Why I need Firefox: open letter to DOE
I will be editing web pages for the Energy Library and Law Library and need to check my work in multiple browsers — more specifically, multiple rendering engines. Internet Explorer doesn’t adhere to web standards as devised and recommended by the W3C — it doesn’t fully support XHTML or CSS2, and has numerous page-rendering bugs, most notibly the box model problem. IE 6.0 is a stale, flawed product and hasn’t had an update in over five years. The Firefox codebase is constantly being honed and improved, and has richer support for web standards — most noticably XHTML, CSS2/CSS2.1 and parts of CSS3.
From a developer’s standpoint, Firefox comes with a standard set of developer tools including a powerful JavaScript and CSS error/warning console, and an optional Document Inspector that gives detailed insight about your pages. Coding and fixing web pages is easier with Firefox because it’s more strict and less forgiving if you throw mal-formed code at it. Web designers find it easier to code in Firefox, then check their work in IE, rather than the other way around.
From theage.com.au:
Microsoft has hampered standards support in Explorer for five years with its go-slow campaign against the web. Standards-oriented page layout is not possible on most versions of Explorer (CSS box model). Explorer has never met standards for web document identification (HTTP MIME content types), or if one is supported, then simultaneously the other is not.
Security:
Secunia.com reports that IE has 79 security alerts, 33 of which are rated highly or extremely critical. In comparison, Secunia.com reports that Firefox has 4 unfixed security alerts, 0 of which are rated highly or extremely critical.
http://secunia.com/product/11/
http://secunia.com/product/4227/
I also seriously recommend a Department-wide rollout of Firefox to supplant IE6.0.
