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May 10, 2005
A Vulnerable Fox
OK, OK it seems that Firefox has a couple of vulnerabilities [secunia.com]. So what, it's not the end of the world. In my experience any piece of sufficiently complex software will always have bugs, compromises and vulnerabilities. Especially something as complex as a platform. Yes, I consider a web browser a platform. Not noly does it provide a graphical interface with a language describing how it's supposed to be rendered, but also a pseudo-systems abstraction language (Javascript) while needing to support native components (plugins/extensions) that extend the main platform in ways that the main developers would never have imagined.
The great thing about a community supported project like Firefox is that the vulnerabilities will be addressed extremely quick. Probably as early as later this week people will be upgrading 1.0.4 to address these problems. It's not even in the same category as a flaw in Internet Explorer where its user base needs to wait with baited breath to see first, if Microsoft will fix it and second, when they will release the fix.
Judging from the net buzz the next incremental release of Firefox, codenamed Deer Park (version 1.1) [mozilla.org] will contain many fixes for the Mac audience and contains lots of improvements concerning the cache. Specifically, the back and forward caches. Also, some rendering and layout bugs are supposed to be fixed. Finally, checking a list of updates [squarefree.com] shows that there will be at least some CSS3 support and I heard a rumor that SVG will be supported natively! This doesn't sound like something that astonishing or big, but it would lead to very interesting pages with images that change based on user feedback, can't wait to see.
Posted by Guy at May 10, 2005 07:52 PM