Firefox is Basecamp's official browser

Jason just announced that Firefox is the primary browser target for Basecamp. Platform-specific browsers like Safari and IE 5/6 are of course still supported, but Firefox is where markup and looks will be verified first.

Personally, I'm still on Safari for OS X. It feels slightly faster and the form controls are just so much prettier that I haven't been overwhelmed by the urge to switch... yet. But if I was still on a PC, I'd consider myself downright foolish if I was still using an out-dated and security issue-ridden browser like IE6.

Firefox is a great browser on any platform, on Windows it's the only sensible choice. Please do switch if you haven't already: Firefox 1.0. While you're at it, get friends and family on the wagon as well, and let's see Firefox climb to a two-digit market share in no time.

UPDATE: Microsoft says Firefox not a threat to IE from CNet includes a full dismissal of Firefox by Microsoft's Steve Vamos. He claims that IE is just as secure as Firefox, that the Mozilla-based browser doesn't have any important features (otherwise MS customers would have told him!), and that it's no threat to the IE market share. Oh, please, please make him wrong. Download Firefox today.

UPDATE 2: Stefano has even more good reasons for why you should ditch IE.

My non-technical, Windows-using girlfriend whom I had previously managed to convince to switch to Mozilla (but remained somewhat skeptical about the whole alternative browser idea) downloaded and installed Firefox 1.0 on her own... I can feel the winds shifting..

I believe that once Firefox becomes more popular, it will see the same level of security issues that IE does. Browsers today are simply too complex and depend on too many 3rd-party libraries. So maybe Microsoft's statement on security isn't so unbelievable.

BTW, Basecamp works pretty well with Lynx, it just needs a few ALT tags here and there. :-)

Basecamp would work even better on Firefox if the checkboxes and radio buttons used proper label elements for the labels. This makes it possible to change the value of these input elements by clicking not only on the checkbox or radio button itself, but also on the label.

Safari sadly does not support clicking on the label element by the way...

awk is right. People seem to forget that security issues also hits non-Microsoft products.

http://a.mongers.org/diary/2004/november#10

Firefox does not allow a lot of the "features" the IE does, eg. ActiveX controls. I agree that security issues hit other browsers also, but at least the Mozilla organization have a proactive approach where they offer $500 for each security bug reported - I think that will make people who are not decidedly evil think twice before abusing.

Anyway - a guy named "Awk" and a guy with a "mongers.org" address probably don't use IE anyway, so I won't preach all the other good reasons for using Firefox :-)

Hey David,

While I agree with you about the form controls looking slightly heinous, I have good news for you. First of all, word is that Firefox 1.1 should have nicer looking form controls--there's a group of folks addressing this issue on the Linux side, so it should easily get tossed over the fence to the other platforms.

Second, Firefoxy works wonders for Firefox 1.0 on the Mac... making your form controls actually look... dare I say... sexy? Download it, drop Firefox on the app and voila--nothing else for you to complain about!! (now to get these controls in to a release!)

-Chris

They're certainly an improvement, yet still ways off the beauty that is Safari. I'll play around with it, though. Thanks for the tip.