Excellent discussion on the FireFox issues. I guess my point in all this is that FireFox is here to stay and only time will tell if that results in the opportunity for a more secure browsing environment. The post regarding standards is well taken, and I don't think anyone whose informed in the biz confuses ActiveX with an RFC standard. But this issue of standards is not so simple as "comply and everything is easy". Why should Micorosft comply with dated standards when they own the vast majority of the market share? Put yourself in the same situation. Say you owned a company that made 98% of all the doodads in the world and you wanted to make a thinngy that interracted with doodad so to make that work better you added some stuff to the doodad. But now, those living in the 2% world (and that's a lot of people) complain about their non-standard doodad and being forced to live with it, etc etc. But the interaction of the thinngy with the doodad adds a lot of functionaly and benefits the other 98% pretty nicely. If someone said to you as the owner of the company "you should make your stuff acccording to industry standards" are you going to comply just because they want you to?
No. Microsoft is going to comply to the degree that it makes sense for them to - that is why in some things they are pretty compliant and in other things they aren't.
However, domainance can lead to complacecy and business books are full success stories where the nimble, fast acting little guy defeats Goliath who is asleep at wheel. Even if Goliath wakes up, it takes a couple years for him to get out of bed. Goliath as Microsoft in this case, may be in this situation. If so, the browser market will be at least intresting and possibly improved in years to come. I mean, when was the last time you looked forward to a new version of IE?
-brett hill
