I'm back. Deanna and I had a wonderful visit with her father and his wife.
I posted a few days ago about my experience using IE for a few days. Well, after this visit with Deanna's father (I believe he's about 65 or 66 years old) I'm even more convinced that IE sucks.
Deanna's father and his wife use AOL and IE on two machines, an older desktop and a relatively new laptop. Both machines had become so infested infested with adware and spyware that they literally were rendered unusable. I had taken with me my USB keychain with my Firefox and Thunderbird installs (and profiles) and a copy of both Ad-aware and Spybot S&D.
After several hours of adware cleanup and Windows updates, I believe that I've returned their two machines to a usable enough state that next time they won't miss the email telling them we're on the way to Louisiana to visit them (seriously).
They're not geeks like us (he's a retired oil man and she's an elementary school teacher) so I left them with a Spybot S&D shortcut on the desktop labeled "Pop-up clean-up" and simple instructions about avoiding spyware and how to clean it up if they do get invaded. I hope, but don't have any great confidence, that they'll be able to maintain normal use of their machines for a while.
Why didn't I just install Firefox? Well, two reasons. They use AOL for their connectivity and most of their web browsing and all of their email (though I'm told that a couple of their other applications occasionally launch IE and so they use that some too). Using AOL to gain the connection and then using some other web browser seemed to be too confusing to them. Also, their older computer only has 16 MB of RAM and so running AOL and Firefox together is a bit much.
They were very impressed with the pop-up blocking and the banner image blocking. Deanna's father seemed to like what he saw of tabbed browsing too. I actually did leave Firefox installed on their laptop but with no shortcut on the desktop to confuse them. If they get into really bad shape again, so bad that they can't even open IE to download clean-up tools, I'll phone coach them on finding it and launching it from the Program Files directory.
I don't know much about AOL and how it interfaces with MS DUN but what it seems like we need in Firefox is the ability to use the AOL or Windows dialer without launching AOL at all. Even better would be if the Firefox installer could notice that it was replacing AOL and offer up a custom bookmarks toolbar that takes you to an AOL start page and has additional links for AOL Webmail and maybe "Search" -- the idea being to try to give AOL users something that covers their basic needs without actually starting up the AOL client.
If these two wonderful (and intelligent) people who literally just stopped reading email and browsing the web because they were so infested with adware and spyware are representative of a larger population, I think that Firefox and Thunderbird have a very good opportunity here.
Posted by asa at April 5, 2004 08:32 PMPerhaps you should also tell them, if you haven't done so, about how to keep Windows up-to-date with patches (against those viruses) and that programs like Spybot and AdAware also need updates to be able to also catch the latest and greatest spyware/adware out there.
Posted by: Martijn on April 5, 2004 09:55 PMI totally agree with your AOL 'addons' for Mozilla. I've seen the scenario you described numerous times, and its really sad because people don't even know that they are being 'attacked'.
As Firefox/Thunderbird become more and more user friendly and ready for the masses, I think a feature like ISP recognition would be awesome. Not just for AOL, but also for the other big ones like Compuserve, Earthlink, MSN, etc.
Since Mozilla is open source, if there was a project for these ISP recongition profiles, the community could very effectively add/update ISPs to the database as they come accross them. I can even see a remotely accessible database being the best route. So when the user installs firefox or thunderbird, the installer asks what their ISP is, and then it downloads a small XML file that describes how to configure things.
In spybot did you click on the immunize button and turn on immunization, install the spybot BHO that blocks bad pages and lock the host file.
I also go to the settings button and check the automation features that I want eg. run check on program/windows start, fix all problems on program start, don't ask for fixing confirmation, search for new versions on program start, download updated include files if available online.
Posted by: Kevin Brosnan on April 5, 2004 11:29 PMAs of today, there is no way to customize Mozilla. It is possible to create custom installation, but there is even no option to alter the default homepage by extension that change values in the pref.js (Do not touch the user.js file by a program). I'm missing this feature alot, and wish that one day I will be able to change values in a user profile configuration, to make it possible for us to define better set of defaults to specific country/language, much more than region packs can. Mail me if you know a solution. Thanks.
As of Microsoft Dial-Up networking, my guess it is just a VPN connection that thier program set before connecting. Google must know solution of how to connect to them, w/o thier program installed at all.
Posted by: Tomer on April 6, 2004 03:23 AMI can totally relate what you went through. I go through the same thing with my in-laws. Everytime we head up there, I usually end up spending a good couple of hours doing maintenance and cleanup on their computer. They're happy when it's back and working nicely, but invariably on our next trip it'll be back to the same state it was last time.
Posted by: imabug on April 6, 2004 05:35 AMTomer: You can modify mozilla in every way you want. Just look at the jar files in chrome directory. You can even delete menue items, reorder the navigation buttons and of course the startpage. You can even define a startpage only for the first start of mozilla.
Posted by: Abdulkadir Topal on April 6, 2004 07:29 AMISP recognition might be tricky. yacoubean quoted four major ISPs there; here in England, onyl AOL would be recognised as an ISP. I've heard of Compuserve but didn't know they were still around; MSN is "that texting thingy, right?"; and Earthlink means absolutely nothing to me.
Point being: a hell of a lot of localisation would be required to pull i off properly. (Sounds like a great idea, though)
Incidentally, the major ISPs in England are probably ntl, Freeserve, AOL and BT(-Yahoo).
Posted by: Greg K Nicholson on April 6, 2004 09:25 AMAOL was offering a BYOB (Bring Your Own Browser)
option for access to the interet without IE.
My Dad (79) uses firebird but he NEVER used AOL
so there are no retraining issues with AOL.
Posted by: Tom on April 6, 2004 09:54 AMWelcome back Asa!
Any chance you will have a new Aska Asa soon :-)
Excellent idea.
Perhaps the Mozilla Foundation can arrange something with AOL where they can call firefox like "AOL Advanced" for "Advanced AOL Users" (
An excellent way to get more people exposed to and comfortable with firefox.
Posted by: Jasinner on April 7, 2004 04:44 AMI believe this also lets dial up AOL users live without their client as a means of primary connection. Though the site doesn't make it clear.
Posted by: Paul on April 7, 2004 04:51 AMThe greater than sign messed up my comment.
The installer could search for AOL installations or just ask AOL users if they would like to upgrade to AOL Advanced (firefox). Then just install a special firefox version with an aol skin, aolim support, an AOL style search bar, the aol homepage, and of course something that says when they've got mail (thunderbird?)
Posted by: Jasinner on April 7, 2004 04:53 AMIt would be nice if you could avoid implicating Internet Explorer when you talk about Spyware and Adware. Please, promote Firefox based on its merits, not based on FUD.
I'd also recommend that you promote features that people know they want. Popup blocking is a good example, but tabbed browsing is not: most people haven't thought of it, and the proliferation of 'back buttons' and in-place navigation on some platforms, or spatially orientated UI's on others, is contrary to the idea. Ad-Blocking is not a good example, because it involves "complicated" customisation of .css files; I don't even know if IE can't do something similar, given that the preferences dialogue has a 'use my style sheet' button.
On the subject of popup blocking, here's an Ask Asa question. Unless your head is sand-based (Mozilla do some QA for Windows, right? ;), you'll know that Windows XP SP2 adds popup-blocking and enables it by default. Do you see this as:
1) a great loss for the people intelligent enough to find a better browser, because popups advertisements will be replaced by annoying in-place flash animations taking up 50% of the space afforded by table-based layouts designed for 800x600 screens, or
2) a competitive necessity for Microsoft, but one which will re-claim the popup for legitimate uses
3) a sign that IE is still in development, to the point that Longhorn could bring useful advances to the lower bar of web design, while Mozilla struggles with a sluggish rendering subsystem
4) an inevitability
5) a chance to provide even more features to enhance the browsing experience
6) an utterly unimportant issue. Mozilla still rul^h^h^h is better!
7) Other. Please specify: ______
8) All of the above/some of the above (please circle)