14 DAY TRIAL // The battle for the most powerful internet browser is very interesting because at this time, three of the giants are trying to take the leader position. Opera, Firefox and Internet Explorer are surely the most popular browsers in the entire internet world because they provide very useful browsing tools. Internet Explorer, currently available in the 7.0 version, is included in the Windows operating system, being the default browser for all the users of the Microsoft's product. Firefox is the application developed by Mozilla that is regarded as an extremely configurable browser because it allows you to add extensions and themes to improve the functionality of the program. Finally, Opera is a free browser that is meant to contain all the tools a user needs to navigate the internet safe and secure and without any additional tools.
Because they are so popular, several internet users are continuously sending bug reports or feedback messages to the company with a single goal: increase the functionality of the browsers and suggest new tools that can improve the browsing experience. That's why the companies are working hardly to update their solutions, trying to fix all the bugs sent by its users.
Security company Secunia released an advisory saying that Opera is the only browser that fixed all the flaws reported by its users in comparison with Internet Explorer, Firefox and Safari.
OperaWatch, one of the sites that are monitoring all the changes and modifications added to the Opera browser, said that Opera 8 and Opera 9 were the applications with the highest rate of fixed vulnerabilities, publishing the following statistics:
- IE6 - 67% patched (out of 110 reported bugs). - IE7 - 25% patched (out of 4 reported bugs). - Firefox 1 - 87% patched (out of 39 reported bugs). - Firefox 2 - 50% patched (out of 4 reported bugs). - Opera 8 - 100% patched (out of 15 reported bugs). - Opera 9 - 100% patched (out of 3 reported bugs). - Safari 1 - 93% patched (out of 15 reported bugs). - Safari 2 - 33% patched (out of 6 reported bugs).
Although many companies are praising Opera for fixing all the reported bugs, have a look at the statistics. You should observe that both Opera 8 and Opera 9 fixed a total of 18 bugs while Microsoft repaired 67 percent of 110 vulnerabilities in Internet Explorer 6 that means approximately 73 fixed flaws. It's obvious that the rate of the sent vulnerabilities depends on the number of users, so I think Opera is not quite so well updated.