Sparda Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 While this is slightly out of date, I just wanted to bring this up: http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/developer...39281655,00.htm Right off the bat it's blantantly obviuse that it's a PR stunt, but not only that, I don't understand (from a technical stand point) why Microsoft would want to do this. I have been using Vista for nearly a week now and for web surfing I have only used Firefox 1.5.0.6 (except for going to mozilla.com and trying to get windows updates to work, but thats a whole other story) and I have encountered zero problems. Firefox works flawlesly. I'v even gone as far as to install Java and play the falling sand game to test it, and there are no problems. If any thing it's better then XP becasue, for some reason, the JRE loads very much instantly (unlike in XP, and for some reason Vista disables Areo when the JRE loads.You have to close Firefox to renable it which is done automaticly when you do close Firefox any way). It's a blatant 100% PR stun and nothing else. If there is any thing wrong I would say it has to be the load time of firefox, which, in Vista, is saverly reduced any way becasue of the new memory managment system. Any thoughts, or did I just hit the nail on the head and every one agrees with me? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armadaender Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 I believe M$ is just trying to figure out ways to make IE better for their customers. Everyone has IE when they buy a fresh comp from where ever and most could care less about how well it works, just as long as it works. So what their probably trying to do is figure out to get FF to work better on Vista so they can incorporate the same techniques to get IE to run better as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted September 7, 2006 Author Share Posted September 7, 2006 but... firefox is opensource... they could just look at the code and no one would ever know (except the admin of the server, as they will see Microsofts IP Block downloading the source code). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
armadaender Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 Yes, ff is opensource, but guessing that M$ is just trying to get a few new brains in the r&d room for their apps. Microsoft can barely create a decent OS, let alone a simple web browser. I could just be talking out of my ass here too, been up for quite a while now and ran out of coffee. My words/thoughts/point probably doesn't make any sense. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted September 7, 2006 Author Share Posted September 7, 2006 but it's microsoft helping Mozilla... perhaps microsoft will invite some of the Mozilla people to a microsoft campus... but I don't think Mozilla will actualy do work for microsoft since it is microsoft who is offering there services. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 STOP BEING SO PARANOID. This isn't the 90's anymore. MS are not the only players on the market and they know this. OSX is gaining popularity and Linux is getting better (slowly). And if they didn't do this, you'd be saying that Microsoft intentionally broke firefox on vista. And also, given that its a unfinished, un-released copy of windows, a few bugs are going to be there. Are you sure the bugs not with firefox or java? And have you submitted a bug report to all three partys? Microsoft offered to open up a new open source facility at its headquarters in Redmond to Mozilla software engineers, including giving them one-on-one time with Microsoft people. The offer includes help with the Thunderbird email client. There invinting arguablly the most popular open source project to come to MSHQ for time with the windows enginers. Not planning to drug them and steal there segways. Again, STOP BEING SO PARANOID. Lets see where this one goes first, both sides have a lot to gain from this, and so do we. Everyone can sit there snearing, or work on making there products better. The mozila foundation is a big player in the OSS world, so maybe MS will listen to them when it comes to how they should work with OSS teams. You do want more OSS on windows don't you? On a related note, how many people think that it won't be long before the Ubuntu people do something that pisses off the OSS community? Makes changes that radically alter linux to make it more palateble for normal people? 5 years? 10 years? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sparda Posted September 7, 2006 Author Share Posted September 7, 2006 I know Vista will brake things, but in the case of Firefox it hasn't broken any thing, so I can't see where help is needed. The two major things that Vista has broken is third part Anti-virus software and third part VNC software (and most firewall manurafturers are puposfully stopping there software form installing on vista). As such, I wouldn't say that Microsoft purposfully broke Firefox on Vista even if it didn't work. Also, Opera 9.1 works just as flawlessly as Firefox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
VaKo Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 The best thing MS have ever done! MS have changed the way windows is layed out. This means that the 3rd partys are going to have to rework how there products work. People often forget that between 1995 and 2001, MS released 6 revisions of Windows 95, Windows 98 and 98SE, Windows ME, Windows NT 4 (10 revisions/service packs), and 4 different versions of of Windows 2000. Which is a hell of a lot of change. In the same period of time (vista schedual wise) since then, we have had Windows XP (2 service packs, and 3 different platforms, x86 being the only one that was mainstream) and Windows 2003 (7 versions and 1 revison). Its been one of the most stable periods of OS design since it began. The hardware has gotten a hell of a lot faster, but we've been using XP for nearly 5 years now. There a loads of people I know who have never used anything other than XP. And yes, its was full of holes, and was used by lots of people (also, it was never designed for the internet we are using now, that was added on. Anyone who remebers what MSN started as will know what i mean by "Walled Gardens".) So this little cottage industry has sprung up around windows, offering various cures and fixes for these holes. Some will fix the holes, others will make it worse. People have been bitching at MS for ages about the state of there OS, so they make changes to windows in an attempt to make it more sercure. And yes, this will kill of the cottage industry somewhat. Which is a good thing imo. It won't die completely, but thats because they won't fix it over night. But if windows eventually fixes all the holes, it will die completely. So to be honest, the AV companys will always want windows to remain crap. So MS will never be legally allowed to release an function to windows that detects and neutralizes viruses and similar attacks, sercures network traffic, prevents the instalation of unauthourized programs and updates automatically. It would be good for the OS and good for users (as long as there was manual controls), Companys that delt souly in those areas would be sunk, and using what ever money they had left for an antitrust case. What ever happend to all those companys that made windows disk defraggers for NT4? You could say the OSS market threatens them all, since a state in india (Kerala) has just gone Linux only. If asia goes linux, there's a lot more of them and there education is much better, How many linux users buy antivirus or firewall software? In short, the AV companys need to stop bitching and get on with studying the Vista betas. If they can't make a better product than microsoft why should be buy it? As for the VNC stuff, it can probally be turned off somehow, as VNC is a legitimate application and i'm sure someone involved with them will have enough money to sue over it if not. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Darren Kitchen Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 there are a few theories on this. 1. it's a move to help them in their EU anti-trust judgement. remember, they're still paying a few million a day there. 2. it's for good PR. 3. they really want to make sure firefox runs well in vista, because if it doesnt then the early adopters (geeks) will flood the blogosphere with bad press about it simply because the first thing you install after a fresh copy of windows is firefox. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Rab Posted September 7, 2006 Share Posted September 7, 2006 do ms even make money off ie? i mean... its shipped with vista regardless of whether u use it? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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