Firefox world loses Web dev guru to Chrome

For years, an extension called Firebug has been a powerful tool that kept Web programmers loyal to Firefox.

But now, as browser makers add their own tools geared to attract those who build Web sites and applications, the lead Firebug programmer has taken a job with Chrome, CNET has learned.

"Monday, I start work on next-gen Web dev tools at Google on the Chrome browser team. Consequently I will no longer be contributing routinely to the development and maintenance of Firebug for Firefox," John J. Barton told members of a Firebug mailing list yesterday.

The change reflects the new rules of the browser market in which Firefox no longer holds such a central location.

Firebug was dominant in the days when Mozilla's Firefox was the dominant challenger of Microsoft's Internet Explorer, but now the browser market is as competitive as it's ever been. Chrome is steadily gaining usage share at Firefox's expense. On top of that, the use of mobile browsers is exploding, and the scope of what people do with a browser has expanded tremendously.

Web programming is a hot area as the era of static Web pages gives way to the era of dynamic Web applications with animated elements, interactive user interfaces, and heavy-duty software written in the JavaScript language. That makes the task of creating developer tools harder.

Barton had been an IBM employee. IBM made Firefox its default browser a year ago, a major endorsement for the open-source browser, but evidently IBM's priorities don't extend as far as Firefox these days.

"I think our current drive to re-architect Firebug is on the right track, but I could not obtain another year of support from IBM to contribute to that work," Barton said.

Web developer tools in browsers are under rapid development as browser makers court Web programmers. Chrome has its suite of developer tools. Apple's Safari has its Web Inspector and other tools. IE has the F12 developer tools. Firefox has a developer tools group, too.

Firebug is an elaborate extension for Firefox. But it's been a lot of work at times to keep Firebug updated as new versions of Firefox arrived. That was the case two years ago when Mozilla was trying to turn the new-version crank faster, and it's even more the case now that Firefox is fully engaged in Mozilla's new rapid-release program for Firefox.

Thus, Barton described Firebug's present challenges:

Working on Firebug with this great group of contributors was fun and I believe we had a tremendous impact on the Web over the years when Firebug was the only decent Web debugger

Now all of the browsers have (or will soon have) their own debuggers. Basing next gen work on Firebug is not practical. The pace of change in browsers is too fast for our team size. Firebug hasn't really been able to keep up with Firefox, let alone compete with other tools. Moreover, the shift from desktop to mobile and from one high-tech browser (Firefox) to three or more requires additional development effort."

Dion Almaer, who had worked on developer tools at Mozilla earlier in his career, noted the significance of Barton's new job in a blog post today.

"Firebug used to be the way you debugged your sites, but that is changed," Almaer said. "It is too early to claim that Firebug is zombied, but all eyes will be on that...especially as we see other browser tools continue to blossom."

Thank you : http://news.cnet.com/8301-30685_3-20080338-264/firefox-world-loses-web-dev-guru-to-chrome/#ixzz1SYhX9AHZ

Internet Explorer 9 utterly dominates malware-blocking stats

Internet Explorer 9's dual-pronged approach to blocking access to malicious URLs—SmartScreen Filter to block bad URLs, and Application Reputation to detect untrustworthy executables—provides the best socially engineered malware blocking of any stable browser version, according to NSS Labs' latest report. Internet Explorer 9 blocked 92 percent of malware with its URL-based filtering, and 100 percent with Application-based filtering enabled. Internet Explorer 8, in second place, blocked 90 percent of malware. Tied for third place were Safari 5, Chrome 10, and Firefox 4, each blocking just 13 percent. Bringing up the rear was Opera 11, blocking just 5 percent of malware.

The study only looked at sites that depended on tricking users into installing malicious software; anything that used browser flaws to run wasn't included in the test. The focus was also exclusively on malware targeting European users, though Internet Explorer 9 has also scored highly in other tests by the company with a global purview. The URLs visited were harvested from spam e-mails, instant messages, and social network posts.

The essentially identical performance of Firefox, Safari, and Chrome is because they use the same source data for their URL blacklisting: Google's Safe Browsing system. Some differences in lag were noticed—Firefox appeared to block bad URLs a little quicker than the other browsers—but overall performance was the same. Opera uses a service operated by anti-virus vendor AVG. Though it scored poorly, its 5 percent nonetheless represents an improvement on the zero percent it used to achieve, prior to integration of that feature. Opera was also substantially slower at blocking sites, averaging 48 hours to block, rather than 13 hours for the other browsers.

Internet Explorer's SmartFilter URL scanner yielded substantially better results than the other browsers tested. The Application Reputation feature then picked up any malicious executables that the URL scanner didn't trap. This shows the potential value of the Application Reputation feature; applications earn reputation by being downloaded regularly. An executable that nobody else has ever downloaded has no reputation at all, and so Internet Explorer 9 warns about the file. This means that its behavior is the reverse of the other filtering options in both Internet Explorer and other browsers: they default to permitting access to unknown URLs (as to do otherwise would break the majority of the Internet), only blocking locations that appear problematic. Application Reputation defaults to blocking.

Though this clearly bolsters Internet Explorer's safety, it comes at a cost, in the form of false positives. Unsigned and unusual downloads generate a warning, even for harmless programs. A Microsoft add-on for Visual Studio fell foul of this problem, for example. Even with the false positives, Microsoft's approach appears to be more secure.

Thank you : http://arstechnica.com/microsoft/news/2011/07/internet-explorer-9-utterly-dominates-malware-blocking-stats.ars