Name: jam14online Date: June 22, 2004 at 11:54:18 Pacific Subject: Mozilla Firefox
Comment:
The point of this post it to do one thing: try to convert IE users over to Firefox. Mozilla Firefox is a next-generation browser; it supersedes IE in all ways.
It's built using none other than the Mozilla rendering engine (Gecko) which is superb at rendering pages. I recommend you read this article for reasons on why Firefox is better.
The best version I have found is the 0.9rc preview version. It has a lovely theme, the menus and toolbars take up little screen space and it loads pages very quickly indeed.
The download size is small and it is easy to install and uninstall. Another decent article is 13 Reasons To Use Firefox Over IE. The title says it all.
I hope some of you make the plunge and try out this fantastic Web browser. I've converted approximately 10 friends already and I hope to convert more. The reason I switched was because I found IE slow, buggy and it didn't render some of my pages correctly. The more people who start using a decent browser which renders pages correctly, the better.
Please don't flame me back now saying "IE is amazing"; that's your opinion.
The fact is: web pages are written in HTML. HTML was designed from the outcome to be a universal language that people on all platforms with any user agent (usually web browser) can use and interpret. It's just unfortunate that Microsoft monopolized the web browser market and shut the door on Netscape.
If someone designs their site with non-standard code written especially for IE or "optimize" the page so it looks best in IE, that's their fault. Here's a famous quote from the inventor of the WWW:
“Anyone who slaps a ‘this page is best viewed with Browser X’ label on a Web page appears to be yearning for the bad old days, before the Web, when you had very little chance of reading a document written on another computer, another word processor, or another network.”
- Tim Berners-Lee in Technology Review, July 1996
My reasons for Firefox are numerous. If you read the articles I mentioned the first post, you'll see many of them.
Security: Firefox wins. It doesn't suffer from disguisting spyware/adware/malware and stupid toolbars and homepage hijacks that IE does. (As far as I know.)
Appearance: Firefox wins. It has a simple interface for quickly adding elegant themes and has an immensely customisable layout. All IE has is a horrible "skinning" background of the toolbar. Although, you could argue you can have add-ons, why bother? Firefox already has it.
Speed: Firefox wins. Although, some may argue that IE takes less time to load, this is purely because Microsoft have again monopolized and integrated IE code into the OS. This means a lot of the IE browser is already loaded before you even start up the main program file. When I load a page in Firefox, it feels twice as fast as IE.
Flexibility: Well, there's not much to compare it to, is there? It has loads of extra features that IE just doesn't have. How about tabbed browsing, a download manager and a pop-up blocker? All built in.
The bad thing about using different browsers other than IE is that you dont view webpages as intended by the creator
that is why i wouldnt use firefox. it would have to have EXACTLY the same stuff for rendering the page as IE so that when i go to a site, i see... as Jamie said, exactly how the creator wanted it.
One day, I was chatting on msn messenger and one of my friends sent me a link. I clicked the link, and nothing happened with my default browser (Mozilla). Thinking that it was just some badly coded html, I tried it in Internet Explorer.
The link infected windows xp with a virus. I had all of the "critical updates". That was the day I switched over to Linux.
If you don't want to switch to Linux, I reccommend you switch to Mozilla or Firefox immediately.
If a web site designer/coder makes their site using valid [X]HTML and CSS, it should look almost identical on every browser. If people stay with this view that there is no point in switching because code will "look different", then we will never have people using decent web browsers. By the way, there are very few pages that render differently in Firefox than IE. If you find one, politely e-mail the webmaster and tell them to stop being M$ activists. (Obviously that's a huge exagerration, but you get the point.)
b0red, you're absolutely right. And your site reflects this awesomely. The story you told has happened to me before, many times. I use no Microsoft software apart from the actual OS itself, Notepad and Minesweeper. This seems to be a good policy and has kept my computer running smoothly for years.
Anyway, just try out Firefox and I assure you that you won't be disappointed.
Maybe if this stupid attitude was abolished people would realise they need to design validating and clean code which means it will work on any browser, from a mobile/cell phone to a tablet PC.
I really don't have super-strong feelings on the subject, but I'm going to post my response to a few of the points made anyway:
"It doesn't suffer from disguisting spyware/adware/malware and stupid toolbars and homepage hijacks that IE does." Of course not...Nobody wants to spend their time making programs to hijack 5% of the population. Like the Win vs Linux argument, there is no way to do a valid comparison between the two products because Microsoft's OS and browser is the only one anybody ever targets!
"How about tabbed browsing, a download manager and a pop-up blocker? All built in. " Three features I despise.
"this is purely because Microsoft have again monopolized and integrated IE code into the OS." the typical end user doesn't care why it loads faster...It just does. I happen to agree that integrating IE into the OS was an awful design decision (I've argued it here previously so I won't go into it again), but simply a business one.
"The bad thing about using different browsers other than IE is that you dont view webpages as intended by the creator" As has already been mentioned, a responsible creator will ensure that the page looks the same with (at least) netscape and IE. There are reasons not to switch, but this isn't one of them. You have no idea what the creator used to develop the page. You might as well attempt to divine the screen resolution the creator had and change yours to match with each page you visit.
"Firefox would be great if all web designers catered for it, but, they dont. so... still IE for me" The deadly circle. I develop primarily using IE as my test browser because that's what 92% of my visitors have. It's not a question of which is better, it's a question of which is more popular.
"from a mobile/cell phone to a tablet PC. " Perfectly valid HTML may not render very well on these devices...You almost have to design with them in mind to be certain your pages will work. This point also comes dangerously close to contradicting your previous point that you got rid of IE when it didn't render some of your pages correctly...:-)
I'm surprised the number one reason to not use IE hasn't even come up yet...When you run IE on windows, and something gets messed up in your browser, you can't just uninstall IE and reinstall it...You have to reload your entire operating system. This is the real heresy of IE. Before I was a programmer, I was a freelance tech, and I am sick and tired of reformating hard drives because some obscure IE file got corrupted.
Contrast this with any other browser...Something goes wrong, and you're back up in running in half an hour.
Why? Tabbed browsing makes it so you don't have a huge amount of windows open in your taskbar. It organizes it well, for me, anyway. The download manager, IMO, is brilliant, simply because it does something that I find useful. It less you which downloads are currently progressing and when you've finished downloading a particular file. Finally, I partially agree about having a pop-up blocker. The simplest thing to do is just disable Javascript completely.
I develop with Firefox and then fix the bugs when I see it in IE. Probably a stupid idea but that's what I do...
The reason I say a cell phone to tablet PC is because I have browsed the Web on these. The cell phone I used allowed WML and (simple) HTML viewing. The tablet PC, of course, had IE but I install Firefox and Opera.
I totally agree with the point about reinstalling. I simply don't use IE anymore. In fact, I uninstalled (most of) it using XPlite. All I have left is the core files needed for Windows Help among other things.
"on winXP if comes with tabbed browsing stuff like that. i disabled it because i hate it so much."
Windows XP doesn't come with tabbed browsing. It comes with a feature that groups multiple taskbar items of the same program together. They are quite different, in fact. Here's a cropped screenshot:
I have Firefox and I am trying to use it, however I found for instance that when I was trying to do an online anti-trojan scan, I could only do it with internet explorer. When I try to access some sites with Firefox it continually asks for the Java plug-in which I have already downloaded, yet the site will not recognize it. Then I have to go to IE. Yes,internet explorer is a pain but I still find needing it.
WWW browsers were never designed to perform virus scans. The scanner you were using probably used ActiveX, which is a proprietary technology developed exclusively by Microsoft and so it's no wonder that it doesn't work with Firefox.
If you want to scan for trojans or viruses, get yourself a proper trojan/virus scanner. It will perform better and also when you are not online! (Sorry if I sound bossy.)
I have never had trouble with the java plugin. I recommend you uninstall everything Java-related from your system. Then close all programs and download the official installer from java.com. It should detect Firefox and install it in the plugins folder. Then start up Firefox and Java should work now.
