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Student starts Firefox campaign on campus |
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Thursday, 05 April 2007 |
by JAMISON DORAN
News Reporter
When students use on-campus computers, they have various browsers they can use, including Internet Explorer and Safari.
If one Appalachian State University student has his way, all students would only use Mozilla Firefox.
James F. Beckner III, a freshmen computer information systems major, is the campus representative for the Firefox campaign.
“The purpose of the campaign is to raise awareness of Firefox and to get people to switch over to Firefox,” Beckner said.
In order to help get the word out about Firefox, Beckner is hosting a
raffle on his Web site where Firefox users can win T-shirts, with the
grand prize being a Firefox backpack that is valued at $70. The raffle
ends at midnight April 15 and is completely free for Appalachian
affiliates.
The raffle is for people who are using or want to use Firefox, Beckner said.
Besides just giving away free gifts for Firefox users, Beckner wants people to understand the benefits of it.
“The security is better and Firefox is much more customizable compared to Internet Explorer,” he said.
With Firefox, users can experience less viruses and spy ware, plus it is very personalized with various add ons, Beckner said.
Other benefits of Firefox are that it is completely free and worked on
by thousands of people, which keeps it more secure and more up to date
than other browsers.
Beckner is also hoping that through this campaign and through raising
awareness with the help of students, he’ll be able to create a new club
on campus for Firefox users.
“It would be nice to have a place where students can come together to talk about Firefox,” Beckner said.
While Beckner would eventually like to see Firefox alone on campus computers, it likely won’t be happening.
“We won’t be taking off Internet Explorer from our lab computers, as
some Web sites and applications function better only within [Internet
Explorer] over Firefox,” Thomas M. Van Gilder, director of
technological support services, said.
There is no universal standard for Web page development and Internet-based application, he said.
“Because of this, some pages won’t render correctly, or will not work
at all in one browser, but will in another,” Van Gilder said.
While there are no plans to make one browser the standard on campus,
Van Gilder stresses that he supports all browsers fully for various
reasons and applications.
“We fully support the Mozilla suite, but also will continue to support
[Internet Explorer], as well as others like Opera and Safari,” he said.
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This statement is misleading. While it is true that web page development and web applications do not have one, single standard, web page and application technology do indeed have standards.
The World Wide Web Consortium, http://www.w3.org/ develops such specifications and standards for web technologies.
some Web sites and applications function better only within [Internet Explorer] over Firefox
This is a case of web sites and applications which make use of certain quirks or bugs in Internet Explorer, which are not present in Firefox. An example of an Internet Explorer bug is ActiveX, a very insecure web platform which is a doorway to thousands of malicious persons attacking the computers using Internet Explorer. Nevertheless, many web sites require Internet Explorer because they rely on this vulnerable technology, such as the Windows Update site.
Great job, and good luck to you, Mr. Beckner.