PKB

So it’s one thing to publish a misleading report comparing the security of Internet Explorer and Firefox (ignoring days of risk, time to patch and automated updates), and it’s another thing to paint said report by a Microsoft employee as an unbiased third party study by not disclosing who authored it. (Even on clickthrough of the link on the IE Blog, it isn’t clear who Jeff Jones is, just that he’s posting to “CSO, the Resource for Security Executives.”)

From today’s IE Blog:

“According to a vulnerability report published today, IE7 has fewer vulnerabilities than previous versions of IE over the same time period.”

That should really say:

“According to a vulnerability report published today by Microsoft Security Strategy Director Jeff Jones, IE7 has fewer vulnerabilities than previous versions of IE over the same time period.”

We’ll have more to share on how wrong Jeff’s study is in just a bit on the Mozilla Security blog, but for now, I’d like to encourage our friends at Microsoft to practice responsible disclosure when they issue propagandist literature and portray it as the god’s honest truth. Guys: you are giving marketing a bad name, and you’re misleading your readers.

Updated 12/1/07: Here’s our side of the story.

• Window Snyder: Critical Vulnerability in Microsoft Metrics
• Mike Schroepfer: Apples, Oranges and the truth
• Mike Shaver: Counting still easy, critical thinking still surprisingly hard

Here’s a roundup of some of the press coverage we’ve tracked today for Firefox 3 Beta 1.

The hard work by the Mozilla development community on performance, security and user experience improvements is absolutely being noticed in these early reviews.

This is a *great* first public milestone on the road to the final release of Firefox 3.

“Firefox 3 delivers an impressive assortment of new features and interface improvements. There are lots of changes under the hood as well, which improve performance and reduce resource consumption.”
– Ars Technica, Ryan Paul

“Firefox 3 beta 1 delivers an outstanding improvement to the user experience. Unlike Firefox 2, which was a bit light on new features, Firefox 3 is practically overflowing with shiny new goodies.”
– Ars Technica, Ryan Paul

“We’re still waiting for word on the next version of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer, but Mozilla today released the first beta test of Firefox 3.0, previewing the features to be included in the next version of the open-source browser.”
– Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Todd Bishop

“I saw a demo of the Firefox 3 beta a couple weeks ago at the Web 2.0 Expo in Berlin, and it was amazing — particularly the zoom-whole-page feature that lets you resize all the elements on a page, up or down, including images and form elements. No more squinting at tiny webcomic writing! No more tedious side-scrolling for huge-mongoose inline images!”
– BoingBoing, Cory Doctorow

“I have no qualms. It’ll be an easy decision to update once everything is ready.”
– CrunchGear, Doug Aamoth

“Firefox 3 employs a button in the location bar that lets users see who owns the site. This is crucial at a time when bogus sites serve as pitfalls for unsuspecting Web users.”
– eWeek, Clint Boulton

“Much of the hardest work has been under the hood, however. Firefox sports a new HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) rendering engine, called Gecko 1.9, that will make it perform better in the graphically rich Web 2.0 world, where developers are trying to find new ways of running software whether the PC is connected to the Internet or not.”
– PC World, Bob McMillan

“Early testers seem pleased with the promise of Firefox 3, which is packed with new features and tweaks alike.”
– LinuxInsider, Chris Maxcer

“A number of meaningful improvements are noticeable with this release, chiefly the speed.”
– PC World, Tom Spring

“Although beta 1 is far from a finished product and some interface changes like platform-specific skins are still in store before the final release, the speed and memory improvements in Firefox 3 beta 1 make it worth the upgrade.”
– Wired News, Scott Gilbertson

Continuing a proud grassroots tradition, someone in Hawaii loved Firefox enough to smudge out some URL-love.

via the SpreadFirefox pool on Flickr

Much respect to the originators of this meme - unnamed friends of Firefox here, who are now welcoming visitors to the beta of Spread Firefox 2.

This week, we’ll be making a minor update to the Firefox Start Page for the English locale. Here’s what’s changing:

• Search navigation links will be updated to match the links on google.com. The categories over the search field in the current Firefox Start Page (Web, Images, Groups, News and Maps) will be updated to match the categories on google.com and moved to the upper left part of the page.
• Links to account controls will now appear on the upper right side of the page if you’re already signed into the Google network. For example, if you’ve signed into Gmail and stayed logged in, you’ll see your Google network username and options to access your account or sign out in the upper right part of the Start Page.

We’re working with Google (who is our search partner for the Start Page) to make these minor changes to sync up with updates to the google.com search experience. You currently see the updated search navigation links in the header of the results page after you initiate a search on the Firefox Start Page. We’ll start with English and roll updates out worldwide over the coming weeks.

Over the past couple of years that I’ve been at Mozilla, we’ve been fortunate to have terrific people join the marketing team, deliver strong programs and roll out blogs on Planet Mozilla and Spread Firefox who’ve never been formally introduced to the Mozilla community.

Like a lot of Mozilla, we have a much smaller team relative to our reach and impact on the Web. When we launched Firefox 1.5, appropriately enough there were about 1.5 dedicated marketing staff in the US dedicated to the launch. We about doubled this number for Firefox 2.

As we’ve been gearing up for the launch of Firefox 3, the team’s grown. We have marketing team members working on our web sites, events, advertising, PR, analytics, grassroots outreach and more.

You’ve already seen posts by several folks that I’m about to introduce here on planet and on SFx. All of us are fully invested in the work our fellow ninjabots in dev, QA, build and IT pour into making Firefox 3 a six-gallon bucket of awesome.

So without further ado, meet the Firefox marketing family (add -at- mozilla -dot- com after the email names):

Mary Colvig
Mary joined Mozilla in 2006 after representing us as part of our PR team and immediately jumped in on the Firefox 2 and Thunderbird 2 launches. She currently manages our events program.
email: mary
blog: http://blog.mozilla.com/blog/author/mary@mozilla.com/

Alix Franquet
Alix is leading our work to support international marketing, with an emphasis on empowering community marketing. She’s also mind-melding with the Firefox development team to build reviewers’ guides for Firefox 3.
email: alix

David Rolnitzky
David leads our new user outreach activities, from search engine marketing to partner initiatives with eBay and Kodak.
email: david
blog: http://www.giantspatula.com

Melissa Shapiro
Melissa is our PR manager. She makes sure Mozilla and Firefox stories are represented well in the media that cover our work.
email: melissa
blog: http://icouldntfindanypaper.blogspot.com/

John Slater
John is Mozilla marketing’s creative director. He’s our branding and messaging guru, responsible for the voice we use to represent Firefox in our marketing.
email: jslater
blog: http://www.intothefuzz.com

David Tenser
David is a longtime contributor to Mozilla and authored the reference standard for Firefox support. He’s joined Mozilla to lead the rollout of new end user support resources, working with a team drawn from the community.
email: djst
blog: http://www.djst.org/blog/

We work with colleagues all over the world. In Mountain View: Rhian Baker, Ken Kovash, Alex Polvi, Asa Dotzler, Jay Patel and Seth Bindernagel. In Europe: Tristan Nitot, Jane Hatton Finette, Anne-Julie Ligneau and Pascal Chevrel. In Japan: Gen Kanai, Kaori Negoro and Kohei Yoshino. In China: Li Gong and Jack Guo.

It goes without saying that we are working together with thousands of marketing community contributors through Spread Firefox and beyond to get the word out about Firefox.

We’ll be sharing a bunch more over the coming weeks as we build up to the worldwide launch of Firefox 3 about our planning, content and approach. In the meantime, say hey to the Mozilla go team.