the content correctly. On the other hand Firefox uses a
different algorithm in that it renders the table contents progressively
before it has all been passed. There are pros and cons to both
approaches. In the case of progressive rendering a table it can result
in an experience where content is initially displayed and then moved as
the browser progresses creating a clunky and poor quality feel. On the
other hand if we parse the entire table content first then it can take
some time to display in the case of heavily nested tables. I've heard
user feedback supporting both arguments and more than a few people have
mentioned that they find Firefox's rendering a little off putting in
this regard." - Source



^ TOP

Conclusion



Copier: This is not the original page. It is just a copy-and-paste stuff from the author.
Linking to this site will "help" the author of this post "save" some bandwidth that
we, the readers who are using firefox are trying to "steal" the writer's bandwidth.
Do the guy a favor, don't link to that firefoxmyths dot com any more, link to this blog
instead. That will do the internet some good.



BTW, the author got itself and other members off Digg banned for spamming this site
all over and over on Digg, and then whining about this all over the place. This page
is just one measure I see that need to be taken. Comments are welcome.



^ TOP

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Note: The author of Firefox Myths is Andrew Khan (known for a long time only as Andrew K.)

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