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I am not the target audience. Mozilla/Firefox it is for me and while I hate useless Javascript (Hey, blogger.. Great to see a spinner!) I wouldn't want to disab

I am not the target audience. Mozilla/Firefox it is for me and while I hate useless Javascript (Hey, blogger.. Great to see a spinner!) I wouldn't want to disable it by default. But maybe this is a good idea and maybe there is a need for a secure by default browser. What I don't quite like is the 'low level languages are dangerous' paragraph and then implementing the thing in Java/on the JVM. As far as I'm aware the security record of that platform isn't exactly stellar as well and especially older versions are widely reported to be vulnerable to exploits (admittedly usually using applets as a vector here). Is the JVM really a great (or decent) choice, if security is the main concern? I truely don't know, so .. honest question here.

hrjet 12y ago
> As far as I'm aware the security record of that platform isn't exactly stellar as well and especially older versions are widely reported to be vulnerable to exploits (admittedly usually using applets as a vector here). Yes, historically, there have been major concerns about security of the JVM platform. Applets (which we don't support) have been a big vector. Also, as per my understanding, there was a transition period when Oracle took over the reigns from Sun, during which security patches were not released as frequently as vulnerabilities were discovered. However, the frequency of patches has increased in recent times. Moreover, OpenJDK has emerge as a complete open-source implementation of Java. So, atleast in theory, it should be possible for the community to fix the holes and not rely on a single company.
eli 12y ago
I think the issue with Java has been with applets that are able to escape the sandbox. In other words, with running apps you don't quite trust. That's not an issue here: you are implicitly trusting the browser itself, just like you trust firefox. So in my opinion, Java isn't inherently worse than a lower level language. (I'm not 100% convinced it's better, though.)

hrjet 12y ago

> As far as I'm aware the security record of that platform isn't exactly stellar as well and especially older versions are widely reported to be vulnerable to exploits (admittedly usually using applets as a vector here). Yes, historically, there have been major concerns about security of the JVM platform. Applets (which we don't support) have been a big vector. Also, as per my understanding, there was a transition period when Oracle took over the reigns from Sun, during which security patches were not released as frequently as vulnerabilities were discovered. However, the frequency of patches has increased in recent times. Moreover, OpenJDK has emerge as a complete open-source implementation of Java. So, atleast in theory, it should be possible for the community to fix the holes and not rely on a single company.

eli 12y ago

I think the issue with Java has been with applets that are able to escape the sandbox. In other words, with running apps you don't quite trust. That's not an issue here: you are implicitly trusting the browser itself, just like you trust firefox. So in my opinion, Java isn't inherently worse than a lower level language. (I'm not 100% convinced it's better, though.)