Comments on: HillarIEous

By: Raphink

Raphink — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 18:53:29 +0000

@Wolfger : Chrome identifies as webkit I guess, hence the Safari identification.

@nixternal : I read this page some days ago, and found it very funny, too. Great example of FUD. I especially liked the last part, which shows their great understanding of physics. From what I got, Microsoft believes that in order to better measure speed, you need slow-motion. Wait a minute… to measure how fast it is, you need to see it slow ?! The ‘_more_ compatible with _more_ sites’ is also worth a literacy prize

By: Wolfger

Wolfger — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:32:08 +0000

PS: Dude, wtf? I’m using Chrome on WinXP, and your blog says I’m using Safari 525.19 on Mac OS X? Is Google pulling a fast one on me?

By: Wolfger

Wolfger — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 13:29:32 +0000

I don’t know about IE8, but Chrome is *MUCH* faster than IE7. And that’s loading my group’s intranet website that was designed specifically to be loaded on IE (to the point that it’s only about 90% functional in FF). Where an ajax page load takes up to (no shit) 30 seconds in IE7, it’s done in the blink of an eye on Chrome.

By: Christoph Shipley

Christoph Shipley — Sat, 20 Jun 2009 18:17:16 +0000

Unfortunately, we have a similar problem where I work. We have close to 5,000 users and at least 9,000 desktop machines. We’re a mixed environment with mostly Windows, but also Mac and Linux. Since we’re been having so many issues with browser support and cross-platform compatibility, we’re planning on moving to Firefox for our officially supported browser. But keeping the enterprise on the same version is nearly impossible with Windows, doable with Mac, and manageable with Linux. A complicated problem, especially when we use Sharepoint.

By: nixternal

nixternal — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:39:51 +0000

Ahh, thanks for that break down, I understand now. I shall do some voting now

By: will_in_wi

will_in_wi — Fri, 19 Jun 2009 22:37:05 +0000

All true. The only bit that I think IE8 has Firefox totally beat is in the Manageability section. From my reading, few people have any clue what this means. I manage a network of about 45 systems . They all run Windows and use Active Directory, so besides the fact that we are smaller than most, this is pretty typical. When I want to install a piece of software across all of these systems, I use group policy to tell windows on bootup to install. The issue is that you must distribute your software in MSI form for this to work. Note that this method of deployment works great with Java, Flash, and Adobe Reader because these use MSI. Firefox uses a custom installer that cannot be automatically rolled out. So I have to go to each of the 45+ systems individually to update it. The ideal here is adobe flash which allows me to simply add a group policy on one server and all of the systems get updated on reboot. Simple. So much for deployment.

Part two is manageability. I am able to enforce a configuration across all windows systems on active directory for IE. I simply open the group policy editor and change some settings and presto, all the systems have these settings. The users can’t change them either. The usage at my organisation (a nonprofit school) is to force the student accounts to go through a proxy. Firefox has no such capability. There is a hack to set firefox settings on login, but users can change them.

These two features are critical for enterprise usage of Firefox, which is what MS references here. The bug reports to add this to Firefox are: 231062 and 267888. Please vote on these reports to improve firefox so that yet another point falls of MS’s list.