Microsoft's Internet Explorer is the
free World Wide Web browser included in every version of Microsoft® Windows™. Being
included in the majority of personal computers when they're sold, most people are introduced to the
internet with Internet Explorer as their first web browser.
Internet Explorer (IE) has at least one major security design flaw. Beyond mere inclusion with
Microsoft Windows, Internet Explorer is integrated into the operating system. Microsoft claims
without IE's core components Windows can not fully function. It's integrated into the file system
browser and other applications. Therefore no capability is given to completely uninstall it, even
for servers. The low level integration also results in
web browser security issues creating
operating system vulnerabilities, sometimes even if the browser is never launched directly by
the user. Many security bugs in IE could be exploited to give an attacker complete control over
Windows. Security patches for Internet Explorer also sometimes cause peripheral problems in the
operating system.
A few relatively mainstream web browser alternatives are available for Windows users.
Mozilla.org's Firefox
Mozilla's suite of open source web browser, e-mail client, and
IRC client are consistant across Windows, Unix, Linux, and Mac OS X. They basically look and behave
the same wherever they are run. This is accomplished by making a core library for web page
rendering and another for drawing its own user interface.
One major goal of the Mozilla Organization is adherence to
web standards. Therefore the core
web page rendering library is often used by other projects. The
Firefox web browser is the Mozilla Organization's own
leaner browser, using the excellent rendering engine with a fast native user interface. Firefox
became popular very quickly due to its speed, standards compliance, and lack of many significant
security issues. The only negative impact of its standards compliance is the improper rendering of
some web pages which were written specifically for Internet Explorer. By not following standards
these web developers knowingly alienate some users. To give some proportion to Firefox's
efficiency, consider its size: 4.6 MB. Meanwhile, Internet Explorer weighs in at 80 MB as part of
Windows XP SP2.
"Internet Explorer users can be as much as 21 times more likely to end up with a spyware-infected PC
than people who go online with Mozilla's Firefox browser." (Source article removed from Yahoo!
News.) In addition to
better security, Firefox offers features not found in Internet
Explorer, such as
tabbed browsing and built-in web searching. Firefox also provides better
form completion and easier configuration. Microsoft Internet Explorer 7 promises to catch up with
these features, but each new version of Firefox generally remains at the forefront of web browsing
features. Firefox also adds many features created by the large development community in the form of
plugins. Firefox makes plug-in creation far easier than with any other browser. There are plenty
of plugins providing various features many people find useful.
According to
Secunia Stay Secure, and
published in
Forbes, as of mid-2004 59% of Microsoft Internet Explorer's known security vulnerabilities have
patches available while 36% remain completely unpatched. Firefox has 69% of its known
vulnerabilities patched and only 15% remain unpatched. The rest of the vulnerabilities - to make
the statistics sum to 100% - likely have partial fixes and workarounds.
Safari
For years Internet Explorer was also available for Mac OS X but support for the competing operating
system has been dropped.
Apple, Inc.'s
Mac OS X operating system contains the
Safari web browser. Known for its speed,
tabbed browsing, and usability features it's a good competitor to Firefox. Yet it's only available
on Macs. With the future of Internet Explorer dropped on the Mac, Safari has solidified its share
of the OS X desktop. There's usually no need to use an alternate browser. A key feature of using
Firefox instead of Safari is Firefox's useful plugins, such as developer toolbars and alternate
searching methods.
Opera
The
Opera commercial web browser is known best for its speed and
features not found in IE. Its effecient implementation and commercial backing have made it
available on mobile devices. As with Firefox, Opera gives Windows users the added security of not
using IE.
See Also