Background information

• As of Semester 2, 2007, ICTS ceased to support Firefox, the second most popular (and far more functional) web browser, on the staff desktop.
• A rationale for retaining firefox by concerned staff was developed - feel free to contribute, this remains as a live, publically available rationale which may, at least, be useful for others.
• An application for the Retention of Firefox in the Standard PC Image (submitted Friday 19 October, 2007) was rejected by the CPAB group (Monday 22 October). FF does, however, remain on the approved software list (for staff), if you can demonstrate a 'business need'.
• The student desktop in Semester 1, 2008, continues to provide Firefox. It remains a mystery as to why ICTS have decided to provide students with more functional desktops than staff, however it seems likely that the next student image will not include FF.
• As a result of the university's decisions, your choices of internet browser include:
  • use [Internet Explorer 6] (the official browser of the university)
  • apply for official approval to use Firefox - you need a business case
  • using Firefox Portable - it's not clear whether ICTS approve of this, but short of disabling USB ports, there's also not much ICTS can do about staff and student use of portable applications
• You can still join the FF Users Group @ UC to learn more and get involved, particularly if you want help/support in getting access to FF, although the list is now largely inactive.

Problems arising

Alternatives for staff

• Use student desktops
• Use Firefox portable
• Make a 'business case' for using FF, get it approved with your area, and then apply to ICTS.

Staff petition and comments in support of the retention of Firefox on the desktop

Add your name and any comments if you agree... "I support the request to retain the Firefox web browser on the UC desktop image."

Heads of Schools and higher support

1. Carole Kayrooz, PVC Education
   • I support the continuation of the two main internet browsers (Internet Explorer and Firefox) on the standard university computer image.
2. [~s420196], Director, CELTS
3. Greg Battye, Head, School of Creative Communication
   • If one were going to have only one browser, then surely it should be Firefox anyway — it's the one that meets external standards, it's the one that works across Windows, Mac and Linux with the same version, has the highest level of development of plugins and extensions... don't get me started.
   • If the university (or anyone else for that matter) needs to limit itself to one browser, the Firefox should be the one, since it works for everybody. Surely this is a key part of what is meant by a 'common operating environment?'
4. George Cho, Head, School of Resource, Environmental & Heritage Sciences
   • I am a Firefox user and am dismayed that there is neither any support nor the degradation to the Firefox browser when used to view UC documents. My personal preference is Firefox but because of a recent PC desktop upgrade have had to accept the MS Outlook suite and IE.

Staff Petition and Comments

1. James Neill
   • FF provides functionality far superior to IE.
   • Offers positive ROI because of enhanced workflow, productivity.
   • Its becoming increasingly important for our graduates to be skilled FF users.
2. Sam Hinton
   • We need a browser that's supported on both Mac and Windows platforms. IE has not been supported on Macs since version 5. This university does have a number of areas which use Macs for teaching and for staff desktop machines, and these areas will be using either Safari or Firefox as the main desktop browser. Supporting only IE implies that there will be no support for browsers on the Mac platform.
   • If we standardise to IE there's a real risk that all IT systems will likewise be standardised to IE. This is a problem because IE is not standards compliant. Web-based applications that are developed to work in IE 7 on a PC consequently may not work properly on Firefox (example: the Exchange Web interface, which is minimal on Firefox - no search for example). I don't want to find that I (once again) cannot access Callista or other UC web applications because of non-compliant IE-specific implementations of web apps.
   • Extending the point above, there are a significant number of Firefox using students (only some of which are Mac users) - we need to be careful that their access to UC appls like OSIS likewise supports a broad range of browsers.
   • We need multiple browser support for teaching web development - so students can test pages in multiple browsers.
   • The enterprise ease of patching IE needs to be balanced against the greater number of security flaws and exploits for IE. IE is by nature a less secure browser than Firefox, if only because it has larger market share and is therefore a bigger target for hackers.
   • This process of developing a case in favor of FF has taken a number of staff quite a bit of time that could have been better spent on other things. I think the strategy of changing something then making staff make a case for the thing to be changed back the way it was is inefficient. We need to examine the process of change and consultation.
   • Firefox supports a number of enhanced applications that are really useful - foxyproxy to change proxy settings on the fly, a del.icio.us toolbar and so on. It has good built-in RSS support and more reflects the Web 2.0 model of web use that it emerging as increasingly important to education.
3. Robert Fitzgerald- Research Fellow (Education)
   • Support the use of FF and the increased flexibility and functionality that it provides. e.g. tabbed browsing
   • Our Carrick project website statistics (http://community.mashedlc.edu.au/, 3,428 Visits, 47,821 Pageviews & 13.95 Pages/Visit) that is being used by UC students shows that since June this year, the four browsers in use are IE7.0 (48.63%), IE6.0 (51.37%), FF (23.61%), SAFARI (2.18%) and MOZILLA (0.12%). On these figures UC's support of only one browser, and IE6.0 at that, seems to be at odds with this patten of use.
   • It would be useful to see  ICTS's browser statistics.
   • There is a complex interaction between technology and pedagogy - the literature refers to this as: techno-pedagogy and suggests we must consider both the technical and the educational as we work in these settings.
   • Neil Postman (1993) reminds us that all technology (applications and management) is a "Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure." What are we at risk of losing (and gaining) as we make these technological decisions?
   • Generally the use of opensource software should be encouraged in publicly-funded institutions.
   • A collegial and non-propriety approach to education and learning is appealing and you might even argue essential today. We need to be encouraging open and flexible approaches to ICT use in universities. Students are demanding this flexibility.
4. Andrew Read
   • It is in the University's best interest to undermine Microsoft's near monopoly position.  Monopolists have an incentive to limit innovation and to charge exploitive prices.  While IE is free at the moment, it would take an extreme optimist to assume it would stay that way if all significant competition was removed from the market.
   • From a risk management perspective, the University should not be dependent on any one supplier of software.  We are already heavily dependent on Microsoft through the use of Windows and Exchange.  We should actively seek to discourage any further dependence on Microsoft.  Adopting FF is one small way of reducing our dependence.
5. Peter Donnan
   • I have been using FF for the last 18 months at home and at work: I find it offers more than IE in terms of features such as managing bookmarks, TABs, history, sites-visited history, searching from the toolbar, and general design. I do think there is scope within a university to offer some diversity but this is not based on knowledge of the economics, resourcing and staffing required to maintain that quality. The fact that I can't used FF to access Callista is a point I would like to mention. As a general principle I always like to see some diversity and competition, not a monopoly and especially not MicroSoft which is not always attuned to the grassroots users.
6. Mary-Jane Taylor
   • I need firefox to communicate with the University of Wollongong Janison sites. Explorer will not do it.
7. Arthur Georges
   • I use Firefox primarily because you can have multiple icons with differing profiles. This is very important when you are working with links to different libraries and facilities, each with different proxyservers. The alternative is to re configure Internet Explorer every time you move from one site to another. So for me it is very important to retain Firefox.
8. Jordan Williams
   • There are any number of sites, business and creative, which, on a Mac at least, don't function with IE. I need Firefox for my research as do several postgrad students so that we can access those sites.
   • I support Firefox - it's superior and some banks only work on Firefox on Macs not to mention some other sites.
9. Felicity Packard
   • Diversity and choice of browsers enormously extends both teaching and learning online opportunities for myself and my students.
10. Sue Demoor
    • I support the retention of Firefox. I think we always need 2 browsers on the staff COE.
11. Minh-Tam Nguyen
    • While I understand the reasoning behind the change, I believe that FF should not be removed from the image, or at the very least it should be made a standard change. Under certain circumstances two browsers are needed on one computer. There are many little features in FF which make life easier. Extensions, bookmark synching, session storage and recovery, etc (this debate being IE7 vs. FF2; so do not mention RSS and tabbed browsing).
    • There are things that don't work properly in one or the other of the two main browsers. Sometimes users are forced to use a non-preferred browser because of bugs in websites, differing interpretations of the code, or so-called security measures. Some websites only work with FF (like banks mentioned above), some only work with IE (Agent 99, other banks).
12. David Williams
13. [~s613031]
    • I would like to see Firefox supported, let's go forward here not back.
14. Stephen Barrass
    • IE (from microsoft) and Safari (from Apple) lag significantly in their implementations and do not work with many the more cutting edge sites that we use to teach in New Media.
    • In addition I really need that the standard disc image includes the Flash 9 Plugin for whatever browsers are supported, otherwise much of the content we need to teach New Media is inaccessible in lecture theatres and computer labs, which makes things very frustrating for lecturers, tutors and students all round.
15. Steve Dawson
    • I support keeping Firefox; I find it more useful in various ways than Internet Explorer, particularly to ability to open multiple tabs.
16. Michael De Percy
17. Andrew Carr
    • FF is a far superior browser, especially amongst the junior members of staff who are more natively comfortable with IT and given Firefox's growing market share, to drop the product now means ICTS are guaranteed to have to revisit the issue in the immediate future as it becomes a more commonly accepted browser.
18. Paula Higgins
19. Loong Wong
20. Cameron Gordon
21. Greg Barrett
22. Sally Berridge
    • Please consider retaining Firefox. I have found it far better than IE.
23. Thea Vanags
24. Geoff Hinchcliffe
25. Chris Lennard
    • I support the retention of Firefox as I find it more stable and easier to use than IE (for example, the use of tabs in Firefox is more intuitive than with IE).
26. Nancy FitzSimmons
    • I am i support of maintaining Firefox, it is the only browser I use.
27. [~s650786]
    • The entire web applications development team at UC uses FF (and has done so for years) to develop web apps and then ports them across to IE as an afterthought.
    • IE CSS has fallen behind FF severely and has not improved with IE7. This frequently results in accessibility issues in the UI or just a plainly un-professional finish
    • The web applications team would like to advise that the web is full of websites made by a wide veriety of people and that not all websites work in all browsers. It makes sense to have "both" major browsers to ensure that maximal (or in some cases, minimal) functionality is supported.
    • The web apps team also wishes to advise that they are capable of assisting the COE team with the difficulties (cost) associated with rolling out the FF product.
    • FF is actually more popular than any other version of IE at the moment. Many websites cater to this, as such, not having FF represents a threat to UC's web browsing capability. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp

Comments ( Hide )

s650786 says: You guys are going to have to do a whole lot better than this. More people, better reasons. Nov 07, 2007 15:22 ( Permalink )

Marilyn Edmond says: I can think of two good technical/pedagogical reasons for UC supporting 2 browsers, plus an ideological one. Firstly, the library subscribes (on behalf of academic faculties) to a number of (often expensive) databases which cannot be viewed via IE, and require Firefox to access them. If Firefox were to be ditched then there would be no point subscribing to these databases, and many students and academics would be disadvantaged as they would no longer be able to access full text journal articles supporting teaching, learning and research. By the way, before someone queries this, many databases are the only source of much online material, so if a particular database is not available because of an ICTS policy, then this is a serious issue for that discipline. Secondly, the online manuals supporting the new library system can only be viewed in Firefox. IE support for java seems flaky at best, and is the reason why these manuals cannot be accessed via IE. In addition, there is  the long standing debate as to whether ICTS should dictate what applications are used on campus to support teaching, learning and research; or whether - as I believe - technology should be the servant, not the master, of the UC community. Mar 04, 2008 14:40 ( Permalink )