I have recently written an article for my University Magazine about Firefox and IE ( as an comparison). And Ive searched well active x is not found in Firefox, and Idont think that you will find a plugin for it since it would only make Firefox insecure. Furthermore, you can always check
www.mozilla.org for any plugins.
I really believe that the only way is to run IE on wine.
My article is below if you want to check it if you want to:
Could Firefox be a winning horse in the race of web browsers.
Firefox is the new web browser everybody is talking about. But what is this mess all about isn't Internet Explorer the reigning web browser of cyberspace?
Well, it seems that Mozilla Foundation has finally produced a web browser which is capable of competing with Internet Explorer on windows platforms. At present time, Firefox has grabbed about 5% of the market share of web browsers and an estimation of about 46 million users, it is reported that "a whopping 237 percent increase in the number of visitors to the Firefox Web site -- operated by open-source developer Mozilla – [happened] in the past nine months. Some 2.6 million people visited the site during March 2005 to download the browser." (1). Mozilla foundation is looking forward to increase their share of the market to 10% by the end of the year. But why is Firefox emerging as a competitor to IE? The main reason is security, it is claimed that Firefox is much securer than IE and a lot more resistant to spyware, an article about internet security in USATODAY.com claims the following “Beware of spyware. If you can, use the Firefox browser.” (2). But on another hand, security chief John Donovan at Symantec claims that Firefox has an edge over IE in the security field because it has a lower number of users, if the popularity of Firefox increases it would be much more worthy for hackers to try and find security holes in Firefox because of the increased number of users (1).
However, Firefox claims the following features which make it such a popular web browser.
1. Popup Blocking
2. Tabbed Browsing
View more than one web page in a single window with this time saving feature. Open links in the background so that they're ready for viewing when you're ready to read them.
3. Privacy and Security
Built with your security in mind, Firefox keeps your computer safe from malicious spyware by not loading harmful ActiveX controls.
4. Smarter Search
Google Search is built right into the toolbar
5. Live Bookmarks
RSS** integration lets you read the latest news headlines and read updates to your favorite sites that are syndicated.
6. Fits Like a Glove
Simple and intuitive, yet fully featured, Firefox has all the functions you're used to - Bookmarks, History, Full Screen, Text Zooming to make pages with small text easier to read, etc.
7. Setup's a Snap
At only 4.7MB (Windows), Firefox takes just a few minutes to download over a slow connection and seconds over a fast connection. The installer gets you set up quickly, and the new Easy Transition system imports all of your settings - Favorites, passwords and other data from Internet Explorer and other browsers
8. Extensive plug- ins which include Macromedia Flash, Macromedia Shockwave, Java and Real player integration.
In short, from my point of view Mozilla's Firefox is worth at least a try. The main advantages that I observed about using Firefox for 2 months are the following:
• Tabbed browsing, extremely useful when you are making a search or reading more than one article from the same web site "The next release of IE might include tabbed browsing.
• Security, Firefox does not get hijacked the way IE gets hijacked and you don’t have to bother about the tons of popups you get as a result of an computer infected with spyware*.
• RSS feed, if you revisit a site you can directly know what has been changed in that site since your last visit**.
• Periodic security updates which use an automated install progress.
On the other hand I observed some problems with Firefox with automated forwarding in some sites ( for ex:
www.flex.mtctouch.com.lb ). But as an overall evaluation Firefox rocks and it presents one more success for open source development over proprietary development, and "IBM plans to develop Firefox extensions to integrate the open-source browser into its server software" (4). I hope that you are considering to use Firefox after reading this article. You can download it for FREE at
www.getfirefox.com. So what are you waiting for??
References:
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...14/bs_nf/32881
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/co...ieinfect_x.htm
http://www.netzeitung.de/internet/331620.html (This is a German site)
http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/71486/ib...ox-inside.html
Bibilography:
http://www.mozilla.org/products/firefox/
http://www.netzeitung.de/internet/331620.html (This is a German site)
*Spyware and the ways to face it is covered in this issue.
**RSS feed is going to be covered in our next issue
By AJ
