Question to Dennis Howlett: Why are you so bloody stupid?

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In a post titled "Question to Mozilla CEO: what do you fear?", blogger Dennis "Howler Monkey" Howlett tries to back up a very important question with out-and-out gross distortions of the facts. For example, in the first paragraph:
The kerfuffle over Apple’s decision to include the Safari 3.1 ‘update’ with an iTunes update installer for Windows made me smile. John Lilly, CEO Mozilla Foundation seems outraged at Apple’s decision. It only adds to the hilarity. Why? In enterprise land, neither browser is likely to be the number one choice down at the PC/laptop image factory. Not even close. Check the stats at W3schools to see what I mean. Mozilla comes in at a miniscule 1.1% while Safari has just hit the 2% mark.
I did check the stats over at W3schools, and you know what I found? Mozilla (Moz) does indeed come in with a mizerly 1.1%. But look over to the left column next to it labeled Fx (for Firefox) and you see that Firefox has a 36.5% share. Add the two together and you get 37.6%. That's a good third of the market.

Earth to Howler: The Mozilla Foundation is responsible for both the Firefox and Mozilla browsers, and it's been primarily (and now exclusively) Firefox for years now. Where the hell have you been?

The the Howler Monkey further howls:
And while I’m in Mozilla flame mode, exactly when will Firefox stop leaking memory like a sieve by default and routinely bringing my machine to a grinding halt? That would be a much better story in my opinion because right now I’d prefer to use Safari, short though it may be on all those Firefox plug-ins, add-ons and themes. Why? Because in enterprise land, performance matters, not all the bells and whistles.
Let's talk about memory leaks for a moment. I'll be the first to admit that Firefox consumes memory like a drunk in a licker store. But is Safari 3.1 any better? Let's take a look, shall we?

Oh my goodness! Safari running on my Windows XP SP2 system, with six tabs, consumes almost 400MB. Firefox 2, while by no means svelte, consumes in the high 200s on this system, and that's with considerably more tabs open to the same sites. Why is this? Because I use three Firefox plug-ins to keep memory consumption down on my systems: Adblock Plus 0.7.5.3, Adblock Filterset.G Updater 0.3.1.3, and NoScript 1.5.2. These three plug-ins keep ads, especially Flash-based ads, off my web pages. Safari, with nothing like them, renders everything, and in the process sucks up even more memory than Firefox 2.

Safari 3.1 on Windows is indeed a good, fast browser with regards to speed and quality of rendering. But when it comes to overall quality, Firefox 2 is as good if not better. Safari provides yet another choice for browsing, but as for me, I'll happily stick with Firefox.

Comments

  1. madevanMarch 23, 2008

    I'm in a posting mood this weekend Bill,
    LOVED the put-down! Its so reasoned it makes the offender look like a second-rate whinger LOL - I've never used safari but I know YOU don't talk S**T! As for firefox well i've been using it since before its official launch and its the best for me.
    Addendum: I use the foxmarks addin which stores my bookmarks on a webstore - its great to create a new OS setup and just load them down (whatever OS i'm using)
    But your putdown - Great Fun Bill

    ReplyDelete
  2. ChrisMarch 23, 2008

    Outstanding post Bill, it's always like the MS Fan boys to distort the facts. Great post.

    ReplyDelete
  3. vexorianMarch 24, 2008

    That guy can lecture us all about how to completely miss the point.


    If Microsoft did this they would have the EU on their back already, apple's abuse of their music player monopoly must stop.

    ReplyDelete

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