Firefox: back in the No. 2 seat once again

[DKT27]

PCWorld's recent Web browser showdown may have crowned Chrome the ultimate winner, but new data suggests that Google's popular contender shouldn't rest on its laurels just yet.

In fact, after a similar market-share shift in August, Chrome fell further into third place in September, buoying Mozilla's Firefox firmly back into the second-place spot it occupied until relatively recently.

In August, Chrome claimed 19.13 percent of the desktop browser market, according to market researcher Net Applications, while Firefox accounted for 20.05 percent. Still in first place was Microsoft's Internet Explorer, with 53.60 percent.

Firefox's four-year low of 19.7 percent occurred in May 2012.

Now, for September, Firefox has increased to 20.08 percent, while Chrome has dipped to 18.86 percent. Explorer, meanwhile, gained a bit, reaching 53.63 percent.

'Critical Vulnerabilities for Months'

Of course, there's no denying that browser market share data varies tremendously with the firm that collects it--among many other factors.

Coincidentally, however, a recent report from security researcher Brian Krebs suggests that users should be wary of Internet Explorer, in particular.

“In a Zero-Day World, It's Active Attacks that Matter” is the title of Krebs' recent blog post, and he concludes that, “unlike Google Chrome and Mozilla Firefox users, IE users were exposed to active attacks against unpatched, critical vulnerabilities for months at a time over the past year and a half.”

In fact, “if we count just the critical zero-days, there were at least 89 non-overlapping days (about three months) between the beginning of 2011 and Sept. 2012 in which IE zero-day vulnerabilities were actively being exploited,” Krebs wrote--and “that number is almost certainly conservative.”

For that same time period, however, Krebs couldn’t find any evidence that malicious hackers had exploited publicly disclosed vulnerabilities in Chrome or Firefox before those flaws were fixed, he added.

'A Very Sane Approach'

Krebs' analysis comes in the wake of a recent zero-day vulnerability affecting IE.

“Microsoft was relatively quick to issue a fix for its most recent IE zero-day (although there is evidence that the company knew about the vulnerability long before its first public advisory on it Sept. 17),” but “the company’s 42-day delay in patching CVE-2012-1889 earlier this summer was enough for code used to exploit the flaw to be folded into the Blackhole exploit kit, by far one of the most widely used attack kits today,” Krebs wrote.

His conclusion?

While browser choice can be an emotional topic, at least “temporarily switching browsers to avoid real zero-days is a very sane and worthwhile approach to staying secure online,” he wrote. “Although it is true that all software has vulnerabilities, the flaws we should truly be motivated to act on are those that are actively being exploited.”

View: Original Article

[Tweety.Abd]

Dang! How long is it going to take to topple Internet Explorer?

[Latjr]

I have been using IceDragon for the past couple of months now. I have all the add-ons and plugins that I have on my Firefox and it loads about 2.5 time faster. Why is this browser never mentioned? It looks like Firefox to me BUT is much faster. What gives?

[DKT27]

I have been using IceDragon for the past couple of months now. I have all the add-ons and plugins that I have on my Firefox and it loads about 2.5 time faster. Why is this browser never mentioned? It looks like Firefox to me BUT is much faster. What gives?

IceDragon is based on Firefox. IceDragon is a custom modified thing. Firefox being an open source browser, has lot of flocks, example Waterfox, Palemoon, IceDragon, CometBird, etc.

From what I can remember, IceDragon was made just 6 months / 1 year ago. Explaining why it's not as famous as Waterfox or Palemoon.

[visualbuffs]

finally my favorite browser go upstair!!! :D

[mosaji]

Thank goodness...i don't like chrome, i hate ie

[a2ms]

Oh Yeah!! I love Firefox! and while I use Waterfox.. I really hope sometime there will be an official 64bit release.

[captcha]

FIREFOX-THE NINE TAILED BROWSER(BELIEVE IT!) :P

[silencer]

Sorry that was me... Switched on Firefox after months of using Chrome. Last time FF did his homework very well. Now it's my no 1 pick browser on a PC and smartphone. ;)

[edwardecl]

While Chrome is good (compared to IE), Firefox is still much better. The one problem I have with Chrome is scrolling uses a lot of processing power and smooth scroll is not a standard feature.

Also Chrome on Android is slow compared to Firefox on Android and even the browser than comes preinstalled which is odd, until they fix these issues then I can't be bothered to use it.

[Ryrynz]

I benchmarked Icedragon and in comparison to anything else Firefox based it's quite slow. The start-up speed is nice but that's where the nice stuff ends, choose Pale Moon it's better than the rest and soon to get a speed boost thanks to a new compiler.

I have been using IceDragon for the past couple of months now. I have all the add-ons and plugins that I have on my Firefox and it loads about 2.5 time faster. Why is this browser never mentioned? It looks like Firefox to me BUT is much faster. What gives?

IceDragon is based on Firefox. IceDragon is a custom modified thing. Firefox being an open source browser, has lot of flocks, example Waterfox, Palemoon, IceDragon, CometBird, etc.

From what I can remember, IceDragon was made just 6 months / 1 year ago. Explaining why it's not as famous as Waterfox or Palemoon.

[DKT27]

I benchmarked Icedragon and in comparison to anything else Firefox based it's quite slow. The start-up speed is nice but that's where the nice stuff ends, choose Pale Moon it's better than the rest and soon to get a speed boost thanks to a new compiler.

Indeed, in my short tests, IceDragon was roughly 15% to 20% slower than Firefox. But that's theoretical performance and, as the browser flock is fairly new, I expect it to get better in upcoming time.

One of our Staff looked into Pale Moon (not the code itself) and it seems that it lacks much changes when compared to Firefox.

[Alhaitham]

awesome

[Ryrynz]

Indeed, in my short tests, IceDragon was roughly 15% to 20% slower than Firefox. But that's theoretical performance and, as the browser flock is fairly new, I expect it to get better in upcoming time.

Not theoretical as many of these tests are workloads you would expect in the real world.

One of our Staff looked into Pale Moon (not the code itself) and it seems that it lacks much changes when compared to Firefox.

Pale Moon's revision corresponds to it's Firefox base. For example 15.2 is based off Firefox 15. What was probably compared was Firefox 12.3 vs 14.. or something similar.

There's nothing significant missing, look on the website for info on what's changed/removed.) Non significant versions are skipped (with important security updates patched in) for example there will be no build of 16 for Pale Moon but 17 is likely and 15.2 includes security updates from Firefox 16.

[DKT27]

@Ryrynz: First of all. Are you still there? Searching... Helloooooo. Can you please come over here. :uhoh:

Anyway, it is theoretical. If you ask me, cause real world usage differs. Like, it could be possible that IceDragon is only slow in one thing, but normal to fast in others, and that thing, in real, isn't much used in real world. This is especially the case cause I used the simple Sunspider.

Thing with Pale Moon is, we have come to know it hardly modifies any Firefox source.

[demoneye]

i found out after using all firefox clone that sticking to the basic is the best of all worlds , so use firefox from mozilla .

[Ryrynz]

@Ryrynz: First of all. Are you still there? Searching... Helloooooo. Can you please come over here. :uhoh:

*walks over to Mumbai*

Anyway, it is theoretical. If you ask me, cause real world usage differs. Like, it could be possible that IceDragon is only slow in one thing, but normal to fast in others, and that thing, in real, isn't much used in real world. This is especially the case cause I used the simple Sunspider.

Theoretical is a theory, this is proven benchmarking. Waterfox and Pale Moon are faster than Firefox at some things. You can't call real results theoretical, you can call them minor or unperceived performance improvements however. There are many benchmarks I use, personally I'm not a fan of Sunspider, use Mozilla Kracken instead, but there's many more browser benchmarks out there, never rely on just one benchmark for anything.

Thing with Pale Moon is, we have come to know it hardly modifies any Firefox source.

Ah yes, but it removes features that aren't required which helps with performance, it's settings are tweaked also, more options and it's compiled better. It's better than Firefox, if it wasn't I wouldn't be using it.

[dcs18]

Oh Yeah!! I love Firefox! and while I use Waterfox.. I really hope sometime there will be an official 64bit release.

Do give the V19 (x64-bit) a try - I'm running the V19 with the V17 (both sharing the same profile.) ;)

[majithia23]

[emerglines]

But firefox still slow , i will give it a try this last version .

[emerglines]

Chrome eats a lot of RAM either it freeze time to time , i guess Firefox eats RAM either but not as like Chrome , IE 6 crash a lot even IE 9 lol . so the best choice is browse the net and pray god to give us a super mega faster browser cause all browser mentioned up there are not as we expect !! or as i expect :)

[demoneye]

^^^^ 100% agree ^^^ :D