Mozilla and beyond!!!

Microsoft Internet Explorer (aka ie) had been in version 6 for a long time. Recently, they released version 7. Essentially, they adopted many features that have existed in both Opera and Firefox for years. In my opinion, the engineering efforts on the Microsoft Internet Explorer division have been placed  on other software projects, abandoning the safety of Internet Explorer.  Consequently this has allowed hackers and virus builders to design exploits for it.

The most vulnerable feature of the IE browser is something called ActiveX. This allows web surfers to view exciting web pages, and it will even automatically download programs to any computer to make the content more interesting.  This single aspect of IE is also the reason most computers become infected. Downloading programs automatically includes the ability to download viruses and Trojans and worms. Menlo Technical promotes Firefox and Opera to stop the potential hazard of automatic virus downloads.

Mozilla Firefox, (programming code rising out of the Netscape ashes), has been released for some time and has been fixed to run on all versions of Windows.  Firefox does not use ActiveX.

There are several OTHER browsers out there, besides Opera and Firefox. Most are just wrappers that ’skin’ Internet Explorer with some protection. These wrappers are still using Internet Explorer, and are still susceptible to automatically placing viruses on a computer through ActiveX exploits.

Apple recently offered up their Mac OS X browser Safari to run on Windows machines. This is available through Apple, and is a viable alternative to IE.

Opera, has been around since 1994, and does not utilize ActiveX ‘out of the box’. Opera is an alternate browser that at one time was free to try, with advertising, and inexpensive to purchase. They have now removed the advertising, and they are offering the browser for free.

Menlo Technical has been installing Firefox on almost all new and repaired machines. It has proven a worthy change for most web surfing, and removing most viruses from attacking through a browser.

Welcome to Menlo Technical’s Blog

Thanks for stopping by the blog. Within this diary of information, you will be introduced to technical ideas and concepts that are related to the IT Industry. This means that there will be details of operating systems, applications, databases. Concepts relating to security, the web, hardware and networking are also fair game for posting.

We will try to be as impartial and objective as possible – for what its worth.

Thanks again for stopping by!!!