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Browser FUD From Microsoft

I've been looking for a way to get IE8 on my Fedora machine for a little while now, as the IES4Linux project is becoming a bit dated, and only offers an unstable IE7 to play with at best. If you're wondering why I would even consider using a browser that has a long-running history of being insecure and one of the least standards-compliant of the big players, then I would have to say at once two words: web development, and then follow this up quickly by explaining that there are still many websites that are IE-only (on the Internet it's banks that seem to get a hard time especially with this one, but I know that at the very least HSBC and Natwest both work quite well on Firefox.) After looking into the problem a bit more, I think my best option would be to go with a virtual machine of Windows XP inside of Linux so that I can use IE8, allowing me to install other Windows-only software should I ever need to, although this will mean I might need to upgrade the paltry 1GB I have installed on my machine. Linux doesn't need huge amounts of memory to function correctly, but Windows does, and Windows won't have access to all the memory I have if it's running as a VM.

While I was looking into the whole IE8 installation, I stumbled upon a little gem that is the MS IE8 'Get The Facts Campaign'. As someone in the field, I see their browser comparison chart as quite laughable really. As I've already mentioned, IE has a large history of being a large open window through which threats can attack a computer quite easily. The other major players in this game are by no means great bastions of safety, but their walls and moats are a little better protected than the past offerings from Microsoft. Time will no doubt tell with the latest version of Internet Explorer, but I won't hold my breath just yet given its track record.

Moving downh through their table of 'facts' brings to attention several issues which I think have been seriously done over by the department of dodgy statistics. As Mark Twain once said First get your facts; then you can distort them at your leisure. Among the Microsoft points which I feel have been distorted are:

Security

Are they serious?! Even counting only the security updates applied to the various browsers of their version lifetime, the facts are still dubious. Firefox 3.x has been around a lot longer than IE 8, and releases security fixes as they are needed, rather than follow a generally fixed update schedule to fix bugs.

Privacy

It's intersting to note that they score themselves a tick here, but not Chrome, which pretty much pioneered the private browsing feature, and Firefox has numerous add-ons for this if you need.

Web Standards

Microsoft have done a lot to make their new browser more standards compliant, but they are still playing catch-up and it shows. While IE8 may pass the Acid2 test now (it's taken a few updates to make it so since the initial release), it is still quite a way off from the latest Acid 3 test. To be fair, Nick Hodge from Microsoft Australia explained that The concern Microsoft has is that if we burnt [draft standards] into Internet Explorer 8 and passed Acid3 with 120 percent and then deploy it on so many machines, especially in the enterprise, [we have made draft standards de-facto standards] when the W3C will then want to innovate on the [evolving] standards. Interesting enough, Firefox 3 scores 92 on this test, and Chrome scores a perfect 100, while IE8 is down in the low 20's (as shown at http://www.russback.com & http://stairwellblog.com)

Reliability

Microsoft has banded together what really ought to be two tests here. Tab isolation, such as is found in Chrome, and tab recovery as is found in Firefox. Firefox has shied away from using tab isolation purely because of the memory footprint it would have on the computer, which Microsoft seem aprehensive to mention.

Compatibility

This is possibly the most crazy of all their points. Essentially they are saying that because of their bastardisation of web standards, more sites on the Internet work on IE8 than do on rival browsers. While this may be true to an extent, it's because of Microsoft abusing their monopolic situation that this came to be, so really shouldn't be displayed so obviously in a list such as this.

Manageability

Guidance and enterprise tools, for a browser? And what would they be exactly? This is most likely buzzword-bingo speak for the extras that Microsoft shove down with their updates as they are tied in too closely with the browser to be enabled seperately. I for one would be wary of something that couldn't be either broken down into laymens terms simply or explained properly in a more verbose manner.

So, while I belive none of the marketing hype or FUD from the worlds largest software company on their latest browser, I am forced by necessity to find a way to install it in order to do my job correctly, I'll let you know how it goes...