Last year, when Firefox 3.5 was released and the whole net community was amazed by the performance gains of the Open Source browser, I was only amused by the childish obsession many IT pros have with browser speed. Now, as the Internet Explorer 9 developer preview is available, touting its fabulous hardware acceleration, I am beginning to wonder if the whole net is just nuts or if I should see a doctor because something is profoundly wrong with my sense of time. I am really worried. So please help me diagnose this phenomenon!

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At first I intended to ignore the new IE bashing wave that surged after the Google hack of December 2009. But then I read Deb Shinder’s article about the topic. Even though her analysis is quite correct, I can’t help from adding a few of my own thoughts.

As noted a few weeks ago, I have a serious problem with all kinds of mass hysteria phenomena. The age old-IE bashing campaigns definitely fall into this category. Shortly after it became public that Internet Explorer played a major role in the Google hack, countless self-styled security experts, exhorting journalists, and even clueless governments felt obliged to recommend switching to an alternative browser.

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In my last post, I described GFI WebMonitor’s filtering features. Today, I will introduce the tool’s security functions. If you want to have a chance to win a license for 500 clients worth 8,500 dollars, please refer to the end of the article.

As noted in the first post of this series, there is a Web Security edition, which can be purchased separately, or with the Web Filtering edition. The Web Security edition consists of four modules: Download Control Policies, IM Control Policies, Virus Scanning Policies, and the Anti-Phishing Engine.

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In my last post, I described GFI WebMonitor’s monitoring capabilities. Today, I will introduce the tool’s web-filtering features. If you want to have a chance to win a license for 500 clients worth 8,500 dollars, please refer to the end of the article.

The main purpose of web filtering is to prevent your company’s employees from spending time on the web for personal interests. Since many of the sites with the most popular web content—you know what I’m talking about—often contain malware, it will also improve security if you block them. The temptation to use the web for private matters at work has been growing along with the possibilities of the web.

The WebGrade database

GFI maintains a list of sites that are most likely unrelated to work in the so-called WebGrade database. I tried a few popular sites and GFI WebMonitor always blocked access to them. In such cases, WebMonitor displays a message in the user’s browser that the web site has been blocked from viewing.

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In my last article, I introduced GFI WebMonitor 2009, the product of the latest 4sysops contest. Today, I will discuss its web monitoring features in more detail. If you want to have a chance to win a license for 500 clients worth 8,500 dollars, please refer to the end of the article.

Active Connections and Past Connections

Before you start configuring Web Filtering and Web Security, you should monitor the web activity of your users for a while. This will give you hints as to where the biggest problems are. The Activity Log gives you an overview of what kind of URLs have been accessed and by whom. WebMonitor enables you to monitor active connections and past connections. Hidden downloads, i.e. downloads unattended by the users (for example by applications), are displayed in a separate folder. Note that you will only be able to catch those downloads, if you have configured GFI WebMonitor as a gateway.

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GFI, a longstanding 4sysops sponsor, has a very generous offer for our readers. You have the chance to win a GFI WebMonitor 2009 license for 500 clients that is worth 8,500 U.S. dollars! You will find more information about this raffle at the end of this review.

Microsoft ISA Server veterans will probably know GFI WebMonitor, a web filtering and web security software that ISAserver.org readers have voted year after year as the best ISA Server add-on. Last November, GFI released a new version, GFI WebMonitor 2009, which is also available as standalone, gateway, and proxy software. This review is about the standalone version. Please note that there is also a free edition of GFI WebMonitor.

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You’ve probably noticed the coverage of Internet Explorer’s inexorable slide at several new sites. In Germany (the country that issued my passport), Firefox overtook IE for the first time. I find this news interesting because it is not that easy to explain why Microsoft can’t stop users from moving to Firefox.

However, the fact that Germany is leading in this development is no surprise for me. It is often claimed that security-aware Germans avoid Microsoft’s allegedly unsecure browser. But that’s only half of the truth considering that Firefox has now become the most vulnerable browser. Of course, most people don’t know this yet, and it will certainly take a while until Firefox’s reputation as a secure browser will be destroyed for good.

Firefox as a political statement

But this won’t really help IE in Germany and in other European countries because the main reason for IE’s bad reputation on the old continent is mostly of a political nature. The European Commission pushes this anti-IE and anti-Microsoft stance because they know that many Europeans will applaud simply out of enjoyment if one of the big animals is cut down to size. And I can tell you that the EC really needs this applause because they are bashed heavily for the bureaucracy they have created in EU countries in the last decade.

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Did you ever wonder how your website looks in Internet Explorer 1? Then you should try Internet Explorer Collection. It allows you to run multiple IE versions at the same time. The collection comes with the following IE editions: 1.0, 1.5., 2.01, 3.0, 3.01, 3.03, 4.01, 5.01, 5.5, 6.0, 6.0 SP2, 7.0, and 8.0.

I tried Internet Explorer Collection on Vista and Windows XP. IE 1.0 only runs on Windows NT and Windows 95. Some of the older browser versions crashed every now and then under Vista. My impression is that the collection works better on an XP machine.

I think versions older than IE 6 don’t really play a noticeable role anymore. Last month, nine 4sysops visitors were using Internet Explorer 5.5 and two were running 5.01. That is good because 4sysops doesn’t really look good with those browsers.

According to Google Analytics, there were also 31 visitors who were using version 999.1. We now have the final proof that time travel is possible. Yeah, it appears some technology historians are accessing 4sysops from the far future. For the sake of completeness, among the IE users, 9.21% use IE6, 29.25.% IE7 and 61.48% IE8. Just in case you are an IE6 user, don’t you think, it is time for an update?

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It appears the European Commission and Microsoft are close to an agreement in the web browser-bundling antitrust case. I reported last week in the 4sysops news section that there probably will be no Windows 7 E without Internet Explorer in Europe. Instead, Microsoft will offer a Ballot Screen that allows users to choose a web browser. The Ballot Screen will also be displayed on already installed Windows XP and Windows Vista computers. This article summarizes the most important facts about the Ballot Screen.

Obviously, Windows 7 without a browser would have meant too much hassle for PC manufacturers, software vendors, and customers. It is also possible that the European Commission wouldn’t have accepted Microsoft’s proposal to deliver Windows 7 in Europe without any web browser. I have already outlined my view about this bizarre antitrust case before. I think Microsoft made the right decision, not because we need more competition in the browser market, but because a special European Windows 7 edition would have caused too much trouble. I am now waiting until Symantec & Co. will want a Ballot Screen for desktop firewalls, antimalware software, backup software, etc.

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It was wise of Google to wait on the announcement of Chrome OS until the Michael Jackson funeral was over. Otherwise, the web might have collapsed. On the other hand, I wonder what took them so long to finally release their own Linux distro for PCs. Many had expected this already years ago.

Yes, I know, it will probably be a Linux distribution that is different compared to the countless other Linux operating systems. The post at Google’s weblog lets us only guess what this Chrome OS could look like. I think this is the key paragraph:

The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform.

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I suppose, you caught the news that Firefox 3.5 is now available. I skimmed over a few news sites to get an idea about its new features. Once again, I was shocked by the lack of objectivity in our Western media. All sites I have read were praising Firefox 3.5 as if the Mozilla guys had just reinvented the Web (like Opera).

Take the article at Channel Web as an example. The author names five features that are reason enough to say Firefox 3.5 rocks. One is an extension of the “awesome bar” that allows you to search in your bookmarks. Now, seriously, is this really a feature that rocks?? I don’t think you need a PhD in psychology to analyze this behavior. The author didn’t just want to write a review about Firefox 3.5; he wanted to belong to the big, Firefox-praising community. Thus, she was desperately trying to find reasons that could support her faulty claim.

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Usually, I ignore the battles between the European Commission (EC) and Microsoft because I can’t take this struggle for “more competition” seriously anymore. But the latest developments are just too bizarre, so I can’t resist sharing my opinion.

You’ve probably heard that the EC believes that bundling Internet Explorer with Windows 7 is against European law. I don’t know this law, and I am not really interested in it. However, if it is really true that it is against the law for a company to decide what kind of features a software product can have, then there is obviously something wrong with this law. To escape insane fines, Microsoft has decided to ship Windows 7 in Europe without Internet Explorer. Manufacturers and customers will have the option to install Internet Explorer. All Windows 7 editions sold in the European Union will have an “E” at the end of the product name.

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In my last post I covered the arguments usually heard when people compare Internet Explorer and Firefox. From my perspective however, other factors have to be considered when comparing the two vis-a-vis the corporate environment. I outlined these issues in my previous posts, which dealt with earlier versions of the two programs. For this article, I reviewed the situation, and I must admit I was a little surprised that not much has changed. It appears that the guys and gals at Mozilla are not really interested in giving Firefox a chance in corporate networks.

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This is the third time I have addressed the issue of Firefox vs. Internet Explorer on this blog. About three years ago, I compared Firefox 1.0 to Internet Explorer 6, and a few months later I wrote about Firefox 2.0 and Internet Explorer 7. Since Firefox 3.0 has already been out for some time, and Internet Explorer 8 is about to be released, it is time to check on what has changed. Considering Firefox’ growing popularity, and the fact that it will be possible to disable Internet Explorer 8 in Windows 7, many Windows administrators will toy with the idea of finally getting rid of IE. In this post, I will cover some of the most commonly discussed criteria relating to the IE vs. Firefox issue. In my next article, I will cover network-related arguments.

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One of the first things I usually do when I install a new Windows Server in a test environment, is to turn off IE Enhanced Security Configuration (IE ESC). I am talking about this little prompts that get on your nerves whenever you open a website in Internet Explorer on a Windows Server. I described how to disable IE ESC in Windows Server 2003 a while back. Since it is one of the popular articles here on 4syosps and because the procedure is different on Windows Server 2008, I decided to post a follow-up to save you from this constant security prompts.

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