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In article <OlFP6x26EHA.4072@TK2MSFTNGP10.phx.gbl>, Okie Noah says...
> I have used and occasionally 'use', Mozilla, Opera, Net Quest, Cyber World,
> Cypher Net, and Netscape, just to see what sort of improvements they have done.
> Not much. All these smaller companies want to be 'different' than you and me,
> but they don't know how to market a product and how to communicate with the
> customers. Have anyone ever done beta testing of Netscape products?
> I am from the old CPM days, where customers were the helpers of customers,
> but what Microsoft did, is to make a well communicating facility, where customers
> can complain and get help.
Microsoft has undertaken to create a complete "computer experience" for
those with no technical inclination whatsoever. Alas, to succeed in creating
a product that any non-geek can use they had to create a product which does
a lot of work out of sight of the user. One of the consequences of this
approach is to create a system which makes some basic assumptions of what a
user would allow, which led to major security issues as the system performed
actions which no rational user would have permitted, had they known the
action was happening. "DestructiveX" (oops; MSFT prefers to call it
"ActiveX") is a prime example; it is the best thing that ever happened to
those who would hijack a computer for their own purposes.
MSFT's approach to computers was to let everything talk with everything else
by default, and leave it to the user to figure out what should be turned
off. This is a backwards approach to system security, which is predicated on
deny everything, then only allow the minimum access necessary to accomplish
a task.
Mozilla, and its derivatives (Firefox, Thunderbird, and Netscape) was
written by geeks, with a geek approach to security. Firefox is a deliberate
attempt to translate "geekware" to something ordinary users could use
without low-level technical knowledge. It seems to me that the worst part of
the transition from MSIE to FF is the lack of "DestructiveX"; FF just can't
be hijacked as easily as MSIE; if it can be hijacked at all. It is otherwise
just as easy to use as MSIE. Most people who go back to MSIE mostly do it
for the lack of familiarity; they just have to have their "DestructiveX"
dog-and-pony show, come Hell, or Browser Hijackers.
--
Norman
~Win dain a lotica, En vai tu ri, Si lo ta
~Fin dein a loluca, En dragu a sei lain
~Vi fa-ru les shutai am, En riga-lint