Firefox explorers

Bill Robertson... "Firefox has the best pedigree, with an active engineering community, wide community support and long history." Photo: Marco Del Grande

When Bill Robertson decided last year to switch 450 workers and 100 desktops at De Bortoli Wines to the open source Firefox web browser, he had the company's future in mind.

In moving to the free Firefox, he did more than just install a web browser that rivals Microsoft's Internet Explorer, which comes for free with every PC running the Windows operating system. The CIO defined a radically new desktop interface for the company and forced his software suppliers to comply with his technology direction, which had a heavy emphasis on open standards so he would no longer be locked into any one vendor's products.

Firefox is a small and streamlined web browser created by the US-based charity The Mozilla Foundation from the bones of the Netscape and Mozilla browsers. It runs on all desktop computers and supports most languages.

Firefox is often paired with its open source sibling, Thunderbird, a free email client that competes with Microsoft's Outlook in the enterprise.

ON 80 Windows PCs, Mr Robertson uses Firefox downloaded from the web; on 20 Linux desktops he installed Firefox as part of a customised system that runs from read-only DVDs. It's safe from accidents and is replaced with a simple hardware swap.

Mr Robertson used these systems at new sites with heavy demand, and where existing Windows users weren't affected.

Firefox is used to access any information displayed in a web browser from the company's intranet, to the World Wide Web and web-based email delivered by Lotus Domino's Web Mail application. Staff use it to access De Bortoli's enterprise resource planning application server - MFG/PRO, a commercial product from QAD Inc - and an open source content management system based on Typo3.

Barry McGee, MFG/PRO account manager at QAD, says Firefox support is "a priority business issue" because of demand from customers such as De Bortoli.

"Our R&D group is committed to removing the few Explorer-specific features that crept in (to MFG/PRO) by accident," Mr McGee says. "The total cost of ownership arguments that surround Firefox and open source are important to our customers, and so to us."

De Bortoli has been making wine since 1928. It crushes more than 70,000 tonnes of grapes for an annual turnover of $120 million. Mr Robertson says De Bortoli's requirement for a long-term vision gave him a chance to analyse how the browser integrates with the back-end systems.

"We are masters of our own destiny, and we can run a lean and efficient operation," says Mr Robertson. "Neutral standards support our decisions when we select free products and empower us in the marketplace when we buy."

Standards in the computing industry define how systems should interact with each other. They determine the rules of the computing road.

Mr Robertson, based in Griffith, NSW, doesn't understand why his peers elsewhere choose to be locked in to Microsoft's strategy. "I'm staggered and close to offended that some businesses choose the risk of vendor lock-in, and I'm staggered by the timidity of some IT managers," he says.

Mr Robertson mandated De Bortoli use free software productivity suite OpenOffice for tasks such as word processing after reading open standards studies from around the world.

He cites the OASIS OpenDocument technical committee recommendations for office document formats and the World Bank's infoDev project's Open Source Software - Perspectives for Development report as two examples of standards-oriented analysis that support strategic IT decisions. The OpenDocument initiative promulgates OpenOffice file formats for ordinary office documents rather than Microsoft Office formats because they are completely transparent.

On standards, Firefox has an advantage over Explorer. That gives organisations latitude to commit to standards rather than to products. That in turn reduces the leverage that vendors have over customers.

Microsoft has hampered standards support in Explorer for five years with its go-slow campaign against the web. Standards-oriented page layout is not possible on most versions of Explorer (CSS box model). Explorer has never met standards for web document identification (HTTP MIME content types), or if one is supported, then simultaneously the other is not. Microsoft has shown an antipathy to web standards, because in the view of many they provide an alternative to the Windows desktop - Microsoft's core business. The success of web-based applications such as Amazon, Google, eBay, the open source Wikipedia encyclopedia and online banking point to the decreasing importance of Windows in a world where a web browser is sufficient.

Microsoft recently announced a future Explorer 7.0, and participates in standards bodies, but its browser still lags on open standards.

Mr Robertson says Firefox's development community of more than 900 software engineers worldwide - many in Australia - was key when it came to selecting Firefox.

"Firefox has the best pedigree, with an active engineering community, wide community support and long history," he says. "It run(s) on most popular platforms. It has a consistent and stable interface, nice features like tabbed browsing and can be extended should we need to modify it or add to it."

Tabbed browsing lets users open several webpages at once without filling the screen with a clutter of separate windows.

Firefox has been downloaded nearly 40 million times since its release last November. Web metrics analysts OneStat and WebSideStory say usage globally and the US, respectively, hovers around 8.5 per cent, up from 2 per cent just nine months ago - dangerously close, from Microsoft's perspective, to the 10-15 per cent "tipping point" needed to gain a critical mass. Once Firefox has that level of support - equal to about 100 million users - businesses must seriously consider supporting the technology or risk losing customers.

Such an outcome further erodes Microsoft's ability to mandate the shape of the web, and opens the door wider to alternative operating systems such as Apple's OS X and Linux.

Such is the case with the Roads and Traffic Authority of NSW, which serves 8000 users through a mixed fleet of Apple iMacs and Windows PCs at more than 250 sites. CIO Greg Carvouni says Mozilla web browser deployment saved the government department 20 per cent of its annual budget - about $2 million - through a reduction in software licences and staff reductions.

"Firefox is clearly where we should be," Mr Carvouni says. "We'll roll it out either in our next standard operating environment (a desktop update), or the one after. Firefox makes the (desktop) a bit more lightweight and customisable, and we're able to lock it down against user tampering."

For large organisations, Firefox supports enterprise management technologies such as a configuration system for managing user preferences, specification of rules for web access (WPAD), digital certificate security rules (OSCP), and automatic user login to servers (NTLM). These make centralised administration of large Firefox deployments possible.

"Because we have both Macintoshes and PCs, we wanted something truly cross-platform," Mr Carvouni says. "We don't feel locked-in because there are other standards-oriented free browsers also available for the Macintosh."

Despite its open source deployment, the authority is committed to proprietary technologies from Microsoft, where it has seen the relationship prosper: "Microsoft is keen to be competitive . . . They don't want us moving more desktops away from Windows. They are cheaper to deal with now than they used to be."

Both Mr Carvouni and Mr Robertson will continue to support Windows - Mr Carvouni's accountants and analysts are wedded to Microsoft Excel, while Mr Robertson has a single Windows kiosk at each of De Bortoli's seven sites for legacy web applications that can only run on Internet Explorer.

Richard Tan, IT manager at Deakin University in Victoria, has resisted Explorer for years but doesn't have the luxury of removing Windows desktops. The university provides information services to students, most of which operate through the web for remote home use and also on-campus. That includes in-house content management systems delivering course information and web point-of-presence.

"We are extremely sympathetic to the cause of open systems," Mr Tan says. "We did not dump Netscape when Explorer was announced because we were wary of the tactics of Microsoft. We thought that we would end up paying for Explorer in Windows upgrades." The most recent update to Explorer requires purchase of Windows XP.

Chris Hoffman, Mozilla Foundation director of engineering, says the short-term goal is to give "the absolute best consumer experience with the Firefox web browser and the Thunderbird email client".

People are learning to love the browser and email suite at home, and want that experience at work, he says, while IT managers are glad to see that they have a choice. He urges IT managers to work with their systems' integrators when it comes time to build the software into their systems.

Firefox's developers goal is to create an easier-to-use web where the surfer does not have the burden of extra training or software that slows to a crawl.

"People are more comfortable driving a well-designed, modern car than an old rattler. The same is true of web browsers," says expatriate Kiwi, Ben Goodger, who is employed by Google to enhance Firefox.

Working hard at making Firefox a better browser than Microsoft's is a trans-Tasman collaboration between Dr Robert O'Callahan, employed by Novell New Zealand, and Dr Roger Sidje, a mathematics researcher at the University of Queensland. Together, they work on Gecko, the layout engine inside Firefox responsible for displaying webpages.

Dr O'Callahan urges IT managers to feel confident about open source projects. "Open source business models are still evolving, but many open source companies are profitable, so I expect current sources of funds will persist and new ones to appear," he says.

Mozilla's Hoffman points out: "With closed source, commercial software, you're pretty much at the mercy of the company that owns the technology."

Firefox and Thunderbird have had success over Explorer in the area of security. The US Computer Emergency Readiness Team found Explorer had 63 security holes, of which 21 still require a fix. Firefox and Mozilla had 11 security flaws, of which two remain to be fixed. Rival assessor Secunia puts Explorer at 20 of 79 flaws unfixed and Firefox at four of 12 flaws unfixed. CERT went as far as to recommend last July, in vulnerability note VU#713878, that to get around Explorer's insecurity, organisations should "use a different web browser".

Microsoft says its systems are targeted because they are popular, and that any system attacked as much as Windows would need as many fixes.

A Microsoft spokesman says the software maker is aware of Secunia's reports and will "continue to investigate these through the security response process and are actively engaging with Secunia on this issue."

But Mozilla's Hoffman points to the success of the Apache web server "where higher market share doesn't mean more security vulnerabilities".

The Firefox business argument is built out of shades of grey: better standards, better interface, better security.

Bill Robertson says deploying Firefox is "far less complex" than some of the other open standards, free software projects De Bortoli has attempted, but it was "one of our important first steps".

"When we recently conducted content management system training using Firefox many users were completely unaware that the desktop operating system wasn't Windows. That is how central Firefox is to our strategy."
Bugzilla software puts open source to the test

The Firefox project uses free Bugzilla software to stomp on problems and debate the browser’s development. Evidence of Bugzilla use is an important quality test for organisations considering open source products such as Firefox. Open source products that use Bugzilla generally deliver new features regularly. They have an eye for quality control, supported by rigorous public review.

Bugzilla is a defect-tracking, change-management and workflow system; a web-based application that sits atop the free MySQL relational database. It is best suited to software engineering but can be fitted to other tasks, such as automated software testing and customer support centres.

Bugzilla's strength is that an issue is thrown up into the public view and then all interested parties can collaborate to find a solution. Firefox’s Bugzilla database, with its 2.5 million remarks, is an important piece of equipment that co-ordinates the changes to Firefox, Mozilla and related products.

Bugzilla is not as flexible as some commercial defect-tracking systems, such as Census from metaquest.com or ClearQuality by Clarify Inc. But Bugzilla has flags and keywords that make it easy to track problems.

Bradley Baetz, Byron Jones and Matthew Tuck are Australians who work intensively on Bugzilla to build the application that exposes the database of issues to the public. "There were some enhancements I wanted as a user, so I added them," says Mr Baetz, 24, a software developer and system administrator for an ISP in Sydney. He did volunteer work at the Mozilla Foundation in California in 2001 following an exchange year at McGill University in Canada. Mr Jones, 29, a programmer in the health sector in Perth, says he was drawn to the project because he is a "stickler for processes and quality control, and Bugzilla fits into that mould".

Bugzilla is so useful that other software projects, including the Linux operating system, adopted it. Most Australian universities use it and the Bugzilla website notes nearly 400 adopters, including NASA.

At the Mozilla Foundation, Bugzilla tracks defects in the quality-oriented systems that support Firefox.

The full set of systems is equivalent to the engineering infrastructure of big software vendors such as Microsoft, IBM or Oracle but with one key difference: anyone can assess the quality of goods produced. - Nigel McFarlane

Every software program, computer and peripheral device (such as a printer, MP3 player or digital camera) relies on standards to work, guaranteeing they "speak the same language". Innovation and growth falter when standards are not readily accessible and understood. Web browsers are especially sensitive to standards because they must access a potentially limitless variety of content governed by different standards.

Standards roughly fall into two camps - closed or proprietary, often only understood by a particular vendor, such as a file format; and open standards, freely available to all without discrimination and usually with no fee.

The MPEG video, PNG graphic and HTML webpage file-types are open standards. The internet would not exist without its open standard lingua franca, TCP/IP ("internet protocol"), which allows different parties to innovate on its base transmission system.

Free and open standards are preferred because the market grows rapidly once there is certainty about their use. A "de facto" standard often begins life as a closed standard before the market adopts it. Microsoft Office files such as Word and Powerpoint are examples of closed standards that through heavy use became the de facto way to share content. De facto standards may lock users into the application that generated them, and can be lucrative for the owning vendor. A technology maker can increase its profit by making small changes to the standard, forcing everyone to buy new software.

But the most broadly accepted standards are generally defined and ratified by not-for-profit standards-setting bodies - organisations such as the World Wide Web Consortium and Internet Engineering Task Force, which determine the evolution of the web and the internet respectively. Other influential bodies include the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, the International Organisation for Standardisation, and the UN's International Telecommunication Union. They may also work with national bodies, such as Standards Australia, to publish and promote these standards around the world. - Nathan Cochrane

CSS: Cascading style sheet; describes how a web document is displayed or printed.

HTTP: Hypertext transfer protocol; the method by which web pages are sent over the net.

MIME: Multi-purpose internet mail extensions; extends the email format for non-US ASCII text, non-text messages, and multi-part message bodies.

Tipping point: The point at which a trend hits critical mass and is irreversible. A turning point or watershed.

Open source consultant and analyst Nigel McFarlane is the author of an upcoming book for browser power users, Firefox Hacks.

Firefox is often paired with its open source sibling, Thunderbird, a

How is Thunderbird? Have you used it? Are the flilters as good or better than Outlook?

Thanks
Jake

Yes. Try removing the unnecessary clutter, and it'll run at peak performance. Start with a clean install, and only install plug-ins, extensions, themes, etc. that are absolutely necessary. Like anything else, the more crap you pile-on, the worse it gets -- so keep it lean and mean! ;)

I use Camino(www.caminobrowser.org) on OS X, and only really experience resource hoggins when I have multiple windowns up, each with multiple tabs. Or, there are tons of flash/banner ads on a page. I also close and restart it every so often, no one is perfect and non freed up resources happen.

Whenever any of my friends or clients bitch about MS-IE-Explorer, I download and install Firefox for them, clean IE out of the machines and out of the Win-registry entirely and I never hear a browser complaint from them again. Now they just want their DSL and T1/ 1/2 T1 / 1/4 T1 connections to run faster.

I have used FireFox for about 4 months, as a secondary browser. I have another tabbed browser for FR that I've used for 4 years, so it is difficult to leave it.

FF is ok. Some of the extensions are great, as add-ons. However, sometimes an extension installation fails, at which point it will neither install nor uninstall. The only way to clear it up is to uninstall everything FF and reinstall from scratch. Also, some of new/updated extensions seem to have some compatibility problems with the FF 1.01 version.

I now use IE only for those strange websites that won't load with any other browser.

I tried Firefox and wasn't impressed.

After far too many hours spent dealing with IE and Outlook security patches and pop-up blocking that just wasn't cutting it, I switched over to Firefox and Thunderbird a few months ago and haven't looked back. YMMV.

However, sometimes an extension installation fails, at which point it will neither install nor uninstall. The only way to clear it up is to uninstall everything FF and reinstall from scratch.

That kinda depends upon your level of computer nerdiness. I'm not sure how it works on windows, but with Linux, you can delete the directory where the extension is installed, modify the Extensions.rdf file, and it's gone for good.

From most reports, Thunderbird is very good. I don't use it myself, as I use either Evolution or Kmail depending upon where I am. I figure most people would benefit from using just about anything other than the virus/worm magnet that is Outlook.

There are some people who will not be swayed away from the Microsoft name. Internet explorer is a useful tool but like all tools it can become obsolete. Avant is nothing more than an overlay for IE with some added feature. In my opinion it is even slower than I.E. Firefox has advantages in the fact that it is customizable. If you want the IE type interface and feel all it takes is a little work to get it there. There you go the crux of the matter. Most people don't want to "work" to get the software right.... That is where Microsoft gets its targets... from the people who are either afraid of or to lazy to try something new.
I use Thunderbird and Firefox at home and even got my IT guy to load Firefox for me at work. (I don't have admin access to the windoze). I have seen an increase of net speed and information access from our intra net of about 10-15%. So Yeah I LIKE Firefox. I recommend that everyone try it to see if they like it. If they don't then by all means go back to I.E. I don't particularly care for M.S. products but what are you going to do when they control about 80-90% of the market share.

"I'm using Firefox on an older Pentium 3 machine running Windows 98 and have no problems with resources, crashes or lock-ups."

I use Firefox at home on XP and at work I use it running from my usb flash drive/mp3 player.

I've been using FF for years when it was named something else. I never have problems that I can directly relate to FF.

I recommend it.

Firefox on Mac OSX isn't too good. You can't do SBA web site interactive work. The govt. doesn't support apple let alone non-windows based products. And this is the SBA.... They just aren't into innovation at the SBA.

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