If you have nothing to show, make it appear as if you are extremely busy.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book.

———-

While Google simply doesn’t want people to use anything else but the latest version (and have therefore intentionally broken their version schema), Firefox wants everyone to think big changes are happening.

Users, however, are not dumb and will respond to such cheating – Mozilla is killing off its own advantage: power and home users, whose dissatisfaction can already be felt.

http://mike.kaply.com/2011/06/23/understanding-the-corporate-impact/#comment-10494

http://mike.kaply.com/2011/06/23/understanding-the-corporate-impact/#comment-10692

Mozilla either need to gag Asa Dotzler, or just fire him. Dotzler comes across as unspeakably arrogant.

“Mozilla either need to gag Asa Dotzler, or just fire him. Dotzler comes across as unspeakably arrogant.”

I agree completely. I was going to say the exact same thing before I read your comment. I don’t think anyone (other than RMS) has ever done so much damage to an open source project with just a single statement.

“By the time I validate Firefox 5, what guarantee would I have that Firefox 5 won’t go EOL when Firefox 6 is released?”

I wonder what possessed these people to deploy Firefox in the first place.

“I wonder what possessed these people to deploy Firefox in the first place.”

You speak about Firefox like it’s the anti-christ or something. It was a decision made by their IT department based on its technical merit. At that time, Firefox was a sufficiently secure and reasonably stable software.

However, I agree this is no longer the case, and I would definitely question any decision made to deploy Firefox in a corporate environment in the future.

It was a decision made by their IT department based on its technical merit.

And definitely not the opinions of tech journals or, worse still, Dotzler’s blog?

Oh, hang on – I forgot to mention ill-informed decisions handed down from the higher-ups as well.

Silly me.

I admit that I don’t know what really made them make that decision, but neither do you. The most obvious reason for me is that they made a decision just like any other technical decision. The most obvious reason for you is that they’re “possessed” or just mindlessly following tech journalists and bloggers (I wonder how they even manage to run a business at all!).

Your logic blows me away.

“I admit that I don’t know what really made them make that decision, but neither do you.”

I think a more “logical” way to make your case is to just state clearly as to why using Firefox in a corporate environment is at all a reasonable move rather than, say, wasting your words insinuating that I know nothing about the subject matter.

Seriously, this shtick is getting old.

“I think a more “logical” way to make your case is to just state clearly as to why using Firefox in a corporate environment is at all a reasonable move rather than, say, wasting your words insinuating that I know nothing about the subject matter.”

I never claimed you know nothing about the subject matter. I said that you don’t know what happened inside that company, you don’t know that company’s requirements, and you weren’t there when they made the decision.

I’ll construct an analogy to explain:

Let’s say Alice and Bob were dating, then they broke up after Bob publicly said he wasn’t interested in women.

You: “I wonder what possessed Alice to date Bob in the first place.”
Me: “She decided to date him after she considered her options and found Bob to be a sufficiently handsome and reasonably nice guy.”

Read the conversation again. My statement does NOT imply that:
1- You don’t know anything about relationships.
2- You don’t know anything about Bob.
3- If you were in Alice’s boots, you should’ve made the same choice because it was the only reasonable decision.
4- Dating Bob at that time was reasonable for everybody.

It seems you take people reaching conclusions different from you as an insult. It’s not an insult. Smart people can reach different conclusions without thinking everyone else is stupid.

Now, since you asked for technical reasons, I’ll list some. I really didn’t want to do that because I wasn’t advocating Firefox, I was just pointing out that you were insulting people needlessly.
1- Security. IE is more used, and thus an attack in the wild is more likely to affect IE users. I don’t blame Microsoft for that, but it’s statistically relevant.
2- Standards compliance. Firefox 3.6 followed the HTML4 standard more closely than IE8. In fact, if you designed your website to work well under Firefox, it’s more likely to work well under IE9 (without any backwards compatibility mode) than if you designed it for IE8.
3- “Standards” compliance, i.e. HTML5 (Actually, I rather call this point “non-standard features” since HTML5 gains features after non-compliant browsers implement them). When Microsoft implements a non-standard feature (ActiveX, web slices, etc), they intend to keep it IE-specific to make IE more powerful than the competition. When Firefox implement non-standard features, they attempt to push it as a web standard. If you decide to use use non-standard features for whatever reason (not that I’m advocating it), doing so with Firefox means you have a better chance of being able to move to other browsers eventually (there is a chance it won’t happen, but at least it’s not 100% like with IE). The fact that IE9 has features that first appeared in Firefox speaks for itself.

Passed the 3000 character limit…

4- Speed. Like it or not, Firefox 3.6 was faster than IE8 in many aspects: rendering speed, Javascript, etc. (As a personal note, the reason I moved from IE to Chrome was that opening multiple pages in IE (for example, clicking on every link in an RSS feed) took ages because IE would pause for a second when opening a new tab).

Note that I didn’t mention some other features like “you can modify the code” or “extensions” because I think the former is bogus and the latter is not very relevant in a corporate environment.

Few disclaimers (since you make lots of assumptions about everything I say):
1- All that said and done, I am not advocating Firefox. I AM NOT ADVOCATING FIREFOX. I am mentioning some reasons that I think the IT department of that company considered before deciding on Firefox.
2- IE9 is a HUGE improvement. In fact, if IE9 existed when they decided to deploy Firefox 3.6, I wouldn’t have much to talk about.
3- Firefox probably has some problems, I’m not denying it. However, you asked why I think Firefox might be reasonable, not what I think the problems of Firefox are.
4- Honestly, I don’t think that “you know nothing about the subject”. I apologize if I gave that impression. Next time I will be more explicit and add this disclaimer when I think there might be confusion.

“Seriously, this shtick is getting old.”

Can you elaborate?

“IE is more used, and thus an attack in the wild is more likely to affect IE users.”

Security through obscurity. 'nuff said.

“Standards compliance. Firefox 3.6 followed the HTML4 standard more closely than IE8.”

Except when it isn’t:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=562198

Hell, it has even at one point failed to adhere to the HTTP protocol:

https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=562198

Let’s face it – the majority of the Internet users chooses IE over Firefox (as you acknowledge), and, as a result, most web site are prepared for IE whether it is supposedly less “complaint to standards” or not. Installing Firefox in fear that certain website will not be displayed properly, especially in a business environment, is just plain silly.

“When Firefox implement non-standard features, they attempt to push it as a web standard.”

Did you ask Alice or Bob about that?

Just sayin’.

“[T]he reason I moved from IE to Chrome was that opening multiple pages in IE (for example, clicking on every link in an RSS feed) took ages because IE would pause for a second when opening a new tab).”

“Ages” == “a second”. Fascinating mathematics.

Well JoeMonco clearly has sand in his vagina today. Don’t worry IMGX64, you made your point clear. The biggest reason was “security” no doubt, even if it was security by obscurity.

Still, JoeMonco isn’t wrong in saying all the bad rep IE was getting had a lot to do with it.

“Well JoeMonco clearly has sand in his vagina today.”

And not my period?

“The biggest reason was 'security’ no doubt, even if it was security by obscurity.”

And sure that went well:

http://www.darknet.org.uk/2010/10/hackers-exploit-unpatched-firefox-0day-using-nobel-peace-prize-website/

“Still, JoeMonco isn’t wrong in saying all the bad rep IE was getting had a lot to do with it.”

Sometimes I just wish that the IT industry wasn’t really as hype-driven as I thought. But, then, there is the “cloud”.

Security through obscurity is even worse actually Joe, because when a supposedly “secure” system gets hit, it gets hit hard, and it takes much longer to fix the issue.

I wouldn’t want to have an argument with you when you’re on your period JoeMonco :p

“Security through obscurity”

I’m sure that’s not what it means, so I’m going to assume it’s a joke (a good double entendre, I admit).

“Except when it isn’t”

No browser is 100% compliant, Firefox 3.6 had fewer HTML4-related bugs than IE8. Just ask any web designer.

“Let’s face it – the majority of the Internet users chooses IE over Firefox (as you acknowledge), and, as a result, most web site are prepared for IE whether it is supposedly less “complaint to standards” or not. Installing Firefox in fear that certain website will not be displayed properly, especially in a business environment, is just plain silly.”

I’m talking about the internal website that the company has tested Firefox 3.6 with, and were in the process of testing it with 4.0 before it was pulled from under their feet. Many companies think it’s entirely reasonable to use non-standard features in an environment where you control all your users (I personally think it’s a terrible idea). Just ask the thousands of companies who still can’t upgrade IE6 because it will break their internal websites.

““Ages” == “a second”. Fascinating mathematics.”

True, it’s not a major thing, but it was really annoying to have to wait a second between each click when opening multiple tabs at once. Usability studies made by Google have shown that a site slower by milliseconds makes users lose interest faster.

Here’s an example, imagine that I wanted to read the whole archive of Bad Machinery webcomic (http://scarygoround.com/index.php?date=archive). I have a not-so-great connection so reading each comic then pressing next would mean I have to wait more than 5 seconds between each comic, unbearably slow. So, the way I do it is to go to the archive and open about 20-30 comics at once, read something else until the first few load, and read them while the rest load. In IE8, the “open 20-30 tabs at once” required me to pause more than a second between clicks, when I could do it much faster in Chrome.

@KOMMENTER
“Well JoeMonco clearly has sand in his vagina today”
I strongly resent that. Nothing, absolutely nothing justifies such comment. We are here to have discussions, not fling mud at each other. Insulting people makes you look stupid, and that you’re out of arguments so you resort to name-calling.

As my mother always said.. If you keep your mouth clean when others don’t, you’ll look right even if you’re wrong.

@IMGX64

Chill out, go watch some southpark.

“Just ask any web designer.”

Another prime example of how fads can affect proper development practices.

Let’s face it – surveys regarding HTML 4.0/1 standard conformance has always been at best lacking if not blatantly biased (i.e. sponsored by none other than those producing the browsers themselves, Mozilla in particular). The real kicker, though, is that the W3C test suite for HTML 4.0/1 is still in its draft stages despite the finalization of the standard itself 11 years ago. The closest thing we have got to a standardized test thus far is Acid 3 – and it is nowhere near anything that you should bet your boat on (since any browser vendor can easily work on producing a perfect score without actually making any improvement for the general cases.) Thus, anything uttered by web designers about “more standard conforming”, given such absence of conclusive, should only be taken with a grain of salt.

And I stand by these words.

“Usability studies made by Google have shown that a site slower by milliseconds makes users lose interest faster.”

Again, as opposed to by an entity that doesn’t have vested interested in the web business.

“Usability studies made by Google have shown that a site slower by milliseconds makes users lose interest faster.”

Seconds? Definitely. People can count seconds.
Tenths? You may notice. If 1 second is measured by saying “one thousand”, a tenth is just about getting to the first “n”. It’s not a long time, but it’s measurable by the brain.
Hundreds? If your DNA is spliced with that of a housefly, maybe.
Thousandths of a second? GTFO. Google needed to look up what a “millisecond” actually is before spouting this.

@Ted

Yes, you’re right. I should correct myself, the results are actually hundreds of milliseconds. Examples:
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/06/bing-and-google-agree-slow-pag.html
http://radar.oreilly.com/2009/07/velocity-making-your-site-fast.html

“Yes, you’re right. I should correct myself, the results are actually hundreds of milliseconds.”

TYeah, that’s about the amount of time you need for your spinal cord to react to a stimulus in what bioengineering experts and the like call “reflex action”.

Unless Google is breeding a whole generation of superhuman, then we have got a problem here. (Actually, either way, we have a problem.)

“It’s not a long time, but it’s measurable by the brain.”

Where’s Jeff Goldblum when you need him?

Grrr… I was supposed to quote this instead:

“If your DNA is spliced with that of a housefly, maybe.”