TANSTAAFL

[libertango]

So, I was looking at something, which reminded me of Mitch Kapor's Open Source Applications Foundation and their project to make an open source PIM that'll be both a challenger to MS Outlook and a modern-day follow-on to Lotus' late, lamented Agenda. And I was reading Mitch's blog, and I saw his entry about how he's converted over to Mozilla for his browser, and I thought about the good press Mozilla's been getting lately...

So I gave it a try.

{phht!}

I am less than whelmed.

Plug-ins don't install automatically. That's a nuisance, but I know some developers think IE's ability to use (programs from other {gasp!} developers) ActiveX controls to just seamlessly install plug-ins is Pure Evil from Planet 10. This strikes me as the usual programmer way of disdaining things that make life easier for the customer while adding any effort at all for the programmer.

But, even so... I went to CNN's web site. Saw the headline story, the derailment down in Commerce, Calif., on the very tracks I used to walk down between the Commerce train platform and Gallo Wine's LA distributorship when I worked there. Saw a link to a video clip. Cliquez-ici. Got told I needed to re-install RealPlayer, because it didn't "see" the copy already installed for IE. Downloaded, re-installed, re-loaded the page.

RealPlayer freezes.

I go to Task Manager. Kill off RealPlayer.

Things are still moving like slush in liquid helium.

Call up Task Manager again. Take a look at the Processes tab.

It's not RealPlayer that's hogging the CPU as a runaway process -- it's Mozilla, at 95% of a CPU locked at 100%.

I shut down Mozilla.

Still sludge.

Mozilla-the-app is gone, but Mozilla-the-process is still 95%+.

{le sigh}

Kill the process, uninstall Mozilla. I'm sorry, an app that refuses to actually stop when I tell it to just offends me.

Slogan of the day: "Open Source: Still Worth Every Penny You Pay!"

Comments

[blufive.livejournal.com]

[The obligatory mozilla-defender comment. What, you thought you could write a post like that and get away with it? :-D ]

Mind if I ask what version you were having all the fun with?

Plug-ins don't install automatically.

In my experience, if you have supported (i.e. netscape-style) plugins in any one of several likely locations, it should all just work. Thing is, since MS abandoned support for NS-style plugins in IE6, many program installers only install them if they find NS-style browsers on the system (and they're not too sharp at that, either) so you probably don't have them lying around unless you installed Netscape 6 [shudder] or something.

I know some developers think IE's ability to use [...] ActiveX controls to just seamlessly install plug-ins is Pure Evil from Planet 10

Several things here:

• Many people regard it as a security hole the size of a planet. AFAIK, the only really serious risk is if you've already got malicious software installed on your machine, in which case you're probably screwed anyway. There is a secondary risk that a malicious webpage could work out whether you have (frex) Windows Media Player 8 installed, and then hit you with a specially-constructed data file to exploit a hole in WMP. Mozilla's position has generally been "secure by default", though they have subsequently relaxed in some areas.


• but from my experience with mozilla.org, I'd say it's more likely that they just haven't had the resources yet. Until recently (well after Moz 1.0), anything which wasn't cross-platform (win/mac/*nix) got punted to the back of the queue with almost unseemly haste. Things are changing now (e.g. Moz 1.4's windows-only NTLM authentication support)


• And from a quick trawl through bugzilla, there IS work happening on ActiveX support. At the moment, it's an experimental build-time switch with Big Scary Warnings all over it, but my guess is that some form of ActiveX support may surface in a mozilla-based browser sometime in the next 6-12 months. Bits of it look like they may happen in Moz 1.5 Alpha, though it's hard to tell, since all I can see are fragments of highly technical discussions that I don't fully understand...

Me? I've got NS-style flash and java plugins, Real spawns as a separate player when I need it - I can live without ActiveX support, thanks.

As for not going away... I have noticed a tendency for Moz-based browsers to suffer when a plugin goes berserk. I find Windows Media Player to be a particularly bad culprit here - but then I hate WMP anyway, so I'm probably biased. The primary fault is probably with Real, but Moz should still cope better than that.

[atlaz.livejournal.com]

I use Mozilla Firebird as my non-IE browser of choice. Generally if I need something that it can't provide, I switch to IE for that, then back. It's basically Mozilla without the bloat... great for a laptop that is a little lacking in power.