It's disturbing to continue seeing replies from Symantec employees that say "it's coming sometime soon."
As someone considering what premium purchase to product for parental controls, this is the reason I am not selecting Norton at this time.
"It's coming sometime soon" has been months. Symantec is not keeping up with browser development schedules that are PUBLISHED well in advance. There are NIGHTLY releases from Mozilla, and frequent releases from Microsoft for IE and Google for Chrome - updates can be built on these, and codebase changes can be tracked in SVN and in the code history so you know if your tool is affected and what changes to make. And a valid answer is not "well, it's a nightly and the build might change" - no, the functions, features and changes are set, all that is left is to get the specific code worked out, and with Firefox/Chrome you're dealing with open-source communities that would love YOUR involvement.
Please don't also say "IE is the standard we develop for that" - it's a lie. IE WAS the standard until anti-trust cases and what not, and regardless of your source, studies clearly show IE, Firefox, and Chrome are all predominant browsers today, with markey share for IE continuing to shrink and Firefox and Chrome growing significantly. I'm not asking you support all browsers, although Opera, Safari and others would be nice and a good gesture to your customers. But here are facts, regardless of which source you choose (this is averaged across NetAppsMarketshare, StatCount, W3Counter, Wikimedia as of May, 2011):
- IE (ALL versions) is ~43.85% (37-54%) of market share;
- Firefox is ~26.3% (21-30%) of market share;
- Chrome is ~16.08% (12-19%) of market share;
- Opera, Safari, mobile browsers: ~16.68%
- All trends indicate that for now, IE marketshare continues to drop, with Firefox and Chrome continuing to grow
- It's important to note many trends adjusted for frequent web users show IE at under 25%, Firefox at over 40%, Chrome at over 25%, and others at under 7%, and in general show Firefox and Chrome holding considerable and significantly higher combined marketshare than IE with the trend strongly moving in the same direction. i.e. http://www.w3schools.com/browsers/browsers_stats.asp, http://www.w3counter.com/globalstats.php)
Why would I pay for parental controls when they aren't going to be fully comptaible with the browser I use - specifically, the most up-to-date (secure) version? Support for Firefox and Chrome must be as important and timely as IE.
I'd like an answer as to how many resources are allocated to safety minder, how many work on the firefox issues, ETAs (specific times - i.e. second week July if not a specific date), and whether or not there is a plan to PROACTIVELY update the software to work with new browsers as they release. Most parents, and many IT people such as myself, choose an automatic update to keep their browser up-to-date. Then they find out - if they happen to notice - safety minder is disabled. So they either know their product isn't fully functional, or they just don't know. Symantec has a responsibility as a security company to address this. Norton Internet Security, starting with v2009, was a great step forward for the company recovering from its mediocre prior products.
This issue is relegating Norton and Symantec to the realm of only Antivirus and some Firewall, with all other pieces being subpar and better suited by other custom products, and better best-of-breed suites out there.
Please give me specific answers on why Symantec has not addressed this and when it will be addressed. Security threats are addressed in hours. Why is a parental control tool, for a browser known to be coming for months and released over a week ago? When should I expect the update for Firefox 6 (NOTICE: It's being released in September, 2011 as has been known for months).
If the reply is another "we'll continue to support and we're working on it" that is the equivalent of saying "we don't care, we'll get to it when we get to it, you wasted your money, we don't care."
