Myth (Definition) - A fiction or half-truth, especially one that forms part of an ideology. While Firefox is a decent Web Browser, there are numerous Myths floating around the Internet regarding it. Hopefully this site will debunk some of these.

[*]"Firefox is faster than Internet Explorer"
It is true that people claim this, but it is an example of taking a concept out of context. While it is true that IE cold starts faster than Firefox (especially if you have Firefox tricked out with a bunch of extensions), I don't know who cares about cold start times. The speed people are referring to is the perceived speed with which Firefox browses and renders when compared to IE. The actual speed of the page loads and renders are varied and can be shown to favor either IE or Firefox, but that doesn't refute the fact that many users get a sense that they are browsing faster than they were before. If they technically aren't, does it really matter?

[*]"Firefox is a secure Web Browser"
Once again... Who says these things? I would love to know who says these things other than people who don't know what the word secure means. Technically, nothing is secure, so the statement in and of itself is invalid just by saying, writing, or thinking it. That said, people have said that Firefox is a more secure browser than IE. This is one of the kinds of statements that is both true and false at the same time since it depends on what you define as "more secure". It has been shown that the developers of Firefox respond, on average, quicker to critical security threats than Microsoft does. This means that patches are released in a more timely manner which results in the potential of increased security. Notice that I said potential. All of the browsers have their own specific vulnerabilities. To some users, the vulnerabilities present in Firefox are more critical than the vulnerabilities in IE and vice-versa.

[*]"Firefox is a Solution to Spyware"
Another one of those "only users who know very little of the nature of the subject would make such a claim" statements. Considering that all browsers have vulnerabilities and all vulnerabilites open up a system to being exploited, it is easy to see that no browser is a "solution to spyware". Many of the users of Firefox have reported that they have received fewer spyware infections while using Firefox than they did while using IE. It is true that IE has finally been fixed up to address most, if not all, of the holes exploited by spyware authors, but when the claims of Firefox antispyware claims were being made, these patches did not exist. It is possible that Firefox has an edge over IE in terms of reduced spyware infection risks, but it is just as possible that IE now has the edge. Just like the security issue, this issue will be a topic of debate for a long time to come.

[*]"Firefox is Bug Free"
This myth is just absurd and shows a complete lack of understanding about software in general. No software is bug free, and Firefox is no exception.

[*]"Firefox was the first Web Browser to offer Tabbed Browsing"
This is an example of the internet's version of the phone game. Start with an idea, cycle it through thousands of people, and a complete lie comes out the other end. The fact is that Firefox was nowhere near the first browser to have tabbed browsing. What is true however is that Firefox helped to popularize the idea of tabbed browsing.

[*]"Firefox fully Supports W3C Standards"
This is the phone game again. Being standards compliant is becoming more and more important. Unfortunately, none of the browsers out there have complete standards compliance. Even more depressing is that none of the browsers are even close to being compliant, and there isn't one that is consistently more compliant than any of the others. When will we get a fully compliant browser and which browser will be there first? We can only guess.

[*]"Firefox works with every Web Page"
If this were true, the Firefox team wouldn't have many tools available to report sites that do not function with Firefox. Most sites that simply don't function at all on Firefox aren't written to comply with a standard; rather, they are written and tested to work with Internet Explorer and only Internet Explorer. It's expecting a lot to want Firefox, and other browsers for that matter, to be different and somehow better than Internet Explorer while having to match the way that Internet Explorer does everything.[/list]

The way the information was laid out in the article makes it ripe for the creation of new myths, myths like "Firefox isn't secure at all!", "Firefox gives you spyware!", "Firefox is full of bugs!", or "The Firefox team doesn't care about W3C standards!"

"My friends told me that I need to start using Firefox because using IE is dangerous."