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[ZDNet] When Vista first came out, users reported a number of problems running Firefox on it. Have these issues been worked out now? For example, Users were unable to set Firefox as the default browser for all applications.

[Schroepfer] Vista changed the way in which default applications are registered. There are many applications currently shipping which do not use the OS provided API’s to launch the default application and instead try and read the registry directly to determine the default application. These applications will not correctly launch Firefox until they are updated to use the existing APIs. We are currently investigating some workarounds for this - you can track the progress here: bug 369703 (Add protocol / file handler registry keys in HKEY_CURRENT_USER to workaround apps that read reg keys directly).

[ZDNet] How about the problem where you couldn’t install the browser to a directory name other than the default one?

If you installed a directory other than the default the Microsoft provided Vista compatibility shim would not have applied. This was fixed in 2.0.0.2.

[ZDNet] Problems with the browser window shaking?

This affects a small number of users and has been very difficult to track down. You can track the progress here: bug 372590 (Screen “jiggle” and Firefox lockup while loading tabs).

[ZDNet] Problems with Firefox updating itself?

There were some problems if you’re running as a low rights user with UAC involved. This was fixed in 2.0.0.2, see bug 351949.

[ZDNet] In terms of Vista integration is there anything that IE7 does that Firefox doesn’t do yet?

IE7 has better integration with the Vista Parental controls, and supports Protected Mode (IE is the only application I am aware of that uses protected mode).

[ZDNet] Is Protected Mode a priority for Firefox? After the animated cursor attack, Protected Mode became important in user’s minds. Microsoft claimed that IE was more secure than Firefox because of Protected Mode.

The animated cursor attack would still allow for reading of any files on the local system - so protected mode is no panacea. We believe pro-active and rapid patching of security vulnerabilities is still the best defense. Having said that we also believe in defense in depth and are investigating protected mode along with many other techniques to improve security for future releases.

[ZDNet] In December I wrote that Microsoft had added a “shim” in Vista to let Firefox run in a backwards-compatible way, but that shim was set to expire with version 2.0.0.3. Well, 2.0.0.4 is out now, so presumably the shim has expired. What effect does that have on users?

None. Versions of Firefox prior to 2.0.0.2 were compatible with Vista through a “compatibility shim” that Microsoft provided. This worked around many of the compatibility issues that we resolved in version 2.0.0.2 and forward. If you want to look into this in more depth you can follow the bugs here: bug 352420. This is the main tracking bug for Vista support.

The work we did for Firefox 2.0.0.2 and beyond added the Vista specific functionality and removed the requirement for the shim.