CNET科技资讯网 12月20日国际报道 Firefox是那种十年辛劳，一夜成名的典型例子。

Firefox正在迅速壮大，它具有微软IE浏览器没有的许多功能，这种新兴的浏览器由非盈利性组织 Mozilla基金会负责发布，它也吸引了许多的程序员志愿对它进行开发。

Firefox 1.0于11月9日正式发布，仅仅一个月，它的下载量就突破了1千万。上周四，Mozilla基金会在纽约时代上刊登了两页的广告，以此庆祝这一里程碑似的事件。

到目前为止，在无数的开源项目当中，Linux是最有希望挑战微软的操作系统，但它多半用于企业的数据中心，个人用户很少需要Linux。

而Firefox浏览器却不同，它正在由办公室走向家庭。Firefox和IE浏览器一样易用，而最吸引用户的是，这种浏览器可以更好的抵御病毒，计算机蠕虫以及间谍软件的攻击。

微软一直将IE浏览器视为是Windows操作系统密不可分的一部分，而Firefox与底层的操作系统相分离， Mozilla基金会的总裁Mitchell Baker将这种特性称为是一种“自然的防御”。

破天荒的，IE浏览器的市场份额开始下滑。OneStat.com 11月底进行的调查发现，IE浏览器的市场份额跌到了89%以下，比5月下降了5个百分点。而Firefox的市场份额几乎达到了5%，它还在继续壮大之中。

微软Windows产品部门的主任Gary Schare说，目前的IE浏览器用户的忠诚度很高，他表示，如果要用户全面的考虑浏览器的各种因素，他们将会首先选择IE。对不起，选择？难道IE浏览器没有捆绑到Windows中吗？

Schare已经表示，除非Mozilla的 Firefox 浏览器能够顺利的由1.0 版本升级到2.0版本，否则，他们远不能感到惬意。

另外，Schare还是表示，微软对Firefox支持Windows平台感到高兴。事实上，Firefox可以同时支持苹果， Linux以及Windows平台。

虽然Schare是微软的官方发言人，但他自己并不使用IE浏览器，他使用Maxthon浏览器。这种浏览器使用了 IE的引擎，但提供了IE浏览器没有的功能特色。事实上，很多其它浏览器所具备的功能，IE浏览器都不具备。微软要等到2006年，才有可能对IE浏览器进行全面的升级。

1995年底，网景航海家浏览器几乎就是网页浏览器的代名词，但IE浏览器已经开始崭露头角，微软做出了一个危险，但却具有战略智慧的决定，他们从底层构架重写了IE浏览器的代码，这一举动直接导致IE 在浏览器的第一次世界大战中获胜。

现在，IE浏览器已经很久没有进行重新设计了。

微软能够给IE用户的，就是不断的安全补丁，层层叠叠。在Windows XP Service Pack 2服务包中，微软对ActiveX控件进行了限制，而在Firefox中，用户根本不需要对此进行操心，因此Firefox浏览器已经自动对控件进行了封锁。

Counterpane互联网安全公司的首席技术官Bruce Schneier，对微软声称的已经提高了IE浏览器的安全表示了愤怒，他说：“当我母亲看到屏幕上你想下载这个东西时吗，她会点击是，微软这么做毫无意义。” 他已经建议他的母亲不要使用微软的IE浏览器。他本人曾经使用Opera浏览器，但现在已经换成Firefox了。

这个月，宾夕法尼亚大学建议学生停止使用IE浏览器，因为存在安全问题。

微软在浏览器方面不太积极，它没有提供单独的浏览器，用户需要下载，安装SP2服务包才能够获得新的IE，而另外一个前提是，用户还需要Windows XP操作系统。如果那些还在使用旧版本Windows系统的用户，就无法使用新IE浏览器。

微软的Schare对此的建议是：购买新的个人电脑。这样的话，如果一辆汽车的门锁坏了，开车的人应该去买一辆新车了。事实上，Schare就是这样比喻的，他说：“这就象买汽车，如果你想获得最新的安全性能，你需要购买最新款式的汽车。”

在浏览器的世界，最新款式的浏览器不是2001 IE，而是2004 Firefox。（本文为《纽约时报》授权CNET News.com 转载）

The fox is in Microsoft's henhouse (and salivating)

Firefox is a classic overnight success, many years in the making.

Published by the Mozilla Foundation, a nonprofit group supporting open-source software that draws upon the skills of hundreds of volunteer programmers, Firefox is a Web browser that is fast and filled with features that Microsoft's stodgy Internet Explorer lacks. Firefox installs in a snap, and it's free.

Firefox 1.0 was released on Nov. 9. Just over a month later, the foundation celebrated a remarkable milestone: 10 million downloads. Donations from Firefox's appreciative fans paid for a two-page advertisement in The New York Times on Thursday.

Until now, the Linux operating system was the best-known success among the hundreds of open-source projects that challenge Microsoft with technically strong, free software that improves as the population of bug-reporting and bug-fixing users grows. But unless you oversee purchases for a corporate data center, it's unlikely that you've felt the need to try Linux yourself.

With Firefox, open-source software moves from back-office obscurity to your home, and to your parents', too. (Your children in college are already using it.) It is polished, as easy to use as Internet Explorer and, most compelling, much better defended against viruses, worms and snoops.

Microsoft has always viewed Internet Explorer's tight integration with Windows to be an attractive feature. That, however, was before security became the unmet need of the day. Firefox sits lightly on top of Windows, in a separation from the underlying operating system that the Mozilla Foundation's president, Mitchell Baker, calls a "natural defense."

For the first time, Internet Explorer has been losing market share. According to a worldwide survey conducted in late November by OneStat.com, a company in Amsterdam that analyzes the Web, Internet Explorer's share dropped to less than 89 percent, 5 percentage points less than in May. Firefox now has almost 5 percent of the market, and it is growing.

Gary Schare, Microsoft's director of product management for Windows, has been assigned the unenviable task of explaining how Microsoft plans to respond to the Firefox challenge with a product whose features were last updated three years ago. He has said that current users of Internet Explorer will stick with it once they take into account "all the factors that led them to choose IE in the first place." Beg your pardon. Choose? Doesn't IE come bundled with Windows?

Schare has said that Mozilla's Firefox must prove it can smoothly move from version 1.0 to 2.0, and has thus far enjoyed "a bit of a free ride." If I were the spokesman for the software company that included the company's browser free on every Windows PC, I'd be more careful about using the phrase "free ride."

Trying to strike a conciliatory note, Schare has also declared that he and his company were happy to have Firefox as "part of the large ecosystem" of software that runs on Windows. In fact, Firefox is ecumenically neutral, being available also for both the Mac and for Linux.

Schare may be the official spokesman, but he does not use Internet Explorer himself. Instead he uses Maxthon, published by a little company of the same name. It uses the Internet Explorer engine but provides loads of features that Internet Explorer does not. "Tabs are what hooked me," he told me, referring to the ability to open within a single window many different Web sites and move easily among them, rather than open separate windows for each one and tax the computer's memory. Firefox has tabs. Other browsers do, too. But fundamental design decisions for Internet Explorer prevent the addition of this and other desiderata without a thorough update of Windows, which will not be complete until 2006 at the earliest.

How fitting that Microsoft finds itself in this predicament. In late 1995, at a time when Netscape Navigator was synonymous with the Web and Internet Explorer had yet to attract many adopters, Microsoft made a risky but strategically wise decision to redesign the Internet Explorer code from the bottom up--re-architecting, in industry jargon. As Michael A. Cusumano of MIT and David B. Yoffie of Harvard chronicled in their 1998 book, "Competing on Internet Time: Lessons From Netscape and Its Battle With Microsoft," that decision meant delaying the release of Internet Explorer 3.0, but the resulting product was technically far superior to Netscape's Navigator. In Browser Wars I, the better browser won.

Today, it's the Internet Explorer code that is long overdue for a top-to-bottom redesign, one that would treat security as integral, and Firefox is the challenger with new, clean code. Netscape bequeathed its software to the nonprofit Mozilla Foundation, which used an open-source approach to undertake a complete rewrite that took three years. Firefox is built upon the Mozilla base.

All Microsoft can offer Internet Explorer users are incremental security improvements, new patches to fix holes in the old patches. In Windows XP Service Pack 2, the company claimed as a major security advance a notice that is displayed if the user takes an action within Internet Explorer that sets off a download of a tiny application called an ActiveX control, which can take control of your PC and, in a worst-case instance, erase your hard drive. "Users still must make informed decisions," Schare added. (With Firefox, users do not have to make decisions about these miniprograms, which are blocked by design.)

Bruce Schneier, the chief technical officer of Counterpane Internet Security and an authority on security issues, did not hide his anger at Microsoft's claim of having improved Internet Explorer. "When my mother gets a prompt 'Do you want to download this?' she's going to say yes," he said. "It's disingenuous for Microsoft to give you all of these tools with which to hang yourself, and when you do, then say it's your fault." He lectures his clients (and his mother): "Don't use Microsoft Internet Explorer, period." He has been using the browser Opera, but having tried Firefox declares it "a great alternative."

This month, officials at Pennsylvania State University recommended that students and staff stop using Internet Explorer because of persistent security problems. The announcement said that "the threats are real, and alternatives exist."

Stuck with code from a bygone era when the need for protection against bad guys was little considered, Microsoft cannot do much. It does not offer a new stand-alone version of Internet Explorer. Instead, the loyal customer must download and install the newest version of Service Pack 2. That, in turn, requires Windows XP. Those who have an earlier version of Windows are out of luck if they wish to stick with Internet Explorer.

Schare of Microsoft does have one suggestion for those who cannot use the latest patches in Service Pack 2: buy a new personal computer. By the same reasoning, the security problems created by a car's broken door lock could be solved by buying an entirely new automobile. The analogy comes straight from Schare. "It's like buying a car," he said. "If you want to get the latest safety features, you have to buy the latest model."

In this case, the very latest model is not a 2001 Internet Explorer, but a 2004 Firefox.