The security issues in Internet Explorer have
highlighted the need for companies to think about supporting other
web browsers on their customer-facing websites to control the
security threat.
A number of security bodies and industry experts, including the
US government-backed CERT, and non-profit Sans Institute, have
urged companies to consider Microsoft alternatives. These include
Netscape, Opera, Mozilla and Apple's Safari.
Richard Brain, technical director at security consultant
ProCheckup, said: "It is a good idea to use other, safer browsers
like Firefox by default, and the more complex, buggy Internet
Explorer to access those sites which will only work with IE.
"IE is an overly complex bit of software that should really get
back to its simpler roots as a web browser, so that Microsoft
developers can simplify it and remove its security holes," he
said.
"Online businesses that follow this advice may have to
re-engineer their websites to make them fully accessible to
non-Microsoft browsers."
Phil Cracknell, security consultant at NetSecurity, advises his
clients to use non-Microsoft web servers, based on Unix, Linux, and
Netscape, together with Microsoft IIS, to confound the hackers.
"More obscure operating systems will get hacked less," Cracknell
said.
He added that Microsoft should not be vilified, because it has
provided what users demanded.
"We wanted interactive stuff and to plug things into the
browser; and there's a cost to that: there will be ports open.
"The Windows environment, while it is slated for OS
vulnerabilities, has had to go through a hardening process, and I
think Microsoft has stepped up to the mark," Cracknell said.
Analysts said it will be possible, although not effortless, to
develop interactive, animated e-commerce sites that can be viewed
on other browser platforms.
Bola Rotiba, senior analyst for software development strategy at
Ovum, said it is a myth that websites will not work well in
non-Microsoft browsers.
"Why should companies lose any functionality? There is nothing
to say the animations shouldn't exist [in alternative browsers],"
Rotiba said.
Rotiba added that translating the site for different browsers
can be straightforward. "It depends on how much abstraction has
been done to build the site. HTML is not an issue; bog-standard
HTML can be optimised easily.
"The questions to ask are what is the site doing: is it dynamic
or static? If it uses dynamic HTML and cascading style sheets, it
will take more work," Rotiba said.
If the site uses a high degree of scripting languages like PHP
and CFML (ColdFusion Markup Language), developers will also have
their hands full, she said.
"Tools like Macromedia MX, and Dreamweaver MX allow you to
produce a site for every platform available. But if you've written
the scripts in something like CFML, there are not many tools
available to translate the interactive, dynamic part," Rotiba
said.