Tag: firefox

OCSP and the GoDaddy Event

2012-09-18 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

The GoDaddy DNS event (which I wrote about here) has been the subject of many a post-mortem and water-cooler conversation in the web performance world for the last week. In addition to the many well-publicized issues that have been discussed, there was one more, hidden effect that most folks may not have noticed – unless you use Firefox.

Firefox uses OCSP lookups to validate the certificate of SSL certificates. If you go to a new site and connect using SSL, Firefox has a process to check the validity of SSL cert. The results are of the lookup cached and stored for some time (I have heard 3 days, this could be incorrect) before checking again.

Before the security wonks in the audience get upset, realize I’m not an OCSP or SSL expert, and would love some comments and feedback that help the rest of us understand exactly how this works. What I do know is that anyone who came to a site the relied on an SSL cert provided and/or signed by GoDaddy at some point in its cert validation path discovered a nasty side-effect of this really great idea when the GoDaddy DNS outage occurred: If you can’t reach the cert signer, the performance of your site will be significantly delayed.

Remember this: It was GoDaddy this time; next time, it could be your cert signing authority.

How did this happen? Performing an OCSP lookup requires a opening a new TCP connection so that an HTTP request can be made to the OCSP provider. A new TCP connection requires a DNS lookup. If you can’t perform a successful DNS lookup to find the IP address of the OCSP host…well, I think you can guess the rest.
Unlike other third-party outages, these are not ones that can be shrugged off. These are ones that will affect page rendering by blocking the downloading the mobile or web application content you present to customers.

I am not someone who can comment on the effectiveness of OCSP lookups in increasing web and mobile security. OCSP lookup for Firefox are simply one more indication of how complex the design and management of modern online applications is.

Learning from the near-disaster state and preventing it from happening again is more important that a disaster post-mortem. The signs of potential complexity collapse exist throughout your applications, if you take the time to look. And while something like OCSP may like like a minor inconvenience, when it affects a discernible portion of your Firefox users, it becomes a very large mouse scaring a very jumpy elephant.

Browser Wars – Internet Explorer 7 Use Collapses in the US

2009-06-11 / spierzchala / 1 Comment

I have been monitoring this trend for a couple of weeks to see if it remained constant, and it appears to be a real thing. Since the end of May 2009, Internet Explorer 7’s browser share in the US has collapsed, with a requisite increase in the use of Firefox 3.0.

This is a staggering change. Either this is an artifact of the way that StatCounter is capturing browser data or a very large organization(s) suddenly switched the default browser that it allowed its customers to use.

Does anyone have any insight into why this may have occurred?

Browser Wars II: Why I returned to Firefox

2008-09-07 / spierzchala / 2 Comments

Since the release of Google Chrome on September 2, I have been using it as my day-to-day browser. Spending up to 80% of my computer time in a browser means that this was decision which affected a huge portion of my online experience.

I can say that I put Chrome through its paces, on a wide-variety of sites, from the simple to the extremely content-rich. From the mainstream, to the questionable.
This morning I migrated back to Firefox, albeit the latest Minefield/Firefox 3.1alpha.

The reasons listed below are mine. Switching back is a personal decision and everyone is likely to have their own reasons to do it, or to stay.

Advertising

I mentioned a few times during my initial use of Chrome that I was having to become used to the re-appearance of advertising in my browsing experience [here and here]. From their early release as extensions to Firefox, I have used AdBlock and AdBlock Plus to remove the annoyance and distraction of online ads from my browsing experience.

When I moved to Chrome, I had to accept that I would see ads. I mean, we were dealing with a browser distributed by one of the largest online advertising agencies. It could only be expected that they were not going to allow people to block ads out of the gate, if ever.

As the week progressed, I realized that I was finding the ads to be a distraction from my browsing experience. Ads impede my ability to find the information I need quickly.

Older Machines

My primary machine for online experiences at home is a Latitude D610. This is a 3-4 year-old laptop, with a single core. It is still far more computing power than most people actually need to enjoy the Web.

While cruising with Chrome, I found that Flash locked up the entire machine on a very regular basis. Made it unsuable. This doesn’t happen on my much more powerful Latitude D630, provided by my work. However, as I have a personal laptop, I am not going to use my work computer for my personal stuff, especially at home.

I cannot have a browser that locks up a machine when I simply close a tab. It appears that the vaunted QA division at Google overlooked the fact that people don’t all run the latest and greatest machines in the real world.

Auto-Complete

I am completely reliant on form auto-completes. Firefox has been doing this for me for a long time, and it is very handy to simply start typing and have Firefox say “Hey! This form element is called email. Here are some of the other things you have put into form elements called email.”

If you can build something as complex as the OmniBox, surely you can add form auto-completes.

The OmniBox

I hate it. I really do. I like having my search and addresses separate. I also like an address bar that remembers complete URLs (including those pesky parameters!), rather than simply the top-level domain name.

It is a cool idea, but it needs some refining, and some customer-satisfaction focus groups.

I Don’t Use Desktop-replacing Web Applications

I do almost all of my real work in desktop-installed Web applications. I have not made the migration to Web applications. I may in the future. But until then, I do not need a completely clean browsing experience. I mentioned that the battle between Chrome and Firefox will come down to the Container v. the Desktop – a web application container, or a desktop-replacing Web experience application.
In the last 48 hours, I have fallen back into the Web-desktop camp.

Summary

In the future, I will continue to use Chrome to see how newer builds advance, and how it evolves as more people begin dictating the features that should be available to it.

For my personal use, Chrome takes away too much from, and injects too much noise into, my daily Web experience to continue to use as the default browser. To quote more than a few skeptics of Chrome when it was relased – “It’s just another browser”.

Internet Explorer: Plan to completely support RFC 2616 anytime before the next ice age?

2007-03-13 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

I am writing up a client presentation for next week, and I just realized just how flawed Internet Explorer is. Microsoft claims that the browser is standards compliant. Yet it still doesn’t support HTTP pipelining.

And the frustrating part? They won’t tell us why. I have my suspicions, which include TCP stack issues and a flawed HTTP handling mechanism that is still based on Windows 95 architecture, but an explanation from Redmond would be nice.

Every (and I mean every) other browser can do this.

Microsoft, it’s time you detached your Web browser from your OS, like you’ve forced everyone else to do.

Firefox Rising

2004-12-14 / spierzchala / 0 Comments

MozillaZine has some interesting statistic war data on the Firefox arrival. Now of course Microsoft is disputing the numbers. But it is sort of like arguing that the Sammy Sosa Home Run record doesn’t mean as much as the Roger Maris or Babe Ruth Records because of the extended season.

Microsoft has lost this battle. If they are willing to suck it up and try to win the war, they have to agree to the following:

Internet Standards — CSS, XHTML, RSS, and HTTP/1.1 — do matter. In fact, when looking at Web performance, I have to fall back to the following argument: “I don’t care if MSIE does it, it is not in the accepted standards”. Microsoft has a very active research division that has participated in the development of these standards. Means they must buy into them at some level.
MSIE hasn’t had any buzz since the start of the pop-up wars.
MSIE suffers from a general perception of being insecure. Microsoft hates when the others can effectively use FUD against their products.
Being multi-platform has it’s advantages. And Macintosh doesn’t count, especially since you don’t have a current version of your browser for OSX. Geeks use Linux, and OSX, and BSD, and Windows. But Geeks all love Firefox, and that runs on ALL platforms. So do 90% of the extensions and themes.

I like Firefox. But I do not underestimate the power that Microsoft can bring to bear if it wants to really develop a kick-ass browser. And in the end, all Web users win.